Chris_R

You're all welcome

When we conceded and lose late on again, because of sitting deep forever trying to hold onto a lead again, and offering no threat at all up the other end again, we'll deserve it.

Regarding the handball, that's never a foul anywhere else on the pitch. Hand by his side, ball hit at him from 3 yards away. Always a goal for me.

Again, Twitter(!) has loads saying Howe's either a liar for not saying he wants rid of people, or a shit manager for actually not wanting rid of them. Are people that incapable of thinking things through beyond the press conference itself? Or their own self importance and neediness to know what's actually happening? He's saying what anyone with half a brain would say. Players may or may not leave, and he has to cover the possibility that they may not and have them still committed to the cause and giving 100% on the pitch.

Why would he say anything else? Those players still play for us, are still needed on the pitch, and may not leave if they either don't want to or we can't agree terms with the buying clubs. Twitter (I know) seems awash with people who think he should have openly said that he wants to sell certain players, honestly so many people are thick as whale spunk. Or they think their personal right to know Howe's plans trumps in some way our need as a team to function well on the pitch and get results. Either way though, idiots.

Great. But entirely not my point. My only point is that too many people think that amortisation just removes the future commitment. That you can repeatedly sell a player for £10m and that gives you £50m to spend, and that you can just keep doing this infinitely. That's a genuine position some seem to have. All I'm doing is pointing out it's nonsense. Sure, revenue will increase in future allowing more spending. But it would do that anyway without us selling Trippier, the two things aren't connected.

That's all well and good provided those revenue streams materialise and can cover the shortfall. But there's not an infinite amount we can grow revenue by, at a speed we dictate. It's a nice theory, but it's not a certainty to happen. Far from it. And we can't just keep saying we'll increase revenue streams by 4* every sale we make forever more.

Well yes if we amortised his initial fee over a number of years and that's not fully paid yet, we still owe it.

Yes. Despite the ravings of some, raising £12m doesn't allow you to spend £60m. It can be used towards one year's payments of a £60m deal that's spread over 5 years, but you've still got to find £12m for each of the next 4 years from somewhere. That commitment doesn't disappear just because you shout "amortisation".

That's not how maths works. It only frees up THIS YEAR's portion of £150m towards transfers. We'd then need to sell someone for £30m next year, and for the 3 years after that, to balance the books for the £150m total. The subsequent years costs don't just magically disappear into thin air. On the other side, if we've already amortised previous years' fees into the future (very likely), we may be selling Almiron to pay for previous spends. What we need to do is grow revenue. Which of course we're looking to do all the time now, but that's the cure long-term, but in the mean time we've got to cut our cloth accordingly.

We just can't sell British players and sign foreigners, no matter the value in the two respective markets. We need UK trained players for the PL quotas, and the European ones. That's why we've bought a good core of British players, nothing to do with the manager not being able to see beyond these shores.

That'll not help - That's allegedly the reason he's wanting away in the first place!

Not when you consider that you have to qualify for it first.

In other words, if we sell Longstaff, some of that may well need to go to stuff we've amortised last year or the year before. Those costs haven't just magically disappeared into thin air just because they were last year.

That's not how maths works. It might give us £150m to spend now, but we're just kicking the can down the road for everything but the first £30m. We'll have to keep selling £30m of players every year to cover this if we do it. Everyone keeps saying 'amortisation' as if you can just forget all costs after the first 12 months. Nope. Amortisation just means it gets spread out. To put it simply: If you spend £150m and amortise it over 5 years and fund this year's costs by selling Longstaff, who are you selling for £30m to fund next year's £30m? Our problem is we've already amortised lots. Until those amortisation periods end, we're a bit fucked because we've got to keep paying for them. Unless that is we keep selling people or increase our revenue, which of course we are doing.

People need to stop with this bullshit. This isn't how it works. Sure, sell Trippier this year for £20m and we get a £20m FFP boost. But IF we sign someone for £60m over 6 years, sure that's only a £10m hit to FFP this year. So we could sign 2 of them, of course. But the problem is that next year we've got to fund another £10m towards this transfer. Or £20m if we've signed 2. And the year after. And so on, for 6 years. We can kick the can down the road, sure, but eventually all these cans we've kicked down the road will become a massive fucking problem. People keep acting as if we can use selling players as some kind of FFP cheat code but it really doesn't work that way.

Sorry, Kimmich? Is there anyone actually reporting that, or has someone on here just put 2 and 2 together? What have I missed?

Maybe something different to the thing that's failed to work the last 5+ times we've tried it? Maybe?

We have subs, we just don't use them. And time and again, leaving the tired players on the pitch fails to work. If it worked, I could accept it, but it doesn't.

The definition of stupidity is to do the same thing again and again, and expect different results. Why then do we repeatedly shut up shop, offer nothing up the other end and try to see out the last 20-25 minutes of matches by just sticking everyone behind the ball and defending deep, when it fails to work time and time again? So infuriating, and so predictable.

Probably just out for 5-6 months then, instead of our standard 6-9 months.

This is just utterly depressing. I've never in 30+ years of following us ever known us or any other club have this many long-term injuries to first team players in the same season, and we're only just over half way through it. It's beyond a joke now. I don't blame anyone, not really, I'm not in a position to make that decision. But this is unprecedented and just not funny anymore. Nobody seems to get a knock and miss a match. Everyone is out for between a month and half a season. Nobody ever seems to return.

I love beer as much if not more than anyone. But I've never, ever understood those who get wasted before a match. I don't think I've ever had more than one beer before a match. I want to enjoy it, remember it, not have to rush off after 20 minutes for a piss and so on. You've paid a lot to watch this, why would you want to watch it hammered? And probably barely remember big chunks of it? Just baffles me. Now after the game, sure I'll be all over the beer. But never before. I don't need it to sing either, I'm as noisy as anyone whilst sober.

Also like others say, not bothered about a DC this January. A DM for me, release Bruno further forward. Feel he's wasted sitting deep, I'd love to see him driving into the box more and getting goals.

Hopefully the good thing about Schar's lack of pace is that because he's not reliant on it, he probably won't lose a yard that'll affect his game.