Chris_R

What, bigger than the £120m Mbappe just got? Nah. Wouldn't even command that as a transfer fee. He's well into his 30s now.

If we need to sell Bruno to make our FFP commitments, I'd rather we just take the 4 point penalty. He's worth well more than that to us.

Again, giving a team £30+m when they want to buy Bruno but are short of the cash to trigger his release clause seems suicidal. Just no, for me.

As a self-proclaimed and completely unapologetic grammar Nazi, I can't disagree with this bit....

Keegan sold Cole because he knew he'd peaked and wasn't training well. And gutted though I was when Cole left, Keegan was right.

Plus, nobody will want our cast-offs.

FYP

Should never have played today if Pope is fit for the bench, as I said pre match. Cost us at least a point today. Annoying that Howe is so loyal to players and needs them to be palpably shit before he'll drop them. Needs to work on this side of his management and be more ruthless in getting his best players on the pitch.

Pope not playing is annoying. He's clearly, by a long way, the better keeper and if he's fit enough for the bench then he should play. I get "having faith" with players, "your shirt to lose" etc, but in this instance the ability disparity is big enough to overcome this.

Plus we've still got to pay for all the players we amortised over the previous windows. We've still not finished paying for Bruno, Botman, Isak, Trippier, Livramento, Barnes, Tonali, Burn, Targett or Pope yet. We're still on the hook for at least £70m/year for all of them yet. We've got to continually understand and appreciate our running total of commitments regarding amortisation, not immediately forget all previous transfers once a new window opens. I know I'm like a broken record with this and it's not aimed at you as such, but the forum as a whole has a big blind spot on this thinking we can just keep spending a net of £100m/season provided we use the magic "amortisation" word. Revenue growth is now vital. And the PL are hamstringing us there. I'm sure we're working on it behind the scenes but until we make significant moves there, we're likely up against the wall for transfers.

If you get stopped every time, it's not the machine failing. I travel regularly for work and the e-gates refuse me every time. I got sick and asked the border official. His response: "Well I can't say for certain for obvious reasons, but..... (checks computer) one 'possible' explanation could be that we're looking for someone with very similar details to yours *nodds enthusiastically*, but as I say I can't say for certain *more nodding*" You've likely got some kind of flag on your passport. Annoying but there's little you can do. I've got 2 UK passports and the same happens on both of them.

We likely have little to no money. We've already kicked the FFP can down the road in previous windows by saying "we'll just amortise it over future seasons", well this summer is one of those "future seasons" and we've still got to find 1/4 or 1/5 of the transfer fees for each of Bruno, Isak, Gordon, Trippier, Barnes, Livramento, Hall, Burn, Botman etc because we haven't fully paid for them yet. If you do kick the can down the road, as we've seemingly done, you can't then pretend the fees for everything after that initial year don't exist. Those commitments have not gone away and until some of these transfers drop off (which will be at least another couple of years) and we're not paying for them anymore, we're a bit fucked. Yes we'll likely increase revenue a bit which will help, plus there's the CL money, but tbh the CL money is a one-off (so far) and won't be replicated next year so shouldn't form part of a multi-year transfer strategy. Hopefully we can shift some of the deadwood but let's be honest, we've not exactly had a queue form for any of them so far and I can't see that changing in the summer. Our only outgoing of any note for years has been ASM.

If we buy Ramsdale, it better be after Bruno's clause expires. Last thing we should be doing is to give a team who need money to trigger a release clause for our best player a big pile of £35m. Just no. I'd worry that Arsenal would anyway only sell us Ramsdale conditional on Bruno going the other way. It's just a deal that I'd want to stay away from for so many reasons.

Yeah let's not, that nearly cost us the match against Barcelona in the 90s.

OK, so how much are you selling Dubravka for, and which keeper are you buying and for how much?

That's not the definition of a sensible transfer policy. Who plays for 4 months if Pope's shoulder pops back out again next season?

