James

I like the model of having the best available players at the start of their prime years

Why not Where do you think Bruce would take Newcastle, even with financial backing? Not very far! If you read my post properly I did say until the end of the season. Of course I want him out after then!

Good thing you weren’t on last week or they would have to X-rate the radio

Why pay £8,5M for Bentaleb and let M.Longstaff go on a free? Give Matty what he wants and don't sign Bentaleb. That would save us £8,5M plus wages. Can't see Matty demanding more than Bentaleb is earning. Do we know what Matty wants in terms of wages? Rumour has it that he is currently on £850 a week, that equates to £45k a year which isn't too shabby. I earn more than Longstaff. Digest that for a second...

I know a few have spoken about public beheadings of Charnley and things but what I’d like to see is some sort of more cathartic apology match. I’d like to see Jonas bring a testimonial team to SJP, managed by KK, with Enrique there too and all of the other players Ashley screwed over. All proceeds to SBR foundation.

You missed the bit about Ashley’s son in law arranging a loan to PCP from Mike Ashley’s holding company.

Why not

Im going to give him some credit, he has somehow, inexplicably managed to get enough points on the board to give buyers confidence to buy mid-season. I don’t think Rafa’s late bloomers approach tempted investors previously, and by the end of the season it’s always been too late to try and negotiate. For that reason he just about deserves to see out the season.

This is literally the best tome in football history to be taken over by Arab billionaires. Every other club in the world are going to be looking at their squad and thinking about how they might be able to raise an extra £20-£50m and in we come. It will be like the world’s most expensive sweet shop.

Thing is with Dalian, Rafa could probably hand pick a great successor, and develop some sort of feeder club partnership where he acts as a club consultant for them whilst managing us

Bale and Coutinho are both reasonably priced in my opinion and their clubs will want to offload them to release some cash. There are going to be a lot of selling clubs and FFP rules may be relaxed.

HTT needs to update his golf courses brochure

Tea towels

It’s hard to say without understanding what the new owner’s strategy for club development will be. Rafa would be number one if we have a more organic project over X years. Pochetino would be my second choice. If it’s for instant success with prime elite players, then Allegri. Or Kinnear.

I can reckon that had Ashley been born as ruler of Saudi Arabia he’d be worse than MBS

How do people think he will leave. I reckon he’s going to put one of his famous letters on the club website

It’s going to be amazing, clubs are going to have to sell to balance the books and we could well have a load of cash. We may well try to reunite Kane with Pochetino

I’m surprised at how many players in our squad I would elect to retain with Arab owners. I’d keep all the centre backs (even Clark), Dubravka, ASM and Almiron for at least the next season.

We did it

So for the FA Cup you have a group stage with one team from each division of the top 5 divisions, home and away. League Cup as above but football league only and just one game per pairing. Top 6 in the CL, 7-14 in Europa, a new format devised for 15-20 So much that could be done that has less games but can also generate significant income.

For me the solution has always been to cancel the league next year and just come up with a beefed up FA Cup, League Cup and European competition that everyone gets a good number of lucrative games in place

Wow that’s quite extreme

It’s very simple, depending on the situation: Situation 1: Most footballers are paying their tax through PAYE based on their full salary. In which case just under 45% of salaries are already going to HM Treasury to do as they see fit with. Based on 25 man squads in an average of £40k, the government are getting £9m a week from premier league footballer salaries. After which footballers should be free to fundraise internally and donate anonymously with some general press release going out on how much players are collectively donating. Situation 2: Players and clubs are using loop holes In which case name, shame and find a way to pull the money back to where it belongs ASAP.

He is not having a go at footballers he is saying that it is wrong to give the money back to their own clubs. He is right.

Also the club price has dropped from a foreign currency perspective