Memphis

Nature abhors a vacuum. We run a tight ship. We are doing things - surely no one actually believes we are just twiddling our thumbs, waiting for some date in the future to act - but no one outside of the club truly knows what they are. When there's no information from anywhere, people just cannot accept that. That's where weird theories, strange names, baseless rumours, etc come from. We deal with attention seeking behavior from people who thrive on getting a response from the public. Long story short, wait until something happens before reacting to it.

The point is that none of us know exactly what is going on behind the scenes. We are notoriously quiet about our dealings so I would say it's incorrect to assume nothing is happening. If we're still sitting here having signed no one by mid-July, then I will start freaking out myself. I expect we will be busy over the next month. And while I like Mbeumo, we can't pay him 180k/pw. We can't pay anyone that yet and I wouldn't want him to be the first. Maybe Isak's new deal can hit that mark. It's shit that ManUtd can pay those types of wages due to their huge commercial revenue advantage, but they can. Hopefully we cut into that advantage over the coming years. Until we do, wages will be a stumbling block for a certain type of player.

Everyone is freaking out way too early. It's barely June. There hasn't been a lot of movement and we tend to work in the shadows, so there's no need to overreact at this stage.

Journalists need to be very precise with their claims, specifically - is a £100m "war chest" representative of the total value of the deals, or what we're actually going to spend *this* summer? £100m could easily be amortized over a five year deal at £20m/yr (not including wages), so if we spend £100m this summer, that could end up being £500m worth of paper value. It wouldn't bc of wages, etc but you get the idea. That's an extreme example but that's why the specifics matter.

The club is much more PR-savvy these days. I'll bet we see something in a day or two from Howe or Eales with a (public) explanation.

This is all too organized to have been a shock to anyone within the club. It was clearly set up to be announced today so as to avoid in-season distractions. Nothing wrong with the announcement itself. As to the decision, here are some theories: 1. Eddie Howe sniped another DoF. He didn't feel that he could work with Mitchell and was annoyed at having his transfer power reduced. He won the PIF power struggle and this is the result. 2. We have found a new CEO and since Darren Eales was instrumental in bringing Mitchell in - and they have worked together - change was needed and demanded by whoever is arriving. 3. Mitchell tried to snipe Eddie. He undermined him, with the backing of Eales, only to find that Howe massively overachieved in spite of them dragging their feet and not signing anyone. PIF saw through the scheme and backed Eddie. I think it's some combination of all three, but mostly 2. This is a pretty smooth exit, though it is abrupt, and everyone seems to be on board with how it's gone. That speaks to a pretty orchestrated process. I don't think this will impact this window all that much, but obviously it depends on the timing of the replacement. I would expect there to be a much more streamlined process and I would expect Eddie to get more power in this process, which I think he has earned. All in all, not all that bothered yet.

I think a lot of people are underrating the importance of culture building and consistency. I could understand the idea of Howe keeping Wilson around as he's done with other players in order to maintain the standards and help the younger or newer players get acclimated to the expectations. Team culture is built over time and the standards that are set have to be maintained. If you don't have the benefit of having some of your best players having been in your team culture for years and years, you have to have help building it. Howe is in the process of doing that and keeping Wilson around - as long as he's not keeping better, younger players from playing - could be really beneficial to team building. It makes sense if it's for those reasons.

Hm, good point. Maybe his clone then.

I think that was his twin Ben Svotman out there today

Let the summer begin!!

Ultimately this was a zero-sum thing. Either we made the Champions League and continued our ascent, or we didn't. And we did. So I'm going to end up not giving a fuck about how it happened.

We didn't deserve it today. But we did deserve it over the course of the season. I'm fucking annoyed about that shit performance. Awful. Nerves got to us. 3-4-3 doesn't suit us. Nothing really suited us. I'm still on edge. But it doesn't matter. We got there in the end.

WE WON EVEN THOUGH WE DIDN'T

You can see how the decades of toil and frustration have scarred so many of us. We have a scenario that we would have all jumped at months ago, a scenario that didn't seem possible a few years ago, and there are so many who are scared shitless of a loss. We control our destiny. Simple. We need to beat a team we should be beating at home. We do that, we are in the Champions League with a third-placed finish after winning a domestic cup. Incredible stuff. We just need to grab it.