This. What people need to realise is that when everyone keep saying "Amortisation means we can spend £40m on a player, as over his 5 year contract that's only only £8m/year + wages", because we've already done that for multiple players in past years so we still have all those £8m/year+wages to pay next year and the year after too. You can't just keep repeating the trick and ignoring the subsequent years' payments after year 1, as almost everyone on here seems keen to do. Yes we'll hopefully increase revenue too, but not by enough to make all this irrelevant.

I mean, well done, but he's only played 3 games for them.

Indeed. Geographically, Manchester is in the middle third of the country. Based on lattitude, the dividing line between North and Midlands runs between York and Leeds. I understand why they want to be northern, because of course it's better, but they're just not. Probably closer to being Welsh than they are to being Northern.

Lovely update to Wikipedia:

Guess it'll be a big hint if half the Man U squad make the England squad.

Cricket Football was originally a winter sport for when there was no cricket on.

100% I guess the exception is work like call centre work, done remotely. Then it's all about your availability to take calls and you can't slack in the traditional sense. You can still slack. You just have to be more creative! Standard office jobs where you're given an amount of work to do for the day/week/whatever, who cares when you do it, where, or how? The problem is middle managers and boomers, guessing Beth is one of either of those camps, who feel they need to sit and watch people work. Middle managers, especially those with shit managerial skills who have been overpromoted, feel that if they're not seen to be observing their staff then someone higher up will realise they add absolutely nothing to the company whatsoever and their cushy gig will be up so they like everyone where they can watch them. It's also partly a power trip for some. They don't actually DO anything themselves, they just like to watch "their staff" work. Add to this that we're constantly gas-lit by people like Alan Sugar and organisations / publications who own loads of office space, who are seeing this plummet in value so they need to tell everyone how evil WFH is. But hey, maybe, JUST MAYBE, these people don't have our best interests at heart.... The other category of course are the jealous. Shop workers, people who can't work from home and are really envious of those who can. Now not everyone is envious, many say "good for you, enjoy!" but not everyone likes to see others have things better than them and so they rail against the concept of working from home, hoping to spoil it for the rest of us. Retirees fall into this camp too "Well, *I* had to go in every day for 45 years so you should too!", that kind of mentality. It's 2024. I will never again work a job that requires 100% office presence. It's unnecessary and just punitive for 0 benefit.

There's two problems with Ramsdale as a £60m keeper 1) he's not worth £60m 2) we don't have £60m The problem with 2) is that we'd need to sell Bruno to buy him, and that weakens us more than it strengthens us, plus it massively strengthens Arsenal whilst costing them very little in terms of money. So no. Just no. If Bruno must go, make it the full £100m and buy a keeper from abroad. You'll get better for less, without taking a direct rival's cast-off as a vastly overpriced makeweight into a deal they otherwise couldn't make.

I'll be honest: yes, sometimes I skive when working from home. But guess what? I skive in the office too! Ha! I can slack off anywhere. I'm an artist at it. I can spend a whole day doing absolutely fuck all in the office. Like, nothing. Not even pretending. I'll skive WITH my boss. But this is because my work is already done, and the thing with office work is 'presenteeism' forces me to sit and stare at a clock until the numbers reach an arbitrary sequence before I can get in my car and go home. It's a very literal waste of my time. Working from home I can crack on with something useful and get my life back during such time, while of course being available for work if required. Whilst I take time back when this are quiet, I put in a shift when needed. 3 days ago I did a full shift at the customer site in Dhahran then went back to the hotel and did another 7 hours because it was needed. But I only do that knowing I can and will take time back on quiet days because the moment I can't, then come 5pm every day I'm downing tools no matter where I'm at, what I'm doing or what the business consequences are. The only thing a manager should ever ask of their staff is "have you completed all of your work, to a high standard and in the agreed timescale". If the answer is "yes", then where, when and how you complete it is completely irrelevant.