The College Dropout

I’m not talking about the financial loans. I’m talking about player loans. https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/67490620.amp what does that look like to you in real terms? Atm we aren’t pursuing a slow build. We are looking for short term success by keeping all of our players in prime or past prime years. Tying some of them down to long term contracts. Pursuing £60m CBs is not a slow build. A slow build To me is a focus on youth and undervalued players. Selling our star players consistently at peak value. Having a pipeline of quality players to keep and sell, comfortable within PSR, increasing revenues with a stadium on the way. And it may take years to get the transfer approach working to the level we need. And the academy will take many years. In that time we could finish anywhere from 5-10th imo. I’m happy with that. Unless the rules change, I don’t see how our current approach is going to work (Barnes, Tonali, Guehi, Elanga, MGW, Olise).

Aye the only players that would generate a lot of PSR headroom are Bruno and Isak. Some intelligent free transfers of good older heads too. Agree what others said. We’ve signed good players but it doesn’t make sense. £100m for Tonali and Barnes.

Applogies for the snark.

Aye let’s refresh the squad but keep all the players of saleable value.

People balk at the Brighton route but they don’t realise Brightons budget is tiny. A Brighton approach with our budget would be powerful.

Villa signed Morgan Rogers from the Champ and he’s been a regular starter pretty much ever since. 20+ years ago Jenas gave us a lift off the bench regularly as a sub. I don’t think it has to be mutually exclusive. We at bringing on Almiron and starting Murphy. Adding any talent to the squad will be a bonus imo.

Also FFP was invented to curtail City and prevent new ones. Just as they were creating and implementing FFP. City accelerated the inflated sponsorships. Announced the city campus. Announced they were going multi-club. City have been aggressive and anti-establishment from day one. Their agenda and strategy is clear. Our agenda and strategy is not clear. I’m not all that bothered by the football until that is clear. I’ll enjoy it for what it is and hope for the best.

Always been the way. Littlewoods started the Liverpool dynasty was it? Levy’s taken spurs from midtable to a team just under the European elite. Blackburn, Arsenal, Newcastle, Chelsea, City all broke British transfer records while challenging for the PL. What club has risen beyond the ambitions of the owners consistently? In the entire history of the sport? Arsene Wenger stopped winning league titles when Arsenal became the 3rd-5th biggest spenders consistently. He would’ve won more with an additional £50m in wages/fees. His first winning team was the most expensive squad in the division though. There’s a number of things we could’ve been aggressive with that we haven’t. Or pushed the boundaries. Or been publicly opposed too. I won’t preemptively blame the cartel without evidence. The loan loophole from Saudi has been open this entire time. Never exploited it.

That means I’m panicking? I hold a view that a club in our position requires aggressive expansion in revenues and infrastructure if we are going to solidify ourselves as an elite club over the next 7 years. 3 years in - I don’t think we are on track to do that - as far as what we know for a fact. But I’m not panicked. There are obviously things I don’t know. Things could change quickly with a few announcements. It might just take us longer to get there. Maybe we never get there but we compete for Europe and have good cup runs - that’s probably the floor of what we will do. Some people here would have a meltdown if we sacked Howe, sold Bruno, Isak or whatever. I wouldn’t. The most important people at a club are the owners. Ours being so wealthy will put us in a better position than most owners. But imo - to get the very top - you have to be aggressive, cutting edge in some departments (transfers, youth development), move quickly l and push against the boundaries of the rules, maybe even force a change. Thats what other teams in our position have needed to do to dominate. I’ve not seen that from our owners so my expectations are capped. im not Howe dickrider but I think his job is a difficult one. High expectations without the tools to succeed. At some point, with Howe or another manager, we’ll have to redress that in leadership and ownership.

So they are getting 50% more than us.

Who is panicking?

No idea. They did announce they were going multi-club after 3 years. Ah brill. 3 years is a good amount of time to have no concrete plans about stadium man. I do not doubt that they will. But the slowness is not a good sign. Owners need to be aggressive in this game. They aren't doing that.

I expect Saka to start but I’d go to Son. Better fixtures over the next 3 or 4. That is if you’re planning to roll Soonish as you might want Saka back kinda soon.

And we should be copying them.

The champ is having a bit of a mare. 50/50 decisions have been backfiring consistently. Still confident of a top 200k finish. Target of top 50k is still possible but I’m going to need make some ground by the new year. I’m tired of being the wrong side of Palmer so will bring him in this week. Son is a temptation. But a Palmer brace in a 3-1 win for Chelsea without him in my FPL will ruin my entire weekend. Also need a cheapish defender. Ait-Nouri is exciting and wolves have good fixtures for a long time. But Wolves haven’t shown any ability to defend. I do eventually want a Forest and/or Everton defender because you can trust Dyche and Nuno long term. But don’t love either fixture set. I read a stat that said DCL was the biggest underachiever of Xg in the PL last season. He’s been fucking awful. Missed 2 sitters this weekend too. That was a bad decision based on that stat. But I’m keeping him for the next 2. If he doesn’t get a return, he’s out. I’m sick of him.

I’m not certain about that. but if ROI is the primary purpose of their investment. Turning Newcastle into a footballing powerhouse is perhaps not the wisest allocation of funds and effort for PIF. I’m not convinced we have joined up thinking with PIF.

Currently spurs pretty much have to have the 6th largest wage bill. By some distance. Anchoring would push the wage bills up and have spurs competing with more PL clubs on wages.

They’re not. It’s the red tops and Levy primarily.

Will the Everton owners turn a significant profit? You can’t compare us to all the clubs happy just to be on the PL gravy train. Thats what Ashley was doing with us and he had leverage of brand and fanbase. The comparisons are Chelsea, City, Villa and Everton. Established PL clubs (City less so) trying to break into the footballing elite. IIRC Villa were purchased in the Champ as a distressed asset.

The delays are not good indicators. But the new board member is. My best case scenario is PIF are just slow and risk-averse.

And Ashley didn’t invest. We’re talking about new stadium, new training facilities, youth development- best in class. The Etihad Campus cost £600m. How much money do you think they have spent off the books? Im not saying we can’t eventually become a decent investment. But it’s going to take a ton of money, will and commitment. I’ve not seen the will yet.

Man U, Arsenal and Liverpool are different propositions. They already have brand value, fanbase, academies and revenues. There’s loads of low hanging fruit for them. Im talking about clubs that need to be built like ours.

If you look at City and Chelsea (and all the undercover spending) do you think their owners turn a genuine profit vs 10% they would get in the stock market?

I have my doubts about PIF. Both in terms of interest and competency. Football clubs require 100% commitment. The 2 clubs that have grown most from investment in the last 25 years have the best 2 academies in the country. Even clubs like Brighton and Brentford have overachieved through analytics. I’ve not seen from PIF what will get us a competitive advantage. Spending what we can under PSR isn’t anything significant. Have we even tried to loan players from Saudi? and then at the same time they are demanding European football from the manager? I don’t see the strategy or the joined up thinking. It’s been 3 years. Staveley and co. had their issues. But we knew they were passionate.

The ability to pass is pretty key for a modern 6. Longstaff would struggle. Shelvey could pass. Also Shelvey days. He sat deep. It wasn’t a flat 3. He as behind 2 others to patrol that gap. Then we abandoned that concept.