OntarioFox

Football is such a shit thing mannnn

Just realise Woyo Coulibaly is playing for Sassuolo. Just made a massive defensive header to prevent a Lecce winner. Three minutes left...

Udinese equaliser... ruled out! Pure drama And that's Vardy's shift over... fingers crossed this is how it stays... now a late Sassuolo winner would be LOVELY... but that's surely asking too much?

YESSSS 2-2 SASSUOLO They'd just hit the crossbar too... rule that one out ya bastards! Now all up to Cremonese to hold on...

Red card rescinded? Yeesh

Yeah, that's absolutely right. Forest's transfer policy after promotion was to throw as much shit at the wall as possible and see what stuck. Annoyingly it worked. Then again, we've had countless managers now who have point-blank refused to use the best resources at our disposal, right back to Rodgers' personal hatred of Soyuncu and insisting on using Amartey instead. We could have had 50 senior players and the likes of Cooper, RVN, Cifuentes and Rowett would all still have stuck with a core bunch of 15 chancers and the odd tweak here and there. I think I'm more worried about the off-the-field stuff than the playing squad - really, at this point even if we're forced to throw the kids in next year (as we all wanted to see far more of this season), it can't be any worse than our worst 2nd tier points tally in 142 years. But there is the small voice in the back of my head telling me that if we don't go up at the first time of asking, and those parachute payments run out, the cashflow issues are going to be huge even if our wage bill is slashed. It will dwarf what Derby went through, and there was a very real risk of them going the way of Bury and Macclesfield at one point.

Ruled out by the killjoys

This is a rollercoaster

SASSUOLO EQUALISER 🗣️🗣️🗣️🚨🚨🚨

Lecce also go ahead

You sly old dog

Thing is, even a 50% cut on 40k is still a 20k salary, which is astronomical for the third tier. Two players on that much would surpass the base level TV deal on their own. TWO. We can't afford to have even one player on more than 10k in my opinion, and they would have to be a talisman to justify it. That's how far up shit creek we are financially. The numbers from matchday revenue are going to become massively more important without TV money. We made £20 million this season just gone, and that's likely to be lower next time around with less demand for hospitality and more general sale tickets. Season tickets are the only guaranteed income and 22k sold would bring in around £11 million. At the last count our wage bill was supposedly around £45 million per season. The majority of that is condensed into 10-12 high earners, some of which will be off the books (Ricardo, Ayew, Daka, Lascelles were all reportedly on £30k or more per week and Lascelles is the only one we're likely to even consider extending). But there are plenty left who are still in contract. So yeah, a fire sale of the likes of Choudhury, Vestergaard, Skipp, Souttar, Fatawu, Winks, Faes - ideally with some hefty transfer fees for one or two - is the only way we're complying with the rules in League One - which have tightened overnight with the recent vote. Loans with wage cover or an obligation will not be enough. As it is we likely need to halve our wage bill to have any hope in hell of meeting the 65% cap and avoiding sanctions. Personally, I can't see a situation where we don't end up with some sort of fresh points deduction or transfer embargo being imposed on us, if not next season then the one after if we don't go straight back up. Edit - re: Fatawu, he's reportedly not one of our high earners, but I've included him as despite how shit he's been for the past six months, he's still one of the only members of this sorry lot who we could possibly get a sizeable transfer fee for.

There's the turd nugget on top of this shitcake of a season then. I hate football.

Taiwan may as well just get Ukraine on the phone and strike a deal to produce drones with them. Russia has found it hard enough mounting a land invasion, good bloody luck to the Chinese doing it from the sea with a finite number of ships when their target has essentially got an opportunity to throw an endless supply of manless kamikazes at them for £2000 a pop. US military gear, as crazy as it sounds, is outdated and behind the curve. The advent of drones has been a huge leveller and countries with traditional militaries are being left behind, as the meat grinder of young Russians in Ukraine proves. Why spend millions on missiles and anti aircraft guns when you could do the same damage with something you could whip up in a garage for a few grand? And yes, sure, China could absolutely fight back with drones, like Russia is now doing. But again, having to do it from the sea, with a finite supply, from navy ships that are more or less sitting ducks... it won't be nearly as easy for them as some people think.

