TheBrownBottle

The US sports have an advantage - they aren’t big enough outside of the US to provide any effective competition. So if NBA players don’t like the deal they’re getting, what’s their options - do they go to play in Lithuania? No-one will come close to the salaries that the NBA, NFL, MLB etc will pay The PL could insert these rules and watch as all the players head to one of the many other leagues which don’t.

The whatabouttery doesn’t cut the mustard here - the flag is banned by FIFA for starters; it absolutely is the equivalent of the swastika or the flag of the confederacy for much of Asia. There’s plenty of crimes in the annals of the British empire, no doubt about it. Kitchener was in charge of the SA campaign, and usually gets much of the blame for the concentration camps (though the Second Boer War was not the origin of concentration camps). You’ll have to show me the history books where beheading competitions by British officers took place, or the organised mass rapes. I’m yet to see any serious objections to the UK being represented by the Union flag by those outside of the UK, including those nations which were subject to British rule in the days of empire. Not at all looking to be an apologist for the British Empire - but all things are relative. The club’s media team (or adidas’s, whoever the fuck put that video together) wants shot with shit. Personally, I’d fire them - but then I think having kit launch videos is the most banal and pointless thing imaginable.

I suspect the PFA would have the PL in court in a heartbeat if they tried introducing a salary cap

Happy to wait, but I’ve seen numbers bandied about on here like they’re fact

The thoughts about the owners playing games with FFP need to stop tbh - it’s not going to happen. If they’re serious about their stated ambitions, it’ll be done by the book - the stadium plans will tell us just how serious they are. The talk of a multi-billion pound stadium just looks like pie in the sky at the moment.

Yep - and there’s nothing to suggest that the rules are going anywhere. Ultimately you do run out of assets to sell, and find that the club doesn’t actually own anything. Sales of stadiums is the next step.

Agreed - if FFP is a thing, it should be to balance the league out, not to crystallise the existing hierarchy.

We can judge their failure in three years to appoint a competent executive tbf.

Agreed - which is why I’d look to find a DoF with a similar football style / philosophy and appoint him on that basis

Tbf the point of a good DoF is to get an entire footballing philosophy ingrained at the club, so that all the clubs teams from youth teams to first team play in the same way, and the club signs players in line with that philosophy - and not the whims of individual managers. Plenty of the most successful clubs do this - it reduces the risks of managerial appointments, as they become more like coaches. If Howe were to leave and be replaced by a manager with a different style, then loads of the players Howe loved might just become surplus very quickly, and it costs a fortune while we sell and buy a new team. We’ve seen it before of course - going from KK to Dalglish to Gullit to Robson - that’s the danger. To me, you’d want a DoF willing to adopt Howe’s style throughout the club, so that any successor will be in the ‘Howe mould’.

All one of them?

He can’t get them over the line, Alan. Any tips?

Classic - The Geordie Rap. It’s the Miami Tab Machine cover on the Sid cartoon, but the David Baird OG is still great:

Yep - I had a navy blue one with white stripes. Pretty much every lad and lass at my high school wore one at some point in the late ‘90s - it was like a uniform.

Selling the women’s team feels like a massively retrograde step, it’s a disgrace that the PL are effectively encouraging this (I don’t blame Villa though)

We were about to …

I didn’t know them at the time of course, but I doubt that when the sentient bog brush was talking about putting in electrified fences to stop Combat 18 and other delightful supporter groups from invading from half-empty dilapidated terraces I doubt they were on whatever passed for Twitter using a faraway team’s successes as a pitiful penis extension

In dictatorships it’s often the result of corruption

Chelsea are an odd club in that respect - their international following absolutely dwarfs their UK support. I still don’t really view Chelsea as a massive club in English terms, but even anecdotally I work with dozens of blokes from Asia and Africa who support them. Which is a shame, as most of them are sound lads otherwise

It’s not the case that KSA’s govt operates like this because they’re expert at planning etc.

It is suggestive of this being a proper investment and not ‘sports-washing’. Many of our supporters appear to think that without PSR they’d chuck colossal sums at us - I think they were comfortable buying us knowing that PSR existed. There is no net benefit to KSA in owning us, so we’ll be treated different from the Saudi Pro League or that Club World Cup shite.

Despite their size, I think they are in a bit of trouble with all of this now. Their has been mostly fucking dreadful - they can’t keep that going forever

Maguire has a point, of course - you do actually have to be a good seller as well as a good buyer. Chelsea and Man City’s sales have mostly come from spunking fortunes on as many good young players as possible and flipping them for profit - and PSR loves that approach. Other than Minteh, we’ve not been good at selling players (including older ones at ‘peak value’). You don’t get to where our owners claim they want to get to by buying players who you intend to keep forever - you buy them with an eye on a sale later.

I always thought that this was Staveley’s greatest strength - negotiation of transfers. Shouldn’t be a surprise tbf - deal-making is her role!

Last week https://www.skysports.com/amp/football/news/11668/13390267/joao-pedro-transfer-news-chelsea-agree-deal-to-sign-brighton-striker-with-brazilian-set-to-join-club-world-cup-squad