Jackie Broon

Maybe, but if that's that case it's very unlikely that they"ve been briefed on our true budget.

Seems more unlikely that our owners are going around telling journalists what our budget is.

Given the £40m figure I suspect that they might have taken it from the Swiss Ramble post. There's no way our owners are going to be telling anyone what our remaining budget is.

If you're referring to the Swiss Ramble FFP thing you've misunderstood it. That £40m is not what we have to spend, it is the amount of additional loss we could afford within FFP by 23/24 if we have no increase in revenue. That £40m equates to a FFP accounting spend of £100m.

My sister's partner, who's from Lisbon and a Benfica fan, had a similar view on Nunez, he said he didn't really rate him much when we were linked with him in December.

Clubs can't have any discussions with a player, including via their agent, without the agreement of the player's club. I know it seems that happens anyway most of the time, maybe sometimes with the agreement of the clubs maybe sometimes without. But it's not a mess, it's the way it's meant to happen within the rules.

A lot of people were disappointed when we missed out on Jeffers and Zenden and settled for Bellamy and Robert instead.

And that will happen over the next couple of seasons, we have huge scope to increase revenue because our previous owner supressed it so much. Our revenue will increase dramatically.

It's not assumed, it's under their control. The sleeve sponsorship alone would raise that projected FFP transfer budget to 23/24 to £140m. Most business operates on the basis of projections rather than the right now. It's all guesswork but saying that we're operating on the basis that our revenue will potentially stay the same as it was under Ashley sounds pretty unlikely to me.

Yes we can, and we will, we've already got Saudi Amazon on the sleeve for a reported £7m per season.

We have the ability to spend around £300m more on transfer fees without FFP being an issue this season. That drops to £100m if projecting to 23/24 with the assumption of no revenue growth from when Ashley was owner. The reality is our revenue will have increased since then and will dramatically increase over the next two seasons. I think we are not meeting valuations because, rightly or wrongly, our owners will not pay what they feel does not represent good value (Wood aside) and I think we're trying to change the view in the football world that we have unlimited money to spend.

The club has done a great job of convincing everyone that we've only got a tight budget left, severely limited by FFP. Watch us suddenly announce Paqueta, Diaby and Isak at the same time.

For FFP the costs are spread by amortisation anyway. A £60m transfer fee is a £12m per season amortisation cost, including wages as say £150k per week it's an annual FFP accounting cost of roughly £20m.

Commercial deals of the size that could alter our budget, and that would probably be related party deals, will need PL sign-off so it's not just a case of our CEO signing-off on them. Our budget this season isn't really that limited in terms of FFP, according to that Swiss Ramble twitter thread, including the cost of the transfers we've already made we could afford to spend another £300m on transfers without being in danger of failing FFP this season. The issue would come in two years if we don't increase our revenue. If our revenue doesn't increase over the next two years by his calculations we could spend only another £100m in transfers over that time before FFP becomes an issue. That increase in revenue isn't an issue for right now, provided that it does increase over the next two years, which it clearly will. Although we clearly don't have an unlimited budget we do still have plenty of ability to spend without FFP being an issue, I think a lot of the talk of FFP being an issue is still the club trying to improve it's bargaining position which other clubs who think we have an unlimited budget.

Possibly the type of match where he could actually be useful, would allow us to bypass midfield.

Can we have some happy medium between the selfish running into dead-ends ASM and this pass it to no one ASM please?

We've been so sloppy, very lucky to be 0-0.

That Trippier, Schar, Botman, Burn back four is like the physical embodiment of St James' Park.

The PL FFP allowance of £105m losses over three years is reduced by £22m for each season outside of the PL. According to Swiss Ramble they've run at an EFL FFP loss of £13m per season for last two seasons, that means they can afford a loss of up to £35m this season without breaching FFP. That doesn't mean they've only got £35m to spend on transfers, because transfers are amortised over the length of the contract so spending £15m on a player on a five year contract would be just £3m per year for FFP, although there is the cost of wages too. They'll probably have big buffer of profit because of the massive injection of money they get just from being in the PL, plus starting out with their players on championship wages. So they're probably nowhere near FFP being an issue. Their problem will come if the gamble doesn't pay off and they end up back in the Championship.

They already are, they took out a bank loan of £500m and set up a £300m credit facility last month.

Yeah, even with the farcical £170m cost of covid deduction the PL seem to have allowed them they're probably way over FFP limits and continuing to spend, seemingly without any consequences.

It's difficult from the outside to know how able he was at his job. But, from the outside, it seemed that he rose from an admin monkey due to everyone above him leaving and being an unquestioning yes man. Ok, he has experience of running a PL club, but they seem to be after advice about the commercial side of that, which it seems he'd have very little really experience of from running Spots Direct United.

The French report suggests that €39m is the upfront fee they want, plus addons, which potentially could make the fee they're looking for a lot higher.

Yes, but the £41m is just what he calculates the remaining amount from the £105m we're allowed to lose under FFP to be if our revenue stays the same as it was under Ashley. Which won't happen.

The potential spend he referred to of £41m isn't the same as buying a player for 41m because a player's fee is amortised over the length of their contract. Also, he was talking about for the accounting period ending the end of next season and assuming that our revenue stays the same, which will increase this season and dramatically increase next season when we can get a new main sponsor.