Abacus

8 minutes ago, Froggy said:

 

[Words... ]

 

I'd swap you Ritchie for Rashford right now. 

 Deal, Sir Ratcliffe 

12 minutes ago, Stifler said:

I think VAR is now just a method to create drama, the same with all this stoppage time. It’s a way to manufacture drama, not coming to the right decision, or playing an appropriate amount of time.

We should get Chris Tarrant on VAR to stroke his chin and take his time deciding if it's a goal or not.

Thought that was a soft VAR decision, not the clear and obvious it was supposed to be.

That said, I'd have taken it the other way round 

Yes, it's looking more like it's being reported differently and maybe the original article was what some clubs were expecting/ hoping rather than what's been agreed. We'll see, including how this is linked to the anchoring proposals - i.e. a fixed limit on salaries compared to the bottom clubs, which has problems of it's own.

A clearer explanation of the rules and exact penalties, maybe a lifting of the £105m loss limit wouldn't be the end of the world IF there's a loosening of the related parties rules.

The main problem I can see is that a fixed set of points penalties could equally lead to gaming of the system. Happy to take a 4 point penalty to allow an overspend? Then how many clubs would take that option deliberately, and how much of the league table would be dotted with an asterisk?

1 minute ago, gbandit said:

Absurd game 

I take it back, Froggy watch back on.

What a game, though 

1 hour ago, gbandit said:

Hope someone’s going to do a welfare check on our Froggy before the end of the match 

Think he'll be fine

1 minute ago, Kid Icarus said:

It is if there's FFP reform. It is even if we boost our commercial revenue, both of which aren't dependent upon moving from SJP. 

Those are my thoughts, there's so much more to be done with international branding and marketing etc that we've neglected. But you still need a USP, which is a unique stadium which still has an atmosphere in a pretty unique city, rather than creating a corporate megadome a mile or two away, which could in the long run become a white elephant unless you move all the hedge funds, banking and international travel from London here too.

Can see it now; a remake of cash converters and a full takeover of the airport. And we'll claim to have invented Shakespeare too.

3 minutes ago, TheBrownBottle said:

In part - but also from other commercial uses of the stadium.  Events, club shops, restaurants, corporate etc

I thought match day revenue included the price of tickets, pints, corporate boxes etc. Could be wrong, though.

Commercial income would include sponsorships (which you could still do with a suitably rebuilt stadium), concerts (likewise), hotels and all the 50ps earnt from go-karting.

A different stadium in the same city doesn't mean you have access to the same concerts, the same hotel traffic, the same business events as you do in London. I think it's a false argument to say you could match the income from the Spurs stadium here, but maybe that's for another thread 

Meanwhile, Ashworth considers whether turnips or carrots should be his main winter crop.

3 minutes ago, Turnbull2000 said:

That's some gap. We're never closing that under the current rules.

 

 

 

 

Just goes to show how little matchday income is the main factor - it's all on broadcast and (mainly) commercial income

13 minutes ago, Sima said:

Is this being reported anywhere else outside of the Mail?

Haven't seen it myself (yet), just people re-reporting the Mail

Some lovely grizzling on RTG about football is now ruined forever and will become a closed shop.

Conveniently forgetting that it already is, and besides that they were bankrolled by Short well above their means for years as well.

Now it's state ownership that's the problem, rather than who has the biggest most spendthrift billionaire (foreign or otherwise) as if that makes any difference at all to the argument.

Ah well, it's all very sad.

In fairness though, no matter who you support, I can't see a good outcome from any set of either restrictive or unrestrictive rules. If anything, there should have always been more rules about owners who actively try to rinse a club instead, as if it was OK to exploit a club instead of putting your money in.

5 minutes ago, timeEd32 said:

It makes sense - they don't want to go back to a club / nation being able to completely take the piss. And it wouldn't make sense with UEFA's rules anyway. But new rules with defined penalties and the ability to go even 10% above whatever limit would be a vast improvement.

 

No matter what comes in increasing revenue is still going to be paramount.

