brummie

Talking of north east born footballers, sad news re one of my all-time heroes. Got both my parents struggling with this horrible fucking disease ATM. https://x.com/peterwhite_1/status/1773411764220129341?s=20

Didn't he also look shite against Brazil, mind?

It does look like more and more people are realising what an indefensible shit show this all is. I have no sympathy at all for Forest and Everton - they knew what the rules were, they both took the piss, albeit in slightly differing ways. However, where I do have sympathy is in the fact that this is all going on whilst the club which built a dynasty from nothing, entirely by cheating and financial doping, which has won seven of the last ten titles (or whatever it is), has 115 charges against it and seems to have had its case punted forever into the long grass. it's truly dreadful management. They can't face tackling Man City partly because they know it casts a fucking huge shadow over the credibility of their main product. And everyone knows it. That's the problem.

Looks like we've at least realised the urgency of boosting revenue. We've clearly got out of the BK8 deal as I am pretty sure that was to run till the start of the ban.

No chance he's coming back here. Things have moved on, and I think there are way more Villa fans who think it'd be a bad idea than there are think it'd be a good one. He'll be 29, too, and wanting a big final pay deal.

The muscle loss on the right leg (ie the impacted one) in his injury at your place is insane. https://x.com/StokeyyG2/status/1770123890863313401?s=20 What a long way back an injury like that is.

I am really going to miss hearing about 'Liverpool's kids' all the fucking time. So, so sad Klopp not getting the FA Cup as a leaving prize when he fucks off. The nation weeps.

This is the insanity of the current rules. It forces clubs into decisions that have no basis in rationality.

The concept of FFP is noble, nobody should be able to do what Man City have done again, it's hugely detrimental to the Premier League. State ownership of football clubs has totally changed the conversation, it has made the numbers insanely bigger but it has also made football an instrument of diplomacy (UK govt raising international relations with the UAE re Man City, for example). There has got to be some sort of lever of control over finances in the game, it's hard to avoid that. The problem is that the current implementation does not work, because it is based on numbers which are years out of date, and because there is already a clutch of clubs which have profited from it already while they could and are now trying to pull up the ladder. All the momentum suggests, though, that financial control is not going to go away. What does need to happen, though, is some sort of system whereby sensible investment to grow clubs remains possible. We now genuinely have a situation where you and us, as two clubs which are well funded, have benevolent owners who would put more in if they could, are genuinely being discussed as needing to sell some of their best players to the very same cabal of clubs at the top end of the ladder if they are to survive under current financial rules. It is absolutely crazy, but it's the implementation of it which is wrong, not the general concept. A bit like VAR.

It's the third of the European Competitions, and no, it's not the Champions League, but fuck me, I fucking hope we win it. As for the point someone made about yeah, at least you had to win something to win the Cup Winners' Cup, you also had to win your league to even get to play for the big trophy, but I don't see many people pointing that out about the Champions League these days. If we do win the conf league, we can then spend the next 40 years going on about having won two European trophies, as much as we have done for the last 40 years about winning the last one. Joking apart, I heard these same arguments from our fans about the Conference League. We haven't won anything for 28 years, and even then it was only the league cup, as was the last one before that. Yet the same fans who were belittling this competition are then happy to spend fucking hours agonising over qualifying for Europe in the first place, and reducing football to agonising about amortisation of player costs. It's pretty amazing that any of our fans - or yours, for that matter - can engage in any turning up of the nose at a UEFA competition, given the fact we've both spent several decades staying as far away as possible from actually winning stuff, which is what I thought football was meant to be about. People belittle the League Cup, too, but I was fucking gutted in 2020 and in 2010 when we lost two finals. It didn't feel pisspot walking out of Wembley having failed again. Progression has to start somewhere, it's never going to start by getting into the Champions League / Europa League / Conference League every now and then but not actually ever winning anything. Look how much silverware the likes of Chelsea, Liverpool, Man U, Man City just hoover up like it's their day to day bread and butter. That's what we have to start to compete with.

Get in there, Fulham you beauties.

Ajax were absolutely piss poor last night. We've got a tricky route to the final now. Well, compared to the other route we could have got, anyway.

A striker, yes, fair point, I don't think Duran alone is enough to rely on. I also actually have a feeling we might sell him. Emery unimpressed allegedly. And yes Lenglet and Zaniolo going back (thank god in the case of Zaniolo who has been terrible, there's surely no way we trigger his buy option). Lenglet has been alright though. Defence - LB - Digne and Moreno, CB - Pau, Mings, Carlos, Konsa, RB - new starter signing, Cash. A better back up to Martinez would be good too. Mind you, I have just heard Jacob Ramsey has re-broken his foot and is going to miss the first month of next season as well, which is a massive kick in the balls.

