SkuseMe

Think we've been okay since the 3rd goal.

Clubs have breached because they've "bet the house" on finishing a certain place in the league, be it for European prize money or for a particular PL 'merit payment', or because they thought the PL wouldn't take its rules seriously, or because they felt they were smarter than the rules, or because they calculated that a points deduction was a cost worth taking. They're easy to account for if you accept spending £minimum PL broadcast revenue + £other income + £35M, but some choose to spend more than this and then must hope for the best, be it performances on the pitch or legal loopholes. We were obviously one of these and did disastrously on the pitch. PSR does nothing for levelling competition between those have modest commercial income / gate receipts and the whales of the league, but then it was never designed to do that.

Same and it surely won't work on this occasion. Time to drop the appeals and face up to this. Precedent is set now that 3 points is the starting point for a breach, with further penalty points then added for significant or severe breaches. A significant breach adds 3 points, as Forest and Everton found out, but Forest's punishment was reduced by 2 points on account of their "excellent cooperation". Everton breached by about £20M and Forest by about £35M, with both classed as "significant". Our breach was £108M minus allowable deductions, so in the £50M-£80M range? It wouldn't surprise me if the eventual figure is labelled a severe breach, especially given how hostile we've been throughout the process, but we at least haven't falsified figures TMK. 8-9 points would be my guess. I don't believe the penalty for administration is pertinent in setting a ceiling or guide for PSR breaches. The financial mismanagement / jeopardy is much more severe in those circumstances, yes, but it's a different charge to breaching the PL's competition rules. If Man City are found guilty on most of their 115 counts, for instance, it would be wishful thinking of them to argue the punishment must be below 9 points because they remain solvent.

I see no prospect of Potter lowering his sights this far, even if he should. Reckon he'd be grateful to return to Brighton if United and England are no longer interested, but he won't want to risk a relegation in his first season back. +1 for Corberan.

Never in doubt 😂😂😂

They are and they'll all fancy playing us too, but we're also at home for three of those and we'll have the better of it against all apart from possibly Southampton. Norwich came to us in great form and were made to look awful frankly. West Brom will offer little offensively and the first goal will be critical. Saints only have one way of playing too and it should suit us much better.

Ipswich will rightly be odds against for their two away games and Boro's a 50/50 tomorrow. Saints, Boro and Bristol are the only top half sides they've beaten away, and they did so when these sides were in poor form. As desperately bad as we've been in front of goal, 2 wins and a draw from the remaining 4 will likely be enough. Stop missing the sitters and we'll get there, even with Enzo weighing us down.

Time to go or there'll be no time left!

We got away from them in 13/14 didn't we, breaking their spending rules and bulldozing the league in the process. Now 10 years later we're back and history is close to repeating; this is the more obvious narrative for why the EFL have overreached here. They don't want clubs to be successful while overspending, as it lessens the value of the competition. In doing so, however, they've only succeeded in exposing how embarrassingly incompetent they and their rules are. No powers to implement PL sanctions at all by the looks of things, it's not even a case of them just falling guilty of trying to expedite the process. With the PL looking to ditch the current system soon and with the separate nature of PL-EFL rules, I'm even less sure what this all means for next season or the one afterwards. If we're back up as we should be, I wonder if the PL has the power to sanction us for this season, or even for our PSR breach last season, given we suffered the ultimate penalty anyway of relegation. We'll be a newly promoted club, after all, rather than an "existing customer".

I'll be very surprised if it doesn't go to Summerville, who is now cemented at the summit of Fotmob and Whoscored's 'player ratings' tables. KDH is 3rd and 5th respectively. Perhaps if we win the title and Leeds miss out altogether that would swing the award his way, but otherwise he may be a better bet for wooden spoon, given Szmodics' achievement is with a club near the bottom.

Much prefer your proposal Jeff, let us all have at it! However, what you do is loudly challenge the rules as they've been formulated, find support among other PL clubs and push for change. You don't opt to become a pariah effectively by cheating the system, or if you do then you do so with conviction. Stay true to the course. Why didn't we go bigger in the summer, embracing our position that FFP is a nonsense and we've chosen to play by our own rules here? Instead we've cut our cloth these past two seasons in a nod to compliance, despite full awareness that this wouldn't be nearly enough to avoid sanctions anyway. The squad's worse for it and our penalty will seemingly be the same as if we had kept spending.

