ClaphamFox

The article says: “Like others in their situation, Leicester have adopted the language of the freedom fighter. “We will continue to fight for the right of all clubs to pursue their ambitions,” they said this week, pointing out that those ambitions had been “reasonably and fairly established through sustained sporting achievements”. At which point one is obliged to remind them: you agreed to these rules. The time to oppose them on a point of principle was surely then.” He’s not making a general point - he’s explicitly accusing us of being hypocrites. The entire article is based on a lie.

I tweeted Sam Wallace to tell him this. No response so far.

We’re going to ferociously resist the case being heard this season until it becomes apparent we’re heading for the play-offs anyway, at which point we’ll be phoning up the PL and EFL and saying, “Guys - can we take the six points now?”

There’s not much new here, but one tidbit that may be relevant is that our breach is apparently ‘significant’ - the same category as Forest’s and Everton’s. I had feared it might be a ‘major’ breach, which would have put us in a whole different category in terms of the level of punishment: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-13231749/amp/Leicesters-legal-action-against-Premier-League-EFL-sparks-anger-rival-clubs-convinced-Foxes-stalling-stop-potential-six-point-deduction-derailing-promotion-bid-season.html

They’re not going after us because of the title win. That’s just daft. However I’ve no doubt the EFL have got the right hump with us about us refusing to submit a business plan and then failing in their bid to force us to. They’re after us now, no doubt about it. I get the impression they’d prefer us to breach again this season rather than find a way of complying because they’re waiting for an excuse to hit us hard. While we’re clearly not without fault in all this, we cannot just stand back and meekly let them make an example of us with excessively harsh treatment. If our legal team genuinely believe our best strategy is to fight them hard, so be it. That’s what we have to do.

Absolutely. I cannot believe that some people are actually saying, “It’s our fault - let’s just take our punishment.” Do they really trust the PL and EFL to act as honest brokers in this? Do they think they’ll treat us fairly? Are they completely insane?! Of course we must fight it every inch of the way.

It seems they’ve claimed responsibility:

The usual twitter vultures are already falling over themselves to proclaim it a ‘false flag’ operation directed by Putin. I’m not saying the guy isn’t capable of it, but maybe let’s wait for the bodies to go cold before making wild claims for which there is currently no evidence?

Yes, fvck cancer. A few months ago an ex-girlfriend of mine died of at a young age (leaving a five-year-old daughter) and last week I discovered that a close family member has been diagnosed with a nasty form of it. It’s utterly horrible. I wish your mum all the very best with her treatment.

There’s an ongoing mass shooting in Moscow 😢 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-68642162

Good article, but this sentence almost brought vomit into my throat: "They also had to make a substantial pay-off to manager Brendan Rodgers when he left the club in April 2023."

The only way it could happen this season would be if we agreed to just accept a points deduction without an appeal, which seems unlikely. If they'd have offered us a six-point penalty a couple of months ago, we'd likely have taken it; now, not so much.

This assessment of Brexit - and of the Tory party in general - from former party chairman Chris Patten is pretty devastating: https://x.com/bmay/status/1770912314083926040?s=20

Well quite. And until we see the actual figures I will remain deeply nervous that our loss for 2021/22 will put our breach at a level above Everton's and Forest's and potentially result in a harsher penalty.

Apologies - was offline for a while. In answer to your questions: 1) Predators are extraordinarily cunning and resourceful. They will exploit any loophole they can to gain access to their victims. We know this from the number of paedophiles that have embedded themselves within the scouts, the church, children's homes, junior football teams etc. I think it's naïve in the extreme to assume that predators targeting vulnerable women won't do the same if they feel the opportunity is there. For example, if your policy on access to a shelter for abused women is that men aren't allowed in unless they identify as a woman, you're essentially basing your entire safeguarding policy on trust. You're just taking somebody's word for it and hoping for the best. I suspect a lot of people might feel unease about the likely efficacy of such a policy. 2) I definitely wouldn't want to tell an abused woman who is anxious about potentially being alone with a naked man in a women's changing room that she's just allowed herself to get caught up in a moral panic. That would take some industrial-strength gaslighting. On the bathrooms issue in particular, I can see us moving to a situation in which all venues of any size (including workplaces, educational establishments, bars, restaurants, etc) must either have three types of bathroom (male, female and gender-neutral). Smaller venues that don't have the capacity for this will likely be allowed to just offer a small number of cubicles for everybody's use. This seems like an area that where sensible solutions can be found via pragmatic policymaking backed up by government funding. Other aspects of this issue (access to shelters and hospital wards, participation in female sports, the recording of crimes, etc) will likely prove much more difficult to resolve.

