Craig

This is all about constantly increasing the games in European competitions and the money that comes with that, ignoring the English football pyramid completely. We should be saying no to UEFA expanding their competitions not removing the revenue and lifelines for clubs further down the pyramid. It will be the fans that will lose out in the end when the gap between the top few clubs and the rest is too big and 90% of the fixtures become meaningless. This is all just another route to the Super League by diluting everything else until there is no competition left and the gap between the "Big" clubs that are in Europe and everyone else is to large that we pretty much have two tiers of competition. We have the perfect mix of American owners wanting a closed shop and ever-increasing premium offerings via games only against the other "Big" clubs and clubs like the Spanish giants having already rinsed their own league wanting to now rinse the rest of Europe by taking a bigger and bigger share of the pot.

I like it, a Director of Football of the North

Big club or not sport is about trying to compete, if Ashworth is someone who rather than build and compete wants to skip this part and move to a supposed "bigger club" then let him. If Man United come in for Howe do we expect him to leave because Man United are a "Bigger club", where is the competition, where is the drive to be the best, is it really sport if people are expected to just move to the supposed bigger club as that is determined as success? I would expect Howe to believe he can compete with all other clubs and that he can beat them. If Ashworth had been here for 10 years and tried to compete and then moved so be it I can understand that. I don't really care about the size of a club, I care about trying to compete, trying to win and enjoying that. That is what sport is, no club (in the premier league at least) is so big it should/will always be at the top, our time will come and if I was involved in football I would want to be involved in making that happen. From Mike Ashley/relegation battle to the top and winning something with a one city club that hasn't won anything for an age, that is sport, that is excitement. Maybe Ashworth sees Man United trying to compete with their local rivals as just as big if not bigger challenge than taking NUFC to the top, which he may be right about as he certainly won't be given the time and support for long to do it.

My worry is him settling in the area if he does get a long ban. Not sure how it'll go for him here if he spends the majority of the next 12 months in Italy.