duncanjwitham

The reason the wage cap works in the NFL is that it's basically a closed eco-system designed to keep the league competitive. The wage-cap, the structure of player contracts, the roster limits, the draft, waivers etc all feed into this. Football has none of that, at least in part because it's spread across so many different countries, with different standards of living and levels of pay. If we introduced a wage-cap in England, the top players would all just go and play in Spain and Italy. There are no real other competing American Football teams outside of the NFL, either in wage terms or stature, for players to go and play for (yeah there's CFL, but it's nowhere near the same level).

But Irwin wasn't expected to bomb forward and provide width. He had Giggs doing that in front of him. We're expecting Lowe to play like a winger at times, but he either has to cut in on his strong foot, or try and whip a cross in with his weak foot. Not Lowe's fault obviously, he's doing a decent job for the team when needs must.

I don't know if there's a rule expressly banning this, but the fee paid to the player would count as income, and thus be taxable (at 45%). So any transfer fee is immediately significantly inflated.

It's a fairly narrow loophole - it's only useful if both the selling club and the player are willing to negotiate cancelling the players contract. If it's deliberate (and not a mistake in how the rules were written, or us misreading them), then presumably the argument is, it's in nobodies interest to have these kind of players either shackled to clubs collecting a wage but not playing, or released after the window has closed so unable to get paid for doing their job for months.

It seems pretty clear from the bit in section 1, but it's amazing that something like that is only clarified in the definitions section, and not explained thoroughly in the actual rules part.

Sounded like we were playing 3 different plans at the same time for most of the match 😉

The one thing the rules seem really muddled on, is the transfer windows closing on different days in different countries. There's no acknowledgement (that I can see) of the fact that the English window may have closed, but the Spanish one is still open. So it's not remotely clear what happens if a player that is registered in Spain cancels his contract while their window is open, and then tries to sign for an English club while ours is closed.

Reading the Charlton forum, he had requested to be released from his contract, due to not being paid, before the window closed. Bolton refused, so he appealed and was granted permission this week. Presumably the EFL are using some common sense and allowing him to be signed now, rather than making him wait until January and go another 4 months without pay. From the EFL rules website: 43.2.3 if agreed by The League (including where the Player was last registered with a Club (or club) which has ceased to trade, including during the Closed Period) subject to such conditions as determined by The League and by which the Club making the application and the Player shall be bound. Which by my reading, basically gives the EFL license to allow anyone to be registered under extenuating circumstances.

https://www.efl.com/-more/governance/efl-rules--regulations/section-6---players/ “Players registered at any level including on a Non-Contract registration are not deemed to have ‘out of registration player’ status if still registered during a Closed Period” so a player registered to a club at any point during the time the transfer window is closed, can not register with another club until the next window is open.

September 2nd.

Suppose it makes a change from Mooy actively chasing Kieran Dowell and co.

While that may be true, they actually have to have been playing in those younger years to improve towards their prime. Roos is 27 and really hasn't played all that much. Personally, I'm not taking a position on Roos either way - I honestly don't think we've seen him tested enough to really know if he's good enough or not. (Although that probably tells you whether it's a good idea to be going into a season with him as your only real option...)

Yeah, every time someone posts in here I think he's gone 😈

Don't forget that the transfer window in Scotland doesn't close until September 2nd. SO they could still sign Max Lowe after the window has closed here. If we're seriously thinking about selling him, we need to know for sure what our plans are for Malone cover.

I'm sure the compensation we'll get from Man Utd will more than ease the pain, if it were to happen.