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Last few posts in this thread make me feel like we deserve to be sold back to Ashley.

Sigh

Oh my God are we actually going to go through?

It's amazing how we instantly look like a functional football team again now that we only have "a lot of injuries" as opposed to "a ridiculous amount of injuries."

Positive jinx!

Every time Joelinton has to shoot the "womp womp" sound effect plays in my head.

Milan don't look like much of a threat at all. Now that I've said this we'll probably concede in the next five minutes.

I imagine the long-term fatigue effects get a lot worse when we have to travel.

Players look very up for it, which is not surprising. Could be the last CL game of their careers for a lot of them. Fighting for the right to stay in the spotlight.

To this day I cannot believe I was in the away end at Stamford Bridge when he scored that goal and everything else that happened that crazy day. I will feel a connection to this guy forever.

The squad is deep enough, as is demonstrated by the fact that we were coping just fine when we had a normal-sized injury crisis. It’s the extra-double-sized injury crisis we have now that we can’t handle.

We’re basically missing six of our first-choice eleven and each of their second-choice replacements. Freakishly bad luck.

Would have been a crime against humanity if we left here with a point.

I think the players and the fans are on the same page in terms of just wanting this game to be over.

I wouldn’t bad mouth him if I were you. At the rate things are going, we’ll need him to suit up for us pretty soon.

I feel like we’ve already far exceeded our quota of good memories for this season and the remaining six months are just going to be pure, unending pain.

Our injury curse is contagious

You could mess with the guy and tell him that the takeover got blocked and Ashley was still in charge and he would totally fall for it.

We’ve got a winning mix of “completely exhausted” and “hasn’t played since ever.”

Losing one starter per game now

Can't comment as to the antitrust implications, but there are ways you can configure the cap amount so that the total amount of league spending remains unchanged. At the beginning of the year you project out the revenue for each club, add it all up, divide it by 20. That's the cap, and in theory at least, at the end of the year the league as a whole would be spending the same amount they would be spending under FFP. You would need slightly more aggressive revenue-sharing with smaller/newly promoted clubs so they can spend up to their cap number, but it may still be a net financial gain for the big clubs regardless because they would be "forced" to spend less on their own transfers and wages.

You know how you could accomplish the stated purpose of FFP (preventing clubs with crazy rich/irresponsible owners spending beyond their means) while also avoiding the side effect where it becomes an anti-competitive mechanism in favor of the big six? ...You turn FFP into a salary cap. FFP has put an infrastructure in place that makes it relatively simple to implement a salary cap if you wanted to. You know how everyone has a different FFP ceiling based on their revenue? Everyone has the same number now. Boom. Problem solved.

Given that we are the only football club owned by the PIF, that seems eminently fair. I also don't know the extent to which the other clubs in the Saudi Pro League are state-owned or affiliated, but if any are, we should be banned from transacting with them as well.

I think it makes sense to restrict one-way. There is a qualitative difference, in my view, between farming out players to feeder clubs in foreign leagues, and bringing in players from affiliated teams in the Saudi League. The former is not a competitive balance issue for the Premier League, the latter very much is.

I feel pretty good about our ability to challenge the "big six" on the pitch without having to rely on dodgy loans from other clubs controlled by the sovereign state that owns us.