Memphis

It does. Again, none of this is an accident. This was clever from Ashworth or whoever put it in there. It's designed to smoke out any potential clubs who want to buy Bruno early in the summer while also ensuring all the proceeds go towards this season's FFP calculations, allowing us the most possible flexibility in restructuring the squad. It works well for everyone imo. Obviously someone could try to buy him after the deadline but at that point there is no incentive for us to sell or for them to buy at an inflated price.

This one is all on Bruno. If he wants to go, he will go for 100m next month. He'd go with my best wishes. If he doesn't want to go, that's fantastic, and he won't be going. I think the club has drawn a line under the interest by saying essentially - "Put up or shut up". Clubs have a month to make the move. If they don't, that's that. To me, it's an ideal way to handle a situation like this.

You run out of superlatives. The finishing ability, the composure, the demeanor, the way he blends into the team and provides more than just pure finishing, the fact that he seems to love it here, there's not a better fit for us on the planet. No point in debating whether he's a top (x) striker in the world, he's 1 of 1 for us right now. And he's not Shearer, but that's OK. No reason to ever compare the two.

Ange and Maddison both sounded completely despondent post match. Like they'd been through a disaster, which, well...

He genuinely looks like Thierry Henry out there. On a different planet than everyone else. His composure is unreal. His first touch, his control, he's intelligence, I wouldn't take 150m for him, he is irreplaceable.

Imagine not believing in this guy... couldn't be me

Perfectly phrased

Looking back at the timetable, it seems that this all became public after 12 October, so it's not as if he was daft enough to bet on football after all of this emerged. This is a continuation of his previous infractions and I would hope common sense would prevail and his lengthy ban would suffice as punishment, but knowing the FA, I doubt it.

Feels as if the season of short squads, injuries, and upheaval is catching up to us. We just look mentally and physically tired every time we step on to a pitch. It's been quite some time since we've looked anywhere near our best, and I think it was always going to be inevitable that we would feel the pain of having squeezed by as long as we did. I think it's silly to blame Howe specifically, as he's merely a part of the whole club philosophy when it comes to training and squad management. I do think we will need to reassess how we do things this summer and prioritize depth more than we have. But it would be harsh in the extreme to make sweeping changes on the back of what feels like an inevitable drop in form. To me, it simply means this summer will be absolutely critical not only in terms of player recruitment, but also a reimagining of how we balance the squad and how we handle our fitness levels.

I think this is well stated. We are in a different position from a financial standpoint than when we hired Ashworth, but more importantly, we are now fully staffed behind the scenes. Knowing how things went with Ashworth, we may well decide to change the remit of the Sporting Director role. Or replace it with something else. Whatever the situation, I would expect whoever is hired to be indicative of that chosen direction.

There is a great deal of speculation and argument over a lot of things none of us can know or will likely ever know: 1. The specifics of Ashworth's role in our transfers 2. The specific things he has done to create and build out our infrastructure 3. The nature of his relationships with the coaching staff and the owners 4. How indispensable (or not) his specific knowledge and methods are 5. How much of our methodology leaves with him and would have to be rebuilt or reimagined We can speculate all we like, we can claim to talk to friends of friends, we can scrutinise public comments, none of it will actually help us have concrete information to address those issues above. At the end of the day, he is obviously very good and very well-thought-of within the industry. And it can't be a good thing for us to have to pivot to a new Sporting Director after only a year or so. But to say it's a crushing blow or to say that Ashworth was worthless are equally knee-jerk reactions that aren't supported by data. We will never truly know those answers, and that's OK. The fact remains that we are supremely wealthy as a club and are extremely attractive to prospective employees. I have no doubt that PIF, Staveley, Ghodoussi, and Eales will find a fantastic candidate and we will continue apace. And yes, they can either pay £20mm or get fucked. Zero motivation, I'd imagine, for anyone to do Ashworth a solid here.

With the importance of this role and the sheer amount of proprietary knowledge he would have, I'm not surprised we baked in a massive gardening leave into his contract. Him leaving immediately would damage us greatly in the short term simply from an information standpoint. I'm thrilled to see us taking a hard stance. PIF will have no problem paying him for putting his career on hold if it means keeping our secrets from them until 2026. Money well spent.

