Keegans Export

He's exactly the type of signing I liked us making, same as Trippier, Bruno, Botman. Anyone could have signed them, it's not as if we swooped in and blew everyone else's bids out of the water and put them on £300k/week. We scouted, we took a punt when others decided against, it paid off. Thanks to PSR we can't even do that now...

Definitely. Going to Arsenal or someone like that isn't a sideways move as such but he's so good that he'll just be looking to step up another level after a couple of seasons there anyway. He'll not just go to a Champions League club, he'll go to a club realistically aiming to win the Champions League.

That's exactly it. I don't think Saudia for example "sponsoring" our shirts for £50m is banned, it's just that they'll only allow us to use a fraction of that towards our PSR calculation.

The cost of building it doesn't count towards our PSR expenses but if we happened to find a multi-million pound sponsor for it that would qualify as income...

They could also already have £20m tied up in Le Fee and £12-15m in Frigan, plus whatever Isidor's clause is. That's just to keep the squad they have now. Even if they could spend another £70m would they have a squad capable of finishing above three others?

They don't, you're just not following all their activity day-by-day on social media, online forums etc. The first we usually hear of a player being sold is when they are sold.

From a purely financial perspective you're better off just having the year in the PL and all the extra money that brings, worst case scenario you go down and bag however much in parachute payments. If you manage to stay up in year one it's a bonus. Investing huge sums to try and stay in the PL first time is a massive risk these days, although Forest are proving it can be done.

Isn't that what happened to Leicester? They broke the rules in one competition but argued the punishment couldn't be handed out by another?

The 70% cutoff wouldn't be so much of an issue with Champions League qualification and the money that brings but if you just end up in the Conference League the 15% drop in "allowable expenses" wouldn't come close to being covered by the income from being in that tournament. Almost penalises clubs for almost getting there but just missing out.

Personally the idea of selling two squad players to fund a starting XI player (ideally a RW) makes sense. If that makes me a FFP nerd then I'm OK with that

Just had a look, Juve are 4th but they haven't lost a league game all season (8 wins, 13 draws!)

We just need a Bournemouth manager. Eddie Howe is the manager, but then we have a second manager who tags in leading up to any time we play Bournemouth, he takes training, picks the team and is on the touchline for the game then at full time he clears off and Eddie's back in again. An extra 4-6 points per season. Simple.

The shrug he gave at the end there, you let him waltz into the box and fire one in from about 7 yards away man

We've been second best in every single category. They're a good side and have played very well but we've been absolutely shite.

He's doing a great job and they're playing very well but we've been miles off it

Completely forgot about him. 0 goals and 2 assists in 17 games for Ipswich

Perfect username for tonight

That's exactly why we were after him. We'd identified Isak as our #1 but he was going to be too expensive so we looked for similar profile players. Then Wilson got injured, Sociedad softened their stance, fast forward two and a half years and the best centre forward in the world is playing for Newcastle.

The thing with DCL (and I'm applying the same logic to Mbeumo) is, can we get as good or better for less elsewhere? On the face of it, he's a reasonable option because he's good enough to backup Isak but not so good that he'll get pissy being #2. Unfortunately PSR is going to be a problem for us so we have two options, shop savvy or sell someone for a big fee. We have too many gaps in our squad to buy players for big fees and/or high wages and I think he may end up being the latter.

Mbeumo probably is worth north of £50m but I think we have too many gaps in the squad (especially if we want to be competitive on multiple fronts next season) and not enough PSR wriggle room to fill them if we shop in that sort of price range. We will probably need another keeper, we'll definitely need another CB, we may need a backup RB depending on what happens with Trippier, our depth at CM isn't great, plus we need RW/CF. We have a number of key players approaching their twilight years and most of the players we could sell for a fee would need to be replaced. Someone earlier said Mbeumo would "complete us" - he'd complete the starting XI absolutely, but we're probably 4-5 players short of having a squad ready for PL and European football. The drop off between the first XI and the backups is too big.

But to consistently qualify for (and be successful in) the Champions League we're going to need a way of investing in the playing squad without having to regularly sell our best players. The proposed doubling of matchday income of £30-40m/year from a new venue could help us achieve that, certainly more than the fabled "Official Tractor partner" sponsorships that are yet to materialise.

I assume they meant doubling match day revenue rather than overall revenue

I'd like to think I'm not missing the point - it seems to be that a new stadium alone won't close the gap? Obviously that is correct but what is the alternative? If we can't close the gap then just leave everything as it is and just hope for marginal increases in sponsorship revenue every so often? The point about Chelsea and Liverpool is an interesting one and I don't know the details of how those stadiums compare to ours in terms of corporate but what I do know is that Chelsea is in London (£££) and Liverpool have multiple Champions League games most seasons which I assume is part of the story.

Let's just take Man City as the target, that's +£34m. Perhaps there could be a stadium sponsorship available, could we add another £10m to that? Obviously that's not going to fill that £100m+ commercial revenue gap, but it's a start isn't it? What could we have done with that extra £40m in the summer? The only way we're going to get close to catching up in the PSR/FMV world is consistently crashing the top 4/5/6, justifying those larger sponsorship deals, bringing in more PL and UEFA prize money etc. and the best way to do that is to be able to invest in the squad and the increased matchday income can help us do that.