timeEd32

Ha yeah, it’s over £2m a year so not nothing. There’s also zero reporting on what his sign on bonus might be. It’d be nice to have some good reporting on this, but Edwards would rather make cryptic tweets, Waugh is recycling lists, and Caulkin is working on his SELA Stack piece where he’s going to say it evokes the same feeling as ambling into the Gallowgate bogs with his grandad.

Maybe, if you want to go against just about every report out there.

Multiple reports that he tripled his wages, which seem to be consistently reported as £30-35k at Bournemouth. Capology has him "verified" at £150k/wk. Verification means it's either been reported by multiple media sources or confirmed directly by the club / agent / player. I can't find any media reports of him on £150k. Despite him being a free agent I'd be surprised if we quintupled his wages and put him immediately above Isak/Tonali, but I think we can safely assume he's in the £105-150k range.

Agreed. It almost doesn't matter if people think he's good or not. He clearly cared and I'm not sure you can say that about a lot of their squad.

Much of it feels like a discussion with Chat GPT.

I can live with it if he's our #2 and reasonably decent. If we can shift Dubravka it's kind of whatever. The noises about us wanting another GK would make this truly desperate.

I agree Villa have been more creative, though they have the academy advantage and had to sell a meaningful player. They were (are?) in an even worse position than us though, so I can't get behind holding them on some sort of PSR pedestal.

You said "in the calculations," which I assume was referencing the linked post, which I will reiterate is a estimated guess based on the numbers we do have. I've bowed out of the June / Minteh discussion as there's no end.

You seem to consistently want others to provide all the evidence to the point that I can't tell if you're trolling. But I'd be happy to discuss the significant gaps if you'd be kind enough to point them out instead of waiting for some future `I told you so` moment.

It’s how we’re going to afford a RW. Thank you for your continued donations.

Seems safe to say this is our biggest coup since the takeover in terms of youth signings.

I've been thinking a CB loan would make a lot of sense if we don't think there's a too-good-to-pass-up player available. We obviously need a Schar replacement at some point, but not necessarily this season. If Botman and Lascelles didn't suffer long term injuries then I'm guessing it wouldn't be so high up the priority list. Loan a CB > spend our whole budget on a versatile RW

My interpretation of this, assuming he's not full of shit, is that he has a source somewhere in the transfer pipeline (private jet, hotel, real estate, club driver, etc.). It'd be hilarious if it was Finneran.

Finneran was named the Republic of Ireland’s under-15 player of the year in 2023. He became the youngest-ever debutant for Blackburn Rovers at the age of 15 when Blackburn faced Cambridge in the third round of the FA Cup.

Annual cost (wages + amortised fee)

There's been a number of discussions on here in the past about how the last couple years contained the easiest revenue increases, so this shouldn't be all that surprising. The rules continually changing are obviously not helping us. There's probably another £10-15m of increases coming from price rises, season ticket freezes ending, and a few more sponsorships. After that the next £100m is by far the hardest to gain if we need to play by the rules. It requires greatly increasing match day revenue, consistently successful player development and trading, and regular European football (which means continually overachieving until the revenue catches up).

If you ignore the hyperbolic comments like Eddie doesn't understand PSR or Miggy should be sent to play with the kids then most of what TCD is saying is right. We made the most of a bad situation in the final week of June, but there's no way to end up in that position without some things going wrong along the way. And, honestly, I also thought we were better managed than that, which is why I thought the reports of us needing to sell throughout June were nonsense. I think it's fair to say we clearly overspent last summer (Barnes is more like £12m btw). As for why you could come up with a bunch of reasons: Maybe we thought we'd go further in Europe and at least get into the Europa knockouts? Maybe we thought we'd finish higher in the league with that investment? Maybe we expected more sponsorships or a big value one fell through? Maybe we planned on an inflated deal before the new APT requirements came in? Maybe we thought it'd be easier to sell one or more of Miggy, Lascelles, Targett, Lewis, Fraser, Dubravka, Wilson, or Trippier in January or June? Maybe Ashworth had planned on selling Joelinton and others and when he left we had to scramble for a plan B? Related, maybe once Ashworth left no one was strong enough to counter Eddie's desire to keep all his players? Maybe we just assumed we wouldn't be able to keep Bruno and pre-spent some of that money? Maybe we didn't think the PL rules had any teeth and then Everton/Forest happened? We either planned poorly, bet on ourselves and lost due to injuries + the Tonali suspension, made faulty assumptions, or were thrown into disarray by Ashworth leaving (or some combination of all of those). I can understand defending the outcome (other than the Greek goalkeeper), but it's hard to completely defend the 12 months leading up to it now that we know how it ended.

Because the calendar flips to August and Sky's deadline day ticker starts ticking. Obviously.

You consistently refer to Eddie as a liar in press conferences (which is true on transfers and sometimes injuries), but in PSR related scenarios he's only telling the absolute truth?

Most reports have him at or over £100k/wk. Some sources go as high as £150k, which I don't believe. We'll amortise his bonus, so let's say it was £5m (this is a total guess, but at least one year's wages is a reasonable guess). There's almost no way he's less than £6m. The difference between them is less than a Paul Dummett.

We've also been quite effective at buying and, PSR considerations aside, I think we would have been fine without him in this window. What we need is to sell better and we need a counter to the manager wanting to naturally keep everyone. His most important job this summer is lowering or maintaining our wage bill while recycling some players.

Honestly my comment, which has had an important word left out, was far less about our ability to recruit and more about how good I think Schar is. Schar with pace is a unicorn.

Kelly's wages have been published anywhere from £90k/wk to well north of £100k. There almost certainly would have been a sign-on bonus. I'd guess he costs at least £6-6.5m per year and quite possibly more. Hall is £28m (not counting add-ons, which presumably haven't been triggered). Wages are a mystery (and the internet is definitely wrong), but I'd be surprised if we gave £60k/wk to an 18 year old prospect. I'd guess he's in the £7.5-8m range. It's much closer than saying one was £30m and one was 'free.'

Kelly and Hall likely cost a very similar amount.

I saw someone walking through Philly in a Shearer shirt about a month ago. I yelled "Toon Toon" while driving by at a decent speed. He almost certainly couldn't hear me, probably thought I was insane, and my kids definitely think less of me now.