stozo

I’ll take the other side and say we should win easily today. Bournemouth are not far off a Spurs level injury crisis, to the point where Jebbison (who has been recalled from his Sheffield United loan) will probably be the only outfield player on the bench who you can call senior (unless there is a surprise return). They only made two subs in the week (one of which was forced) and I imagine they’ll fade in the second half (as they did against Chelsea).

9 points off top if we win tomorrow, followed by a home game and playing the bottom side. Are we...in the title race?...

I could be putting two and two together and getting five - but it wouldn't stun me if there was a £500k-£1m sort of number needed to be raised to facilitate a bit of PSR headroom which Dubravka's sale was needed to fill and now that looks unlikely we are looking at other options. Presumably a Kelly loan would raise around that figure.

The Times say nobody has been charged.

Not how amortisation works in this case sadly. If we sell at a loss, the full loss has to be booked this year rather than being spread over future years.

I'd be very surprised if any of them make the squad. I think the best we can hope for in terms of 'young talent' is Osula and Miley starting. Howe will rotate but will still really want to win, so I think the bench will be packed with the cavalry of the 'first XI' who will be brought on circa. 60-70 minutes in if we are in the shit. FWIW I think the XI will be: Odysseas, Trippier, Schar, Kelly, Targett, Longstaff, Miley, Willock, Almiron, Barnes and Osula. Subs: Dubravka, Krafth, Burn, Hall/Livramento, Tonali, Bruno, Joelinton, Murphy, Gordon. The only differences to that I could foresee is Howe going stronger at LB and in midfield - by possibly starting Hall or doing Trippier on left and Krafth on the right, and then for the midfield playing either Bruno or Joelinton instead of Miley.

Last January it was 'If we sell Trippier we'll have nobody to play RB', so we kept him. And look where that led us in the Summer. Kieran Trippier is now an aging, backup right back and Yankuba Minteh is at Brighton with a good decade ahead of him. Dubravka has been a great servant but in a world where all our business is dictated by PSR, this is 100% the right move.

From a brief look at Twitter, the signs are not promising for more game time at Willem any time soon. He played the full match as they got knocked out the Dutch Cup by a third tier Dutch side, and he is getting an absolute pasting for his performance from the Willem fans on Twitter. But as @SAK says, this his first season outside Serbia and first season playing in a top division, so hopefully this is a learning curve and the game time he does get enables him to get a work permit.

Can’t figure out how to embed on my phone but a Saudi sports media outlet on Twitter seems to be saying Dubravka is going to Al-Shabab in January.

I think he probably meant final good contract. If he signs a five year deal, he'll be 32 when it expires - so he won't be getting another lengthy deal at that point.

I mean I think this is a fundamental misunderstanding of the Pivas situation. He’s come from the Serbian Second Division, so you are incredibly restricted on loan options. The job is get him into a league of a decent standard and see if they think he has any ability. If you want guaranteed minutes, then you are probably sending him to a league where the coaching standard is far lower (not good for him) and it’s harder to assess where his talent level is (not good for us). You can’t even loan him to Gateshead as he can’t get a work permit - and the same applies in a number of European countries, hence why he’s likely gone to the Netherlands where it is far easier to get a permit. In all likelihood, Pivas is probably a signing made based on something that showed up in numbers and/or tape that looked interesting and this is effectively a 1/2 year test to see if that holds up in a league where the standard is far higher.

Comments like this that slag off parts of the club slightly irk me. Where would you have loaned him? He’s ineligible for work permits in most European countries so it’s a bloody tough job finding a club (a) that will sign a player who has played only in the Serbian second division (b) has a decent enough standard of football that might allow us to learn something about whether he is any good and (c) has a coaching set up that may make him better.

It’s not really about the money in the short/medium term in the women’s game. There is no FFP so we can spend what we want, but obviously that has the ‘downside’ that if we invest to succeed then the women’s team will lose money at the rate spend. Women’s teams are also seperate from men’s FFP calculations so in effect with our ownership it’s really a question of spending as much as we fancy.

This is exactly the point I'm making. We couldn't do Olise, Madueke, Tosin etc. or keep Minteh and Anderson precisely because we overspent in Summer 2023 - on players who, as it stands, were not worth mortgaging our future for.

Not sure where to put this but I was sat during the game yesterday thinking we are in a awful FFP situation and yet spent £150m in Summer 2023 on four players (Tonali, Barnes, Hall and Livramento) who have barely improved the first XI. Tonali is better than Longstaff clearly but not exactly setting the world on fire, Barnes doesn't get into first XI with Gordon fit, and Hall & Livramento are both still raw and neither look like £30m+ full backs today. Don't want to be all doom and gloom but the more I think about it, the more that window is the route of our problems.

Not even good enough for Brighton's bench today.

Miley has arrived with the squad. So assuming we have a bench today of Dubs, Kelly, Krafth, Willock, Longstaff, Miley, Murphy, Almiron and Osula. That's got to be our strongest bench in a long time!

Do you honestly think we're going to be able to build on Leazes Park without ending up with someone or various organisations seeking a judicial review?

The problem with anything that has listed status is not that there isn't any way to overcome that - it's that overcoming that is, at best, a multi-year legal battle before you can put in a spade in the ground. I would be stunned if we're genuinely exploring Leazes Park etc. - it'll be an SJP redevelopment or an issue-free new site somewhere that planning permission will be nailed on.

Alas Nikita Parris has gone to Brighton. We looked good last weekend, but that would have been an amazing icing on the cake if we'd pulled it off. Probably fair for her to want to stay in the WSL though.

You might argue that if we're not going big in January, then booking the loss in this financial year might not be a totally horrible idea (given it then removes the amortised fee from future years). That's me assuming that our lack of Summer spending gives us a significant PSR buffer.

It's 100% a risk but with PSR the biggest risk is actually getting a signing wrong. In the next 2-3 years we have virtually no room for error. If an expensive inbound transfer goes wrong then we won't have the ability to just cut our losses and sign another player. Or rather, the only way we'll be able to sign another player is by cashing in on someone we don't want to sell (which likely means Bruno, Isak or Gordon). Do I like this? No. Is this the reality we face with PSR? Sadly Yes.

I think that's where your wrong. Schar is 32 years old. The reason we are rolling him on one-year contracts is because the average CB falls off a cliff performance wise as they approach their mid-30s. If you sign Silva, and it turns out Schar goes off the cliff before Silva is ready (which at 20, could be 2-3 years away) then you are in serious trouble.

I think you are probably overestimating our pull here. Osimhen has just gone to Saudi in exactly the scenario you've outlined - Chelsea made him a very good offer, he could have stayed in Europe but at the end of the day the money he has been offered in Saudi is so great he's gone there.

I actually like Silva and would quite like that move for the long-term. BUT both the examples you have given here are players from a non-elite league. Portugal isn't quite the Netherlands in terms of its flop record but you do see a higher level of Portugal > Elite League flops than Elite > Elite. Also, Anotnio Silva is 20 which is extremely young for someone to go from a non-elite league to being better than Schar and/or Botman. A stepping stone move (which is what his move to RB Leipzig is) makes a lot of sense for him rather than jumping to somewhere elite straight away (which is what we'd need him to be.