If the related parties rule goes re sponsorships as well though, the revenue part of it could be less of an issue.

I'd imagine various other forums from clubs wanting to cherry pick our players will be taking this proposal well.

So, for a balanced and unbiased opinion, I'm off to skim RTG.

3 minutes ago, Kid Icarus said:

 

Depends on what you want I reckon. If you want us to 'go Man City 2008' and this goes ahead then it's worth getting excited, if you don't want that to happen for whatever reason then it's bad news if it goes ahead. 

I want us to be able to keep the talent we took a risk on and brought here, and to strengthen the places we've needed to and then compete with the might of clubs with the income of Man U, or the attractiveness of London, and to stop the talent farming/ having to sell home grown players that the rules have caused to happen.

Liverpool and Leicester to a lesser extent have both shown that it doesn't make the league a foregone conclusion with the right combinations of scouting and management.

Longer term, yes it's not the right answer either. But then the ambitions of the Man City (and our) owners can change, as can everything. For instance, IF there was such dominance, I don't think global interest in the league would carry on growing as it has, and that itself could be a factor in what some owners want from it.

In the meantime, I'd await the crying of certain owners who you could argue have treated the league as a cash point to be monetised and protected with a certain amount of glee as well.

Let's not count our chickens but, I think if true the rules were snookered anyway in two ways.

First, everyone can see the ridiculous consequences of PSR on certain clubs, that it's going to mean years of appeals and legal challenges and which they must also suspect they might lose.

Secondly, there's us. If forced to sell some of our better players this year, we'd only use the money to reinvest and keep coming back stronger. If six clubs were really trying to hold us back, perhaps the penny has dropped with enough of them that it's only a matter of time and they're going to have to accept financial reality and deal with it, so might as well bite the bullet now.

26 minutes ago, leffe186 said:

Yeah, the ESL stuff is horrible, and without question would have been the final straw for me personally. The club doesn’t have a lot of moral high ground to cling to, which makes it bloody hard to do the bit of our job which is advocating for the club 

 

As an individual fan though, I’m not entirely morally bankrupt. I hated what happened with Abramovich and Man City, and I would hate it to continue happening. If people were cool with it then of course there’d be no problem with Newcastle doing the same. I know there are some Spurs fans who feel the same, and I’d be annoyed with them too. 
 

You don’t need to give a shit what I think, why would you?  I’m just old and tired. The last 35 years of being a fan have worn me out.

I think part of the trouble is that, in most cases, we wouldn't really be happy with doing a Man City or a Chelsea either. Well, maybe just for a bit 

There's an always going to be an element of "well, other clubs were allowed to do it, so where's our moment in the sun?" for us. Whilst, in the back of our minds also thinking that two wrongs don't make a right etc and getting into a pointless tit-for-tat with other historic wrongs about fairness in the sport.

For me, in this thread, the argument has always been more about how you stop other more devious forms of controlling the league, in which FFP, coefficients, etc are causing intended or unintended impacts on clubs and more importantly their fans.

It's a right old mess and can, at times, make you forget the actual football and concentrate on (temporary) owners and incompetence in the rules instead, which is a fun old way to live when it's supposed to be an escape. But I'm sounding like a broken record as most of us vaguely think the same and it's probably been expressed better by others, so I'm going into the chat thread to read about people's awful pints of Guinness instead.

19 minutes ago, leffe186 said:

We did nothing of investing in our academy, buying and selling players, and saving up to build a new stadium?

 

I get that it’s frustrating Stifler, Lord knows I do. I get that we have advantages being in London. I get that you’ve been owned by an utter cunt for years - let me rephrase that because we have too, an incompetent utter cunt. I know this isn’t going to be a sympathetic audience, at least not for the most part. But you’re not listening. And some of what you’re saying is just bullshit. 

@midds is right, this isn’t really the place, and I should just shut up and keep my head down. Just sometimes the frustration I’ve felt since Abramovich needs venting . 

Nah, of course there'll be people listening when you make valid points. Think we're all a bit narked with a draw today as well like you must be too.

