Tiresias

Yeah I would predict midtable still. 7th would be great. You have to spend to stand still in the league and face it for the majority of teh season we were in the bottom 6. We will climb out of that but expectations of Europe are far fetched. Season after is when that starts to become an expectation. It's very very hard to get into that position. Villa have spent a lot too and for once seem to have spent moderately well. West Ham are fairly entrenched i wouldn't expect them to get worse. Always a chance Man U get their act together (oh wait lol no). If Brighton sign an actual goal scorer they could be up there too. I expect us to do well but there will be injuries, there will be spells of bad form. We won't keep up last seasons form, which was some superhuman feat but also slightly driven by panic and fear of the drop.

I dunno that other new winger, foden, de bruyne grealish mahrez think should be decent but maybe de bruyne injury does have disproportionate impact

Absolutely pathetic how Barca have carried on, complained, asked players to cut wages all because they spent horrendously. They've spunked so much money up the wall and all it amounted to was one season of being thrifty and now they are throwing silly wages around again? Really starting to dislike Barca as much as I used to like watching them. Nothing worse than a clownshow of a club being rewarded for idiocy

Useful for parking the bus

Not sure if we'll get him anyway but bit worried about those stats on him not doing defensive work. Already have that issue with ASM on other side not sure can deal with another on other side would impact any high press.

I think people are overreacting somewhat, see prior comment about amortasization or whatever the word is the cost of the stadium will be spread out significantly. It's not going to be designed to make it impossible to build new stadiums...maybe through incompetance thinking about it...

Oh completely the debt leveraged takeover much worse for the clubs themselves. The sponsorship thing is a different thing, that's more directly about stopping nation state owned clubs having loads of money pumped essentially laundered to look like legitimate sponsorship. The rationale is that makes the league uncompetitive if all the clubs are legitimately earning income to buy players etc and man city just suddenly got 100m from a 'sponsorship deal; at waaay above expected market rate. What's annoying is that man city were doing this and yet there has been no word of any punishment of any kind even though that was threatened. Of course it is pulling up the drawbridge before we got over it but it's a different thing to preventing debt on clubs and again I think a perfectly reasonable rule in a vacuum.

This is not a problem for actual sponsors, it's just a right pain that Man City and the like got away with this shit for so long, Man City got caught with their pants down doing it and seems likely will get no substantial punishment and we don't get the opportunity to take advantage of previously lax rules. I understand what is going on somewhat, I think we definitley need financial fair play in some form to stop runaway inflation in costs and stop clubs being run by lunatics bankrupting them, but it should also be about getting a more level playing field rather than a bit of ladder pulling up. I am moderately relaxed though, this would be a problem if the owners were wanting to buy everyone psg style immediately, but they are very clear they want to build the club patiently and sensibly, which will be slower but will avoid ending up like a circus act a la man u.

We will be fine, it will slow things down no doubt but I imagine there is a lot of low hanging fruit to get added revenue into the club to balance the books, years of neglect under ashley means it's not like our earnings potential had previously been maxed out

Something needs to be done about runaway fees for players and see if any of this does help, but of course it is watered down and engineered to make sure the likes of us can't spend. It's rather telling that in all reforms of clubs to make sure they don't go under from overspending, not one proposal ever has something about requiring clubs to have some responsibility to their fans, such a spot on the board for fan representation at the very least.

It's probably because he is unable to get many chances he overthinks it when it does happen I guess as an explanation.

Never heard any coach or anyone accuse Gayle of being anything but a model professional and heard some footballer talking about him as a lovely bloke. The problem is he can't hold the ball up like Wood and equally like Wood can't hit a barn door. I used to assume it was differences in defenders in premier league to championship cloggers but even through on goal in premier league his shooting boots seem to desert him

We have Richard Dawson!

Honestly, if someone offers reasonable fee would be happy to see him get a chance elsewhere, if we can't shift him he will be handy positive squad presence and some pace off the bench if need be. Either way fine with.

Yeah it's so weird but a player then play in a way guaranteed to to not get goals out of him madness

I suspect they will in a 3 at times especially considering that there are 5 subs next season so plenty of opportunity to sub on extra defender for last 5 minutes

Probably on wages that would break our wage structure i would have thought

I mean kane annoys us all too, he keeps doing this illegal rugby tackle that is really dangerous and refs dont do anything in league, and scissor tackling. Swear every season we lose a game he should be sent off in. Good for england mind!

When you're in champions league, you just won league and you're ac milan you can get plenty of defenders. if you cant somethng is wrong.

There are plenty of defenders to go round, i dunno if you miss out on a player a competant club looks for more, this narrative of victory in transfer is kinda mad. If he had stuck to his guns to join a club that just won serie a and is in champions league would be mad and insular to think that unreasonable lol. Milan shouldnt have a problem finding a player of similar or better quality lol

Good if true. Ambition, we are so used to having none. Players should want to qualify for the champions league, even if we probably won't make it so quickly £70m hardly a bad profit lol

Can we have this gif permanently on the forum banner, feels a good middle finger to the world

I imagine we will have a late go for him or one of the ambitious targets that we are priced out of at the moment if there hasn't been converted interest from elsewhere close to end of window in case we can get substantially cheaper. I understand the club feel clubs are adding 20m or so to price tags right now cos it's us and we're rich...

That's a waste of time Steve Bruce as a kebab is just Steve Bruce