TheBrownBottle

You know when Champ Man isn’t going well, so you create a second manager profile and overpay for a reserve so that you’ve got money again - then retire the second profile? Aye, that (Of course, no self-respecting Champ Man player would even contemplate such a thing …)

Yes - and I think that the club’s approach to this has been reasonable. I think it was worth the gamble in January to see if we could qualify for Europe - and we only narrowly missed out. There was some dismissive comments re UEFA cup / Conference League qualification, but ultimately they bring in revenues. And as many have pointed out, a club triggering Bruno’s clause would have meant no other sales were required. No-one did, so the club had to sell to others to meet PSR requirements. So they sold a kid they’d signed for that exact purpose, and a lad who is sixth choice for what seems to be his primary position. Doesn’t seem that bad an outcome to me.

Fraser we probably can get off the books - I’m sure Soton would take him for most. The likes of Hayden are a problem, because we’d either need to buy his contract out - which doesn’t resolve the problem - or subsidise his wages - which is less of a problem, but means those outgoings are still there. Building an academy which produces both saleable players and competent young players who can cover for the first team is another way around it - and the club does seem to be making big strides in that direction (though again, I sort of expected that a new training ground / academy would have been in the planning stage at least by now).

We’d be in an even tougher position. We’d only be able to spend 70% of our income on players (transfers, signing on fees, wages etc). Allowing for our income being what it is now - somewhere between £300-330m - that means we would be limited to £230m on wages and salaries. (Edit - our current spend on this is c.£300m) Of course a big sale quickly offsets that difference - so this year, allowing for say £40m from Minteh and Anderson, as well as ASM and Wood, would mean that we would have been just about ok. But we’d need to do that every season just to maintain current outgoings. Of course, increasing income in other ways lifts that pressure. But it really is hard to see how NUFC gets above £400m per season without something dramatic occurring. edit: this is also why - unless the rules change - selling ‘big name’ players is likely in the not too distant future. We’re unlikely to hold on to most of the players we sign. Best not to get too attached!

The new rules to come in next year bring all of that to a close - linking outgoings to income.

Not quite - it’s not 5x spending. The problem has existed for some time - we’ve got around £100m of amortisation and £200m of wages on the books, with a likely income just above that. The new adidas deal will only offset the loss of CL money next season - and it isn’t clear that there is a lot of easy growth to come; some of us have bleated on for a while that the club is moving at a glacial pace re some of the low-hanging commercial fruit (training ground & kit sponsorships, for example). We’re nearing our ‘natural’ income ceiling at this point - so something needs to give if further growth is achievable. Lots of folks appear to get very upset at one obvious route - a new stadium. Otherwise, something needs to happen re the PL rules re related sponsorships etc, or were basically reaching the edge of what is ‘naturally’ achievable.

Happily were getting closer to the point when we have sellable reserve players - that squad looks ok to me (allowing for new additions)

Hopefully a few more pennies have dropped - and there’s no reason to panic over any of this. What should be abundantly clear by now though is that the club has zero intent of challenging the rules etc set by the PL. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was an agreement when the takeover was signed-off re this. You can buy the club - don’t rock the boat.

Makes sense to me

It’s silly season. I bet they’ll say that deal suits them. There are rumours that the club has been feeding these lines to the press. I hope they haven’t been playing that game - it’s not a smart one.

FFP books are now balanced; kindly now fuck off with your laughable rumours, ‘gentlemen’ of the press

Good luck to the lad. Have to say I’m still not even sure what his best position is? Never looked 100% at home anywhere on the pitch.

NB re forced sales due to PSR - Minteh was bought with PSR in mind. For all the talk about being ‘forced’ into this due to PSR - without PSR I doubt that PIF would’ve been wanting the Mintehs of the world in the first place. They would have been buying experienced names.

You don’t even know that Minteh can perform to Almiron levels in the PL yet

I think he played at pretty much every level for England

I do Probably too many years of playing Champ Man and immediately capping dual-national youngsters. Though in this instance Musiala was always highly rated

He’s one of our own …

He did; he could’ve waved a couple of red cards that day. But he’d learned from Graham Poll that showing cards willy-nilly can end up making you look a right twat. Mind you, I don’t think any of those tops Clive Thomas blowing up as Zico heads the ball into the net from a last gasp corner vs Sweden. But he’s Welsh, so they can take the brunt on that one

He’s just following the recent tradition of English refereeing at major tournaments. Of course, it’s unlikely any referee will top Graham Poll needing to show three yellow cards before sending off Simunic at 2006. That high watermark is surely too difficult to top

Danes have been robbed here

The days when the English could criticise forrin refs are long gone

Not arguing that it isn’t a lovely first touch. But Havertz is wasteful

Touch means less than fuck all if you do that afterwards. Which is what you’d expect Havertz to do

Havertz is absolute gash mind

A combination of the TV companies and whining cunts with money have collectively ruined it. I heard Lineker and co criticising VAR a while back; as if it wasn’t their entire fucking industry which hadn’t led the charge for it for decades