Jackie Broon

We'll be budgeting to be compliant with both the UEFA and EPL rules anyway, so it's probably better if they are just completely aligned.

The town moor is absolutely unique. How many other major cities have an expanse of agricultural land with grazing cattle in the heart of the city? The cost of turning 400 hectares of land into parkland and managing it would be astronomical, and it would be likely to become a massive headache in terms of rough sleeping and crime without the natural visual surveillance the open nature of it allows.

If anyone is interested in finding out what pre-application discussions there might have been with the council about redevelopment on St. James' Park or developing Castle Leazes or the arena site, there has been a recent judgment that pre-application planning advice is not exempt from freedom of information requests.

This isn't being driven by the PL board, it's being driven by the 'big 6' (minus Man City) with the other clubs tagging along. The PL board have accidentally been advising against some of the changes.

There were no deals of significance between 2021/22 and 2022/23 but we still managed to increase comercial income by 66%.

We have more potential to do that than the likes of Villa because our owners have the resources to be able to increase our income in a way rich individuals can't (provided that don't leave an email trail à la Man City). If we keep increasing revenue at the rate we have been we'll be within the top six in terms of revenue by 26/27.

On the pitch, definitely Fenton. Off the pitch, the decision to float the club on the stock market.

Unfortunately, I think tapping up rules only apply to players, managers and senior coaching staff.

"That's not the way the UK works or the law works" I think it very much is if that's what contract he signed requires, Jim.

Weren't they meant to be doing that with Ralf Rangnick, who was considered amongst best sporting directors in the world when they appointed him, then knee-jerked his reputation into the bin.

But most of those 14 are perfectly happy to be also-rans and keep the drawbridge up for any club with more ambition.

Yeah, that doesn't seem likely to be directly relevant to Everton's case, but its all under the same profit and sustainability section of the PL's rules.

I don't think it'll be any surprise if they lose their appeal, the appeal can only consider the case on the basis of the PL's rules. If they lose the appeal it likely not to be the end of it, it's possible / likely they'll then challenge the lawfulness of the PLs FFP rules through the Competition Appeals Tribunal, which is when it'll get interesting! Particularly if they're in the regulation places with the deduction. The case would be be unlikely to be concluded before the start of next season but they could theoretically get an injunction to prevent them from being relegated while the case is ongoing, and leave the whole system of promotion and relegation in limbo.

UEFA's FFP rules still exclude infrastructure spending from the calculation as far as I can tell (Article 89.01(e) of the UEFA Club Licencing and Financial Sustainability Regulations). I think there was some talk of them removing the exclusion of infrastructure spending but I don't think that did, or is going to, happen. Although I might be completely wrong because there's lots of talk of it on here, so I might have missed something.

We're playing the long game, we're just sticking to the rules and letting the rest of the league strangle itself with FFP. Either the FFP chains will be loosened eventually or we'll get to a financial position where it doesn't really restrict us much. The number of clubs that are turning against FFP is gradually increasing and we're the only club in the league other than Man City with the ability to really inflate our income to get around FFP (provided that we don't get sloppy with email trails and hacked), that is clearly happening (e.g. the Sela-Adidas partnership).

I'm not sure it works like that for ffp purposes, I think the fee is amortised over 5 years whatever the structure of the actual deal. It might matter in terms of cash flow for clubs where that is an issue but most clubs are now limited by ffp rather than actual cash flow.

Specifically, Premier League rules E.55-69.

Net spend will still be relevant in the long run, selling players to buy should only really result in a short term boost. It's useful for us because our revenue should continue to increase dramatically, and it pushes most of the cost further into the future when we will have a lot more revenue. Not so useful for the likes of Chelsea, who won't have that type of revenue growth. Where Chelsea do very well though is in profit from selling players that have come through the academy, and that is probably one of the best ways to legitimately boost profit for FFP, but would take us a long time to build that type of academy set-up.

I think that table is a bit misleading being labelled 'profit', that table is just income from player sales, not taking into account expenditure. Chelsea had a £238m loss on income minus expenditure.

Income from related parties is counted, it's just restricted to whatever the PL determine to be fair market value. To be truly 'fair' that market value should be the largest equivalent non-related party sponsorship deal in the league. If they were just to make that change in interpretation (both the PL and UEFA) I think FFP would be okay. As it is it's just being used as a tool to restrict competition and protect the established order.

Which is fine if we keep our shape in a fluid way, with one or both of the more of the forward two dropping back into the hole that Bruno leaves when he pushes forward. But that's just not happening consistently and it's consistently being exploited by other teams.

But that's in addition to rather then instead of the rule restricting losses over 3 seasons.

Bruno is brilliant, I love him, but he needs to either be more defensively disciplined or for Longstaff or Miley to play in his position in a more disciplined way. There is constantly a big hole between our midfield and defence, where Bruno should be, and it makes us so easy to play through. It's been the same all season.

Probably not, but we clearly aren't going to go down that route, yet.

The rules are already in place to stop that, we can't just get a huge sponsorship because the PL will be able to say it's not market value. We have to (be seen at least) to be gradually and naturally increasing the club's market value.