ClaphamFox

I don't think whoever takes the job will have much choice in the matter. They'll have to play the kids as they'll form the bulk of the squad.

After the Blackburn game he said that involving youth was very much the way he would want to go next season. He's clearly pitching hard for the job.

This will come down to the severity of their relegation wage deduction clauses. Some of them might find they can earn more in the Championship with another club.

Has anybody credible even claimed that we've spoken to Darren Ferguson? I'll be amazed if he's even under consideration.

It sounds like we haven't even spoken to him. So what if he's 'open' to becoming our new manager? So would loads of other out of work managers.

I had mine the other week. I left my house one morning and Top was outside with a bunch of flowers and a teddy bear. I told him to do one but he's been bombarding me with phone calls and texts ever since. I'm actually starting to feel a bit sorry for him.

I really hope this is the route we go down.

Fans are fickle. They might get behind the appointment of a former player at the beginning and then, if things go badly, bitterly complain that the club made a daft sentimental appointment rather than one based on ability/experience.

Amen.

I think we should be careful not to put too much emphasis on this. Yes, a former player like Fuchs would probably get the fans onside in the short term, but that wouldn't last very long if he doesn't make a strong start. Personally I'd prefer us to recruit the best candidate for the job rather than go for an ex-player just because the fans will like it. Fuchs may well turn out to be a very good manager. And we if do recruit him, I'll get behind him. But would we even be considering him based on his experience alone? I don't think so.

A player said some words in an interview. We subsequently went down. The players saying the words in the interview did not cause us to go down. Our relegation was due to numerous factors, but Jordan James' post-match interview was not among them. Why the hell does it matter? It was just a poxy post-match interview.

Don't Championship clubs have to submit a PSR projection for the current season to determine the likelihood of a breach? I remember the EFL believed (correctly, as it turned out) that we were heading for a breach in 2023/24 and tried to make us submit a business plan for that season, but we ended up not having to do that after winning an appeal. All of this was widely covered in the media, mainly because we were legally contesting it. There has been no indication so far that the EFL seeking to impose pre-emptive controls on us for 2025/26—do we dare assume that this means we aren't heading for a breach, or could it be simply that the EFL is actively intervening but it hasn't been leaked because we're not legally contesting it this time? I suppose if there is a mad scramble to flog any players who might command a fee between 15-30 June, that will give us more of an idea.

Targeting ex-players for the sake of it would be stupid. The fact that they played for shouldn’t even be a consideration when deciding whether they’re right for the job.

I would say it’s about both. Compliance with PSR/SCMP is important because we don’t want to get in a cycle of annual points deductions—especially as we need to get out of League One as soon as possible. Cash flow is even more important because if we can’t pay the bills we’ll go into administration and get an even bigger points deduction. Does the club slash costs across the board and accept we may be stuck in League One for a while or spend a bit in an attempt to get back to the Championship straight away? I don’t have any personal knowledge of the season ticket situation, but judging from reports it seems that around 20k may have renewed. If we end up with 22k in total that will be a decent number in League One (the last time we were down there we had around 14k). The challenge with trying to sell players quickly for PSR purposes is that our most saleable asset will be at the World Cup when the transfer window opens. Hopefully a few deals are agreed in advance…

It was his comments on the relegation clauses that clearly pissed them off. He suggested we don’t put them (a claim that has been repeated across social media). To be fair I don’t really blame the club for correcting this if it isn’t true because it’s actually quite important. What isn’t in dispute is that the club has been taking loans from Macquarie to meet day-to-day running costs. As Methven pointed out, you only do this if you have to—nobody would choose to pay loan interest if they were in a healthy enough position to wait for the parachute payments etc to come in when they were due. The club’s complaint to Methven that this is ‘normal’ is much less convincing than the factual correction about the relegation clauses. Methven admitted that he doesn’t know what our cost base is this season or will be next season. He clearly suspects it will prove to be unsustainable in League One, but nobody outside of the club knows the true picture. Things are clearly bad—we just don’t know how bad. It’s a shame the transfer window doesn’t open for another six weeks because I’ll feel a lot better if/when we start offloading our remaining high earners in addition to those whose contracts have expired…

I should have perhaps made it clear that I don’t believe the Alan Nixon transfer kitty story (I think it‘s safer not to believe any of his stories until proven otherwise). My point was more a general one about the unknowability of our precise financial situation (and therefore leeway in the transfer market) because of the huge lag between the end of our financial year and the publication of that year’s accounts. All we know at present is that we lost £70m during our 24/25 season in the PL but apparently did not breach PSR. We won’t know our results for the current season until next April, but in our last Championship season we lost around £19m but DID end up breaching PSR. There’s a lot of speculation about our cost base remaining that of a PL club but nobody outside of the club actually knows what it really is. To what extent have relegation clauses slashed our wage bill this season and will do so again next season? Until we know the answers to these questions it’s all guesswork, as you say.

I suppose it comes down to whether you look at it from a pure accounting perspective or an EFL rules perspective. The only books we have are for 2024-25. Despite the hefty accounting loss reported for that period last month, we have not been charged for breaching PSR for 24/25 and there doesn’t seem to be any expectation that we will be. We have no idea what this year’s accounts are like or whether we’re likely to breach PSR for 2025/26. From 1 July we’ll move from the PSR regime to the SCMP regime, which works differently. I’m not convinced we’ve taken on a new loan to fund this £10m kitty as we’ve already flogged our last parachute payment to Macquarie and I can’t see anybody else extending a new line of credit to us. Is it possible that the club has looked at our situation re: PSR this season and/or SCMP next season and calculated we can spend that much before any player sales and stay within the rules? I don’t know, but I also don’t feel there is enough information to definitively rule it out.

Where are you getting those player salaries from? I doubt any of them were being paid that much in the Championship and they’ll fall even further in L1.

Unless we're finally going down the route of letting the Director of Football determine the style of play rather than changing it with every manager...

Might be a realistic option if they don't go up. If they do, no chance.

Very much look forward to giving this a listen later. I’m curious to see whether Charlie addresses the issue of relegation clauses. In that podcast he did the other month he seemed to think we didn’t put them into players’ contracts (and consequently have a PL wage bill in the Championship), but I’ve read other reports that flatly deny this. As we’ve just been relegated again, this seems a pertinent issue…

I don’t think we usually announce the departure of players whose contracts have ended. They just go.

Yeah I’ll give you Nelson. Chesterfield can push as hard for Braybrooke as they want—they won’t have the money for him.

The academy graduates will form the core of the team next season. Monga excepted, none of them will attract bids anywhere near enough to make it worth our while. Braybrooke will be playing for us next season irrespective of whether Chesterfield go up or stay down.