Colos Short and Curlies

Because they will be asked to avoid as much tax as they possibly can, hide as many other financial problems as they can, and everyone from the outside knows that SD is not doing things a company should. If they came out and hid everything and said SD was fine, HMRC would look at the auditors, then also look at other companies the auditors have worked for. Basically as soon as any company does look at them, that company and it’s other companies would be fucked. I don't get this. Why would they hide shit then? They wouldn't. Accountancy is an art not a science and there is plenty of grey to play around in. Auditors review the accounts and make sure that income and costs are being fairly reported - its A true and fair view, not THE absolute truth. Plenty of assumptions and interpretation going on. From a tax perspective, that's not the auditors - its the team engaged to prepare the tax which may or not be the same firm as the auditors. Why no-one will audit them? Simple SD now have a demonstrable track record of hiding important details which makes auditing the company impossible. They can do the accounts and they can prepare an Audit report that says they are happy with everything or not, but they can't pass comment on what they don't know. If no transactions have been made they rely on company representations and if these aren't made what can they do? It's also the company that dictates when they file the accounts, so even if the auditors do everything right the company can still not file them (yes there are fines involved) but the auditors name gets dragged into this. All in all, its not worth the fees.

i'd love to hear what our resident accountants think of this, the lads who go over the books in detail i'd also like to hear how it makes him more money than simply hiring a competent manager, spending a decent fraction of the TV money, and trying to increase the clubs commercial revenue properly Well step 4 isnt physically possible - how do you lend yourself money? Relegation won't be part of a masterplan, but I don't think one relegation every 5 years is something he would worry about, sell some assets and start again without any significant investment. Problem is that in 09 we had a good team, last time we had Rafa. We will have neither this time and the Championship gets stronger each year. In short we ain't coming back up straight away without significant change and investment

Its the £94 million wage bill that always gets me, not a hope in hell we pay players and staff £94 million a year. We will, but it will include inflated signing on bonuses/extension bonuses that the players pass onto their agents. A way of circumventing disclosure on how much we pay in fees.

For the career experience it would be Zlatan - Sweden, Holland, Spain, France, Italy, UK, US leagues. For a one off moment has to be Tardelli. Never has a man had a greater moment of joy than that 1982 final goal Playing style I would have loved to have been a player like Colo. But overall my heart says Shearer. Bar a trophy he's done everything you can in a career for his boyhood club

But the point isn't what works on or off TV. The point is that decisions are corrected. If it's a problem in ground, which I'm sure it is, they need to solve that with some commentary or whatever. The box has been opened, there's no going back. You can't now wish for less accuracy it's mental. Surely it depends on your personal view as to whether inaccuracy was ever really a problem? When VAR was used in the world cup a few years ago it was sold to the world under the impression that it would be used to correct "clear and obvious errors", and to-date that tournament has been the only good use of the system that I've seen. It's gone way beyond the clear and obvious now. Those offsides in the city game today were mental, there's no way it's an obvious error from the linesman if different frames of the ball being kicked show different results... If they have to analyse things frame-by-frame and still need a computer display to figure out whether it was actually offside then it's definitely gone too far. If they want to get those decisions perfect then why bother having people there to review it anyway? In this day and age you could probably just whack a GPS on every player and every ball and have it work as efficiently as goal line tech anyway; I'd rather wait for a solution along those lines if we're aiming for perfection, because at least the decision would be instantaneous rather than the shambles it is now. Something in the way VAR's used needs to change like. Almost every time a goal goes in now we're just waiting to see if it'll actually count, that just isn't right IMO. It's a bad enough experience on the tele with the commentators telling you what's going on, it must be a complete mess for match-goers. My point on VAR would be they've tried to make it fit existing rules and it won't. They need to amend the rules to fit the technology. Then we can move on. or we could just go back to the old rules which worked just fine and throw var in the bin rather than try and mutilate the rules so var fits. Which ones, they've been changed countless times in small ways over the years like. Look at offside, has gone from daylight to the width of a fingernail man. Rules don't have to be changed wholesale like, they just have to make sense with VAR. So of the 4 things they're saying it's used for, as an example: Offside: needs to be a practical advantage taken by the attacker, this mm bullshit is nonsense. Make it daylight again which var can easily capture with very little controversy. Advantage goes to the defender if it's in doubt, imo. Red card incidents: is there an issue with it for this? I guess the main one would be you can't review things like 2nd yellows right? Not sure anything needs to change there Mistaken identity: again any issue? Penalties: main one is surely this f***ing nonsense about the hand being in an unnatural position or whatever it is. They need to adjust the rules so every f***ing ball kicked at a defender won't result in a penalty As regards the overall point about something happening 28 passes ago that led to a goal, it's going too far imo. Off the top of my head make it active in areas or something, so if there's a foul in the final third of the pitch prior to a goal then it's eligible for var review and the goal can be chalked off. I get that a foul could be committed next to your own box to win the ball then you go up and score right away. You'd feel aggrieved but at the end of the day if you take the ball 90 yards and score the other team has had ample opportunity to stop you doing it and haven't. Go back a couple of seasons, Everton at home when we lost to a last minute header from a corner that should have been a goal kick. So literally 3 touches after a wrong call, VAR rule that one out? I'm actually curious, I haven't read up enough on what it is to be used for.