I have no problem at all with Spurs building the way they have, or reaping the benefits of that. Ideally, it's how everyone would do it IF everyone was starting from a level playing field, which they aren't.

I have no idea either how you cope with an owner that plays by the rules but hinders you in the long run which applies to a lot of clubs.

But then, I can never personally forget that in a different example of bad ownership that Spurs were quite happy to join the ESL, wreck the entire league permanently and entrench a non-competitive advantage for themselves when they thought they could, showing the reality of it, and at that point the moral high ground argument about doing things the right way is sunk. You sub-human scum .

Out of all of it, and there's a lot that does, it's the coefficients that bother me most. Get into the champions league against the odds and try to break into the big time?

Well hard cheese, you'll get put into the toughest group and get less money as well for no sporting merit reasons but just BECAUSE.

I'm thinking our medical team should stop checking reflexes by hitting players' knees with hammers.

But, bad luck Jamaal, you surprised me with how good you were when needed this season.

1 minute ago, Froggy said:

 

We've faced criticism for years, and rightly so, about looking for expensive quick fixes. 

 

Now we're going after the best in class and willing to be patient to secure them, including not paying over the odds to release them from gardening leave. 

 

I'd say it's far from idiotic. it's a long term plan, which is something we haven't had in 10+ years. 

Which is fair enough re the long term plan and I completely get why you'd want someone to be actually prioritising football things for a change, what I'm questioning is why he is seemingly doing it so publicly given how limited sympathy Man U will get, allowing clubs to hold them over a barrel.

Ratcliffe comes across as a bit of an idiot in all of this. There are going to be some tremendous gardens around the country.

11 minutes ago, Froggy said:

Wish you would sack Howe. We could turf Ten Hag and get the gang back together in Manchester. 

 

A master at his craft. 

In real life, I'd bet there's not more than 1 in a hundred people here that would want rid of Howe, and each of that minority need a crane kick to come their senses.

Criticism is fine, of course - it's a discussion board after all, and the best managers always have coaches that will challenge them. Not that we're coaches, just a bunch of well-meaning idiots myself included, which should probably be the subtitle of this forum.

3 hours ago, gjohnson said:

Never seen anything with as bad luck as this? How about getting  taken over by the tightest billionaire in the world, suffering two relegations due to basic incompetence? We've had far worse seasons, and luck has been a factor this season, but shouldn't gloss over some of the obvious mistakes that have been made on and off the pitch. 

 

Given our so called style, injuries should be realistically expected so will freely admit we were unlucky with Barnes. Tonalis issues should have been picked up so I don't see that as bad luck...either an oversight or incompetence in due diligence. Bringing in no cover for Isak or Wilson and letting Wood go knowing their records is bordering on stupidity

Well, we're going to have to disagree then, in a scholarly manner. 

I was mainly just sticking to things on the pitch and ignoring the PSG robbery, but then you have the ridiculous cup draws, the Tonali situation and the freak injuries trying to cope with a squad built by Ashley after years of neglect.

If you're talking off the pitch, then the years we couldn't or wouldn't compete is comfortably trumped by realising that the cards are stacked in such a way to stop us, or anyone else from doing so. Maybe saying that's bad luck is describing it wrongly, but we certainly did it at the wrong time.

Thing is, we were finally playing like we all wanted and were ready to give it a go (well ahead of time) from where we should have been. Shit luck, as I say.

Edit; it's still been a hell of a ride and nowhere near as dispiriting as some of the Ashley years, so I'll definitely give you that.

34 minutes ago, gjohnson said:

Bad luck used in for a decade in a season?....Clearly haven't been around NUFC for long. We are the MASTERS of "bad luck". A chance for glory comes our way and thers always a monumental f**k up that comes our way. 

Sadly, or happily, I've been around NUFC for a long time. I've not seen any combination of shit luck like this before.

And I say this having still enjoyed an amazing European adventure, two decent cup runs and still  the chance of a crack at some sort of European football next season.

This season is one of what ifs, and as they say, it's the hope that kills you.