ClaphamFox

This is simply not true. July 1 marks the beginning of a new accounting period. A number of our players will be leaving and they will need to be replaced. We won't be splashing £30m on a player any time soon, but we will obviously be buying players. PSR is likely to be replaced by something different, which means we won't be facing the prospect of year-on-year breaches and points deductions. Our current transfer embargo won't be extended if we go up, and may not even if we stay down. Your point about the training ground makes no sense. The cost of its upkeep is exempt from PSR, so King Power can cover that whether we have Premier League revenues or not.

Nobody is sacking Top and nobody is sacking the board. I completely understand the frustration behind this thread, but the truth is it’s all just pie-in-the-sky fantasy.

I agree that it feels horrible and dark at the moment, but it’s probably just what the world has been like for most of history. It’s just that the period since the Second World War has bern unusually peaceful by historic standards, and that has lulled our generation into thinking that’s the norm. What we’re experiencing now may be a slight reversion to the mean, albeit probably still nowhere near as bad as it has been for much of the past.

I really hope it was a one-off and isn't repeated again on Saturday. The next seven games could define our future for many years - it's probably not the time for ironic gestures that are basically aimed at mocking the team rather than helping them.

I can't see us sacking Maresca if we go up, so unless he decides to quit I think he'll be in charge next season, playing the same style of football. In which case I really hope our scouting department has been putting in the hard yards because we're going to need some inspired player recruitment to stand any chance of staying up.

And then it will be the EFL saying, "Hang on guys - these things take time. No sense in rushing them..."

How can we challenge a deduction when one hasn't even been imposed on us yet? And if either the EPL or EFL decided to break with precedent and whack us with a 20-point deduction to make an example of us, are you saying we should just meekly accept it? Do you not care about the future of our football club at all?

For clarity, while the EPL has charged us with a breach, our case will be heard by an independent commission. It is this commission that will decide the punishment, not the EPL. I believe Forest had two points deducted because the commission that reviewed their case felt they were highly co-operative during the process, whereas Everton were apparently less so. If we're co-operative with the commission that reviews our case we may get a similar deduction - I'm not convinced that our aggressive public statements re: the EPL and EFL will be a factor as long as we play nicely with the judges that ultimately review our case.

Oh I know. It's just that some people seemed to be under the impression that the players hadn't taken wage cuts, whereas Percy seems certain they have. The wages will likely go straight back up for the players who remain with us next season if we get promoted.

"Following relegation, Leicester offloaded several high earners while the remaining players took wage cuts between 35 to 50 per cent." Some slightly better news for those concerned about the scale of our breach for this season.

I'm not arguing that Rudkin is good at his job. I see zero evidence of that. But I get the impression that he's a more of a yes man than somebody with significant decision-making responsibility. The wages and transfer budget would have been set and monitored at board level. People talk of Rudkin and Whelan as if the mess was caused by two individuals who went rogue and messed everything up, whereas in reality the blame should probably be spread more widely than that. Sacking Rudkin might throw a sop to those demanding his head on a platter, but it wouldn't change anything at all unless there was an acceptance at board level of their collective failure.

We don't actually know this yet. It will come down to how much we can argue should be deducted for non-PSR expenditure,

The board runs the football club and includes several members of the family that owns us. Are they going to sack themselves? If not, what mysterious entity is going to do the sacking? They will have known about our situation for some time. If anybody was going to be sacked, it would have happened by now. So it’s safe to assume that it is not going to happen. The best case scenario is that they admit they need help and bring in some experienced professionals who can actually help them to run the club much more professionally.

On the When You’re Smiling podcast last night, Kieran Maguire said: “Leicester’s title win was a 5000-1 occurrence. After it happened, the big six set about changing the rules [re: TV money] to make it a 50,000-1 occurrence.” I thought that summed it up pretty well.

Yes it does, but it isn’t going to get us close to complying with PSR. Our best hope is that once the deductibles are accounted for, our PSR breach is brought to a level that is merely ‘significant’ (the same category as Forest’s and Everton’s) rather than ‘major’. Getting promoted is imperative. We’ll still be in for a rocky ride, but the additional revenue from being in the Premier League will put us in a far better position than if we stay down and receive much lower income while dealing with a vindictive EFL determined to make an example of us. IF we go up and our PSR breach is deemed only ‘significant’, I suspect we’ll get a 6-8 point deduction. That will make survival difficult but not necessarily impossible. New players will arrive in the summer but we’ll clearly have to go back to relying on good scouting rather than splashing cash. I suspect we’ll try to recruit one or two of the better Championship players we’ve faced this season and hope they can step up, as well as some relatively unknown young players from foreign leagues. The PSR system will likely be replaced soon. If it is, that will save us from the possibility of an ongoing cycle of annual breaches. I suspect the personnel at the top of the club won’t change much, irrespective of how much clamour there is for it. The club will have known about the situation we’re in for a long time and nobody has been sacked - why would they suddenly act now the figures are public? Our ridiculous overspend on wages was not down to one or two individuals going off piste behind Top’s back, but rather a collective responsibility at board level. We just need to hope that the board has actually learned its lesson this time and that we’re finally on track to becoming a club that operates within the rules once again. It goes without saying that the next seven games are massive. If the players continue putting in the level of effort they showed against Norwich, we’ll go up. We can then face up to the PSR music as a PL side rather than a Championship one.

It was completely media-driven. One or two enterprising journalists speculated on the possibility of other clubs suing Everton and focused on us because we came third from bottom and would have had the most plausible case. Nobody credible has ever claimed that Leicester were going to sue Everton. It’s frankly astonishing that people still repeat this story as fact when there is zero evidence for it.

We’re not getting 20 points deducted.

It's a shame you feel you have to leave. Maybe take a break and see how you feel after that? Either way, look after yourself.

I'd love it if for once a footballer was honest and said: "It's in our hands. That's the ugly and terrifying truth of it."

Thanks - a very good piece, albeit not a particularly cheering one. The section covering the impact of years of spending cuts might be of interest to those complaining about the state of the roads elsewhere on this page. I tend to agree with Cummings' view that the political class is in a state of complete paralysis over Brexit. This sentence towards the end of the piece sums things up fairly neatly: "It is unnerving to be heading into an election year in Britain with the political conversation so small, next to questions that can feel immeasurable."

That was Faes, not Vestergaard.

Given how much sanctimonious moralising Leeds fans have been spouting about our issues with the PL and FPL, I might permit myself a wry smile if this is the case.

Companies House is showing their accounts as overdue, too. It's probably safe to assume that clubs that have delayed submitting their accounts until the very last minute aren't going to be posting healthy numbers.