Jamie Redknapp, banged Louise

Extremely generous that. How close to Rafa’s points total do you think Bruce will get? He could well match it, just obtain them against the real dross who Rafa sometimes struggled against. Our GD will be miles worse though, giving the real story of the season

Just remove transfers/transfer fees altogether and have players issue notice on their employers like in any other business

Sturridge didn't go anywhere did he? Could see him rocking up at Old Trafford for a couple of years

Not too worried about this season, it's next season that worries me. For all the good performances against the top 6 they resulted in 3 points. The 14 games against Brighton, Palace, West Ham, Bournemouth, Cardiff, Fulham and Huddersfield gave us 17 points. Whilst Bruce is a far inferior coach to Rafa I actually think he is more likely to get a result at home against all of these than Rafa's system + our players would be. So we are going to take a few heavy beatings, but we'll also win a few more games just by not having such a systemic approach to games. The front 3 + Carroll will get chances and will score goals. For the casual fan I'd actually wager that match day will be more fun this year, but its not sustainable and once Bruce gets his 'methods' ingrained we will see results suffer - ala Pardew.

Does this mean we've gone full circle and have fully reinvested the Carroll money?

Hoping to see this thread at the top of page tomorrow with 100's of posts of celebratory emoji's as he is carted back to Forest. Him leaving + a coupe of loans the height of my ambition for tomorrow

Anyone of the front 3. It was said earlier but it will be like Ba-Cisse-Ben Arfa when the front three look class despite the manager. It does of course rely on Longstaff/Hayden/Shelvey et al providing a solid base like Cabaye and Tiote did

I'm sure Jetro Willems is a country singer character from the Fast Show

Yup. Albeit not all out and out left wingers all of the below played there at some point. Ginola, Robert, N'Zgobia, Cabella, Thauvin, HBA, Gouffran, Obertan, Marveaux Sissoko spent most of his time here out on the wing. Fabrice Pancrate probably played on the wing that one time. Wasn't he on the right though? You could argue Bernard as well, wasn't he signed as a winger who we converted to a full back?

I know NUFC are associated with a love of a number 9, we must be pretty close to having the same affection for erratic French left wingers

They had a vat problem as well if memory serves. He dances in the grey when it comes to tax that much is clear

He'll be playing up front for them the way their summer is going

Not sure it's that. @Colo's Short and Curlies knows more about it. You're right, its not tax evasion (well from what we know it wouldn't be). Its a case of paying tax in the wrong place. As its VAT and it is a matter of record from HMRC that SD pay and have always paid VAT to them then its safe to say that we take tax evasion off the table. What is important is whether Belgium (and potentially others) believe that SD deliberately neglected to register for VAT there in order to pay less VAT in the UK. If so then the fines/interest will be more punitive than if its a genuine oversight. As HMRC advised that SD contact all 27 countries back in 2017 this argument is weak. As an aside, reading on the NUFC/HMRC investigation, if HMRC have a case then this COULD be deemed evasion as the case centres around NUFC funnelling money and wages through different sources in order to reduce tax. (How the hell has my life come to be discussing VAT on a football forum!)

I have an auditors certificate and 'Big 4' trained :-) May not be independent though

30 (random) x 50k x 52 weeks is only 78m. Penfold and the tea lady are on a canny screw like. Add on National Insurance and you get to around £85m, then signing on fees will be there as well. I'd put money on us inflating signing on fees which is in part a further payment to agents that we don't want to disclose

I'd counter that Ashley has been a scourge of NUFC, as a provider of low cost sports wear in one of the less well off areas of the country you can say he has benefited the portion of the city who have no interest in football. The Sun went beyond football with their reporting and it really was a city wide impact. As for do non-football fans in Liverpool buy the sun? When I lived there in the early 00s you couldn't find a newsagent who sold it Edit: As a football fan and a NUFC fan of course I hate everything he stands for a refuse to spend a penny in his stores.

Kid's clothes & shoes are zero rated in the UK aren't they? Don't know about the rest of the EU, but this suggests not. Would think that's a significant percentage of sales. The UK and Ireland are the only countries who have a zero rate for VAT, it is a reduced rate across the EU - on average this would be around 10%. So yes, if children's clothing make up a significant amount of EU sales then the amount that they can reclaim from HMRC in proportion to the total bill goes down dramatically.

Any idea how much he'll claim back from HMRC? Its really difficult to put a decent guess on it as what we don't know is the breakdown of the £600m bill. Trying to be a bit realistic, 25% of the bill being interest etc would be sensible so £480 would be VAT. Belgian VAT is 21% and as most of these sales were post 2011 UK VAT has been 20% for the full time - the UK VAT paid on sales would be £457m. Putting together SD would have to find the £120m fine/interest and £23m additional VAT (Assuming HMRC accept that the VAT was paid in error and not as a malicious attempt to pay less VAT in which case they would levy their own fines...... appreciated. Would the same apply to any other countries that do the same? Absolutely. The UK is one of the lowest VAT rates in the EU, Germany is lower at 19% but from memory that is the only one less than 20% and I'm ignoring any zero rated goods in the UK as I don't think SD will sell many of these but if they do then the impact is a lot worse than my first example (yay). Its the fines that get you, Belgium is one of the more lenient countries. I keep mentioning Italy and this being massive, if they think that its a deliberate attempt to withhold tax there the fines can be 400% of the original VAT. As I mentioned on Friday I'm unwinding a total of €2m in VAT etc across the EU and this was on £700k paid to HMRC originally

Any idea how much he'll claim back from HMRC? Its really difficult to put a decent guess on it as what we don't know is the breakdown of the £600m bill. Trying to be a bit realistic, 25% of the bill being interest etc would be sensible so £480 would be VAT. Belgian VAT is 21% and as most of these sales were post 2011 UK VAT has been 20% for the full time - the UK VAT paid on sales would be £457m. Putting together SD would have to find the £120m fine/interest and £23m additional VAT (Assuming HMRC accept that the VAT was paid in error and not as a malicious attempt to pay less VAT in which case they would levy their own fines......