The College Dropout

Dubs is surely above Ruddy. I think Dubs might be above the Greek lad too. If the greek lad is worse than Sels, he’s worse than Dubs.

Dubs is still no. 2 isn’t he?

If reports are true. I don’t think Howe fully understands FFP or at the very least is extremely loyal to his players. Which is perhaps why some feel like they can dig in their heels. It’s a dickhead thing to do but I’ve heard so many stories of clubs completely isolating players for no other reason than they want them to leave. Howe wouldn’t do that to Miggy. It’s bad. But I would get all Miggys stuff and move it to the U16s. Don’t even get to see the first team training staff or players. YOU HAVE TO GO TO SAUDI LAD! they’ll let you go wherever your agent can find you a spot in January. You don’t even have to go to Saudi personally. But you gotta sign that contract.

Rumours that our budget is small seem more and more believable as I have been suggesting. I think part of the hold up is that sales would have us looking higher up our list.

I would be mostly content. But a little underwhelmed. Been spoilt recently. They don’t seem as upsidey as Isak or Tonali. But it would suggest we are preparing properly for FFP this summer unlike the last. Which is a must and a good decision. Looking at the commercial team to unlock the £150m+ net spend in future windows again.

I do think part of our strategy is to go for players that other top clubs aren’t fully convinced by but are considering. Gordon had the biggest question marks but Isak and Bruno both strongly linked with big moves that just never quite materialised. Isak in particular was a wonder kid. I don’t think Thiaw is in that Isak or Bruno bucket. Maybe more of a Gordon - the bigger question marks. I think he looks quick and aggressive. But he doesn’t look a step up on Schar the way Botman looked a step up on Burn. Sure they’ll probably start together this season but the following season, would Thiaw be a step up on today’s Schar?

this is the perfect post. Brighton bent us over for our best youngster. I’ve got 20 minutes for some more though. Ok cool. Then our current FFP strategy is to get bent over a barrel by other clubs for our best players and youngsters. We are a distressed seller. That’s bad business. btw we bought Hall for close to £35m - Chelsra have a sell-on clause. Also I think the Luiz fee was closer to €40m. But Villa bought the 2 youngsters for a combined €12-15m or something. So they get more FFP headroom for the sale. The cost of the youngsters are spread through amortisation and low wages and they have upside that the boys increase their value. They planned that with Juve. They then bought Maatsen for the inflated fee but sold the academy players the other way. Same practice both ways with different clubs. Our sales and incoming reflect our lack of preparation / miscalculation.

The problem with the Forest deal is the GK we got is useless and will have next to no resale value. Everyone else has bought useful and/or young players they could resell for a decent fee. Thats my only problem with the Forest deal. No other shady PSR deal has been for a 29 year old 3rd choice GK for good reason. Im fine with doing loads of shady deals. They just need to make more sense.

Villa are doing a cool thing where they ‘sell’ their brightest youngsters for decent money at 18-20 with buybacks. Madrid do that too. We could do that with Miley. We should have a backlog of options like that. Which I think we are planning to do.

The Anderson deal is fugazi. Which is fine. But is our plan to keep doing fugazi deals? I don’t think it is (yet). The Minteh deal - for reasons already mentioned isn’t a great deal financially. Even Chelsea have a sell-on for Hall. City typically have sell-ons or buybacks. Funnily enough they don’t for Palmer because they thought they were ripping Chelsea off with the fee. As you say - the only way we bridge the gap is to trade. And it looks like that means trading our best players or brightest prospects (with no way to have a future stake in their value). As you say - we need a better strategy. Commercial deals, dodgy player trading etc.

Tbf nobody knew our FFP position last summer. That Milan fan on here and reports in the media were that we’ve paid top dollar leaving Milan no choice but to sell. I fully agree that midfield is awesome. But financially if we are to play FFP straight - we’ll need to sell and reinvest. If we played FFP straight we would’ve sold Gordon it seems. Or Bruno or Joelinton before the contract. Chelsea and Villa keep signing players they could resell in the short term to help navigate FFP. Their medium term FFP strategy is to keep doing these transfers. They have better academy players to do it but they are also bringing in more players for that purpose at a high clip. Inflate the selling fee but buy promising youngsters from that club to sell next season.

With the injuries we still need a CB.

I don’t think anyone thought Tonali was a bargain mind. That was a marquee signing. I think the idea of buying Tonali (or whatever premium CM), selling Bruno the next summer at peak value to align FFP and afford another premium CM actually makes a bit of sense. You would hope we’d be in Europe in that scenario.

