ClaphamFox

The retained list is a non-event anyway. It won’t tell us anything we don’t already know.

They all apparently had relegation clauses when we went down to the Championship and have them again for the relegation to League One. We don't know how extensive they are, but I think Winks was on around £40k per week this season and he was probably the highest earner. Hopefully the clauses will cut deep enough to persuade the likes of Vestergaard etc to seek moves elsewhere. I'm not saying the wage bill won't be a problem, but I don't think it will be quite as big a problem as some people believe. We shall see.

I don't think it was ever a serious suggestion anyway.

I reckon only 8-9 of last year's senior squad will be here next season.

https://x.com/JPercyTelegraph/status/2055249720847556834?s=20

It’s 85% in your first year down, not 60%. Championship clubs are voting tomorrow on whether to switch to the squad cost ratio. If it goes through, there will be no return to PSR even if we go straight back up.

It's when this group includes people like Russell Martin and WIll Still that we'll know we have a problem...

Entirely understandable. The problem we have is that even if there’s a genuine desire inside the club to make a fresh start, our reputation in football is probably so radioactive that any half-decent manager will look at our “project” with deep suspicion — and rightly so. The club has to convince candidates it has really has learned from the chaos of the past few years and is genuinely serious about behaving like a grown-up organisation again. But that still asks for a leap of faith from anyone with options. So while I hope we’re working hard to persuade a talented manager to drag us out of this mess, I’m not quite ready to believe we’ll pull it off.

Yes, you certainly could if you were 100% certain about that. However if you were pursuing other candidates but wanted to keep Rowett as a back-up option, you wouldn’t say anything. To be honest, that’s where I think we’re at: the club is targeting candidates already in work but is not certain we will get any of them, hence the awkward silence on Rowett.

If we’re paying compensation for somebody we might not be able to afford it until July 1.

If the club doesn’t make an appointment until early July and then hires a free agent who was available from the start, it will show that nothing has changed; if the delay means we manage to recruit a very good candidate who is currently in work, it may turn out to be worth it. Big moment for McCarron.

Sweet Jesus that was a horrendous decision. The ref couldn’t wait to give it even though the evidence wasn’t there. What a joke.

I hadn’t realised this. At least if it gets voted through it will remove the need to worry about simultaneously trying to abide by two sets of financial rules…

Which part of my post was untrue? The club is very tight-lipped—only two or three journalists ever get scoops on us, which is probably less than most clubs. I regard the club as a shambolic mess that has been mismanaged to a degree never previously witnessed in football. But the lack of idle media gossip about our new manager and the fact that—like most clubs—we haven’t published our retained list yet do not provide further evidence of this. And we don’t exactly need any further evidence, anyway…

I don’t think any club issues regular updates on their manager searches until they’ve actually got some news. Remaining silent until an appointment is made is the norm. A handful of clubs have already published their retained lists but the large majority haven’t. We never publish this early. Last year we published ours on 28 May; in 2024, it was 10 June. We’re all impatient to get last season’s absolute shit show out of our system and move on, hence the desperation for any news that indicates the club is moving forward. But the ‘radio silence’ from the club is not particularly strange—it’s standard procedure at this time of year.

I thought so at first but apparently it just means that Bristol are willing to meet the clause—it does not mean that Skubala is going there or wants to. Less of a story than I first thought.

I think whoever suggested 17k got their wires crossed. Apparently we sold 22,500 season tickets last season (not 23.5k as I said earlier) and more than 20k renewed, which would tally with your 2k figure for non-renewers.

There were numerous reports that around 20k renewed, meaning around 3.5-4k didn't renew (depending on exactly how many season tickets we sold last season). So probably around 3.5-4k new fans, not 17k.

Was it the standard 23k available this time? There were suggestions they'd allowed more, but I'm not sure if this was confirmed anywhere.

Our sole consideration next season is how to get out of League One immediately. There is no way that Vardy would play 46 games so using him strategically from the bench and as an occasional starter, and as mentor to players like Evans, could make the difference between achieving promotion or missing out. It's a shame there's probably nothing in the story.

Yes, on the grounds that even at his age he's likely to be better than anybody else we could sign. We'd probably have stayed up last season if he hadn't left. I can't see it, though.

I'm also curious to know whether anybody has actually seen the article on Gazzetta_it. @XtraLeicester is not a reliable source.

It runs far deeper than the managers. In clubs like Brighton, Bournemouth, Brentford etc —all smaller than us but performing much better—the culture is established by the owners and runs throughout the club, not just the playing squad. Managers come and go, but the values, vision and work ethic remains the same whoever is in charge. In our case, there is deep cultural malaise—every manager that comes has to deal with a total absence of leadership from Top, incompetence from Rudkin, and apathy and low morale across the club. An elite manager like Enzo Maresca might have enough about them to temporarily override these things through sheer force of personality, but such managers ae very rare and don't stick around for long at clubs of our size. Yes, the managers we have recruited have been poor. But if you think that's been the main problem then I'm afraid you simply haven't been paying attention.