80

He's not just a back up right back. Unless we've got a very good idea for replacing him, he'll be going nowhere. And no idea why people are assuming any offer will be as much as £5m-£10m either...

There was a report a few weeks back saying Akliouche was liked by us but we had doubts about how he'd physically stand up to English football, meaning we were focusing elsewhere.

Financial fair play has done an amazing job of cooking the game.

Same experience. By all accounts the talent is in there...

Ha, perfect.

Apparently so. Tall, skinny lightskin - Eddie certainly has a type.

It was enough to get me to walk. Always hated him, always saw through him. Was highly dismayed with the thickness of our support.

Ah, bugger.

Absolutely. I'm sure he's happy to hand over control of anything to anyone he knows is on the same team and not a twat. If you don't tick those boxes though, he'll fight to keep you away even if that means holding on to responsibilities that aren't ideal because the alternative is worse. Give him a better option and he'll make a different choice. Bunce appears to be a good example of that - he was being welcomed and praised within days, despite being imposed from the outside on a vital area of management.

Along those lines, yeah. That specific example would probably have us flirt with relegation at some point, unless we do something sensible like throw all our cup games inc. CL. Trying to attack all 4 competitions would be madness. Osula or Gordon up front, 5 CMs playing three games a week - 2 or 3 of whom are highly injury prone, increasingly ancient and knackered central defenders. We're asking for trouble, there's no getting away from that. Don't get me wrong, I'm anticipating we get at least a couple of players in e.g. Wissa and Thiaw, which will help take some strain off. And maybe something nice will turn up like Hernes in midfield. But time is running out, and morale might start to also if the light of this club's future starts to fade.

We're staring down the barrel of a bottom half finish at the moment. That said, I wouldn't be surprised if the bottom 15 or so clubs have a shit off and we end up placing better than I fear.

Was thinking about this recently, wondered if they meant Ekitike and such. Sad state of affairs, like.

Not sure what we're disagreeing on there, but yes that sounds right. Should swap Pope and Burn for Botman, mind, they were relatively negligible. Edit: Oh, you're wanting to clarify it was amortization rather than actual cash spending? Fair enough, yes. We also need to factor in what that would've meant for our overall position. E.g. If we didn't sign Isak, would we have qualified for the champions league and got additional tens of millions in income? Probably not, meaning our PSR allowance would've been even smaller. Would the Tonalis and Gordons have been as inclined to join us? Also probably not. If we didn't have these players now giving us the choice of selling them today, would we be in the Ashley trap of still having no PSR flexibility beyond the default £105m because we have no players of value to sell? Basically speaking, yes.

I think there were other hopes and expectations of income too e.g. Miggy rejecting a Saudi club, Lascelles getting injured, Wilson's body collapsing and sponsorships that never came through. Various options kept getting eliminated prior to the deadline.

To be honest they had similar impacts. As Colo says, we needed to not spend about £65m. Roughly speaking, Barnes cost us about £13m between signing and the PSR deadline. Gordon probably cost around £20m, given he'd signed 6 months earlier.

And I can get cocky if I want. You're relegated from this conversation. Edit: But I genuinely welcome anyone who wants to have a go at this game. We just have to balance the books and have a little go at imagining what that alternative would've worked out like. If it's an honest attempt I'll have full respect.

I also would be entertained to see how we did in 23/24 without any of Gordon's 20+ goal contributions given Barnes, Willock, Joelinton and virtually every other left sided player was out with long term injuries.

Flat wrong, you need to learn how PSR works before you criticise people for how they handle it.

Cool, who else should we have not bought? We're still in PSR debt so more players need to not be signed, so who?

Which players do you think we shouldn't have bought to avoid being in that situation?

Certainly, but that's why it boils down into either running the finances hot, or attempting to be Brighton despite having almost zero experience in sports analytics in our locker. There's a sensible alternate reality where MAYBE we get Bruno and Botman explicitly on a stepping stone basis (Bruno left in summer 24, maybe 23), Pedro instead of Isak, no Gordon, no Tonali, no Barnes, and we fill the rest of the gaps with eight Mintehs e.g. maybe we get Huijsen for a year instead of Bournemouth. That could've worked, but you'd have to acknowledge the last 4 years would've been very different.

Plus the diminished interest of players and sponsors who are/were only interested in coming here for the prospect of a waking giant.

Exactly, it's a question that never gets answered on here when I ask it. People bemoan us not having an extra CM in Anderson, but neglect that instead we'd need a new Tonali and a new Livramento instead, and wouldn't have had the benefit of them in previous seasons either.

Bang on. It's beyond me why people get so upset about selling 2 under loved kids when the alternative was not having at least 4 in who helped us win our first trophy in 60 years and put us in the champions league. With PSR, unless you're in the cartel, you've got two choices - 1. Push it to the limit 2. Completely forget about competing. Anything else is irrational. If people are saying signing Isak in the first place was a strategic error and shouldn't have happened, then fair enough, it's a cogent argument.