TheBrownBottle

Chelsea haven’t breached the rules as yet though. Their problems are coming further down the line - shitloads on amortised contracts for players who aren’t worth close to what they paid for them. Their wriggle-room will end quickly; they also can’t be finishing mid table forever or else those lucrative commercials start to become less lucrative

Big clubs trade players between each other, and given where we at the moment I’d say there’s no chance we reject a bid for a player because it’s Liverpool; it would be rejected if it isn’t the fee we want.

Not the impression I get. They’ll expect pushback.

Bottom half finishes were failures under Ashley, too. I’m happy for a five year timeline to be ‘challenging’. I don’t see why standards get to drop because ‘jam tomorrow’. And if we have five years of mid table, I wouldn’t worry about challenging. We won’t have the revenues to compete.

Bottom half finish is failure, for me - it always is for NUFC. I know everyone talks about ‘the project’, but commercial revenues don’t grow when you’re a mid table side. And the drop in prize money is significant. It would put us back a year, comfortably.

Doesn’t seem that mysterious to me - Howe doesn’t rate the lad at the moment.

The way we play is partly responsible for the fatigue. You can’t play this sort of tactic when playing every three days, and with a squad blighted by injuries. And a lot of teams have sussed us, too. I think next season we‘ll see changes in play style etc. Howe will spend his ‘holidays’ (I don’t think the man rests) thinking of ways to change it up.

‘There’s fack all ‘appenin’, lads’

There’s only one UEFA cup place for league finish. If Liverpool win the League Cup then it’ll drop another in

Hope him and his family are ok. Mind you, they’d need to be armed. I wouldn’t want to break into that man’s house and see him coming down the stairs to investigate

Yep, this is often forgotten. He used to get pelters - and he was utter shite to be frank. He was played on the left, like he was at Leeds, and it was patently obvious that he wasn’t up to snuff. In terms of transfer values at the time, we absolutely overpaid. Still don’t think he was great under Gullit either, tbh, but at least he wasn’t on the left wing anymore. Looked so much better alongside Dyer in Robson’s team.

Can’t agree mate - it’s a matter of public record. There’s no secret slush fund we can draw down from. If were still in Europe and weren’t having such an awful run in the league, then I think there would be wriggle-room. December has cattle-trucked that. The club isn’t able to hide anything, so there isn’t a strategy here - other than perhaps to make their gripes public to join the noise re FFP

No, the FFP regs were there. FMV wasn’t and the related party transactions was watered down. These were brought in to block NUFC’s growth, and they’ve meekly accepted them.

It’s impossible with all the other regs in place at the moment. FMV and all that nonsense. The other clubs can literally block everything.

Do we really think that the publically produced accounts and the FFP regs are all an elaborate smokescreen to help NUFC drive prices down?

I don’t think that there is anyone daft on here, but I wonder what the portion of the support who thinks we’re going to be Real Madrid MkII think of Eales stating that the club’s aim is to be ‘top six’? I think that with the constraints that’s a hell of a challenge, but there will be a chunk of the fan base who bought into the ‘we’re going to be number 1’ patter

Same. Sometimes you need to be pragmatic.

We’ve had plenty of ageing Mackems play for us mind

Why? I know his club has said they won’t loan him

I’d take either. Preferably Phillips of course

Because they had FFP leeway

It’s literally published. £105m in FFP accounting losses over a rolling three year period. All PL clubs books are published. It’s not made up, as Everton can attest.

We can’t, no matter how confident you are. A loan to buy is likely the best bet. But that won’t happen until the very end of the window.

I’ve always thought that what is being attempted is what Ashley attempted, just on steroids and done competently. You buy players at the right age with significant potential and future value. You develop them and make a massive profit, which then recycles etc etc. The ‘Arsenal model’ is what Ashley said he wanted. These days it’s the ‘Brighton model’. Spurs have been exceptional at it. Buy your Isaks, Botmans, Brunos, get a few years out of them, have some success, sell for big profit, repeat. Nothing wrong with it as a strategy for growth - it makes sense given our position and current ceiling. To do it you need the right personnel - and generally the club have brought in those viewed as the best operators for that model (Howe, Ashworth etc). There’s a reason that the PIF didn’t go for a ‘name’ manager.

This is it, and I used Tonali as an example in the present, but it was about flop transfers. FFP just completely knackers the ability of a Newcastle / Villa / West Ham / Everton etc to have a bad big-money buy.