It's worth pointing out for the sake of clarity that the £92.5m loss was our headline financial loss, not our PSR loss for that season. Our PSR loss for 2021/22 will have been less than £92.5m but still very high so your point still stands, but mentioning a headline accounting loss in the same sentence as referring to the £105m loss allowed under PSR is potentially misleading. If the PSR system continues, next season will mark the first three-year period in which we won't have the millstone of 2021/22 around our necks. But in truth this is probably academic as I don't expect the PSR system to be retained beyond this season.

Enzo won't drop Vestergaard no matter what.

A poll shows Labour ahead by 25 percentage points and the Tories down to 19% on the same day that Owen Jones resigns his membership. If I were Kier Starmer, I would choose a pub in central London, put a couple of grand behind the bar and tell all Labour staffers and MPs to meet there at midday for an all-day session. Days like this don't come around very often.

You are of course correct to highlight the massive role that the fan reaction had in getting the Super League abandoned. It was a key element in the whole thing disintegrating so quickly. Maybe my memory is playing tricks on me, but I'm pretty sure that the ESL was supposed to replace the Champions League, not domestic competition. I remember Florentino Perez stating very clearly that the member clubs would be able to continue playing in their domestic leagues while participating in the ESL. The problem was, those clubs hadn't actually bothered to consult their domestic leagues to check on this and were apparently shocked when they were told they could not play in both competitions. If the Super League happened as proposed, the English member clubs would have a vast income stream guaranteed every year without having to worry about the small matter of qualification. This would give them a massive permanent advantage over non-member clubs in the Premier League, making it even more lopsided than it currently is. It would not be a sustainable arrangement. In the end, I suspect the rest of the league would indeed tell them to **** off. But that would mean giving up domestic football, which their fans have already made clear they are not prepared to do. Hence it is completely unworkable.

This question is indeed at the heart of the issue regarding spaces. And if you genuinely believe that women only feel 'slightly uncomfortable' about having men in their spaces, then of course you're likely to reach the conclusion you have. The problem is, there are plenty of women whose experience of this issue goes significantly beyond mild discomfort. And for good reason: male violence against women and girls is a massive problem. The vast majority of sexual assaults are committed by men, the large bulk of them against women. Many, many women have suffered abuse, are the victims of assault or have been harassed in a way that makes them fear for their lives. In places where they feel vulnerable - bathrooms, changing facilities, shelters, hospital wards etc - they prefer to know that the only other people present are women. I don't think this is unreasonable and I think their wish should be respected. Dismissing their experiences as being 'slightly uncomfortable' comes across as condescending at best, and downright misogynistic at worst. It's the equivalent to saying, "We men have had a chat and we've decided that some of us can access your spaces. Now, we don't want to hear any complaints, ok? Just know your place and don't worry your pretty little heads about it." I am sure that you would not frame the issue in these terms. But believe me, lots of women feel that being told to accept men in their spaces is just a modern twist on the misogyny they have been subject to for thousands of years and which they thought, naively, was beginning to diminish.

The Super League teams never wanted to **** off, though. They wanted to play in a closed shop European competition while continuing to participate in the Premier League. It was only when the Premier League and the government told them they'd be banned from domestic competition that the whole thing disintegrated.

Varadkar has resigned. I suppose not a huge shock given the two referendum defeats, but big news nonetheless... https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-68616372

This makes complete sense. However if we just miss out on promotion and Enzo doesn't quit, I'm not convinced the club will sack him. He was recruited specifically to play the kind of football he favours - there is clearly a view at the top of the club that we should play that way. I just don't see the club suddenly becoming pragmatic and trying a different approach even if we don't go up.

Lots of clubs will be in the same boat, which will put some downward pressure on transfer fees. The new system obviously won't overturn the massive advantage that the biggest clubs have, but it will likely end the spectacle of clubs desperately trying to offload homegrown talents before June 30 to scramble together enough cash to avoid a breach.

Personally I would argue that there are indeed one or two worse things in life than watching Leicester in the knowledge that we have an excellent back-up keeper on the bench.