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Don't want anyone getting too relaxed around here

Yeah, a number of times.

I agree with most of what you say. It's just this bit - I think we should be revisiting the phrase occasionally when it comes to assessing our board rather than the team. This week is a perfect example, actually. Is it a bugger that we've had major PSR troubles and had to chuck away some promising players? Definitely. Is it massively better than never having PSR issues because the club didn't give a shit? A thousand times yes.

Not aimed at you - or Miggy, who I like personally and no one should be callous to - but I think this phrase gets misused a lot. It was said at a time the club itself - i.e. the owner - had no intention of doing anything to win beyond existing and being profitable for him personally. But doing things to win will mean us moving on nice guys and try hards who don't cut the mustard. Jogging up and down a lot just to keep us in 16th was the problem, even if a lot of effort was getting spent in that process.

To be fair, I think this one is out of Eddie's hands - there's only so much he can do! I'm glad there's no sign of us taking our eye off the ball with the academy since Ashworth left. Keep those signings coming.

Was about to say that. Hopefully not too much of a problem, but I could imagine the situation would filter out some candidates who were looking for easy street.

I'm similar although pretty confident it's all good. More than most, with his Bournemouth history, he'll know the wheeling and dealing that can be required when you're trying to claw your way to the top.

I reckon so. I'm a bit nervous after the last few days, but it looks like we've cleared our decks successfully and I believe we've got room to do some pretty serious spending for the rest of this summer. I don't think he'd be trying to force his way out for a lowball offer in those circumstances, I think he's ready for another big season with us.

That's fair enough, the money will be welcome, but it just would've been even more welcome 24 hours later is all, which looks like a smoking gun to me.

Yes, but if it was a sale of pure choice it would've been more beneficial to wait 24 hours and do it today - the first day of the new PSR period. That way we'd still feel the benefit of the profit in June 2027. As it is, that profit will expire in 25/26 - a straightforward negative for us.

Well, we'll see if we bid £85m for Gibbs in July, I guess...

From memory, he thought £40m with a high degree of uncertainty, didn't he? I mean, I respect his work but the evidence is the people at the coalface of the profit and loss sheets thought it was much more. Otherwise I doubt we would've sacrificed both Minteh and Anderson like this. One would've been enough.

Yeah, I reckon so. Was saying it partly with a view to combating the idea the board was inherently not operating in the best interests of the club if they were counting on a Bruno departure. I think realistically Eddie would've been made fully aware and bought into that plan also, with a view to the ultimate ambitions for the club.

Well, the problem is seemingly the club itself doesn't know what the number is. They're working off estimates. That sounds incredibly unprofessional but apparently all clubs are in the same boat, so no major criticisms there. The story we're being fed is £68m for Anderson and Minteh was 'probably' enough but they weren't certain. So sure, it could've been £59m in reality, but equally it could've been £72m. Whatever the case, it appears we were unsure enough to seal the Ashworth deal and make it (hopefully) cast iron. Which is why, going back to the original subject, the obvious route to fix the problem would've been to get a whacking great fee for a single player and sort it in one go.

Mate, have you had a drink?

Maybe, but the article claims it's full of quotes and views from senior figures at the club. Are we proposing we never really had any concerns and always expected to sort any minor issues out by selling Minteh and Anderson for £30m+ each? It doesn't seem to be attached to reality...

This looks like willful blindness to be honest... I don't think we sold Minteh for fun, I think it's pretty clear we did it because we had to.

Well, we don't really know, but under duress we've done Minteh, Anderson and Ashworth all on the same day just before the PSR window closed, so the implication is it was in that region... This pretty much sums up the situation, unless it's a tissue of lies - https://archive.ph/zfPwk

There were multiple briefings, off and on record to client journalists, in the first half of the season that we'd have to sacrifice a big beast to keep the show on the road. Our communications on that changed pretty much exactly around the time we realised we were in deep shit after not managing to sell anyone in January. We've seemingly had a £70m hole in our PSR budget - they will have known full well it would be extremely difficult to fill without selling some of our crown jewels. We've been extremely lucky Minteh wasn't a Kuol, and it's not at all obvious how we'd have bridged that gap without him being extraordinary - sans a Bruno going. It would've been neglectful to have not planned for that eventuality, really.

I guess the distinction is I'm defining Plan A as what I suspect they thought was the most likely outcome, and possibly the necessary outcome - not that it was their preferred outcome.

16? Fuck me, I can already see him on Soccer Saturday. Good luck to all the new lads

As an aside, I have to hope Eddie was fully aware and on board with the idea of Bruno being sold if that was Plan A. The alternative - that he was blindsided and feels misled by the past fortnight - is much worse.

I'm with you on most of that. To steel man the club's position though, I think we've just seen how hard it is for us to sell most of our squad for any serious money. Factor in Bruno's age and understandable ambitions and it starts to feel more natural that he might have needed to be the one to go however horrible that is (unless he's genuinely willing to commit to us for the long haul and risk doing a Shearer in terms of winning nothing in his prime years). Re: spending less last summer etc, I've thought that myself but if I understand right - and I might not - we were in such a deep PSR hole that we could've not bought Barnes, Tonali AND Livramento AND Minteh AND Gordon and still been uncomfortably close to the line, which would've totally changed our last year for the worse overall. The problem is the system doesn't seem to reward saving up a pot of money in the slightest.

Any doubts, get Ritchie to stop his artic off in Blankenhain for a chat.