Ric Flair

You did indeed tell me this a few days ago.

Not sure, doubt they'd be chuffing up £70-80k a week though on full backs.

Looks far better in that video than the YouTube ones.

That article claiming we don't need to sell players 😂😂😂😂

How does that Union Berlin keeper get a gig over Hermansen?

Not quite. Whilst we paid the likes of Vardy and Kasper £100k + a week on their 2nd / 3rd contract with us, we were paying the likes of Perez and Vestergaard straight off the bat £80-90k a week, tripling the wages of the likes of Castagne, Praet and Soumare etc. It culminated in a totally unsustainable wage bill. What we needed to do better was recognise the wage structure of new players and the wage structure of players who succeeded with us and were offered better terms. This is what we did in the early years but as we became more established we did push it to the max. I still think our ambition wouldn't have diminished by being more sustainable on wages of new players and to have been willing to cash in on more players. Eduardo Macia was a fantastic head of recruitment but that fell apart when he went and Congerton came in.

I think you've misunderstood what our original formula was. It was being progressive enough to know when to cash in on players that we've flipped for a profit or who were at risk of running their contract down. We never sold more than one key asset a summer but neither did we sell other players regularly enough and slowly but surely if you either stop doing that and/or increase the wage bill at an unsustainable then it goes bang. We are paying the price for that for years to come. That was not the nature of the beast, winning the FA Cup and bottling top 4 twice was not because we let things get out of control. There's a misplaced notion that we should be careful what we wish for and the fall out of all this is the price we had to pay for winning things. Bollocks.

Let's have it right. We did not win the league or win the FA Cup by being ambitious to the point our wages were more than our total revenue. We stopped doing the things that got us to where we'd gotten to and it's quickly unravelled. It makes my skin crawl that people are quick to point to our success as a way of defending our current plight which shows no signs of significant change with the same incumbents in charge. Anyone part of our successful periods on and off the field, massive well done. Anyone part of our diabolical decline and the financial situation we are in. Utterly disgraceful and borderline unforgivable there's been little change. The former doesn't excuse the latter, if anything it makes it even harder to stomach than if we and them had always been the pits.

The thing is, having certain systems without the highest calibre of player is often how lesser teams can become effective and over achieve. And likewise the system or rigid way of playing is less important if you are like Real Madrid and can field the best individual players in the world and allow them the freedom to show it. Sadly the former is also a hindrance if you aren't careful as the system no longer suits the group of current players or it's been countered against by the opposition who've worked out how to negate it. As with everything, you want a coach who's able to adapt and evolve.

I fully concur. I've always held Scotch eggs in the elite tier of snacks. Graham Potter is anything but elite.

I think it'll be a manager that has put themselves forward for it rather than us go asking for permission for an already employed manager. Fair to say Oscar Garcia and Steve Cooper are likely to have applied....

Maximus Allegrius?

He's extremely pragmatic depending on the resources he has available and the opposition he faces. West Brom's possession stats varied significantly and on average was just over 51%. So you are very much mistaken. His principles are possession football but not for the sake of it. In the PL we'd be more often than not the underdog and likely to be counter attacking.

Any word from him yet? His wife has been very busy blocking people on twitter (me included) so she could have a full time job on her hands erasing all the Chelsea mob, they are seething with his appointment 😂

At the last time of looking nearly every PL club is loss making but the rule changes coming force all clubs to turn a profit as they are only able to spend 85% dropping down to 70% of revenue on wages and transfers. Suddenly club ownership becomes a little more attractive (if it wasn't already - it's a billionaires play thing) There's no proof that we'd not interest a host of other billionaires, some might see what we've already achieved and think they can tap in to that whilst avoiding the mistakes and recent failures. Either way it's massively naive to think that there's no future for this club without our owners and an largely untouched board. It's also extremely scary that in the eyes of some they can do whatever they want without scrutiny no matter how badly we faltered. A complete mockery of the core aspect of being custodians of our football club - the words they have referenced before as well.

I'm not saying that at all. Our club have divulged the bare minimum on almost everything for years so there's nothing to accuse them of exaggerating. The silence is deafening. Maresca said in January that the club kept him in the dark on our forthcoming financial problems. Brendan Rodgers said the club kept him in the dark on the inability to sign players in the summer of 2022. If either of these managers weren't telling the truth then due to point A of club silence how are we to take such statements? And if they were being dishonest then why did they not attempt to halt the repeated public declarations from both managers on the said topics? As I've said before and I'll say it again, our club don't help themselves with our fans. There's a complete disconnect. Couple that with the financial problems we face and the ramifications of this, in the midst of those people responsible being kept in posts to carry on as normal, why should any leniency be shown?

Sorry I've got confused, any 2023/24 breach would still be handled by the EFL then as we were a Championship club that season. The PL will only be responsible for sorting the 22/23 breach and if we were to breach 24/25.

Oh its a hard yes from me

Interesting. Why then has the EFL never passed any charges over to the PL? For example the fine we paid for our breach from 2013/14 was settled by way of a fine to the EFL rather than the PL deal with it? Other clubs have had similar too, most recently Sheffield Utd although not a PSR breach.

It's going to be interesting. The PL have never taken over such a charge and implemented it. There's been plenty of outcomes where the EFL have had to action it by way of a fine or in Sheffield Utd's case a deferred points deduction, albeit for a different reason that a potential PSR breach. If the PL do indeed hand down a points deduction if we breach 2023/24, then the legal minefield will explode. Whether we get such a deduction altered or not is highly debatable but it would be the 1st of it's kind and likely to be open to serious appeal.

Yeah, I think we might have to cave in on some very low release clauses (without making a loss for PSR) in the event of relegation to convince players to join us. This would mean we're probably limited to paying a max of £10-15m for a player with a release clause of 80% of that if we go down next season.

He's an extremely promising player who showed it in the handful of games he played last season. It's not unusual that his progression continues even at a higher level, can think of many examples of that. We might have little choice but to blood him more anyway, likewise Alves and Braybrooke.

Think there'll be some very attractive release clauses in new signings contracts should we go down.

I think we could be looking at breaches and points deductions or fines for a few more years to come. It's messy.

Wouldn't ever risk an ounce of humility about the catastrophic mistakes they've made though will they? Bang on about loyalty and yet our outgoing manager has essentially called our club dishonest at worst and economical with the truth at best in relation to problems that preceded him.