TheBrownBottle

It’s the grim reality of modern football - shined up, packaged off and sold to the highest bidder. The horse has well and truly bolted. International tourists is who most big club owners want through the door - people who will come and spend as much money on merchandising tat and food and drink as possible. Joe Bloggs having a few pints in the Bulls with his mates and rocking up at ten to three every week is who they wanted a few years back. It is all shite but I suspect unfixable at this point. Which is why - from a deeply cynical point of view - I think the club needs to do what they’re likely going to do anyway.

Agreed. But it happened in the ‘90s, too. Football deserted its traditional fan base by pricing them out decades ago - why do you think the ground is full and the atmosphere is shite? You don’t get groups of young working class lads going to the match anymore. Priced out and ticketed out. And anyone who thinks that the slush fund of a foreign dictatorship and a family of tax-dodging Tory billionaires are more likely to give a shit about where the matchday revenue is coming from than the local businessmen who ran the club back then needs a good shake. This is also why the ‘big six’ don’t have all ST stadiums - even though they easily could. Football was sold off to the highest bidder yonks ago.

It’s not people from NE who would be likely buying up the corporate sections

They can’t spend under the regs. The regs are designed to do precisely this - stop clubs with lower turnovers and wealthy owners from ‘breaking in’. All the shirt sales, TV money is accounted for and sunk into the squad - the issue is that we make about half of what a member of the ‘Big Six’ makes. If we don’t make the CL next season, we’d likely need to sell to make significant signings (we’ll be able to make signings). Without CL football we may lose a big name or two in any case. Knowing how PSR etc works is fantastically boring, but it seems better than getting worked up thinking that the club is pretending there is a problem.

The SJP of my childhood, which should not be touched because of history.

It is a club wage cap system. Caps on individual salaries would be more of an issue

I don’t think £80m is feasible without CL or player sales.

£80m plus sales would do very nicely. But the Ronnie Gill is talking shite as it’s impossible to know until the season ends. The problem is that the rules completely change next season. ‘Acceptable losses’ etc are over. Next season clubs will be allowed to spend 85% of turnover on squad costs. As in the past, transfers are amortised. It does make everything a bit more straightforward, though; if we allow for say £350m in turnover, then we’re allowed £297.5m in amortised transfers and wages. At present, a guesstimate would be we have around £190m in wages and c.£95m in amortisation costs. There are also allowable deductibles. So not a huge amount; however, European qualification and players sales would massively boost that.

It’s not a choice of the club how much they can spend The Ronnie Gill literally can’t possibly know that given we don’t know if we’ll be in Europe (and in which tournament if we are)

Young was a title-winning player at Man Utd and Tomori was a fair bit younger and had been capped by England

With a massive price tag obligation to buy

Usually an agreement to buy at an agreed price (so if a player smashes it the selling club can’t raise the price)

It would be interesting to see what the profit turns out to be, given that his signing on fee would be spread over his contract and would be likely to be paid in full when he leaves

Agreed, but it doesn't seem any less bonkers to me. I'm a child of the '90s, ultimately - top Serie A clubs picking up unwanted PL defenders for decent money just seems crazy to me.

This is what is more likely to happen - certainly in terms of transfer fees. Which wouldn't be a bad thing for football generally.

I love BDB, but again we're talking about Italy's most successful club domestically - in what is traditionally the world's best league for defenders. It just feels like a massive, massive drop off. If BDB signed for Real Madrid tomorrow I suspect we'd raise eyebrows - Juve are a club that view themselves to be of that stature.

The fact that he's not better than BDB should be enough to suggest that this isn't a good signing for Juventus. It's Juve we're talking about - signing ok-ish reserve CBs from NUFC feels like a massive fall from grace. Scirea, Ferrara, Chiellini ... Kelly. Hmm.

Link so I can laugh

Most loan deals for decent players come with a hefty fee and often with an obligation to buy - and that's if you even want the player in the first place. There is a reason that Rashford has just gone on loan - besides, Villa sold a reserve CF to KSA for seventy million quid so they have the 'headroom' to pay that waster. I'm struggling to see where Mitchell is to blame for not making signings that we can't currently make. Yes, we bid crazy money for Guehi - which was likely an informed gamble to try to secure a top five position, and would likely have seen a player leave for significant value before 30th June. We don't, unfortunately - the owners have backed the club in the transfer market previously and allowed us to spend the maximum possible. The lack of signings isn't down to a lack of will - we can't sign players at the moment for any significant fee.

Agreed, but that was to avoid punishment through something self-inflicted. I still don’t think it was a coincidence that those with a management contract to manage the club were gone sharpish afterwards.

I’d be astonished if we did. The ownership since day one has shown an intent not only to stay within the rules, but within the spirit of the rules. I’d be surprised if they’re even looking for loopholes. Complete speculation: I suspect that as part of getting past the PL FPPT the owners likely agreed to do exactly the above. ‘Separation’ was obviously bollocks (PIF is a part of the state of KSA).

Completely agree - I was scratching my head when I read it. The replies often made it worse. Can’t believe he’s a lawyer if his communication and written skills are that poor.

Who said 10 years - and what did they say it about?

I’d say there’s more chance that certain parties didn’t completely understand the regs than they bet the house and lost

Gammon for the gammon