WilliamPS

People chuck around terms like legal or illegal - there are no laws being broken here? Or am I wrong? I don’t see how it’s against any trading standards. Clubs can sign sponsorship deals about FMV, but the amounts above don’t count in the FFP calculations The PL is a club that sets its own rules. If you a club wants to do something against FFP it can, it just can’t stay as a PL club member. The various clubs challenges are all whether the PL is applying the rules of the PL all agreed fairly. But that’s of no interest to competition regulators or any other parties.

I don’t have sympathy for Everton and Forrest as if they have broken the rules then it’s simply not fair on all who obeyed them - especially as both clubs were in relegation battles. If they stayed up ahead of Southampton and Leicester as those clubs obeyed the rules and they didn’t then there has to be a punishment I would not expect any change to FFP to help Newcastle, it will be designed to keep the brakes on. Aligning with UEFA will at least help the club navigate FFP

Had a sensible regime sold Carroll for that money I’m sure the fans would have been ok with it. The kicker with Ashley was the squad was never going to see the reinvestment. Carroll never had a great touch and certainly never looked after himself - the stuff with Kevin Nolan was comedy at the time - but am fairly sure his career would have had a similar trajectory if he had stayed. Not really progressing, then injuries taking their toll. He certainly was never going to become Harry Kane

agree With those saying that with pretty much any 2 of the 7 missing forward players I think they get something. Question is whether people think the team can realistically switch to a different less energy sapping style of play mid way through the season. up until now there’s been a game every 3 days, not a lot of time to change coaching, and can the players brought in even do it? on the other hand if the current approach keeps losing matches how long can you stick with it? Im in the stick rather than twist camp, but its tricky. They can’t change a style of play at halftime against Man City though, remember when spurs tried a new style of play at St James and were something like 4 down in 20 mins

It doesn’t take much to get some peoples knickers in a twist. The club look at hundreds of players and they will also know the squad needs some filling out, unless you want to see Ritchie etc in the bench again next season, so there could well be additions at good prices that aren’t straight into the first 11.

Underrated chant as well. When the whole stadium or the away end was just chanting Papiss Demba Cisse over and over - greet scenes

Some academy players are only in the academy to make up the numbers and the club will have no expectation they ever play at PL level - including most of the new boys. Bringing them in was about raising the overall standard as the few players who will make it need to be in a good enough team and training squad to progress. A lot of the new academy signings will be league 1 or 2 level players. And that’s fine, that’s the deal - they make up the numbers in the academy and in return get top level coaching so they can have a career as a professional footballer - just don’t expect a load of 18 or 19 year olds bought for the academy to all be first teamers in 3 years.

Ditching 3rd round replays would be a crime Bit annoying to be both away and against premier league opposition.

Can’t see them being interested in domestic English cricket, it has barely any audience in the UK. If they go into cricket it will be the IPL. I can see the club wanting to buy Kingston Park, but it would probably be to upgrade the facilities for the women’s, reserves and youth teams that already use it

The race course itself has a separate members owned golf club through half of it so if it was on the race course they’d need to pay off the golf club and am sure one of the (presumably hundreds of) members would have leaked it? Parklands golf club is directly owned by the racecourse so that seems more likely

It was never going to be plane sailing - from the takeover to being part of the elite, this season is going to be a tough one. Did people honestly think it would just be season after season of higher league places? I don’t blame Howe at all, I’d probably apportion more blame for this season on whoever was supposed to do the background checks on Tonali. José is a busted flush and replacing Howe with him is a terrible take. Mourinhos time at the top of the game has long gone. Howe is a far better coach and man manager.

True, but it’s one thing asking them to step up for a couple of games vs perform week in week out for an extended time. As well as Miley and Anderson have done they likely will struggle to keep form consistently, it’s unfair on them to expect anything else.

It’s a fair point about how the stadium has changed. It changed constantly until 2002 (roughly! I can’t remember when everything got built! Many fans will remember the gallowgate stand going up and the leaves end being rebuilt twice. It’s only been the same the last 20 years. However a lot of new stadia do go wrong, even commercially successful ones like the emirates and Wembley are total failures for atmosphere and experience

This match isn’t even in the top ten most important games of the season. Sunderland are a midtable championship side, so yeah it’s their biggest game, but compared to Milan in the CL it’s nothing

Top tip; sign up to the main NYT as a foreign reader for £20, and the athletic is bundled (it’s still shite but it’s cheaper shite)

Kane would have been relentless as City, Levy did the league a favour (and Kanes career huge damage!) in blocking that one. Arguably bad for Spurs too as it allowed all their other problems to be masked for years, now a manager is actually had to manage them. Haaland is incredible (11 already in the PL) but Kane would have brought even more out of the rest of the City players.

Bournemouth are a poor side, if you had to pick a team to play when injury ravaged you might well pick this lot Really think it’s a big opportunity and the 11 on the pitch will have the quality to win

Probably a lot of swelling in the ligaments. Maybe They don’t think there is a tear but the swelling needs to go down before he does anything or it’ll aggravate it and tear. The risk is the swelling goes down and they find there is damage and need to operate anyway

I am not a fan of the Trippier to LB stuff but it would be slightly more credible against Arsenal as they are not the biggest team. People tend to ignore Burns ability in the air esp at set pieces, if Burn is out you’ve only got the two CBs and Wilson (if he’s playing) as players really strong in the air. Joelinton and slightly surprisingly Willock are decent beyond that there’s not much. Against any side that plays 3 CBs or just has a bit of height in midfield you want 4 players who have the height to defend corners (to mark the 1 big striker and 3 CBs / 2 CBs and whoever else is big)

Assume there’s pain or discomfort and they were hoping it was just swelling rather than damage and it would be solved with rest. Frustrating!

Both are rotten but Schar in midfield has a another level of terrible take. I don’t agree with it, but Trippier at LB is a legit position he has played. Whereas Schar in midfield is nuts

I must be the only one that winces at the knee slides - your cruciates lads your cruciates! Man United have an easy run of games now where (hopefully) they’ll do well enough that this circus limps on. The last thing you want to see is them acting to fix their problems

Has Tonali not learned his lesson?!

My guess is if he has bet on Milan games he will get a big two year ban, but this will then be reduced to one year for admitting guilt and cooperating. Probably can’t train until June next year or so. Fagiolis is a one year ban reduced to 7 months for pleading guilty, so I’d take that as the precedent. It is a proper kick in the balls as Tonalis ceiling is a lot higher than Longstaffs or Joelintons. Tonali was supposed to be like Botman, Bruno and Isak and lift the quality level. The club will just have to suck it up. The hierarchy will be livid as this basically costs £18m (wages plus the share of the transfer fee given it’s about a quarter of the contract length)

What’s wrong with having a load of English players (or any nationality really!), makes no difference if they are good enough