Saxondale

This is doing the rounds on social media.

Paperboys

I think commercialisation is inevitable, but it all needs dialling back a bit. The root cause of our replica shirts costing £65 is the fact that player wages and transfer fees grow without restraint, egged on by the media and fans hungry for transfers (let’s be honest, transfers are as much part of the entertainment as the game itself these days) and owners with bottomless pockets. It’s not realistic to enforce pay cuts on footballers, but we can do some things to curb the excessive financial growth in the game. Hypothetically, we could abolish transfer fees. I wouldn’t be against that. We can cap wages going forward, or cap overall wage budgets. We can limit squad sizes. Fans should be able to buy a shirt for £25, attend a game for £20 or have the option to watch it on a club- provided stream at home for about five quid. Sky, BT et al can frig off.

This whole ‘big six’ thing, I’ve been thinking: * Are they just set in stone forever now, because Sky Sports decided one day? * Is it the big seven now that Newcastle have their blood money? * How many years would Chelsea / Man Utd / Tottenham have to be woeful before they would no longer be considered ‘big six’? * Can somebody else do a Man City and come in with new money and break into the elite club? Is Bahrain going to buy Sheffield Wednesday? * How many years would somebody like Villa or us or Everton or Palace have to finish in the top six before we would be considered ‘big six’? * Covering old ground here, but why were Tottenham considered big six in the first place? They never win a sausage, and rarely come close. Part of me wonders if it would be better if these lot frigged off to the Super League so they can just play each other every week for no reason (I can’t think of anything more boring). If they want to be an ‘elite’ group participating in some NBA-style closed competition, maybe we should leave them to it, and they can leave actual football to the rest of us. Bit of this happens, it needs to be clear that they’re on their own. FIFA / UEFA shouldn’t recognise it as a legit competition and they should be responsible for their own development of the laws of the game. Full-on code split.

Cov fans weirdly vocal, considering they’ve only come back to the club over the past two or three seasons. The club spent about ten years pulling crowds of 1,500.

Yeah, their academy makes some money, but not the sort of sums they need to splash the cash the way they have been doing. This business with the eight year contracts and amortising the ‘assets’ over extended periods is a model that could only work if they’re building an all-conquering team and essentially not rebuilding the team for the next eight years. Football doesn’t work like that. They will be in big trouble at some point over the next few years.

The cheek of that fat Greek crook and his cronies. Where do you the draw the line? Two months? Two years? Two decades? Two billion? They’ve also literally admitted that they benefitted to the tune of £12.5m by breaking the rules. We’ll be having that back, thanks. Back down to League 1 lads. You’ll love it; you can play Derby for the Brian Clough trophy again.

You think Todd Boehly knows what he’s doing? The man who proposed they play a 4-4-3 formation?

Aston Villa are having their best season for about 25 years.

Castore have obviously done so many deals with pro sports teams because the money is right, not because the brand is admired or the product is good - their products are demonstrably substandard. If they want to buy a deal with Leicester, they will.

Weird innit. Unloved, forgotten and - most oddly - not that old. Speaking of bad kits, I’ve got a very nasty feeling we may end up with Castore after Adidas expires I’d rather we have TU at Sainsbury’s than that gaudy crap.

Red card killed it. We’ll still win the league; they’ll fail to get promoted.

“Let’s hope he can kick on”

I assume somebody’s already made the “this is a Sensible signing” joke?

30 laps of Monza last season.

Don’t forget Everton needed to shift players for FFP revenue. Maybe if they were in a stronger financial situation they wouldn’t have sold.

Forest - if they beat Blackpool at replay (a long way from guaranteed) - so we can smash the jokers.

Frankly who can blame the Italian clubs for wanting to drive transfer fees down. I’ve fifty times more respect for the transfer business policy of these clubs, than the like of Man Utd who are happy to repeatedly pay £70-90m for players who GENUINELY wouldn’t get in our side.

What, poor behaviour from Millwall supporters? Well I never. Disgusting club followed by morbidly obese simpletons, the products of inbreeding in South London’s shittiest sink estates. IQs so low it’s impossible to measure. Ghetto-dwelling cockney scum. You know when clubs experience severe financial trouble and you think ‘I don’t like them, but I don’t want the club to disappear’? Clubs you love to hate. Well, if Millwall ever found themselves in that position, I’d be egging on the banks and the HMRC. Then they can form a phoenix club, so they can play at being racist cockney hard men playing in some wank South London league. See how far that gets them.

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Haha, that’s dodgy as frig. Deleting the original post about his ‘loan’ too!

They signed exactly thirty, which is madness. Incidentally, wasn’t there an article linked on here a few months back about Forest owing millions in unpaid agents’ fees? Thirty signings equals a lot of agents’ fees.

Never had a filling, lads.