Jackie Broon

That's a redevelopment of the existing student accommodation, it doesn't involve the moorland.

Just spider senses and Occam's razor, it's the most obvious answer and I don't the planning issues are insurmountable if the Council are on-side.

For what it's worth I have a hunch that they have decided on Castle Leazes, but the announcement of that will have to be very sensitively done and there will be a lot of behind the scenes work before they'll be ready for that.

To be fair, Peter Silverstone said a decision on the stadium was imminent, not an announcement. There may be quite a bit of negotiation and design work to do after a decision before they are ready for an announcement.

That shouldn't really make a difference because it's not a criminal case, so it is balance of probabilities rather than beyond reasonable doubt.

'Fortuity is our identity' our new slogan?

In my experience, even in cases where they are confident in the case barristers are generally very cautious in terms of likelihood of winning. Even when they are very confident in the case they'll estimate the odds of winning at not more than 60/40. Even if we've had advice that we would have a strong case, the odds would probably be something like 50/50, and that's a big risk to take.

You said a month or two ago that the club hadn't been in touch with the Freemen about Castle Leazes, has something changed on that front... or no comment?

Yeah, he's never going to say that explicitly but he has implicitly a few times.

Yeah, we're not hamstrung at all when it comes to infrastructure and youth level stuff and the progress on long terms stuff for that seems glacially slow.

I think it's probably a case of no smoke without fire, it does seem likely that there are some issues behind the scenes.

There was a waiting list in the 90s before the expantion to 52k.

And the best way for us to maximise matchday revenue is a big capacity and affordable ticket prices.

The trees don't have a Tree Preservation Order, although Councils don't usually TPO trees on land they manage, but they are protedcted by the Conservation Area designation. Even TPO'd trees are often allowed to be felled to make way for developments if they are replaced by new trees. Whether that would be allowed in this case would be a matter of judgment.

The issue isn't the sale of the hotels really, it's the management contract which means that Chelsea still get the revenue from them. That's clearly not fair market value, who would ever buy a hotel and then sign a contract with the previous owner that they still get all of the revenue?

Must have a sloping pitch too.

The solution is simple, FMV should be based on the largest current equivalent non-associated party deal. That would prevent owners from injecting ridiculous amounts of money and allow competition with the established top clubs.

It's actually not great news for us. What we need is a club to get really hit by a PSR charge, to get a deduction which relegates them, to be put in a position where they will have to challenge the legality of PSR itself. That could have been Leicester but they have got off on a very specific technicality.

Not specifically, my reading of the decision is about Leicester being a EFL club at the time of the charges and for part of the FFP accounting period and poor drafting of the rules, meaning that it's not clear how that should be handled and so it has been determined that they weren't in breach. It only really seems to be applicable to relegated clubs dependent on where their accounting period falls.

IIRC the only investment the Halls ever put in was for the signing of Brian Kilcline when Keegan walked out over it, and that was out of Mae Hall's pocket.

Great mental strength to keep his head up after a poor first three touches and the crowd getting on his back. He might be frustrating at times but he makes things happen.

Why do you say that? From what I remember his input turned out to be correct in terms of Everton bluffing about what they wanted for Gordon and having to be conscious of FFP.

Al-Rumayyan being there today is reassuring to me, it indicates that they are still interested in us as a project and understand the need to show that now.

Do you actually know any of that? You're writing in definite terms as if you do but if you watch the documentary they seem to be far more involved than that.

There has been lots of talk in the past that PIF have final sign off on every financial decision and that slows down transfers, and in the documentary PIF were involved in meetings that were shown.