It's two years, under the new rules you no longer get the third year if you only managed to stay in the Premier League for one season.
Rationally, why would any player pick City over Leeds right now? And how sad is it that this is now the prospect, after a decade of them being in our shadow. So very avoidable.
Here's some basic maths for you Ehab! Acceptable squad size - (11 + 3) = Buy/loan shed loads of players - preferably early doors so they can gel! Ehabs response...errr 1 loan player before pre season training camp = thick Cnut 11 Shaun Maloney Curtis Davies Harry Maguire Josh Tymon Tom Huddlestone Lazar Marković Andrea Ranocchia Oumar Niasse Omar Elabdellaoui Dieumerci Mbokani Alfred N'Diaye 3 Eldin Jakupovic Ahmed Elmohamady Andy Robertson Kamil Grosicki Sam Clucas
2 more leaving in Clucas and Grosicki would mean we should be bringing in 15 more players & with the additional games in the Championship the bigger squad is paramount!
A player might choose us over Leeds because they like what Leonid says, we make them a better offer, etc etc. I do understand the misery around here but just think this 'why would any player stay/come here stuff is really counterproductive.If I were a player and saw all our fans saying why would anyone want to be here, that would increase my resolve not to be here. it's a spiral which we somehow need to break out of with a bit of self -belief. And no, I am not an Allam apologist, far from it. Just think our wallowing in misery is making things even worse!
Its called human nature. A sense of optimistic hope before the season starts, though there is no concrete evidence to support such a reasoning. The shrinks would have a whale of a time analysing the average football fans mental capacity to block out negative thoughts, pre-season. No doubt they've got a name for the condition. PPPPS or Perennial Positive Posturing in the Pre-Season
Not really a transfer story, but a friend of a friend (I know, I know...) went on holiday shortly after the season end and said he bumped into Luer and Bowen. The lads told them they are fans and were invited to join them for drinks. Apparently they got a bit worse for wear after picking up the tab for booze all day and one of them said he was on £5k a week. Now obvs it's a debateable story but is that realistically what these kids earn? They also said that they had to tell the players who we'd appointed as manager cos they hadn't heard anything
As far as I know, though I don't think there's any chance of us being relegated, despite all the ****ing about at the moment, I still expect us to bring in some decent players.
This has the hallmark of Leicester, Wednesday and Wigan who I guess all thought they wouldn't face double relegation. Relegation looks nailed on at the moment.
Why do you think that? I'm not saying we will, but you can't dismiss it out of hand. I would suggest that this is shaping up to the strongest Championship in history while we are having a fire sale beyond anything any other relegated Premier League team has. I'd wager fans of Wolves and the others mentioned didn't think they'd face successive relegations.
Wigan didn't get double relegated, they made the play offs the season after going down. You're thinking of Wolves.
Because I'm incredibly confident money will be spent and good players will be brought in. We all knew that there was going to be a tonne of exits, not sure I'd call it a firesale though.
Unless there's some we don't know about, I imagine every single player who has had a reasonable offer made for has either gone or is in the process of going. We don't appear to have resisted any approaches whatsoever. Which sounds like a fire sale to me.
The players we've sold have gone to PL clubs, it's very difficult players going back to the PL. The others have had clauses triggered and we had no option.
Just because a clause is triggered, it doesn't mean they have to leave. Also, why even invite bids so low by having the clause in the first place, or at least one set so low.