Keegans Export

If he gets banned for football betting any ban imposed in Italy will in all likelihood be enforced across all FIFA countries (same reason Toney didn't just clear off on loan for 6 months)

Brazilian wonderkid Gamblor

Wasn't the 3-year maximum just when it was non-football betting?

Perhaps if they moved the jail from Italy to Leazes Terrace brick by brick he could still play home games?

It seems that you have to have a licence to operate a bookies/casino etc in Italy so if he's been using a VPN to access a site without an Italian licence then he's broken their gambling laws.

Presumably if it's not football-related then any ban from the Italian FA isn't going to be enforced by our FA/FIFA? Is this just a general criminal investigation/charge?

I was wondering that but looking back the players pictured in those things doesn't seem to give any indication as to who starts and who doesn't

They nearly managed it 30 years ago?

There's also the clever accounting trick whereby extending his contract alters the amortisation on the books. His value dropped by about £8m/season on his previous deal (£40m, 5 year deal) but now his current value, which is around £16m, is spread over an additional two years. This means the amortisation on the books next year is only £4m (£16m > £12m) rather than £8m (£16m > £8m). That extra £4m could easily cover a £70k/week pay increase from a FFP perspective. (all of these numbers are rough estimates obviously)

That was originally the idea but I think they scrapped it in the end didn't they? Now it's just wages, transfer fees and agent payments as a percentage of revenue.

That's the boring financial benefit of results like Wednesday night. We are in the Champions League this season because we earned it, but results and performances like that show that we belong at that level. That gives brands confidence that we will keep operating at this sort of level (not necessarily CL football every season yet, but in time).

"Look Sean mon ami, I know Gianluigi has first dibs but you don't really want a keepers shirt do you?"

The giant is awake and smashing down the Eiffel Tower with his gargantuan member

The bloke who relegated Bournemouth is doing a pretty good job on balance

Fucking fuck me

Same as Gordon vs Sheff Utd

They just look like they're used to mostly playing shite teams. Undoubted quality and they're going to get going at some point so we'll have to deal with that but they can't live with us at the moment.

Remember when Klopp was "heavy metal football", the charismatic orchestrator of gegenpress? Now he's just a whinging little bitch. Sad to see really.

Finally a change to use that GCSE in French! J'ai visite la piscine. Je voudrais un verre d'eau sil vous plait.

Having a club laden with hundreds of millions of pounds worth of debt = fine Owners pumping in a fraction of their wealth = not fine But hey, there's "Profitability and Sustainability" rules to be followed!

It's something George Caulkin said after the Palace game last season and it's stuck with me - all VAR does is give another human being a chance to make a mistake. Goal-line technology works - instantaneous, black-or-white. As soon as you add that human factor you get mistakes and you get controversy. I'd rather just take the bad decisions as they come and be able to celebrate a goal properly in real-time.

That's interesting, I thought that (aside from the designated safe standing areas) the ground had to be all-seater but it's obviously a regulations thing rather than a law. Either way, it's not an ideal situation. Obviously there are people who want to stand but there are also people who don't - sometimes for the same reason people don't like the allocated seats thing (eg "I can't walk all the way up to L7 because I have bad knees"). For the record I don't like the way seats are allocated in the ballot either and this seems like another issue caused by it.

It's probably a legal thing as much as anything. The law says the fans have to be seated and if they aren't then it isn't safe. If the club are aware of a large group of fans standing (and they can hardly plead ignorance on that) and are seen to be taking no action whatsoever, if anything were to happen the club is immediately in negligence territory.

We've got 5+ first team players injured (Botman, Joe x2, Barnes, Wilson) plus one suspended. No PL team aside from City wouldn't be massively impacted by that.