Keegans Export

I have absolutely no recollection of this, what's going on there?

Absolutely right, the key thing is getting like-minded fans together, then hopefully everyone can get what they want out of the experience. The answer of course (in terms of atmosphere) is to have a large, ideally safe-standing area as @pedro111 says above. Unfortunately the only way that can happen is turfing out a load of season ticket holders and I don't think the club will do that.

I caught a brief part of the post Forest/Villa coverage, Redknapp talking about Villa's struggles post-CL games, our issues with juggling both competitions last season. May have missed it but didn't hear any references to the main issue at play - Villa unable to strengthen in the summer and us in the January window.

Loves SBR too

At his best, that's what Bruno does too, and why it would have been difficult to replace him with a classic destroyer-style DM. Unfortunately he does get into the habit of holding on to the ball for too long at times. Tonali seems to be that guy though. Dictates the tempo, gets things moving.

Same here, I was thinking "What? They closed down the shop?!"

We have done, but we can't continue to do it. Hall is looking much better and Tino is still getting there but when you consider they cost (ballpark) the same as Bruno, Botman, players who come right in and lift the whole side, we can't keep spending that money on players who might be the finished article in a couple of seasons.

At the moment we can't drop big fees on potential. It's either decent money on current ability (eg. Bruno, Botman, potentially someone like Tomori), someone that can come in and improve the starting XI straight away or you look in the sub-£15m market in the hope of either unearthing a gem or someone who can develop into that. If one of the big boys then want to give us £50m+ for one of those talents after a year or two, we accept it and look for the next one. It's frustrating, but short of a substantial increase in revenue, that's the way we're going to have to play it.

The thing I don't get about the attendance thing is why do they make a big deal out of it at all? I mean, it's Championship football, very few clubs are going to get regular attendances north of 30k and there's no shame in that at all. This obsession with the figures that clearly bare no resemblance to the actual number of fans in the ground, the mad excuses for having a half-empty stadium - it all just makes what is honestly a perfectly normal situation into something really odd.

So you're saying the Italian media have just...made something up? The Italian media? I'm stunned.

Recently we've been very much based in the UK market. I think Tonali has been the only first team transfer from abroad since we bought Isak

Why would we tie ourselves in for 10 years? A one-year training kit sponsor for £2m would have covered Bruno's wage rise for the year and then some. And is considerably better than £0m. If we'd signed a £5m/year deal for 3 years for the training ground, maybe we'd have been able to keep Minteh? So now not only have we lost the potential income from that deal, we're going to have to spend a load of money brining a winger in.

The "waiting for the rules to change" argument has run it's course a while back imo If they've held off on key sponsors eg. Training kit on the basis that they'll get more if/when the rules change, how much more are they going to have to bring in to cover three years of missing potential income?

Interesting that the FMV tests for sponsorship etc will still use an independent expert assesor but the tests for shareholder loans won't...

But, we do presumably own the stuff it's made from...? "How about a piece of the hallowed St James Park turf? Well, as a relative of the PIF Chairman, we can do you a special deal of only £10m per square meter! Or perhaps you'd like one of these vintage urinals from the legendary Gallowgate End loos? A bargain at just £20m"

Apparently Tony Bloom wrote all the good bits

It's the double-edged sword of amortisation. We sign Isak for £65m, but only £13m of that goes on the books for that season (assuming a 5 year deal). That's where the whole "sell £20m worth of players and you could spend £100m replacing them because of amortisation!" The downside is that £13m is going to be on the next years books too. And the one after that. And so on. The amortisation of every player we've signed since the takeover is still being taken into account, so even though we haven't spent much, the money we did spend is still affecting our PSR position. Just Botman, Bruno, Tonali, Isak, Gordon and Barnes is roughly (very roughly) £55m/year plus wages

They're in the process of expanding the current training ground further so we'll be staying put for a while

I assume he's kidding...

Extra £250 from every season ticket holder. Fire a few minimum wage club shop staff. Sorted.

You know he will. Bonus points for a cheeky mention of the league cup win.

Doesn't really matter who's made the call, if one of your star backroom acquisitions is on his way after less than six months there's a clear issue with that recruitment process.

I suppose it only works if you have a team trying to play through it from the back so we can turn the ball over in the final third. Most teams are now quite happy to let us have the ball if necessary because if we win the ball in our own third we don't seem to be able to hit teams on the counter and we can't create anything of note against a low block.

That depends how involved he was in the transfer activity before then, including players being given contract extensions. If he was largely hands-off or not particularly involved in which players we were chasing and how much we were willing to spend then fair enough, especially if our PSR position has not been laid out clearly for him. However, if he's gone into the last few transfer windows leading the charge with his eyes wide open then he has to take some of the responsibility for how those transfer windows played out.

Honestly, I have no idea. But I also had no idea who Thomas Frank was until he turned up at Brentford and he's just embarrassed us in that second half. I still can't pronounce the Brighton managers name and he seems to be doing alright.