Les-TA-Jon

We can’t really set expectations until deep into the window. There’s a huge turnover of players required and it remains to be seen if we’ll be able to shift who we need to, whether we even have money to reinvest in replacements and if we’re going to target new types of signings or stick with the same agent driven ‘strategy’

He's not some guaranteed promotion specialist. He's finished mid table or worse in all his jobs bar the Southampton promotion. And do you mean if we go up twice?

I hope he goes rogue and gives us tell-all stories. Unlikely though.

Problem we've got is we need a huge rebuild - but the club is so bad as medium term squad building that we're likely to either have far less of a rebuild than we need and/or just be left with the next group of overpaid average players

Don't think it's quite as simple as that though - given the transition occurred under Puel (great signings) and Rodgers (our best ever football for first 18 months or so?) The club is the pits though, for sure.

Is Dave Challinor even a realistic option? Didn't he leave Stockport by mutual consent? Which suggest he's having a break or something?

SMI Sports Management apparently

He's basically just Marti Cifuentes, but british, even more wedded to philosophy and managed for 84 fewer games.

Depends what you mean by 'most'

I'm not so bothered by the radio silence on the managerial front. It's often quiet at this time of year - any managers in post are on holiday/don't want to be bothered. The industry in general slows down, especially with players away and the World Cup etc. And as discussed at length - this appointment is so important and the situation the club finds itself in makes it all the more challenging to getting it right - we need someone who can lift the feeling and morale from rock bottom, oversee a huge squad rebuild, make use of youth, instill a completely new ethos and mindset and finish top 2 at the first time of asking. Talking our time to get it right is no bad thing (obviously the club could be doing this, or they could be taking aging to make Yet Another Terrible AppointmentTM, or they could be doing nothing). What I think is unforgivable is the general radio silence over the wider situation. There should have been some sort of statement to acknowledge the failings of the last 4-5 years, the double relegation, the financial worries etc - some sort of attempt to provide assurances to the fans that there is some sort of plan and some sort of attempt to set things right.

I'm not sure the new spending rules mean clubs can ignore book values. The new rules are about player costs vs player income, equity injection and % of turnover. There's some debate as to whether book value losses count as a player cost or not.

If we were a mid-table PL team like we 'should' be?

We absolutely should be complaining. The club shouldn't be in the position to have to sell their best up and coming youth products just to keep the lights on. It's a disgrace that we've managed ourselves into this position. The entire point of spending £100m+ on Seagrave and it's high annual running costs was to create, develop and use players like Monga, not sell them early in their careers just to maintain cashflow and enable the signings of players with worse prospects.

Currently got a book value of approx £5.5m - so a nice £2.5m loss for Topkin...

And I don't even think it's a 'choice' by the club either - it's simply that there's little to no football based talent and strategy in the structure, above the manager...

The 6 point deduction applied to the period ending 2024 (Promotion season under Enzo) so RVN sacking was irrelevant

Think it's more to do with them not having / not finalising a plan - whilst that's the case, they 'have' to keep Rowett as an option. RVN delayed sacking was different because it was around figuring which accounting year could stomach the cost of doing so.

We're in League One mate

Sure - But I guess I'm saying if it is him signing off on 'bad stuff' then he's the target for blame. But if he gets overruled by Top all the time, and forced to do 'bad stuff' then Top's to blame. Either way we're splitting hairs - the club is a shambles and seems to be continuing in that vein.

Did Jan Kerfuffle get any recognition at the game?

New points deduction incoming for this illegal use of subs

Who’s to say the CEO can make that call? How do we know? Maybe he’s been suggesting that and is overruled by Top?

Us winning and waiting for the final whistle “Ref, you said 10 seconds, 40 ****ing seconds ago”

Think it's just a classic multiple things can be true at once situation: We were massively punching above our weight in 2019 and 2020 - at that time, non-big 6 club finishing in the top 6 in the PL era was exceedingly rare. In one of those attempts at the top 4, Man Utd spent £65m on Bruno Fernandes in Jan to get them over the line and pip us. How can we compete with that? Finishing 5th both times after being in the top 4 for so long was a crumble/bottle situation, perhaps indicative of the soft mentality/underbelly that developed in the latter half of Rodger's tenure But finishing 5th twice was a huge achievement for the club based on an historical perspective for the club and for a non-big 6 club Performance in subsequent 2nd/3rd tier European competitions was poor (even if we did eventually get knocked out by Mourinho's Roma) 'medium' sized clubs that have done well since is largely due to 1) the PL getting more competitive; 2) those kinds of teams have upskilled; 3) 2nd/3rd tier European competitions have gotten 'easier' due to format changes

Also just totally scattergun 'strategy' too. We ripped up our model to try to get into the top 4, yet both times we were close we refused to spend in the Jan windows and/or brought in crap players that made no difference.