Viva

So we go for the sponsor that gives us the most money. Seems a pretty straightforward decision to me when we are trying to stay in the Prem and need all the money we can get.

Would be nice to just talk about a player and whether he seems a good signing or not. Yes we all know we aren’t the team we was 2 years ago.

Do we need this kind of comment every time we make a signing?

He got dropped after the second match.

There is no chance of us getting £12m for him. We’re into a new year now, so I would rather take a bit of a hit on him now rather than have him leave on a free in two years. £6-8m would be good for me if we can find a buyer.

But still there.

I don’t know the exact amount we would have needed to comply. Obviously we wouldn’t have bought in January and sacked Rodgers if we wasn’t close to relegation, which would have saved a lot. We might have been able to get Barnes out the door earlier for example or KDH if we was close to being under the limit. i don’t know what the plans would have been, but we could have been in a position to comply with the rules if we had stayed up.

Like I said too, we could have sold another player as well to comply.

You said that we didn't forecast a Fofana sale. I meant that we did probably plan to sell him in the following summer, but sold him early instead. We also probably intended to sell Maddison regardless of whether we went down or not. Without relegation, we would have had time to sell the necessary players to stay within the rules. The trouble was that we didn't expect or plan for relegation.

If we had stayed in the Prem, we would have had up until June 30th to stay within the rules. So while we might not have planned for Fofana to leave when he did, we probably had him down for leaving in the summer. Same with Maddison and possibly other players.

I think fans need to live with the reality of where we are. The past has happened and we went some why to righting some of the wrongs by getting promoted at the first opportunity. We aren't a top 8 team now, but in future I imagine we have aspirations to get back into the top half. For now though, it's going to be a spell of looking after the finances and keeping on the right side of the rules. This will mean selling good players from time to time. I hope we don't have the same negative reactions every time we sell a player in the next few years, because that's what needs to happen.

We would have been in a similar mess. We broke the rules due to sacking Rodgers and spending heavily in the January to try and avoid relegation. If we hadn't done either of those, we probably would have still been relegated. We are trying to stay within the rules now though, so surely that's a good thing?

No we didn't. Mistakes were made. Good decisions got us back in the Premier League though. If we want to keep within the rules, then we sometimes have to sell our best assets unfortunately.

That's what happens with any team when they get relegated. We still have sellable assets and I'm sure there will be quite a few incomings in the coming weeks.

I'm pretty sure Cooper would have known he was leaving when he joined us. Still seemed pretty happy to me.

I’d hope for B or C. I’d sell for less than that too and take a hit if needed.

Barnes and Maddison were both sold for a fair price. KDH too I think.

I agree that was a mistake. I assume they thought he would take over Kasper’s number one spot though like he did. Unfortunately he was poor, although not helped by a non existent centre mid and defence.

You can only sell players if there is a buyer. Would you have preferred not to buy Mads and have stuck with Ward? Enzo changed the style and didn’t want anything to do with Souter. You can’t just get rid of him either.

If we spend all our transfer budget on 29 year olds on long contracts, then I’ll criticise them. I think it would have been tricky negotiating contracts for new players when Vardy and Schmeichel were sat on £140k a week deals. Those times are changing now though and we are currently not chasing a top 4 spot. So I would imagine we can rebuild a bit more sustainably. If people want that though, then they can’t criticise when we sell our best players. That’s what we would need to do. What would it take for you to defend them?

Just trying to give some balance on a predominantly negative forum. I don’t follow the crowd in hounding Rudkin and Top etc. We have enjoyed more good times supporting City than most fans at other clubs could ever dream of. You wouldn’t think it though reading some of the comments on here.

We spent a fair bit in the Jan trying to stay up and sacking Rodgers. Yes wages got too high trying to chase a top 4 spot. We then pushed it hard in the Championship to give us the best chance of going up. I’d still rather we did that then play it completely safe and for example sell players like Tielemans straight after he won us the FA Cup. It would have been hard to completely break up that team after two very close top 4 efforts.

To help make sure we get promoted.

We had a wage bill of a top 8 team and also spent £40m or so. Easy to see why we could make a loss in the Championship.

He lost his place for the last match.