TheBrownBottle

Yep. No one with the scantiest knowledge of football would ever call Everton a ‘small club’; for a man in Masters’ position to do it is unbelievable

I’ve always believed that the solution would be to limit investment as a proportion of income, inversely proportional to existing income, using the club with the highest income as a cap. So you cap Man City’s current owner losses to say 5% of income, which if their income is £700m would be £35m (roughly what the current FFP guidelines are), but you might allow the club with the 17th highest income the ability to have 100% owner losses. So if the 17th highest club has an income of £100m, their owner can invest another £100m. Alternatively you could have caps entirely income-dependent and not relative to each other - so perhaps a £500m bar with no allowable losses above £25m (5% of £500m, but no additional millions allowable above it - so a club with a £600m income can still only lose £25m), and grade it down - so perhaps £400m clubs you’re looking at 10%, £300m you’re looking at 25%, £200m you’re looking at 50%, £100m at 100% etc. That would allow owners to grow any club, but investment growth would slow the higher actual income becomes. Probably a shite idea, but that would be my fix.

FMV is the biggest issue, it has to be said. I’d have a bit less of a problem with it if it was administered via an independent arbiter. It’s so obviously fixed at the moment its disgraceful

Next season. Given UEFA’s rules from next season (and especially the season after) the club are going to need to pull their finger out re commercials and matchday income. I hard to picture how exactly we catch up with Spurs at the moment without a new ground and some serious sponsorship money

They can sell any narrative they want, doesn’t make it anymore true. Mike Ashley is a billionaire, but we weren’t a billion pound club.

We’re not the ‘richest club in the world’ by any metric. The PIF isn’t the same even as Abu Dhabi’s ownership of Man City or Qatar’s of PSG. We’ve known since the takeover that this wouldn’t look remotely like Man City. What’s happening is that the likes of ‘True Geordie’ are just realising what most of us realised two and a half years ago - that there are significant constraints which we’ll be operating within. The PIF either knew about them beforehand - in which case it suits their plans - or they didn’t, and they’re thicker than Ashley when it comes to due diligence.

Well, you’re not looking at the whole pie Amanda

True enough, I wasn’t one of the great doubters there mind And Gordon wasn’t exactly your ‘moneyball’ signing. He was pretty well known

Great. Happily, we took advantage of all of that with the signings we made in the last two years. Minteh was the only one I wasn’t familiar with, and I’m far more of a passive observer of football these days.

And yet, incredibly, a half-switched on football fan can identify good players and bad ones. For all of the waffle and data crunching around it all, most teams tend to sign players that all of us have heard of.

Yep, that is absolutely fucking nuts. We’re comfortably about half a decade away from being in that position. If it’s true, the club should be asking very serious questions of all involved.

*NUFC proceed to buy Tommy Svindal Larsen*

Given he's an NUFC fan it all seems like a perfect fit, but he's been at Brentford for quite some time - I'm sure he'll have had other approaches; maybe it would be difficult to persuade him to move?

I would think she's effectively the ownership representative - acting like a chair - rather than running the day-to-day football or commercial operations I hope so, anyway

It honestly just sounds like Henry Winter has never played Champ Man. He should try it; it would blow his socks off

When Ashworth explained it on TV, about being in the middle of a wheel and spokes coming out to different functions, he just sounded like a middle-management airbag who’s job is simply delegating stuff for others to do. Hopefully there is a lot more to it than that, but from what I can tell he didn’t actually directly do owt.

Exactly. Apparently he isn’t involved in scouting all that much, he only finalises contracts etc. We’ve got a training ground to build too - and I’m sure that will have soft landscaping if he want to get his gardening gloves on

Yeah do that. I can’t think of anything funnier than Man Utd being the ones who end up wrecking the very things that entrench their own position

Ahahahahha

That’s impossible to predict - they could well do. They’re a bigger club than Bournemouth, for example. The majority of their fans will be able to remember Luton being a solid top flight club - one that they’ve seen win a major trophy.

ASM and Almiron have as many goals and assists as each other this season - but I know who is playing in the harder league

Richard Masters referring to Everton as a ‘small club’ was a fucking disgrace, mind.

He’s a more effective PL player than ASM. I don’t think he’s a particularly good PL player, but he’d be in my side ahead of ASM every week

He’s a bottom six PL / top six second tier GK for me, which is perfectly fine as a reserve under normal circumstances. This being NUFC 23/24, we’re not living in normal times, so he’s playing far more than we’d like

Yeah, I take your point - though I do think social media is more ‘white noise’ than the stadium. When the crowd turns it’s hard to win them back - it’s much harder for the clubs to resist than a bunch of wallies on Twitter