Colos Short and Curlies

you might not need to but I’d say we’d want to. It’s the perfect opportunity to give the next gen competitive minutes. if we went through a conference league campaign playing Bruno for 90 minutes every game Howe would want shooting

This is where Conf League or Europa would be great. We can pad the bench with u21s who we think might be the ones to make a step up and bring them on when we are comfortable in games to give them experience. More tricky in the champions league

Sell Longstaff Promote Miley to the Longstaff squad role (as Longstaff should be now) Promote White to the Miley role providing cover off the bench

nah he was just a dick, no playing up to a role at all.

You're missing a bit here, buying a football club is not reducing the choice or reducing the market for customers in a way it would if Tesco took over Sainsbury. The comparison you would need to look at here would be the City owners now buying up the likes of Oldham, Blackburn etc and merging them all into the City umbrella so they become reserve teams or the grounds used for training purposes only. What the City owners have done is come into an industry and offer a premium to purchase the best that is available. That would be fine in pretty much any industry. The problem is with the rules that the PL and UEFA have now put in place that restrict the ability of others to do the same. You can look at whether City have played by PL rules but that is a matter between them and not competition law. The more I think about this the more I'm coming down on a FFP challenge never seeing a court room. If you look at cases on competition law they take forever to get through the system. The UEFA/PL lawyers know that there is at least a 50% chance the rules would be deemed illegal and operate them based on clubs voting them in. What will happen on a challenge is that they will make some quick changes that will soften FMV rules to allow a certain amount of related investment and will change the punishments to be a fine on first breach with an allowance of mitigating circumstances to be remedied within a 12 month period (so for example Forest would be let off by showing the value of player sales after the 1st July etc)

Who do people think the best villain has been in the premier league era? I don’t mean truly awful individuals but those who absolutely play up to the role (or try to). Klopp thinks he is being a clever antagonist but he is in reality just a poor human being. for me it’s 100% Jose as a manager and probably Vinny Jones as a player

If he can’t lift them for 10 games to get a European spot then I think questions do need to be asked unfortunately. i think a lot here are underestimating the risk of players leaving if we don’t get Europe. Not through them requesting transfers necessarily but we in a weak place when others come knocking

to be fair no closer than Kenny or Ruud did

that would be different, he’s got a contract already and we’d be a very sticky wicket trying anything there

the change in formation. Is welcomed, May as well try something different. Dan Burn at wingback beggars belief mind, but watch him now have an absolute stormer

It would be brand ambassador type of work, but yes. it’s happened since day dot, look how many of our players wore Asics back in the day. This would simply be totally coincidental partnerships with companies who are willing to pay too dollar for premier league footballer endorsements.

the allegation here though is that he was being paid by a related party for work done for the club. all we would have to do is to not have restrictions in contracts on who they can do work for and the link is broken. it may be incredibly grey but it would be almost impossible for the league to legislate against

I don’t see how. players currently have 3rd party sponsorships etc and act as ambassadors for brands. that relationship is outside of their contract with a club. if they tried to go down the line of restricting what players can do they’d be straight in court. The stumbling block would be getting players on board with it edit and if they tried to set an artificial salary it causes all sorts issues with them essentially setting a minimum premier league salary

I don’t see how they can. as long as the salaries aren’t funnelled back into the club and there are 2 contracts in place there is nothing that could be done. theyd be telling players what they can earn and also telling clubs that footballers have a minimum wage. Good luck with that in court

I half in jest suggesting that we half all of our player wages but allow them to be ambassadors for pit companies who can pay them whatever they like. would be untouchable by the premier league

if it’s found to be against competition law in the uk it is bound to also the case in a EU court

Forest and Everton will be waiting for a punishment and then will challenge it. most challenges to laws come from defending a position or a penalty, it’s much more difficult to take a concept to court. theres probably something under the bonnet of most clubs that isn’t totally on the level so why put your head up until you need to? City in particular will have practices that they don’t want out in public, so they just tie the process up in knots

The exact scenario I hope the club would avoid this time around. They came out and backed Eddie for the long term a few weeks ago, they either have to stick to that or if they now have concerns act at the end of the season. none of this 5-10 games next season bollocks

We should reduce the weekly wage of our players by 50% and allow them to act as ambassadors for various PIF related companies independently of their contract with us for whatever value these companies feel they are worth. I'd like to see the premier league go after individual players and tell them what they can earn outside of the league they administer. They also couldn't touch us as that would be artificially inflating everyone's salaries. I do also wonder if the long game for the likes of us and City will be to go after transfer fees rather than the concept of FFP

There's something about him and Chelsea though.

Its a slight worry that we've been saying there is a favourable run for the last couple of months and haven't taken advantage of it. It does however have the feel of a cup final (and loss) season

Now I'm still on the Howe train for next season, but I do think its fair to ask if last season was the blip for him and what we are seeing now is more of the norm. It's not the results, injuries see to that, but its the manner of defeats and a seeming lack of something from some of the players on the pitch. I'm not saying they aren't trying, they all look knackered coming off but there is something not quite there from the eye test

He's going to back to Chelsea, and I reckon he'll have them back in the top 4 next season. He'd be a disaster for us though

they won’t though. they are the closest potential elite players in our squad at the moment, yes they can see the injuries etc but they also know that they could be in a team challenging for league titles in any league. Their agents will be looking for signs that next year will be 3 steps forward from this or they will be off. It’s not like they are local lads with 10 years of affinity from the academy to keep them here. build it slow and steady is great, but if we continue on that path it will be full of recycling players who are better than the level we are currently at

I’d like to see him RWF against one of the ‘weaker’ teams, see if he can absolutely bully a left back cutting in constantly. it wouldn’t be for every game, but a good mix it up option