leffe186

It’s just another aspect of the system that massively favours the big clubs. There is an argument that it might have contributed to the breadth and depth of talent we have as a country by giving more youngsters the opportunity to have a higher level of competition and coaching, but I feel uncomfortable about having such a huge amount of youngsters on loan throughout the pyramid. I guess I’d rather have it than the Spanish or German system where (presuming they still do this, I’m not as engaged as I was) big clubs have reserve teams in the lower division. There’s always going to be a trade-off. I guess the first red line I want to be drawn is to outlaw proper feeder clubs like in the BlueCo system.

Yeah it’s always been the case, like, for decades. Notts Forest is just easier to say, and nobody outside Nottingham gave the slightest shit. Of course when we all realized Forest fans did we were happy to not comply. I don’t know the history but Spurscommunity has been autocorrecting “Notts” to “Nottingham” for a while. Really annoying, because we’ve been loaning kids to Notts County for a couple of years now.

Tbf he appears to be a caricature of a movie baddie.

Feels like this will have been a factor in Iraola’s decision.

Oh I agree, it’s open to question. But you’re using the wrong Kane timeline for your argument. You need to ask what would have happened if he’d stayed at Spurs without being loaned out and getting the experience at Orient etc. Maybe he’d have got a few games coming on as sub, maybe we’d have sold him to somebody else. The elephant in the room is whether the loan system should exist at all, and honestly I’d rather it didn’t.

You just know Maguire’s guffs are agricultural.

Different horses for different courses. You could argue that it was critical in the development of the best English player of the last decade and more. Saliba isn’t what he is now without being allowed to continue his development on loan. It’s an inexact science, but you’d struggle to argue that it never works.

Aren’t Chelsea on some kind of restriction vis-a-vis sales?

It’s one of the reasons Arteta does what he does. At this level it doesn’t matter who you are, it’s hard to break down a well- parked bus. We’re probably about to see a World Cup full of it. One option is to maximise set-pieces and gamesmanship.

Basically a mad scramble for that 8th place presuming Brentford lose today.

Got it, cheers.

Obviously I’ve had other things on my mind, but are we thinking it will be nine in Europe? Top four CL, Villa CL via Europa, 6th CL via money, 7th and 8th Europa, 9th Conference?

One of my all time favourites. I used to be a quiet fan of USSR/CCCP football - bit difficult now with a wife with Ukrainian family

At Stamford Bridge? I wouldn’t be putting any money on it.

Semi final If the cup changes have done nothing else they’ve made the end-of-season run in more interesting. Every single Premier League team will feel like if they can squeak into Europe they have a fantastic chance of a trophy. Adding more English sides to the CL has downgraded that slightly too I think. Not in quality, just in excitement and novelty.

While it does feel silly that we’ll probably see English clubs win both minor European trophies again, I’d forgotten how samey the Europa/UEFA has always been. Since the UEFA became the Europa, there have been 16 Europa Cups. Spanish clubs have won 9 and English clubs 4. Sevilla themselves have won 7 of the last 20. Back in the late 80s-90s Italy won 8 of 11. Twas ever thus.

Burn it all down, then build it again, then burn it all down again.

That’s not real, surely?

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in 50 years of watching football it’s that the word “deserve” is meaningless

I absolutely think you have a chance of Europe and should try really really hard for the next two weeks.

This is the flip side. Just hope we’re there too.

Also it makes it (relatively) interesting to look at the percentage of revenue versus the sum of wages & squad cost to look at sustainability on the football side: Chelsea 491 - 359 - 1510 = -1378 Newcastle 335 - 243 - 581 = -489 Man City 694 (lol) - 408 - 1330 = -1044 Man U 667 - 313 - 1102 = -748 Spurs 565 - 256 - 697 = -388 West Ham 228 - 176 - 481 = -429 Aston Villa 378 - 273 - 540 = -435 Chelsea man. Fucking hell. I really hope Boehly doesn't know what he's doing.

Much appreciated. Yeah that makes it a useful measure - it shows the actual hit to the books. Like, presumably as Bentancur cost £15M or so in Jan 2022 his squad cost is about £4M, whereas Gallagher’s squad cost this year will be the full £35M or whatever we spent on him. Chelsea’s figure for that is completely insane. West Ham’s is dangerously high too.

There was discussion about this on one of the Spurs podcasts. We know that wage spend is a better indicator of success than transfer spend - they pointed out that we’ve been low wage forever but recently started spending more on transfers. They expressed surprise that Man U seem to be heading the same way - reducing wage spend while still spending a lot in transfer fees.

I also wonder about the wages we pay for staff to just run the stadium, which you would imagine is a huge amount. I suspect we don’t have to worry about that highest-paid director any more What’s the significance of the “squad cost” figure? Is that just a sum of transfer fees, or does it factor in wages/amortization?