I personally think a couple of last seasons transfers were a bit luxury in terms of price. And I think we should’ve been doing dodgy deals a lot earlier.

Aye I didn’t expect you to get a good fee and get all the wages off the books. I still don’t tbh.

I think everyone agrees it was the right decision given the circumstances. I think the club and fans feel we shouldn’t have been in that position though.

Been more proactive in doing shady deals and loopholes. Signing more players to flip. not given Joelinton the new contract until wee were good FFP wise. Spent a little less money in previous windows. make it clearer to players that they need to leave and make sure Eddie supports it publicly. In the end we got away with it and did the best we could in the last few weeks. Better Minteh than Gordon. But to end up there was bad - we almost still ended up there too. I think the club has already pivoted. I don’t think we’ll let ourselves be caught in such a last minute scramble. I think had Ashworth stayed or not had his head turned we would’ve navigated the process smoother. In January 2024 Best case scenario Ashworth planned to sell Bruno (solving all FFP issues + funds to spend more) or Joelinton and smaller sales.2 solid plans. In January Minteh isn’t worth £30m+ so selling him wouldn’t have been a realistic plan. When Ashworth left I think Staveley and co. overstepped and got the Joelinton deal done. That meant the only way to cleanly be compliant was to sell a purple. We apparently tried to shift the 3 players you named in January. That doesn’t close the gap enough.

He’s deffo right footed and prefers the left.

Barca senior players are always on serious wedge. I don’t see it. And he’s another right footer. Primarily off the left wing?

You might’ve been happy to sell regardless. But the wider view in the game is that Minteh could end up being worth much more than that pretty soon. Which is why a decent number of clubs wanted him at £30m+. It’s like selling a stock in a company that you bought early for cheap when the market thinks it’s going to continue to do well. I also don’t think the club thought it’s the optimal time to sell either. But we had debts to pay and it was the stock or the car or the house that had to go. Mate - a £300m revenue per year business needs hard plans for rules that will directly impact business performance. Being prepared means having several actionable plans in good time. In this case That means September or January at the latest. Selling Minteh - could not have been one of them until fairly late in the game. If it wasn’t for doing last minute shady deals with Forest AND getting comp for Ashworth - we still would’ve had to sell a purple. Eales said we would probably need to sell a purple…. Because he planned to sell a purple (Bruno) or a blue (Joelinton). Chelsea’s FFP strategy is to find loopholes and sell academy products. I know we didn’t plan to do the loophole thing until late in the day because our dodgy transfers with Forest were very very shit.

€60m would be a fantastic fee for Man U for Sancho. I liked the look of the Soule kid. Disappointed we aren’t in for him.

We clearly had our price for Bruno and the deadline was purposely lined up to help with the FFP deadline. And in any case - it doesn’t look like anyone bid £80m to test our resolve. The contract and clause was signed within this FFP window. BTW this is the scenario that gives the club the MOST credit. I hope you realise that. We knew we would have a FFP shortfall in October when the contract was signed. And by January we knew it would likely be £50m net. January is the latest we would need a decent FFP exit strategy and banking on selling Minteh wouldn’t have been a good strategy. Or Anderson for that matter. And it seems likely they both their transfers wasn’t enough which is why the Ashworth deal went through the same day. With FFP you need a proper fucking plan. With several different other routes. We were underprepared and a Minteh ACL away from selling the car or house. Or going grovelling in Chelsea, Leicester etc. for an even crazier deal than the Forest ones. I think we’ve learnt our lessons which is partly why this summer we are moving much slower.

You think that Anderson sale was legit?

You can wish we were able to keep him but still understand and accept the reasons he was sold. I mean… that’s pretty straight forward right? His release clause expired with a week to go before the PSR deadline (genuinely good decision that). Towards that deadline when it became apparent/increasingly likely the release clause would not be activated - that’s when the Minteh rumours started picking up. Likewise we started talking to Everton and Forest about dodgy dealings. so when it became apparent Bruno wouldn’t be sold, Minteh was as the only player besides the Crown Jewels that clubs actually wanted for some proper money so we had to sell him. Then we scrambled for the rest of the money which is why we ended up spending £20m for a failed £5m 29 year old GK and settled the Ashworth money by the FFP deadline. We should’ve been better prepared for Bruno’s release clause not being activated. I thought you were smart and could add basic events up.

This sale isn’t a model sale. The model is to sell players that are good but not good enough for us for a profit. KDB was deemed not good enough. That wasn’t the situation here. Nobody has said otherwise.