when_you're_smiling

No. They posted a £120m profit last year because they sold the women’s team to themselves for £200m. It is ludicrous. This from The Guardian’s report of it too - “In February, a Uefa report put Chelsea’s losses for 2025 even higher – at €407m (£355m). Sources close to the club say the difference between that loss figure and the one reported by the club on Wednesday is due to the different reporting requirements applied by European football’s governing body.”

Good to see this thread go lively again. A sign summer is nearly here! Interview attributed to Wisden on the Guardian website on Michael Carberry. https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2026/mar/18/michael-carberry-cricket-cancer-captaincy-proudest-moments-fight-england-london-opener Carberry/Nixon During the 2017 season, Carberry announced that he would be leaving Hampshire for Leicestershire and taking over as club captain at Grace Road. Winless in the Championship the previous summer, the Foxes made a promising start under their new skipper, winning one and drawing two of their first four matches. However, a bitter dispute between Carberry and head coach Paul Nixon led to Carberry’s removal as captain. While never formally announcing his retirement, he stepped away from the game with immediate effect, his contract with Leicestershire terminated by ‘mutual consent’ in October 2018. I was disappointed with how the PCA allowed Paul Nixon to do the things he did. That led to my decision to walk away. I didn’t go for the big song and dance, the guard of honour. I just walked away, which surprised a few. I went to Leicester with the purest of intentions, to try and turn a losing team and structure into a winning outfit. I had the benefit of playing at some very big clubs who were serial winners. I felt I was in a good space to lead some good, young players who needed some direction, the club needed direction. I knew we weren’t going to get a lot of new recruits so it was very much working with what we had. Could I turn the dial on some of the attitudes around the club?

It’s been rumoured that they’ll host the final in their new 115,000 stadia. It was part of the reason they’ve (without consultation) moved AFCON to every fours years because that’s what Infantino wants. Otherwise it makes no sense because it’s obviously their biggest money maker and if held at the same time as Euros and the Copa America will not have as many viewers so less sponsorship and won’t be able to be held in most of the continent due to the weather.

To be fair, Africans have probably been saying the same about the ‘punishment’ handed to Chelsea today for years of deliberate rule breaking.

Also, they knew this was coming. Apparently when he sold it Abrhamovic basically put in a £150m discount so the new owners could pay the fines for the old regime’s crimes. And then they get praise for being co-operative. Load of bollocks.

20th for home form. 18th for away. https://footystats.org/england/championship/home-away-league-table Edit - Also officially now the second worst defence only wise than Sheff Weds’ kids.

I might be wrong but I imagine it’s negligible and I don’t think it matters in Daka’s case. He won’t be sold anyway as he’s one of those out of contract. So he’ll disappear into the ether and we won’t have to pay the wages anymore. The likes of Skipp and those on longer contracts would, you’d like to think, have wage decrease written in for all relegations. Not just for the Prem. The numbers are greater partly because of inflation. It was a £14m loss when we went down to League One last time and, again, there’s more income this time around.

I don’t understand what you mean. If you sell Daka or anyone then you won’t have to pay their wages anymore. There would have to be sales. I’m not sure anyone would care about losing any of them to be honest. It should also be pointed out we were arguably in a worse position in 2008. At that point the wages to turnover ratio was 103% and it went down to 89% in League One because of the relegation clauses. That ratio is already lower than that now because of PSR. At the time we didn’t even own the stadium so didn’t have that asset as well and our income is much greater than it was then.

They’re not as gutless as our lot. We were all amazed we kept a 2-0 lead last time out.

You can’t rely on scoring four goals a game to win games.

I get why people obsess over strikers (Ayew) etc… However, if you’re defensively poor and give three goals away like that you’re never going to win. Those goals were so poor any side scores them at any level. We’d have been beaten by a non-league team. The back line is the reason why we’ll be going down. Are any of the defenders good enough to keep us up? I really don’t think so.

It died a while ago. This is the wake. Where’s the alcohol?

QPR player thought that was a red. Looked at the card colour first.

They haven’t had to do anything for any of their goals. All absolute gifts a Sunday League side would have taken.

It doesn’t matter who plays up front. If your defence is shit you’re ****ed anyway.

I saw it on social media. Booked it on the Friday and picked ticket up at the ground.

Tbf he was saying Iranians were walking around without any legs earlier this week so it’s not that high on the stupidity scale of the man.

We’d still have the same shite defence. We could have Messi up there and we’d have still gone 30 games without a clean sheet.

Iraq finished higher and are in the play offs, but requested those be delayed because they can’t fly to Mexico as they’re meant to later this month. FIFA have told them to get on a 25 hour bus and then fly there.

Decent. Counts for sod all though unless they see out the second half.

What an assist by BDCR! Absolutely meant the overhead kick towards the corner flag.

Fawa on now.

It’s way more accurate but I’m not sure ‘Get Behind the Arsehole’ is going to catch on as much as ‘Foxes Never Quit’.

Partly because we’re a lot smaller than most the teams.