Unbelievable

No way City finishes outside the top 5 imo

I sympathise somewhat with the argument that things related to stadium and training ground appear to be moving a bit slowly (even realising if in the real world these things always take a lot of time), but the underlying expectation behind all these sponsor/PSR related frustrations is that our owners, or indeed any owners of our club, should be willing to spend unlimited amounts of their own money to help us compete with the likes of Liverpool and Man City asap. Why exactly is this? Is this a PIF specific thing? Would the same expectation have been heaped upon any owner following the dire Ashley reign? Me, I'm just happy that we have owners who seem passionate about the club, appear to have an above level of intelligence and are wiling to invest in the club to help it grow into meeting their amibitious targets. I think it's perfectly sensible that they try to not fully turbo-charge our growth path the way the PSG owners have done, but rather look for sponsorship opporunities outside of their own business portfolio too. Ultimately this club should be able to compete at the top in a more or less self sustaining manner so it can benefit long term and not just fall apart when these owners move on. Besides, they are still overachieving on their own targets in most if not all areas, so why do people feel they owe us any more than the brilliant support and direction they're already giving us..?

Nothing going our way this weekend

Aye. For those who missed it, I think he said something like Sean’s future at the club being uncertain beyond the summer or words to that effect.

This. From his perspective I can imagine he’s getting itchy feet. He’s a better player than Andersen who left and made a name for himself at a side chasing CL football. Eddie will need to find a wag to trust him with more minutes or we may as well cash in and allow the kid to fulfil his potential elsewhere.

Madness imho. We've won a cup and got that monkey of our back. The best way to continue to progress and compete for future silverware is by finishing the highest we possibly can, grow our prize money, commercial profile and revenue, etc., attract better players and continue to develop into a better club. For where we are right now, five points clear with 6 games to go, that means anything but CL qualification would be a massive missed opportunity.

Pen

Get the fuck in!

Nonsense sending off that

Just need Frankfurt to pull it back now too

This is rather lovely isn’t it?

In my view we could conceivably have been where we are today without the new owners’ spending post takeover if Ashley had allowed the club to grow commercially in line with our competitors at the time he took over. We were in the CL more often then not the years before he took over and our revenue was only slightly lower than some of the “big six” at the time. We are only a doped club now insofar as the new owners have us sponsored at a level that would be seen as normal for a club of our statute and potential, as opposed to the free advertising that Mike Ashley arranged for SD. The reason we were a yoyo club performing at well below our potential is because for 14 years we had an incompetent, petulant piece of shit consistently running us into the ground. Our potential was always there though. Keegan saw it, some fans did and luckily for us, Amanda Stavely did too.

See, I was and still am of the opinion that the potential of this football club we support is as high as that of any other club regardless of who owns it. We went from a penny-pinching leech to the “richest owners in world football”, but in either scenario our potential was for us to challenge at the top of the (domestic) game for titles, European football qualification and cups. I think the first three years of this ownership bear that out, because we’ve not even really had to tap into the unthinkable wealth of our owners to achieve 2/3 simply by being very well managed and united. That is not beyond the likes of Villa, and indeed they are also demonstrating this. As I’ve argued before I will happily accept a form of FFP that prevents owners such as ours to simply outspend the competition tenfold and thereby compete by default, such as PSG are doing in France. That would feel hollow to me. I much prefer beating the “big six” by being smarter than by simply being richer and I also respect our owners even more for taling on this challenge without flashing cheque books left, right and center. They are building us up to be a sustainable top club rather than a flash in the pan. Your view may differ and that is ok, but for me the owners are extracting potential that was always here rather than taking the club places no “normal” owner could have.

Considering the Aston Villa owner’s wealth is around 10b, they seem willing to spend at least as much as these regulations allow and they’re consistently voting with City, Forest and us to get the shackles removed I’m not sure I agree out potential is all that different to ours. Still, I’d rather them in the CL than any of the “big six”. At least we’d be competing on an even playing field with them and both teams doing well should eventually start hurting the finances of the likes of Spurs, Man U and Chelsea.

It’s good to have the option, but with how good Burn has been this season I’d give Botman a full season this time before hoying him back in, unless in case of an emergency.