The Premier League Thread

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It became pretty clear last season that that was the method of staying up, the fear being that as soon as a smaller club does it the book will get thrown at them rather than the paltry couple of point deduction it has been up until now. Sunderland have just cemented that philosophy this season which does rather make a mockery of the whole point of the system in the first place. You do still need to get your transfers right though, and get a bit of luck that the vast majority of them work out which is always a bit of gamble no matter how good your recruitment is on paper.
 
If you do it well enough to stay up and stay up well (ie get to the top half) surely the extra income coming in will make the losses on the first promoted season balance out within the reporting window?

Of course the trick is not to get demoted back again that first season....
 
Be interesting to see if they have any FFP issues like Forest did.

Their recruitment has been good as us, Leeds and Ipswich all brought in a load of players for bigish money as well which didn’t work for us or Ipswich (and likely not Leeds either). Sunderland still out spent all three of us though and as you say basically replaced their entire starting 11.

If we do go up this year then you’d think that Sunderland/Forest is the blue print you have to look at. There is nobody in our squad now who we should be thinking is a starter next year if we do go up

I do also think that the biggest factor for the promoted sides this year is the weakening of some of the other established sides. Multiple sides are significantly weaker than they were last year
Selling Bellingham may help FFP for them. Either way, the point deduction is so small and an army of lawyers seems to be sufficient in obfuscating, delaying and minimising any punishment.

100% is the model though. The PL isn't as strong as the year we went up and next year will have weak sides again too. Sunderland won't be strong forever, West ham, Brentford, Leeds, and Burnley at least 2 of will stay up and Fulham as well look to be at the end of a cycle. Also never be certain on Bournemouth as it seems a lot of their better players have been told they can move on when big clubs come sniffing, which I imagine applies to Iraola too..

If we somehow get up this year though, a whole new side is required and established old pros with no resale are needed to balance the team. PL money is no joke and we should be able to attract players in European competition.
 
It's also hugely beneficial that any points deduction isn't applied for the season in which the big expenditure is incurred. The season when Forest spent big in order to survive was 2022-23. Their four point punishment was duly issued in March 2024, and hence applied to 2023-24. But they were already so far clear of Luton that it literally had no impact. Whereas a four point deduction in 2022-23 would have seen them relegated instead of Leicester.

The fact that it's done on a three-year cumulative basis does mean that you need to wait until after that three-year period has finished each time. And hence there will always be this lag period. Forest used that to their advantage, and I say fair play to them.
 
Fellows and Scienza can play PL. As can THB if he sorts his head out a bit.

We will be keeping a fair chunk of the squad if we go up. We just need to be open to the idea that nobody in the team is a “oh we have xxxx we don’t need another player in that position”. There are potential upgrades to every single player in the team so we have to be actively trying to get them in.

Obviously this only applies if we go up which is unlikely anyway. If we don’t then we have a different challenge of losing most of the squad for financial reasons and replacing them
 
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It's only Liverpool and Man Utd away up next for Wolves.

After just being denied last season, Derby fans must be full of hope that they'll finally lose that record in a few months.
 
Broja scores for Burnley. Might possibly be his first Prem goal since he played for us?

Edit: Nah, scored once in 22/23, and once again in 23/24