timeEd32

Oh, that wasn't my angle. More just how supportive Staveley seems to have been. Though I just saw there was a huge signing today so maybe nothing to worry about there either.

I can understand being apprehensive about it, but it was an entirely predictable and expected outcome. It may be slightly accelerated due to investment plans or due to her own financial obligations. It actually has a higher chance of leading to positive things than negative, except for potentially the women's team. That's the one area where I could understand some real question marks in terms of commitment and ambition.

I'm sure they got around it with some accounting wizardry. But hopefully there's some truth in this because there'd be no quicker path to the rules being blown up.

PL only... Kepa - £72m Mustafi - £35m Mangala - £42m Cucurella - £62m Lo Celso - £30ishm Drinkwater - £32m Markovic - £20m Bakayoko - £40m Pepe - £72m Antony - £86m Lukaku (the last time) - £97m You need to inflation adjust some of these, but that feels suitably terrible. Also, "Chelsea" was a very appropriate answer.

Yeah, part of that FSG timeline was securing funding and a lot of Liverpool City Council negotiations related to development outside the ground. But our financial situation isn't as simple as PIF writing a £600m check either.

FSG bought Liverpool in October of 2010. Henry announced in early 2011 they wanted to stay at Anfield. It wasn't until April of 2014 that plans were released for the redevelopment of the Main Stand. Work began at the end of 2014. That's despite 1) an entire design and agreement for a new stadium being readily available (i.e. there was a known alternative); 2) FSG already having done this exact thing with Fenway Park in Boston; 3) Liverpool buying up land around the stadium beginning in 2000, a decade before FSG even showed up. Mike Ashley sat on his hands for 14 years. Actually, that's not true - he sold land around the stadium, actively making this more difficult. I don't even know what's real or fake angst in this thread anymore, but people really need some patience.

I was open to Gordon being used on the RW a year ago and kind of thought that might be the idea when we added Barnes. Obviously Barnes missed most of the season, so the sample is small but I feel like we would have seen more of Gordon on the right in the run-in if it was going to be a core part of our plan. I do think Eddie likes the idea of an interchangeable front three and we did see Gordon moving around at times in-game, but I don't think Barnes is equally as capable of that so you're pretty firmly planting Gordon at RW by playing Barnes at LW. The Barnes signing was opportunistic, but I think after the extent of our PSR issues last month it's fair to call it a mistake (financially and as a use of resources; not a comment on the player, who I like).

I don't think the solution to an inefficient use of resources at LW is to play one of our best players out of his best position.

It used to be my favorite thing. I lost interest somewhere in the Ashley years where it was all very pointless. Now we're in good hands and there was a lot of "mega rich Saudi" nonsense, so I find it more enjoyable to tune out most of the noise.

Those aren’t the same. Pedro was actually coming until a last minute change of plan.

I'm ok with it being quiet. Just waiting for an Isak-like bomb out of nowhere. (Though part of me is skeptical of how much we're going to spend this summer)

It’s possible we only needed a portion of Anderson’s fee on top of Minteh. If we needed all or most of it I’m honestly scared what our cost base has risen to.

I picked some week to be traveling. The 2023/24 accounts are going to make for very interesting reading in ~7 months time. I was very wrong about how close we pushed it and slightly horrified at the size of the gap we needed to make up. We should be in solid shape by the current PSR rules for 2024/25, but I'm a bit worried things will be much tighter by the UEFA / likely incoming PSR cost control metric.

We were 10th in mid January and in awful form. We can’t have been banking anything on merit payments. The three places we ended up gaining is worth about £9m. Similar to what I said yesterday — if we didn’t know we were failing PSR in January then we are actually run by morons. I just really don’t think we are. The only plausible scenario I can think of where we’re actually in a bit of a mess is if we had planned to sell one of Miggy / Wilson / Trippier (or Anderson) to balance the books and the market completely dried up.

There could be many reasons from genuine inbound interest to us actively shopping him or made up/agent driven nonsense. If we need £20-30m in the next few days it would be a failure by the exec team.

If we’ve left it this late then it’s gross mismanagement unless our intent is to start challenging the rules (which we’ve shown no interest in doing directly). Given that we’ve displayed no sign of being mismanaged thus far then I can only assume we have no problem. It’s not hard to fathom that our revenue is higher than most are projecting. You can comfortably estimate around £330m. Not insane to think it’s actually £340-350.

UEFA’s version recognizes that player sales are unpredictable / lumpy, so it calls for an average over a three year period. I assume a PL version would be done in the same way.

Just enjoy the desperation from others. He’s not going anywhere.

They are so far ahead of everyone it's unreal. Man City is really the only exception and they have Pep's future + charges looming.

I was pleasantly surprised at how many partners we have now. Kind of snuck up on me. I’d love to know what those deals are worth though.

Leicester being home on the first day feels like a trap for someone. Promoted, possible points deduction, us against the world atmosphere. Hopefully not us.

Awesome

Had this exchange with Swiss Ramble... Me: Kieran:

True, missed that part. I think he's at least £15m off on the revenue side. I think we'll be north of £315m not counting sales. Very likely we're going to increase our allowed deductions also. I could accept we might need to bring in £15m or so and my assumption would be we already have something lined up for Miggy (or other) if that is indeed necessary. Definitely not £40m+.

The odds are decreasing by the day that this Luiz transfer doesn't end with an investigation in 12-24 months.