The Prophet

That's right, but I'd wager the winning party will leak it the press.

Our run of home games coming up isn't the kindest. City, Brighton, Arsenal, West Hal, Liverpool.

Wouldn't be surprised if we're back in January.

We should hear something about City's FVM challenge any day now. Intrigued to see what success they've had.

It merely confirms again that they're acting beyond their remit, as they were in Everton's case. Good for Leicester.

"In its decision, the Appeal Board (which was made of up a panel of three experienced, senior lawyers, two of whom are former Court of Appeal judges) identifies flaws in the drafting of the Premier League’s rules. In challenging the Premier League’s attempts to charge Leicester City, the Club has simply sought to ensure (in the interests of providing consistency and certainty for all clubs) that the rules are applied based on how they are actually written."

He'll still cost a decent wedge next summer, but perhaps not the £65 million we were willing to pay. I'd imagine we'd have competition from Liverpool, Chelsea and possibly Vills though.

I'll take it on board. What about Parish though?

"I don't think the window worked out exactly the same format that we thought it would," Parish said. "Maybe we thought at the beginning it'd be more likely that Marc Guehi went and we kept Joachim Andersen. "We accepted that bid [for Andersen] which then made it very difficult really to sell both of our starting centre-backs in one window. "That's not to say it wasn't still an outside possibility that we got to the right number but then Chadi Riad got injured. That doesn't look quite as bad as it seems but it still left us very light and really made it impossible for us to consider at that point.” "We're proud of the fact that Michael Olise's gone to Bayern Munich. “We want to be selling to the top clubs, or top clubs like Newcastle who've got great aspirations and have recently been in the Champions League. "So we have to manage all of those things. We won't get really great young talent to come to us if they think they're going to be stuck. "We want to be playing in the Champions League. The reality is we don't right now. That's what players want to achieve in their career and we respect that and we respect the fact that sometimes we're going to be a pathway to that."

Seemingly loves sticking their best players in the shop window.

Perhaps they currently feel there's enough headroom to grow into, without challenging the rules?

Fair, so your take is that you'd like to see us challenge and exploit the rules more, say like a Chelsea?

While I agree with some of that. They've bought us just under three years ago and inherited an absolute mess. Man City were bought pre-PSR. They already had the City of Manchester Stsdium built. The plans for the Etihad Campus were released almost exactly three years after their takeover. The City Group wasn't established until nearly four and a half years after they were taken over. While I'd fully expect progress, particularly on the stadium front, in the next year these things take time. Even longer when purchase a post-Mike Ashley shell of a club, playing catch-up while trying to comply with PSR.

Yep, if anything they'll prioritise their domestic market.

Folk need to stop thinking about PIF as your average firm with regular jointed-up decision making. They're a public investment fund, that oversee multiple portfolios and projects. We're a small, albeit well known fish, in a large pool of investments. Very little thought will be going into "if we invest in a, it might have a knock on effect on b". It'll be more or less passive investment across the board.

1-1 anyone?

He might just not be very good. You'd think he'll go out on loan again this season though.

While I agree we generally limited them to speculative shots from outside the area, that miss from Odobert at the back stick was criminal.

Makes me sad you get fewer and fewer of these mavericks in the game now.

Also on the training ground sponsor: