timeEd32

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.

Some clubs may think when the clause expires that he can be had for less and my guess is the media will be more than happy to fuel this. The reality is I don't think there's any chance we'd consider an offer meaningfully below the clause unless Bruno was kicking up a fuss to leave. And I think the only scenario where that happens is if Madrid or Barcelona are genuinely interested.

Tbf, if a player on another team had the lowlight reel you could put together for Trippier's season then we'd all probably assume they were bad also.

I don't have time right now to go through it in detail, but I'm very confident that his revenue estimates are considerably low and his cost estimates are high. Our revenue, including player sales that happened last summer, is going to be at least £330m.

He accounts for those earlier in the analysis, though he estimates our academy investment in the lowest of three tiers (no idea if it's remotely accurate, but it's another lever we have).

Just read through it. It’s disappointing analysis tbh. He thinks we need to make about £44m in sales to balance the books, but I think he’s way off on our revenue gains. He’s missing about £6m the club has already said can be tied to the CL. I think he’s also missing at least a couple million in match day gains. His commercial gains only include Sela and the Amazon doc, but leave out other new partners, the preseason, Australia, and Saudi/England friendlies. He also added £20m in wages and other costs and I’m not sure about that (this does not include amortization increases). There’s no way we’re sitting here needing to sell Bruno or Isak, which is his conclusion.

I’m always a little sad there are no derby dates to find when the fixtures come out.

It always amuses me the attitude some American Arsenal supporters have. Like they are some superior being for rejecting the allure of Man United, Chelsea (then) or City (now) in favor of the sophisticated underdogs.