The College Dropout

Philogene is a great signing. De Light tossed around elite clubs like Morata

Difference with the wording is some seem to think we have FFP "paid" for that first window and we haven't. The loss for that year has dropped off but we incur costs of transfers through the life of the contracts given. I don't think the Anderson sale was long in the works. That one was from late-window discussions with other PSR-impacted teams and Forest helped us out. Any sale between the PSR 6 has a massive asterics IMO. Definitely on the fee and with us - we may be lukewarm on some of the players. Few of the players traded between the PSR 6 would go straight into the teams first teams - yet there's £200m odd of transfers there.

I feel like i'm always defending Martinez. But he at least tries. Only thing I can fault him for his starting and never subbing Ronaldo. Otherwise he's put out teams that want to attack. WC18 Belgium beat Brazil & England twice. Only losing narrowly to the eventual winners in the semi's. Bigger achievement than anything Southgate has done imo. R16 has been particularly boring because of the defensive nature of many teams.

Great game that. Well done Turkey. quality and drama of this R16 has been so low. But that was more like it.

Bottled a red imo.

Think para 3 is wishful thinking

I don't no. But it's a risk worth taking considering the lighter fixture schedule IMO. A £30m Wilson replacement on a 4-year deal is£7.5m FFP cost per year + £3-4m in wages. It's a lot of money for someone to sit on the bench.

Better options than any other team in the league apart from City, Liverpool & Brentford imo.

With a rugged Isak and no European football, 20-30 minute Cal is perfect.

I love Wilson as #2 tbh. Isak, Wilson, Gordon is a top 4 striker option in the league.

Agree. Playing wise - Spurs built it by selling their best players for about a decade and then having an all time great emerge from the academy. In this same thread many have denied the idea that selling Bruno might’ve been a preferred plan.

I hope so with the second point. Yeh it does take time. In that time we might need to sell most of our top stars. It might be that. That’s fine. I don’t think as a fanbase we’ve accepted that.

You’ve said ‘obviously’. Where’s the evidence for that ? Genuinely - where have you got that from? to get top 6 consistently we need to be better managed, better luck and better in the transfer market than 3 of the top 6 every year. Much like Villa - we are a couple managerial appointments or bad transfer windows away from big trouble. None of the actual top 6 have that risk. Chelsea are onto year 3 of BS.

The losses for those years fall off. But the costs for that spending we carry (amortisation and wages) into this year.

How do we finish in the top 6 year after year without top 6 revenues? £35m from CL. Where's the additional £70m coming from? The player sales? If so, where's the £70m coming from next season? We don't have a legit pipeline of youth talent. Villa do though. If we continue to finish 7th, our FMV will be 7th by a huge margin - as it is now.

I agree with that. The boat I'm talking about is - not being able to generate enough revenue to maintain spending and fighting for top 4 or better year in and year out. We have the same problem with PSR and neither of us has easy levers to exploit. It's the top 6. And the rest. We are still part of the rest with no easy escape route. We can't inflate sponsorships to the point where we are in another stratosphere from Villa revenue-wise. Total revenues (slightly out of date): 72m more than Villa. 194m less than Spurs - the smallest top 6 side. It's the top 6 vs everybody else. That's the boat that matters IMO. Under the current rules - how do we bridge that gap?

Under the current rules - it doesn't really matter that we are state-backed. We can't inflate sponsorships. Our revenues are 7th & 8th together. Ours is higher but not significantly so. Their wages are higher but not significantly so. Especially after Bruno, Joelintn & Isak deals. We are closer to Villa in revenue than Spurs. We are in the same boat friend.

I agree with a lot of what you've said @80. The sales happening for 1 July strongly indicate that we needed Minteh, Anderson + at least +£1 to be confident of PSR compliance. And we clearly SCRAMBLED to get there. The scramble can't have been the plan from January. We did the most "PSR Deadline Day" business out of everyone right? 3 transfers out basically. Like the actual transfer window, you would want to sort it earlier than later. The thing that makes the most sense - in January - is selling Bruno for his release clause. That clears all PSR concerns and gives us some leeway to buy a player or two. We must've known getting good money for Almiron, Wilson & co. might prove difficult. That might've been the preferred route but the Bruno route might've been the most realistic.

Oh I missed that. I thought it didn't go through yet. So yeh - 6 out of 6 did business together. The rumour was 100% on the button.

We are in a similar boat to Villa. We both need to find an additional £100m in revenue per year to continue to compete at the top end with current rules.

That rumour about 6 clubs needing to sell ended up being more true than not. Everton Chelsea Villa Forest Newcastle All of these clubs did business with at least 1 other club. Only Leicester of the clubs named didn't get involved or make a sale. But they did make £10m from their manager. IMO there's more truth in a lot of press news than fans like to think. Many fans believe if a transfer doesn't happen, it means the club was never interested, for example. When I think often clubs like to have a little sniff to see if the price is right or to gauge player interest. Sometimes agents talk up things but that's still something. Not to say believe everything or everything is concrete. But I refused to believe that initial story and only started to believe it when I realised we were definitely selling Minteh. And all the other teams have strong links of sales. I refused to believe the Gordon links but now I'm convinced there was something to that - even if it was just exploratory conversations.

I want a left footer at RW.

The Anderson sale is a farce tbf. It’s proof that we weren’t sufficiently prepared. Scot some balance - over a quarter of the league weren’t prepared either.

He’ll block it - obviously.

I said the same thing earlier today. If not for the surprising emergence of Minteh - we would’ve had to go begging to Chelsea and co. got favourable shady deals or sell Gordon or the like. That’s baaaad man. I said it before that Minteh deal is 70% great talent spotting and 30% luck. No club would model that a 19-year-old would 4x his value in 12 months.