If posters are correct in that the maximum deduction is locked at around 6 points for a PSR/FFP breach, we really should have gone big over these past two transfer windows in order to "future-proof" the team somewhat. In for a penny, in for a pound. Alas this strategy is likely now closed to us due to embargoes and we'll probably be subject to an onerous business plan. Indeed if it wasn't for embargoes we'd be much better off embracing an annual 6-point deduction for a period and re-establishing our position in the middle of the Prem. There's almost always at least 6 points between 14th and 18th after all, while we could comfortably make a mockery of punishments of this size for any seasons spent in the Championship (even in freaky seasons like now we'd be a shoo-in for the playoffs and then much too strong for those we face there). Of course the above strategy is totally reliant on Top being comfortable sustaining massive losses and doesn't work if the leagues refuse to let us register players. 🫤

It's an interesting discussion, teams' luck or lack thereof. I've always been of the mind that it's too elusive to determine over the course of a whole campaign, but another late Ipswich charge, encouraged me to dive deeper into areas perhaps more commonly associated with good or bad fortune. Points' change if refs blew on 90': Leicester = 0 Ipswich = 0 Leeds = -2 Saints = -8 This surprised me most, but it's Southampton who have struck at the death to keep themselves vaguely in the hunt. The table would certainly make for easier reading if injury time were abolished. Own goals gained: Leicester = 0 (for 1, against 1) Ipswich = -2 (for 4, against 6) Leeds = +1 (for 3, against 2) Saints = +2 (for 2, against 0) Ipswich have scored a surprising amount of own goals, surpassing those they've benefitted from. Some own goals are the product of poor defending and some the product of great attack play, rather than misfortune, so it isn't safe to conclude they have been unlucky here. Football xG league table, excluding midweek: Leicester = 65 points Ipswich = 63 points Leeds = 69 points Saints = 59 points Leeds most wasteful of the four sides according to this resource; they were incredibly fortunate in the away game but I suppose that was 1 match out of 36. Otherwise teams pretty much maintain their gaps. Penalties gained: Leicester = +11 (for 11, against 0) Ipswich = 0 (for 3, against 3) Leeds = +5 (for 6, against 1) Saints = +1 (for 3, against 2) Ipswich and Southampton may reasonably have anticipated positive scores here, given the significant advantages they've enjoyed over the average opponent this season (+350 and +550 touches in the box respectively, for instance), but it isn't safe to conclude that luck has shaped the wide divisions seen. Deflections and woodwork: No information is available on this from what I can gather, as much as I'm instantly reminded of Morsy's late leveller. It's impossible to wade in here, candidly. Obvious referee errors: Leicester: it doesn't get more obvious than the vital disallowed goal against Leeds, which has blown the race wide open. Ipswich: "referee apology" search reveals officials apologised for two goals awarded to Preston in their 3-2 loss. Leeds: "apology" search reveals Rotherham were apologised to in what was admittedly a 3-0 loss to Leeds, for a handled goal. Southampton: PGMOL apologised to Stoke for not awarding a penalty in their 1-0 loss to Southampton. It's impossible to gain an accurate impression of refereeing incidents in other teams' games and so this segment was pointless, just what appeared on the first Google search page lol, but I didn't want to miss out mentioning Daka's disallowed goal. 😅 So to conclude, it isn't obviously apparent that Ipswich have been lucky, in coming back from behind as often as they have. They do have the tightest margins though, certainly of the top three, and in the crunch games it's Leicester who have had little or no luck.

With the FA Cup rearrangement and international break to be respected, the only options I can see would be to play it next Tues/Weds (too soon to sort you'd think) or face playing every midweek and weekend from Easter onwards. Not good for Saints if it's the latter, even if Preston are in a purple patch now.

Despite an upturn in form and excellent January window, Hull's recent home record now reads W1, D2, L2. They've only scored 4 goals in those 5 matches and have picked up more points away this season, so hardly a fortress. They're technically better than the standard sides in this league though and have that early season win to take confidence from; still one of the three hardest games left in my book, don't wish to underplay it.