Allardyce complaining he might not be able to buy Carroll

BFS has been complaining about the impending EPL FFP rules suggesting that he may not be able to afford Andy Carroll.

Go and speak to your owners Sam as they helped to vote this in.

LMAO! Exactly lie down with the (red) devil and reap what you sow .....

I still say we do a PSG and just shove 2 fingers up and see them all in court.

This is another example of how everyone has been blinded by the smoke and mirrors. A small number of teams are shitting themselves at the prospect of their privileged position at the very top of the pile being usurped by "outsiders" that they want to shut down the beast before it even gets a chance to cause them any issues.

And all those clubs that signed up to it, thinking, "Yes, we'll have no more clubs like Portsmouth going bust, or like Leeds dropping out of top flight existence altogether!" Except these rules will have precisely that effect.

West Ham want to buy Andy Carroll and would ordinarily splash out £15m for the privilege. That money would go to Liverpool, who'd then spend a sizeable chunk of this on someone else and maybe a couple of mill on some guy in the Championship. That club, then in need of a replacement, uses some of that money to buy from another club, and so on and so forth, and the money trickles down to clubs further down the tree. Until maybe a hundred K lands at the doors of Bury, who really could use a bit of cash.

Unfortunately, now West Ham can't spend the money, so Liverpool have no money to spend either as they're still paying for a player they don't want. The clubs lower down who could've got the money trickling down to them now don't get a penny because those above them who could afford to spend now can't. And Bury go bust.

Of course, Liverpool could've taken their £15 million and blown it on a player at a foreign club - and surely this is where the restriction should be? Limiting the influx of foreign players would mean we'd be forced to train up local talent and the lower league clubs who nurture it would benefit from it financially.

Does anyone else get fed up of being able to see the bleeding obvious and wonder why the powers that be still make sure they sort out the chosen few? Seriously, I can see now why so many forty-somethings are so cynical, I can feel myself going the same way.

Don't Spain restrict foreign imports?

The premier league made that half hearted attempt by saying the squad needed 8 'home grown' players.

What's the point though if the squad is 25 players, those home grown players could include a few journeymen pros (Stuart Taylor, Richard Wright) who never get a look in anyway.

I think every European league except ours does, Dawg. We used to have a 5 foreign players rule back in the day, but that went out of the window around the same sort of time the PL started. Remember the Chelsea team of the 90s that had Dennis Wise as the only British player?

Yes, granted, it's lovely to see all these international soccer gods playing on our hallowed shores, but really all it does is make life harder for British players to cut it. Granted, the Scots, Welsh and Irish (both flavours) are always going to struggle to find eleven world class players given their relatively small populations, but England has a bigger population than Spain and yet they can turn out a full squad of eighteen international superstars and the best we can manage is Gerrard and Rooney.

As you rightly say, Dawg, 8 home grown players means nothing, especially when home grown includes the likes of Cesc Fabregas and Samir Nasri, both of whom are as English as olive oil.