oldtype

I’m sure they had an understanding that the rules existed, they just didn’t know how draconian it would be. Actual football executives misconstrue the rules and get penalized for it all the time. Or it could just be that our revenue hasn’t been growing anywhere near as fast as they thought it would be.

I mostly agree with this, but at the risk of sounding overly negative, I'd be content if this is just where the club is going to be for a while. We had over a decade where we would have cut off our nuts for "a cup and occasional CL qualification." We haven't been here that long. I feel okay chilling in this position for a little longer. It could be so much worse.

I'm sure they did due diligence in terms of looking over the club's assets and liabilities, but I wouldn't be surprised at all if they were relying on Stavely to explain how all the footballing stuff worked. Rich sophisticated people make mistakes in business deals all the time and I get the sense that PIF is typically pretty comfortable with delegating.

He seems like the absolute top level of player that Liverpool or Chelsea or Man United wouldn't immediately jump in to steal from us. So more or less exactly the level of player we should be targeting.

I don't mind the idea of us having a reality check and going after slightly less attractive targets given that we clearly can't compete with the cartel clubs for the absolute top tier players. Slightly older players like Trippier. Young prospects who need to grow into the squad like Livramento and Hall. Competent PL players who we're explicitly bringing in to be part of the squad rather than to be fixtures in the starting XI, like Dan Burn (who turns out to be starting anyway). If we're going to have to pay a ridiculous premium to get anywhere near the cream of the crop, better to be outbidding all the mid table clubs for the best of the rest instead. Frankly, we need depth just as much as we need quality.

I'm sorry sir, I wasn't aware that all our posts to this internet forum must be accompanied by sworn affidavits.

My operating assumption (based on nothing other than speculation) is that Stavely (1) didn't fully understand how PSR worked; and (2) because of this, misrepresented to PIF how quickly she could grow the stature of the club to Man City/Liverpool levels. That's why her team was pushed out, and why PIF appears to have lost a little bit of interest in the whole thing. They thought we could be a bit of a vanity project (in addition to being a good investment) but have now probably realized that getting us up to the level they want could take a decade or more - if it's even possible on that timescale. So they're focused on value retention rather than doing anything dramatic. Which is frankly, fine by me given where we were before they came in. Despite all the dysfunction now, I don't want to live in the alternate reality where they just decide not to buy us in the first place.

In retrospect, it’s incredibly fortunate that we got lucky with our initial signings and ended up with basically no dead weight, because otherwise messing up our PSR calculations and losing multiple transfer windows could have sunk the entire project. I’m sure some of it was good scouting, but even with the best scouting program in the world nobody gets it 100% right like we basically did. It’s given us a big comfy cushion to keep us competitive while we flounder about a little due to executive team turnover and PSR nonsense.

I’m bored let’s go trigger some release clauses.

Given the realities of the market, I frankly don't think we have the luxury of passing up on a 29 year old solely because he's "too old." If he was 25 he'd be off to Chelsea.

Extremely nostalgic to be having another “old board” debate. Feels like 2009 again. Somebody find NE5.

Main problem I think is that owners of the Yankees or Lakers know that they need the small teams. They wouldn’t have as good of a product without a competitive league where every team has a genuine chance, and long-term history and rivalries accumulate over the years. I don’t think the owner of European teams realize this, as is evidenced by their never ending desire for a Super League. I’d be willing to bet that overall interest in the sport would actually drop if that happened. Liverpool isn’t Liverpool if they’re not playing Everton in the league.

The cartel was smaller yes, but that doesn’t mean we were part of it.

To be fair it’s never really been a twenty team league within any of our adult lifetimes (apologies to the 55+ crowd). And transfer frustrations notwithstanding, we are much much closer to the “big six” now than we ever were in the Sheppard or Ashley eras.

I don’t know why people get worked up when these sort of numbers are reported. Teams talk to each other all the time about potential deals, and I would assume 90% of offers are rejected out of hand. Only a tiny fraction of those conversations are reported based on second- or third-hand information, and almost always out of context. 25m could be the very first number we uttered on a conference call where our offer eventually rose to 35m. Brentford may have already countered. Or it could just be the upfront portion of an offer that involves installments. Or it could be old news and we’ve already moved on to other targets. It’s not like FM where you hit the “offer” button and immediately get a message in your inbox saying the other team has broken off negotiations because they’re offended by the lowball. It’s fine to consume this kind of news since it’s fun and we have nothing better to do, but it’s worthless if you’re trying to draw larger conclusions about our transfer negotiation strategy.

European sports felt nuts fifteen years ago from a US sports fan perspective when they were just letting the big clubs spend whatever the hell they want without any regard for parity or sustainability. And somehow they went and made it even worse.

We're still talking about this? It's been fifteen years guys. The insane thing is that there's actually two separate crazy photoshop binges that involve me. (1) game show night; and (2) when I got caught on camera at Stamford Bridge.

Liverpool getting both Isak and Ekitike for combined 200 million pounds while we flail about trying to limbo under some arbitrary PSR line would be emblematic of the PL's complete failure to be a functioning, competitive sports league.

American sports caps the spending of highest-revenue teams and uses the excess revenue to subsidize everyone else. English Football caps the spending of everyone else and tells them to go fuck themselves. I know which system sounds fairer to me.

It's a little weird that we don't have a DOF yet are appointing senior staff to report to the DOF. Either we have someone lined up and are not announcing until later due to contractual reasons, or the new DOF may be something of a figurehead with Howe having more authority.

To be fair, it's hard to have an actual transfer strategy when you don't have an actual director of football. Makes sense to be focused on a small subset of targets which we've already done a lot of work on and have deemed "can't miss" given that the recruiting staff have been largely rudderless for a while now. Not the time to be taking risks. But going forward, I would hope that we start casting a wider net.

Insert "Chelsea to swoop in with last minute bid" joke here.

I frankly didn't even notice the Rising Sun flag-thingy and I'm perhaps not as sensitive about it as some Koreans are, but there's really nothing to be gained for the club or Adidas by having it in there so good on them for taking action quickly. BTW, If NUFC would like the services a Korean cultural sensitivity coordinator, I am very available.

Frankly even setting aside all the PSR nonsense, I don't mind the fact that PIF are taking a relatively hands-off approach to the club and don't seem inclined to plow in infinite sums of money. It lets us build organically and form a culture rather than setting up a revolving door of mercenaries, and hopefully the organic growth means the club will be in a better place once they inevitably leave than it would be otherwise. I do wish they could be just a little more hands on in terms of finding us a Director of Football who can stick around for more than a few months, but that's a separate issue...

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.