I actually don't think we have that thin a squad - we've been unlucky to lose two of our most important players for the entire season, and have suffered three ACLs in the period since just before the first match - but yeah, it'll need more coverage. Losing Mings, Buendia and Kamara is a massive blow. Certainly, some of the back up players need to be moved on and improved, and we definitely need a right back, and maybe two. Anyway, let's see, to expand on the above post re trophies, it's winning trophies and qualifying for Europe in the first place that matter.

And also, lest we forget now that football is a sport and not accountancy, which is easy to do in the current set up, it's a trophy. I can guarantee, if we win it, I won't be wasting a second thinking about how much it would impact the accounts.

However, it is worth noting, that although the 119 is going to be there for a couple of years, the other year which remains was a break even. I'd also be extremely sceptical about you turning a profit this year, something which we'll see soon enough i guess (don't know when your accounting date is)?

It won't be for this financial year, as it closes before the window opens. It's basically the same situation you allegedly have - balancing things finely, pushing it as far as you can without exceeding it. The accounts just published show the three year running losses - before deductions - as 37m (20-21), 0 (21-22) and 119m (22-23) This year the 37 drops off, so we're basically at 119m minus deductions plus this year's loss as the cumulative total. We've already binned 40m of home grown in this year, and we didn't spend hugely over last summer in any case, so I'd expect this one to be a lower loss (also as it will include more prize money and tv cash plus the UEFA stuff - 12m plus tv money share if we were to win it, 6m on our progress so far). I really don't know what will transpire, but I think we are currently prob in a better place than you are, because we've got plenty of high value assets on the squad, many of whom are 'pure profit' as they've been here so long - Luiz, Konsa, Watkins (I think), McGinn, and Kamara and Tielemans who were free transfers, plus Ramsey. I wouldn't want to sell any, but I suspect we will - just to create some wriggle room (NB in the next financial year, ie next season).

Actually my last post is wrong, the 0.3m profit year was the year before this set of accounts, so it's the 37m loss year that falls off the FFP three year total.

Not really, current three year period is >105m, yes, but with the deductibles, we are apparently ok. Our challenge is this current season, where the 3 year losses will be 37m, 120m and whatever this year is. Lots of armchair accountancy wizards on Twitter missing the point here and looking at the figure just released for last year. Yes, the Grealish year falls off now, but to counter that, this season we've already sold 40m plus of homegrown talent, all of which we can claim in this financial year. We also moved Danny Ings on, so that is also off the books as well. The thing with FFP is also, I guess, have a potential route out if the worst comes to the worst - I'd rather not have to sell, but then again, I'd rather not be Everton and looking at that squad of shite and wondering where on earth the money is. FWIW, I think your problem is that you've not really got into the business of growing and selling players to create extra room - you need to do that, it's not the answer to everything but it's vital for creating at least a bit of space (see Chelsea, as discussed earlier, they've made a fortune doing this in recent years, and yeah, it'll probably, hopefully cripple them at some point because they can't assume they'll always be able to do that).

It will be interesting, though, to see the continuing significant reduction of spending by PL clubs as a result of all this, and how long it takes however many people to find their gravy train shut down before they start back-pedalling on all this.

you (I mean the wider sense of you here, ie competing clubs) have absolutely no choice but to sail as close to the wind as they possibly can with FFP. It is absolutely fucking ridiculous and in some ways encourages more recklessness as the rules are so draconian all of a sudden (now it is convenient to pull up the ladder). The reason Everton got a points deduction isn’t spending as such, as much as it was about pushing the interpretation of the rules too far.

Invested a ton building a new inner city academy, covid losses plus of the three seasons, one of which we didn’t lose anything at all, and the other 37 or so. We will be well within the PSR limits but what these sort of manoeuvres show is how much of a ridiculous balancing act all this shit is. It will be hard to strengthen in the summer without also selling though. But then again we spent 8m on a young right back and 10m on Rodgers in January so it can’t be that tight. The other thing with all this is it just makes me more convinced we’ll be getting a new ground.

What is crazy is that transfer fees have gone nuts, but that 105m stays fixed.

Can't be that skint, they gave us 19m for Cameron Archer. Although yeah, tbf, that doesn't mean much, it requires much more money than that these days.

Get in, you beauty.