Depends which ones though. The likes of Vestergaard, Skipp and Choudhury are all in contract and not shifting them is going to sting us massively unless by some miracle they have League One relegation clauses and significant ones at that. If the £2 million TV revenue figure is true, Choudhury alone is reportedly on 50k a week which is more than we'd earn. Him and Skipp alone would cost us £5.2 million next year in wages and we'd need them to take a 50% pay cut to even entertain being compliant. Even if we both finished top and rode the maximum number of TV appearances, and backed it up with cup run prize money, we're going to struggle to clear £10 million which makes 65% of that (£6.5 million) almost certainly untenable. Basically, King Power are going to have to pull another incredibly dodgy advertising deal out of their arse to cover our wage bill, or we're nailed on for another points deduction. And let's face it, aside from another BC Game scam company, nobody is paying the money we need for the complete lack of exposure that comes with third-tier football.

Thought I was on General Football and Sport for a split second, then remembered. Just in time for our arrival! But nah, the rules are looser, we're just going to spend our way out of the league eh KPFC gang? Absolutely no way in hell we comply even with the extra 15% leeway, let alone make wholesale squad changes through the transfer market.

Well that's where he's dead, dead wrong. Spurs going down is something the football world as a whole will never, ever let them live down even if they claw their way back at the first time of asking. We live in the permanently online banter era and them - a Greedy Six proponent of the breakaway league - going down is the second biggest thing to happen in the Premier League era behind... well, us winning it. People won't forget. It'll be something they get the piss taken out of them on the terraces forevermore. Think 'third in a two horse race' on steroids, from every club. 'Who went down from a six team league?' Tottenham f***ing Hotspur'

Two teams saved in one season? Rowett masterclass.

About time Restore stood a candidate in one of these - would be very interesting how many votes they cream off of Reform when they contest seats. That's about all I'm clinging to as far as the next General Election goes: it would be very funny if we're spared PM Farage because the right does what the left normally does and tears itself apart over ideological purity. Bonus points if the wolves are kept at the door long enough to implement voting system change to kill off the chances of them ever getting a parliamentary majority. Back to Burnham - he's popular in Manchester because he communicates the things his administration does. That alone would be night and day if he takes the PM's job and actually has a comms strategy, rather than just letting Labour take a battering from all corners and being ignored when they do something right.

Scenes when Saints get a 50 points deduction, relegating them and leaving us... Oh, third bottom and down anyway. Never mind.

nahhhhh had to be seniorman

Cartwright comes on and we're catching strays about relegation on the commentary, is nothing sacred For what it's worth, Falkirk would absolutely smash us from what I've seen tonight, they play good counter-attacking football, were unlucky not to bag early on.

Boro choking under pressure like they have done all season it seems

Not unless he's willing to be a bit-part off the bench and mentor young players. Next year is just that crucial - not in the sense of our financial future relying on instant promotion, but in the sense that we need a bonfire of everything that has gone before. We can't afford to bollocks up the rebuild for the sake of sentimentality, even if a 39-40 year old Vardy would still bag plenty at League One level. And that's not just me talking with blue tinted glasses, he's got seven goals in Serie A for a relegation fodder side while being injured for long spells, which is more than Ayew and Daka have managed all season in the Championship. I voted yes, but only in the sort of role Dickov had last time we were in the third tier. And that would frankly require a manager of Pearson's caliber to happen, so I'm doubtful.

It would be very 2020s Labour for them to spend two years chasing Reform votes by engaging in the culture war, then deciding to follow that up with a guy who has been on record as wanting parts of the NHS privatised. I guess in their heads, do all Reform's work for them so they don't have anything to take credit for after the next election.