Keegans Export

I don't think he'd be anywhere near good enough to justify the circus that would accompany the move (including a section of our own support)

Obviously Barnes changed the game (along with them taking Antonio off and seemingly removing their threat on the counter) but I thought Hall was excellent when he came on. Absolutely tenacious which is what we needed at that point. We did well to get our heads back in the game. Our intensity had dropped so low, there was a point where they had knocked it out for a throw while Schar was injured, we threw it back to Zouma and we had so little pressure on him he made a gesture to say "Are we playing again?" Also shout out to the two blokes next to me who were blabbering on about coming from 3-0 down to beat Arsenal 4-3 thanks to an Asprilla hattrick and a Tiote winner. Confusing about three separate games there.

Burgundy as in the 95/96 hopped shirt?

Replace "player" with "patient". From a medical perspective there is no difference. And you can't coerce/threaten the patient to do what you want either. Bench him, yes fair enough, if you believe it's in his best interests, but you can't sack him.

Sorry, this is an absolutely mental take. Every patient has the right to decide what treatments they do or don't have. A footballer is a human being. The medical staff are registered professionals and any surgeons are required to act the same whether they are treating a footballer, a builder or a homeless guy on the street. The patient is given the pros and cons of each option and must make that decision themselves. A medical professional isn't there to convince them or make the decision for them.

I don't think he knew he was being investigated? Looking at the dates, he got pulled from training with Italy mid-October which is when the FA charge runs to. Seems like they were investigating covertly, brought him in to talk about it and that's when he stopped.

To me "enforced" isn't a particularly ambiguous word but OK, if that's not what he meant then fair enough. Having said that, its also shakey medical ground convincing a patient to have a procedure rather than giving them all the necessary information to make their own choice.

Well, firstly we don't know that isn't what happened. Secondly, your exact words were "we should have enforced him to" which isn't quite the same as having a good, long chat about it!

Well unfortunately that's not how medicine works, there isn't a surgeon in the country who would operate without patient consent.

The alternative being what? Grab the chloroform and get him on the operating table?

They made the mistake of doing it all very, very publicly, presumably in the hope that we'd crumble. We made the same mistake with Emery, although we seemed to learn that lesson quite quickly.

We can just go on the assumption that someone who has performed the role for a club like Milan, Benfica, Monaco, is probably a safer bet than someone who's only managerial appointment outside of Scotland was in League One and is currently coaching coaches. I'm not saying Ross wouldn't be good at the job, I just think we will (quite rightly) go with a safer option.

Because he's still broken their rules. It's like charging someone with murder and then tagging on a load of other smaller but related charges - they aren't going to give 25 years for murder, then another 2 for breaking & entering, then another 3 for carrying an unlicenced firearm etc, but they're still going to charge them for it all. Charged =/= additional punishment

I think charging him is fair enough, if he's broken the rules while under FA jurisdiction. I'm sure common sense will prevail and "time served" will apply. Unless they would have banned him for longer than the 10 months he was given which seems unlikely given Toney only received eight.

Bruno. I can see the argument for Joelinton and @gjohnson is right that Bruno looks better with Joelinton there but I think what Joelinton brings to the team would be easier to replace, whereas the pool of players we could bring in to replace what Bruno offers would be incredibly small.

They could be using it to encourage leniency if (when?) they fall foul of FFP/PSR themselves? In most cases cooperation is viewed favourably when handing down a punishment.

I suppose that would be the case even if they wanted to build a brand new stadium? Although presumably the financial upside of that would be greater.

Didn't consider that he didn't play for us until he was much older! Anyway, the point stands that we aren't going to spend money on 7 first team squad players just to have them (or others) unavailable for selection. Even before we have to shift players to make room for them, we've also got Fraser, Hayden & Lewis who all have a year on their contracts I think. We're not going to sell 10+ players this summer.

It's just daft buying that many players then not being able to register them (or others) for a competition we'd presumably aim to win. They are the players we'd have to register next season as it stands. I've assumed Karius and Dummett are away. Hall and Miley are U21s so don't count. That's 23 and we've got three homegrown there, one of which is Gillespie so that's a squad of 23 or 24 we can register for Europa/Conference League, so it becomes one in one out otherwise someone isn't being registered for the competition. If we sign seven players, we'll have to shift six or seven from that 23.

We'd have to do some serious selling to allow us to bring in and register seven new players. Bear in mind that if we get into Europe we need four club-developed players in the squad otherwise we'll have to register less than 25 again.

He probably booked a bumper holiday for him & his missus, forgetting the Euros were on

I'm the same. You can think the rules are shit, but if the majority of clubs follow them it's only right for those who don't to be punished.

For me, in order of priority; CB, RW, CF, CM That's on the basis that the CB and RW would be day-one starters in the Botman/Bruno/Isak mould whereas the CF and CM would be more rotation options. Obviously if we sell Bruno then CM jumps to the top of the list and I'd probably add a GK to the shopping list.

Well judging by the figures @timeEd32 posted above, we've currently got about a 15% lower capacity than Spurs (52k versus 62k) but we're taking in 60% less matchday revenue (£40m versus £120m) so that suggests that just bridging the capacity gap isn't enough on its own.

Send out the @FloydianMag signal! They owe us one after the miner's strike tbf