oldtype

Again, a salary cap would not necessarily depress the wages of players as long as it’s implemented properly. You can build it so that the total spending power of the 20 PL clubs combined is more or less the same as it is now. Also, there is already a league that can blow every PL team out of the water in terms of wages in Saudi Arabia, but that hasn’t led to some kind of mass exodus. I think we’re living in an era that has proven that the whole “any kind of spending limitations will result in top talent deserting the PL” theory is false.

I’m talking about what is fair rather than what is realistic. But from a purely technical standpoint, there are plenty of ways to implement a salary cap where the players would not be making any less money in the aggregate.

It would be no different from PSR. Just run revenue numbers for the clubs the same way, but instead of setting a separate ceiling for each club, you add everything up and divide it by twenty. Presto, there's your salary cap.

It's been a long and winding road, but happy to see that you Brits are finally coming around to salary caps.

I assure you I remember Kinnear and Carver very vividly.

I just refuse to believe that Pardew, McClaren, and Bruce all managed this club at some point. It feels like a bad dream now.

I somehow love the Tiote and Jonas goals even more in retrospect than I did in the moment. A reminder that even during the Ashley years, there were moments to be proud of.

only thing missing is Shola

Extended local hero intro (never rush straight into the climax!), Tiote, Jonas. Some mf’er at Adidas marketing knew exactly which buttons to push.

Jesus Christ Adidas. I don’t even know what I’m supposed to be buying yet but please take my money. That token Asian dude is my spirit animal

It’s going to narrow our transfer options by a lot if we’re only willing to sign players who don’t like getting paid more money.

Yet another anti-competitive aspect of PSR is that it effectively gives the non-cap teams veto power over transfers from any team subject to a cap (i.e. us), since they can so easily outbid on fees and wages, even if they don’t actually want or need the player as much as we do.

People shit on the American salary cap system but PSR is basically just a salary cap for some clubs that the richest clubs are exempt from. Don’t see why anyone would prefer this over the same rules for everyone.

Frankly enjoyed Kuqi for NUFC more than I enjoyed Ki for NUFC. Ashely hadn’t broken my soul yet.

I'm long past the point where I actually care about Koreans playing for NUFC. Ki was one of my favorite players ever and that was... not a good experience so I've kind of soured on it all.

These days, European teams have genuinely reached FM-levels of foreign prospect scouting (i.e. they have folks looking at 15 year olds in obscure foreign leagues in Asia or Africa). It seems like we have people over to scout the Korean leagues periodically and he just happened to catch our eye. He has been capped at U-17 and U-20 level but so far has not stood out in either (to be fair, he just turned 18).

Based on what's being reported in local media it sounds like he's definitely signing with us FWIW. He's very young and barely gets playing time in the Korean second tier, so probably one for the far future (or never). Also, fuck off with all of your racist Korean jokes they have not improved in quality one bit in the twenty years I've been on this forum.

If we do ever win the league, it will have been over a century since the last time (I'm assuming it's not going to happen within the next two seasons). Imagine how ridiculous that would feel. A euphoria that fans of certain teams will never even have the possibility of experiencing.

Now that we’ve finally got the trophy monkey off of our backs I care less about advancing in the Europa League. It would be nice, but the CL money moves us closer to our next long term goals (winning the league or the CL).

It’s all relative, but I think the club had functionally ceased to exist for a lot of people notwithstanding its league position (myself included)

Would have been a footnote for Liverpool even if they had won. Our players knew they were competing for immortality.

Given the low point we were at pre-Howe you could just as easily argue that there would be no club without him either. Although I realize that the new owners coming in at the same time obfuscates that a little. (And I think I’ve stumbled upon the topic this forum will spend the next few years bickering needlessly about )

Howe is also just four seasons into what may end up being (knock on wood) a 10+ year tenure so I wouldn’t quite say “forever”.

Local Hero was grown in a lab to make fans weep. Absolute gem of a song and we’re lucky to have it. And utterly Kafkaesque that Ashley tried to get rid of it.

We were absurdly lucky that almost every big name player we spent our (in retrospect, surprisingly limited) PSR budget on turned out not only to be good footballers, but also perfect cultural fits for the club. This man most of all.