More like Dan Ashworthless if you ask me

We didn't crumble in the last 20 minutes because we weren't dog tired from having played 4 matches in 10 days or something crazy. There's not much more to it than that. If we had a deeper, healthier squad, we would have been seeing this all season. As it stands, once we've been given some time to breathe, we can play this way again.

A rested Howe team is a dangerous Howe team...

Fabulous performance so far. Isak injury puts a big stink on it, though. Just that kind of year, I guess. Unrecognizable from some of our earlier away performances, THIS is the team that I've used to seeing.

Xabi Alonso is a million fucking miles ahead of Gerrard as a manager. And a billion ahead of Lampard. We can only hope it somehow ends up being Gerrard. It's nailed on to be Alonso and he's a good choice.

From a brief look around the internet, he jumped into the U18s at age 16, was spending some time in first team training this year, highlights show him to be capable of seeing a nice pass and having enough pace to get into dangerous positions. Definitely looks a player.

I think they're both definitely Men Intensely Loving Football

Irrespective of what happens from here, Trippier's contributions to the club were massively important. His leadership, professionalism, and quality helped us immeasurably when we were seriously facing the prospect of relegation. That should never be forgotten. But if he's sold, this is now a sliding doors moment - and it could go one of two ways: 1. We sell Trippier for a nice fee and use that fee and the room it opens up for us appropriately to continue our rise as a club. Livramento slots right in for Trippier and we don't miss too much of a beat on the pitch. The players at the club understand Trippier's age, our financial situation, and where things are this season, and they react with long-term optimism about the project in spite of the sale. The summer sees us spend lavishly and keep growing. 2. We sell Trippier for a nice fee and the players immediately get upset, thinking that the project is stalling, and the future here isn't as bright as they expected. Other players start to see their heads being turned by offers and they start to doubt whether or not this is the right project for them. The rest of the season dwindles away in a sea of rumour and discontent and the summer is a reclamation project as we have to rebuild not only players but also attitudes. I hope it's 1, but there are a lot of people outside the club who would want to see 2. Huge challenge for Howe's leadership and the leadership of our ownership/Ashworth.

I think it's a bit silly to think a club that has spent tens of millions of pounds on infrastructure improvements, facilities improvements, medical staff improvements, and more is going to let the manager decide by himself whether or not a player is fit to play. Howe can no more make that determination by himself than he can buy a player by himself. He's a (very important) member of a staff that values his input but doesn't make their decisions based on him. He will play the players that are deemed fit to play. Questions can be asked about why and how those players are deemed fit to play but he's not dragging out some half-injured man by the scruff of his neck to go run out there for 90 minutes. He's already shown over his career that he can adapt. His sides are quite different here than at Bournemouth. They adapted last year and changed the press style and point of attack. I expect that we will adapt a little this season as well, but the truth is that injuries and suspensions have undone us and there's precious little he could do about it. He's the best manager we've had in an age and I can't think of a better one to lead us from here. Patience is difficult but vital.

Sometimes you lick the dessert and sometimes the dessert licks you

Exactly. The man was starting from absolutely square fucking one. We barely had any departments and like fuck did we have a structure or a culture in place. So, yeah, it's going to take time - I'm quite sure the owners are thrilled with what he's been doing.

https://trainingground.guru/articles/dan-ashworth-inside-the-mind-of-a-technical-director I may have posted this before, but it's worth a re-post given the current discussion. I think if you listen to this you can help to understand what Ashworth's role is and how he envisions a club setup. He likens himself to the hub of a wheel and the spokes are each department - medical, scouting, academy, first team, women's team, business - who all report to him. He then fashions a strategy to maximise all of those areas in keeping with the desires and goals of the owners. By all accounts he's a brilliant manager of people and departments, and I think it is to his credit rather than to his detriment that Brighton is continuing so well, that would indicate that the systems he put in place and oversaw are working well even as he himself has departed. I think he's putting all of that into place here and there's a lot more to it than simply the transfer strategy window to window. It seems to me he's putting a much more coherent system in place for the long-term, but that will certainly mean that there are short-term ups and downs.