Babylon

I've done Home Alone and Empire Strikes Back. It was a really good experience, I loved the home alone one at Christmas time, with the ice rink nearby at the Natural History Museum, pretty magical.

Until we get the PSR numbers and see our argument, we could still have a case. We could rightfully argue that their "cheating" cost us position prize money, relegation, millions in sponsorship, millions on player negotiations etc, if our loss is at a certain amount. Obviously, we have little case if it's gigantic.

This thread is depressing. "Look what you could have won"

I'd imagine we were planning on that; we'd been talking about the importance of player trading again in the programme notes etc. We were probably planning on selling at the end of the season for both.

Indeed, which makes you think they also believe it's a collective issue rather than just Rudkin. I've tried to point out, that there has been a whole raft of issues. Some man-made, some not, and that has all piled up to create the situation we are in. You can't just point to X and say that caused it. People try to simplify it here too much. From the club loading us with debt to build the training ground, more debt to expand the stadium. Injuries to key assets (some awful luck, some I still think are down to Rodgers). Covid. Given too much power to Rodgers (somewhat understandable considering how good we were for a large chuck of time). Yeah there is some real tangible stuff like sticking with Rodgers roo long, but even that is fraught with issues... did that sacking and then relegation push over FFP? You can list 100 things. Problem x, caused problem y, impacting problem z, and so on. And we'll never know, who did, or said what. So, that's why I just go for collective blame and trust that if someone was indeed failing spectacularly individually, they would just be removed, just like they do with poor managers.

And if that were the case, and he failed to sell x y and z, they would or should have said we need to sell a different asset. Be it Barnes or anyone else remotely actually desirable that would garner interest. Or if year on year they believe that to be HIS fault, he should have been removed. Or perhaps they shouldn't have approved £50m worth of players in the championship.

Why do people always seem to link saying they are all culpable as somehow trying to "deflect" blame? It literally means he's going to share a percentage of the blame. This isn't about sitting back and trusting someone, the financial stuff has many hands on the tiller. They've not just let Rudkin loose with a cheque book and are now somehow shocked we have financial issues. This would be an approved strategy; the financial stuff and budgets would be agreed and signed off before he goes off and does stuff. (We failed FFP before, we've had this stratergy before he took his role). You can say he bears more of the responsibility here and there, of course. Like appointing shit chief scouts, and letting Rodgers dictate too much. You can even say he's over spent on x or y persons wages if you want (he didn't choose the player). But they've approved the amount he's got to spend in total. If they give him a budget of £100m on wages, and he spends it on wages, don't be shocked that you suddenly have a £100m wage spend. . We'd likely still be in trouble even if we'd done ok and not got relegated.

People's anger needs to be spread around, John Rudkin does not run this football club. He answers to the board and Top and there are others there who have their hand on the finances more than he. They could have, at any point, put a stop to it by saying NO. No to that signing, no to that contract, no, we can't overspend by £100m a season. This isn't one persons doing, our game plan would have been accepted and approved by all the senior management and the owners.

There have been numerous iterations of FFP, voted on. We certainly didn't vote on it originally, but since in the premier league I'm not sure, I'm presume we have. But that's a red herring, as to play in Europe; we need to follow their FFP, which always gets adapted to some level in the premier league. So it's like putting a gun to their head and then handing them the voting slip.

It was secured against future income, we can choose to pay it however we want. Could refinance. Could switch to another lender (king power)

Define “f.cked”? If we get promotion we will be in a position of increased income and having our finances under control. We might get points deducted and eventually relegated. But we should be back under control and in a position to stay within any ffp we need to. We’d be back in the champ and have two years of parachutes to try and get promoted. If we don’t get promoted it’s going to be tricky. But we should be able to get things under control. It will just end up being much much harder to get out of the league as we’d only have one season of decent parachute payments left, probably have a points deduction and need to sell players.

“Trust”… nothing to do with it.

Not sure it’s as simple as that. With the quirks of the accounting, selling for example Soumare for a few million. Despite actually getting the money in the bank, with all the amortisation that’s done. It could make it worse. I’m sure someone else can explain it clearly, I’ve about had enough of all this shit ha. Thats why it’s so valuable to sell a player who came through the ranks. Pure profit!

Some likely, some highly unlikely. They don’t take much shit from the report I read. Very much a “you knew the rules, no excuses”.

We don’t know, but it is possible which is the point. No point predicting they’ll do x,y and z. Because they know, if they don’t play by the rules we’ll just take them to court. All we have done so far is ask to be punished at the correct times by the correct people according to their own rules. We won. We will be playing by the rules as they are written next season, so we’ll be compliant, submit business plans etc. I see few reasons as to why they wouldn’t so long as we have a plan in place and have likely sold a player or two. So long as players agree there would be no rush to get the papers signed.

Winks's career was going down the pan before we gave him a chance, and who signs Ricardo with his injury record? It's a punt. Yes Ndidi will be gone I'm sure.

Clearly there will be other outs, I'm not saying it's the team we start with. Just trying to put down on paper a potential starting point, considering we lose so many and have a few out on loan. It literally clearly says on the EFL website that you can. "Yes, Clubs can offer new contracts to existing players, though this will be dependent upon the circumstances of the individual Club and will be determined by the League."

If you read the Everton report, they take into account a huge amount of mitigating and aggravating things. From trends of losses (or up down), from selling players (or not), curtailing buying players. We'll argue greater losses due to relegation, based on sporting advantage gained by other teams found to fail PSR. We'll claim things all the way down to paying staff during COVID, rather than taking goverment funds as mitigating. They might get ignored, but the point is I don't think we can possibly know what we will get. With no formulae to follow, we are just at someone's whim.

So, if we can't sign players and with many out of contract. Our starting base (if still in the championship) could be, presuming we sold those three to raise the money Keepers Hermansen Stoarcyzk Ward Iversen Defenders Faes Coady Souttar Justin Brunt Thomas Kristiansen Nelson Midfield KDH Ricardo Winks Choudhury Soumare Braybrook Alves Wingers Mavididi Mcateer Marcal Albrighton (Potential extra year) Maswanhise Forwards Cannon Daka Vardy (Potential extra year) It's not a terrible starting point.

Amen

I don't see how FFP has anything to do with that. That's to do with clubs having more income. The top clubs can still walk in and take anyone they want pretty much.

Yes we did have good reason to vote for it, the owners wanted to get promoted and spend money to do so. Hence the losses. Everyone is already blown out the water, the horse has bolted on trying to contain it. The money these clubs generate from things like the champions league means the rest of us are bringing a spoon to a knife fight. They've just upped the prize money again for the "elite" clubs. How many clubs outside the big few have won the FA CUP or League in the last 28 years? All we are doing with FFP and PSR is maintaining the status quo and not allowing any others have a go. The only chance others have at the minute is a total miracle like ours or taking advantage of other clubs awful management. It isn't due to any levelled playing field.

Well, we voted against them when first implemented. https://www.financialfairplay.co.uk/latest-news/financial-fair-play-rules-introduced-into-the-championship The notion that we voted for it because owners didn't want to fund losses forever.... Errrrr.... just stop spending, you don't need a rule for that.

That is the biggest pile of shite I've ever read. You're calling it a miracle for a reason you total and utter goon. As for voting for FFP and PSR and the like, we essentially have to follow UEFA to a point (where we hold no vote), otherwise we'd never be able to play in Europe. So the notion we were HAPPY about it is total nonsense really.

I’ve sacked but all off completely barring a few city games and feel great.