dsr-burnley

They don't close Tesco if one of the backroom staff tests positive. Would they close a football club?

I'm not convinced that the current hiatus is worse than the suspension of league football for 6 seasons and the tens of millions of deaths in World War 2.

Fortunately that was misreported. What was said was that it will cost Burnley £50m in losses if the League is still stuck doing nothing by August, with no sign of a resumption to this season or a start to next season. I'm not sure what the cash reserves are now, but in June 2019 it was £41m, and the net transfer spend was only £8m last year, so we'll be OK for a while yet. But I agree the original post - it is outrageous that any club should be paying its top earners full whack while cutting the lower paid earners by 20% or while claiming government grants. At a minimum, they shouldn't get government grants unless all earners, or an equal proportion of high paid to low paid, have their salaries cut by 20%.

We're in the position where there is no play at the moment and no-one knows when there will be. Will the hypothetical solution be equally valid if we start again in April, in June, in spetember, in December, in March; if we have to stop play for the Euros; if the European cup is played or if it isn't? There would have to be a great number of solutions set aside for a vast number of potential but unlikely scenarios.

Is there any point banning public gatherings at football if they are going to allow workplaces and shops to stay open?

If the death rate on a cruise ship is 1% or 2.4%, bearing in mind that cruise ship populations are heavily skewed to towards the elderly, then the rate for the population as a whole should be much less.

Don't try the chicken wing elbow tap on Monday. If you do, watch Grealish roll on the floor, screaming in pain, and holding his face.

And even more dubiously, that company called Aston Villa Football Club Ltd. does all the football activities except they don't own any players or pay any players' or coaches' wages. (Hence the wages of Aston Villa Football Club being only £7m.) The player registrations are owned by, and the wages paid by, Aston Villa FC Ltd., and that company lost £8m as well - so £120m total. Aston Villa Footballl Club pays and admin fee to Aston Villa FC. Highly dodgy.

Debtors plus cash owned by the company = £115m. Creditors owed by the company = £234m. Net shortfall if all debtors and creditors had to be paid tomorrow = £119m, but obviously that won't happen. If it did you have the ground, the training ground(s), and of course the players to sell. Or get some more cash off the owners. 2018 - Income £160m, wages £119m, Admin and matchday expenses £26m, interest paid £3m, operating profit £12m. Players sold for £42m, players bought for £93m. 2019 - Income £181m, wages £150m, Admin and matchday expenses £40m, interest paid £6m, operating loss £15m. Players sold for £80m, players bought for £119m.

There's more to being a defender than scoring goals, you know. But if you want a goalscoring full back, Erik Pieters has scored a couple - you can have him for the right price.

That's exactly how they depreciate a player - as if he was plant and machinery. If you sell a player for £60m on 31st May 2019, the full sale proceeds count as income; if you buy a player for £60m on 31st May 2019, the purchase cost will be spread over the next 5 years starting from year ended 2020. So buy a player for £60m, sell a player for £60m, and you have made £60m profit. It's the fantasy land of accountants, I'm afraid. Those of us at the business end tend to think differently from the logical theorists in their ivory towers.

Let's be really technical here. When a player is running at 33cm per hundredth of a second, his back foot is doing twice that speed; and probably more pertinently, the defender's back foot may be moving at that speed too. Now we're getting to a combined speed of over a yard between frames. Which is a lot when they think they can judge it to the inch.

Actually I have just re-read the rule and there is a footnote to say that "the moment the ball is played" is defined by "*The first point of contact of the 'play' or 'touch' of the ball should be used" . So if you are onside at the moment the player first touches the ball but offside a hundredth of a second later when the ball leaves his boot, you're OK.

But is it? I don't think the laws of the game make it clear whether offside is to be judged at the moment the players' foot makes contact with the ball, the moment the ball leaves the player's foot about a hundredth of a second later, or at any time during the process or throughout the process. That's four different possibilities, and if you're judging to the inch, they will not give the same answer. A player's foot can move at least 6 inches during a hundredth of a second. Why are they judging offside to the nearest inch when they don't have the technology to do it, and they don't even know what the rule is they're judging by? The old rule was straightforward enough - "level" is onside. Why don't they go back to that?

I'm a Burnley fan, we benefitted from VAR on Saturday, and both the VAR decisions were right (though the first one is a stupid rule). And yet I still think that Saturday's game would have been better without it. That's how bad it is. If they would abolish the attacker's handball rule, and they would go back to the old offside rule where "level" as judged by normal human vision meant onside, then I would accept it. As it is now, bin bin bin.

League Cup runners up don't get a European place at all - if the League Cup winners don't need it, the place goes to 6th or 7th in the League. Same with the FA Cup. Maximum 7 qualifiers for Europe. 8th place can't get it.

I would think a defensive free kick in the box would become an attacking free kick on the edge of the box. Possibly make it indirect, I'm not fussy. The thing about slow left backs taking corners is the bit about "expeditiously". It's deliberately vague - my idea of how it might work in practice is if the ref thinks a team is not getting on with it - which at present happens in most games - he can warn them that he is on the ball. From then on, they had better not dally. They can move at normal game speed, but not slower. I think it would be one of those rules not needed very often as long as refs were willing to apply it firmly.

To be fair, Bardsley missed last night's game because of that back injury. We don't know whether he was exaggerating it, but he was definitely injured. But yes, we do waste time, as do most other clubs, and the three miutes last Sunday was definitely shorter than it should have been - especially with the VAR. My solution would be to change the law so that if a team is not taking their dead ball expeditiously - good word - the ref can give it the other way. So if they don't take a throw-in it becomes a throw the other way, if they don't take a goal kick it becomes a corner, and so forth. And it would cover things like one player moving slowly to the ball and then moving away to let someone else move slowly to the ball; standing pointing instead of taking the throw; slow goal kicks; kicking the ball in the wrong direction and walking slowly after it. Anything that is obvious time wasting but a booking is too much of a punishment. It would soon stop.

They may finish the game exhausted, but aren't they supposed to? If a player looks like he hasn't been trying, it's probably because he hasn't been trying. As for miserable, there isn't a man in the side who hasn't signed at least 2 contracts with Burnley. They don't want to leave, that's why the average age is increasing,

Point being that you could and probably should have had a second penalty; but you could and probably should have had your goal disallowed. Even in just the one game, it worked both ways. (Though with Taylor refereeing, it's pot luck what he gives and what he doesn't.)

Is anyone remotely concerned about the tackle on Cork that led to your goal? All the Sky commentators agreed that going through the back of the man to get the ball made it a foul.

Which makes it no wonder that tennis players are forever being told they are tired. Oh, hang on ...

Leicester's wage bill in 2013-14 was £26.9m plus £9.4m promotion bonuses. Burnley's wage bill in 2013-14 was £15.4m plus £6.1m promotion bonuses. Nottingham Forest was £27.2m.

That's the point - I don't know. I have been told that the admin deal was 2p in the pound for all creditors, and I've been told that the new owners paid all the debts in full even though there was no legal obligation to, and I have little idea whether either or both is true. Was the stadium sold to a third party, then? Who did you pay the rent to - the builders if they claimed it back for unpaid debts? The banks who took it in lieu of mortgage? (That sounds the more likely.)

Rightly or wrongly, what other fans remember is that by the end of 2014, Leicester City had received approx £140 million in share capital and loans from the owners, and that under previous owners you had paid 2p in the pound towards the cost of the new stadium. (Is that second part factually accurate? It's certainly widely believed.) I know Sean Dyche is widely mocked for mentioning (perhaps more than once!) that Leicester had financial advantages over Burnley, but it's undoubtedly true that they did.