Colos Short and Curlies

£20m of that rolls off in this 3 year period. And how you can claim for loss of player value (£4m), write down of player values (£1.4m) and have a loss for not taking up the furlough scheme (£1.6m) is bonkers. A full FFP statement should be made public in the accounts

Had £70m to play with for 2022/2023, they've bust that by £49m though. It's Everton levels of creative allocation of costs to bring that back in line. for 2023/2024 they start with a loss of £119m and a profit of £336k, so lets be kind and round it right down to £118m as a starting point, hence needing to come up with a £15m profit this year. Even if they did then its still a breakeven position needed for 2024/2025. I reckon they'll sell Watkins and someone like Ramsey, but time is against them

Coutinho will fall off the wage bill for this year but you'd imagine Diaby Tielemans and Torres are on a decent wedge Amortisation will also increase by around £20m from the summer activity and they won't see a massive drop off from prior year signings until 2024/2025 (€19m spent in 18/19, over €100m spent every year since then). Before you take off any allowable expenses they had a profit of £336,000 last year and a loss of £37,000,000 the year before. There is some amazing dark arts going on in their FFP calcs to avoid a breach after these accounts, I'd love to get my teeth into them and if they don't breach then we need to have a good hard look at how they've done it. And if Everton can get done 2 years in a row they'd have to come up with a profit of £15m this year to not get done again

Bit annoyed we're going to lose the biggest win of the season. Just have to knock 10 past them at home

Eddie would probably say he does, but surely keeping Longstaff for h/g purposes only makes sense if we are planning on him being a key part of the squad. Lets assume we are in EL or EC next season and not the CL, I'd rather have a smaller European squad but give experience to the academy players who may be the ones to breakthrough next.

we’ll get more than 2 points out of Chelsea, Spurs and Manu.

it’s international week straight after so I can see a pretty strong team being put out

Spurs have a couple of games coming up in Villa and Fulham away. You'd certainly expect them to drop points in at least one of them, I reckon a loss and a draw. Two winnable ones then We've got them at home. If we can beat Chelsea then we've 2 winnable games at home (West Ham and Everton) and Fulham away. If things go our way (ha!) then we could be coming out of the home game with them only 3-4 points behind with 6 to play. Loads of ifs and buts there but shows that it won't take a total collapse for us to get close and put some serious pressure on them for 5th. So if we are aiming for 6th our points target should really be to get enough for 5th in a typical season and see what happens. It is unlikely I grant you, but not complete fan fiction

this is an area where I know I’m an old cunt. why would you want to understand a match by stats? Surely it’s entertainment that you live in the moment and the eye test is all you need for whether something is deserved or not? as I say, I know I’m basically a dinosaur when it comes to appreciating the general use of stats at this level in football. Surely shots on or off target is enough?

he’s decent but there’s a few better number 2s out there. City, Liverpool, Arsenal have far better for starters. You would of course expect that to be the case but there are a few others that push him close

mess looking to see what game 5 was, rather rest him for 1 than lose him for 2. it’s fucking spurs, can’t rest him for that one

Anderson unless you count his pen in the shootout

Has to be the best set of 3pm fixtures in a long while. cue a multitude of nil nil draws

Its time to release the B.I.G front three

Possibly the biggest of all for English football is what if Fergie hadn’t won that first trophy

We’ll that would be the dumbest move ever of true. hes still a NUFC employee, can’t do anything for those lot yet

I don't quite follow - sorry! I was cryptically saying that on average premier league players get paid more because the money is in the league through TV deals, so a comparable player in Germany or France will be on less wages than in England. Of course the money means that a Europa League club from England will (again on average) be able to spend more on a squad than the competition hence the English clubs always being in and around the favourites for all competitions

Over time a bigger wage bill suggests a bigger squad who should be able to cope with injuries better. We aren't at that level yet as we have a Europa League position wage bill but an outside expectation of Champions League placement but as a general point wages=expected performance isn't the worst starting point

And there is a reason premier league players are paid on average more than in other European leagues that is not linked to ability. You will get a player of the same ability from the German or French leagues for less wages than the equivalent in the Premier League. We did it with Bruno. You are right on the will they flop bit, but you can say the same about players moving between clubs - I'd give you Alexis Sanchez or Fernando Torres as 2 high profile 'sure bets' in fairly recent times who moved and flopped

You're ignoring the Premier League tax here. There are better midfielders in Europe and beyond than Big Joe who wouldn't cost what we will need to pay him. With a good scouting team and an ability to cycle players in and out every 2,3,4 years you could be ultra competitive without paying top Premier League wages.

You've taken the absolute Value rather than then position here haven't you? So we have a wage bill that is £60m higher than Luton but £70m less than Chelsea? I'd prefer to say that we need to outperform 5 teams relative to payroll in order to get top 4 but would need to underperform 9 teams to be relegated. Closer to 4th than 18th. If you take the figures you quoted as being more or less true I'd ignore the Manchester Clubs as they have to pay higher wages just for being City or Manure and I'd ignore Chelsea as they are just plain nuts. Spurs/Villa/Liverpool are the wages that should be sustainable for being competitive in and around the top 4 every year. I think Arsenal have overspent and over the next few years you'll see the 3/4 below them catch up as they stay relatively still

The only time that I will be fair to Kenny…. he needed to sell one of Les or Tino that summer, on paper with age etc Les was the right one to be sold and we should have had a front line of Shearer, Tino and JDT. There was a solid midfield behind them in Didi, Speed, Lee and Batty and bringing in Given was a good move. Even Pistone came in with a good rep as an attacking full back. of course we then lost Shearer and Tino was never really on it before he left. Rush and Barnes were emergency signings when the money had been spent and Shearer got injured. i think his approach would have been different if he had been able to play Shearer or Les that season.

We'd have a very different club now if we had beaten Sunderland in the playoffs

Lets be honest here lads, we're going to beat City and then lose to Coventry in the semis

that last point is plain daft. For all his positives Howe will never be able to rock the turtle neck like Pep can