Remember how ruthless we were with players like Dean Hammond last time we came up (and stayed up). That.
On to this game - suspect we might see ABK get a run out, which I guess would be interesting. SAA too?
Yeah, I have no idea how close to that we are. There was talk we were very close last year, but then we spent over £100m in the summer. I haven’t heard anything about us being in any trouble when we go down (I recall Villa and Bournemouth were both threatened with points deductions by the football league if they got relegated within a couple of seasons of going up, neither of them did though). Whether because we came back to the Championship immediately we are ****ed from a PSR perspective in the Champ I also don’t know, we should be able to raise a fair bit from player sales which will help. I also think you only get parachute payments for 2 years if you come straight back down, rather than 3 years. No idea why I think that though
If it’s a 3 year window in the Champ then we may well be ****ed as it would include the first relegation season as well as this one where we have spent about £300m combined or something (not net)
I've been thinking that we should just break PSR rules for a while now, since the punishment ended up just being getting a couple of points deducted, which is pretty inconsequential compared to actually being able to sign lots of good players*. However, you just know that we would end up getting a much more severe punishment. *herein lies the other issue with that plan. We would just waste even more money on **** players because who at this point has any faith in our recruitment!?
Yeah, I mean there's no point doing it now, but go down, get a functional DoF in, and screw it next time we come up.
Put the tea lady out and make THB along with all the other CBA ‘players’ play with a real professional!!
Tom said ‘the first team’ which in normal circumstances is ‘the strongest’ but strongest and first cannot both be used in the same sentence with this lot!
Correct about needing to spend at least two consecutive years in the PL to be entitled to a third year of parachute money in the Championship. But the amount in question is only 20% (of what a PL team receives), which is much less than the 55% and 45% amounts in years one and two. Still nice to have though, of course.
Oh yeah for sure. I was meaning with regards to being a newly promoted team in the PL! One thing on the DoF that we are all calling out for. SR restructured how it all works behind the scenes, promoted Bitcon into a new role 'Head of Football Operations', that sort of covers DoF (but not really) and spread out the remaining DoF responsibilities to the likes of Martin before he got sacked. They supposedly recruited for Bitcons old role as Director of Performance too. So there isn't even a DoF gap in their genius setup. Hopefully they can see that it's not working though. You need a proper football man that operates higher up in the club. We just don't have that (Bitcon isn't a football man), so it's no real surprise that the football side of things is a shambles.
Kelvin Davis, Fraser Richardson, chaplow, fox, sharpe, Lee Barnard, tadinari Lee. There were so many who weren’t up to PL level, felt a bit sad at the time but was necessary.
Sorry to say, ain’t going & in all honesty don’t give a turd. Can’t believe it’ll provide any of those usual cliches; rest from the intensity of PL, chance for the fringe players, opportunity for new mgr to evaluate, blah, blah, blah. If we lose or draw it’s a mare. If we win there’s virtually zero positives & just sets us up eventually to get smashed by someone else. What a shambles.
Yep, I watched most of it. Swansea defended like Saints - they were dreadful. Have a look at the highlights!
I feel like I've suffered enough for one day watching Saints. Don't need to rub salt into the wound by watching Pompey thrash a team we will probably struggle against Brentford had not won away all season...had only scored 5 or 6 away from home all season...until today. Doesn't matter how bad the opposition are. We are worse right now! We beat them 5-0 at home last season too (and 1-3).
Yep, Cortese may have been a ruthless bastard but you can’t deny he got us where he needed by making big choices. The players (and even the manager) were good but they had a ceiling and we needed to improve to compete and you need to compete to make money long term. He saw that and knew how to change it. I’m all for loyalty in football but you also have to know when you need to upgrade, it was clear to most fans that these players wouldn’t be up to snuff this season based on how they were already performing in the championship. Owners like SR want the financial stability of being a solid mid table PL side but they want to just skip to that instead of putting a strategic plan in place with competent people needed in much needed roles. We came into this season with a manager that had a quite openly obviously tactically suicidal style of play, with no set piece coach, seemingly no logical approach to transfers as the manager didn’t really even consistently use any new signings, no idea of a center forward (including a striker who has been injured since we’ve bought him), farcical goalkeepers, one average CDM and our most expensive signing continuing to be so dogshit that a striker has to play in his place and be absolutely useless as a result. And somehow no one high up realised there was a ****ing issue until December. And according to our manager we haven’t even settled upon where and how they’re going to improve yet. They are a joke. They have no plan, you see that, I see that and based on today the players see that. We are the football club equivalent of Kate Winslet alone drifting on a door in the Atlantic Ocean. ****s They are the absolute worst kind of owner because they actually have money and will spend it but they have no clue what the **** to spend it on.
The players haven’t been showing up all season. Why would this game be any different. I’d be playing SAA and some of the other kids. At least they will give a ****.
It was an Everton fan who told me that. No idea what amendments they are making but he said they’re are definitely changing something. Obviously he was all excited as he thinks they will be spending £500m again in their new stadium
