Les-TA-Jon

Bloody hell...

Probably money. When things are tight with PSR and we're 99% down regardless, why jeopardise the finances? There's a lot we don't know. Does RVN have a relegation clause? Do we need to sack him in the next accounting period? No one would want the job right now. Maybe we can't afford to sack RVN, then sack the interim in the summer, then make a permanent appointment in the summer? Anyone good enough for the permanent appointment is likely either unavailable and/or uninterested. And they certainly wouldn't want to and should be starting their tenure hear with likely losses and relegation.

People seem to want a sacking for purely punitive reasons. But (even for the current set up) there has to be an attempt at strategic thinking. This ^^^

Largely irrelevant to the wider discussion but Coady absolutely cannot pass the ball as well as Vestergaard does.

Book values this summer Hard to sell: Soumare, Winks, Daka, Ayew, Coady, Faes all hard to move on without making a loss. Can't see anyone paying £16m+ for El Khannous, and we'd want £20m+ for it to be worthwhile Kristiansen, Souttar, Okoli, Skipp all virtually unsellable Fatawu coming back from injury Easier to sell Hermansen, Mavididi much easier to sell for profit Ndidi, Ricardo and Justin all unclear because signed contract extensions/new deals in time here, but imagine all 3 are 'easier' to sell and make profit on Academy products like Thomas, McAteer easier to sell, since all profit

I don't really see the irony or the contradiction myself. Betting adverts / sponsorships = betting and gambling is a service/product that can be advertised in a free market Banning players from betting / punishing them when they do = protecting the integrity of the game

Take your pic The club think he's the right appointment The club can't afford to sack him They're waiting for relegation to be confirmed because there's a clause to make sacking him cheaper They're waiting for the next accounting period to sack him Top/Rudkin are too proud to sack him They think we're going down no matter what, so what's the point in sacking him and appointing interims?

Or...1.5) The club recognises the problems run deeper than whoever the current manager is, they also see there's no point now in changing him and they also don't think he's the man to take us forward

We saw how bad Dawson was for a game. I don't think these 2 are ready to be chucked in.

P14 W2 D1 L11 F9 A34 GD-25 Blanks 9, Clean Sheets 0 Pretty rancid stuff EDIT: Add full context

Whether we can afford the pay off or not - surely he's not the right man for next season anyhow? There's no point in appointing a permanent manager now - they'll be tainted by this relegation before next season's promotion attempt. So it's either RVN to the end or some interim/fall guy in the meantime.

Multiple things can be true at once: Cooper was terrible RVN is terrible The squad is terrible

How many ball playing CB with PL experience were available on a free that summer? I’m not saying Vestergaard was the correct call but it’s easy to see how the club made that decision when it did

Same!

It'd be really interesting to try and benchmark this sort of stuff - failed signings and talent leaving on frees - vs other PL clubs.

The current squad and contract expirations: And a rudimentary look at the book values of players this summer - i.e the minimum we need to sell them for to break even. Quite a few there that will be hard to shift...

See above - for us to sell Winks someone has to pay £4m for him and match or better his wages. Not impossible, but probably unlikely.

Obviously based on (unreliable) internet reporting, but here's another look at the current 'book value' of most of the relevant players The book value is the transfer fee divided by the contract length, minus the number of years past on the contract. So for example, you sign a player for £20m, on a 5 year deal. They're 'worth' £4m per year. When their contract has 3 years remaining, their book value is £12m. If you sell them for less than this, they go in the accounts as a loss. So looking at the Book Value of players this summer gives us a 'rating' of how easy/difficult it is to make a profit/loss on them. Players like Justin, Ricardo, Ndidi who have all signed extensions in their time here - so harder to figure out (or do they not have a book value?).

The categories are largely back of the fag packet musings. Knowing LCFC's recent transfer dealings, you can probably put every player into the 'hard to sell' category anyhow. We struggle to sell players because we've offered them wages that (virtually) any interested party cannot match.

But Nelson was deemed not good enough/ready for the Championship or the PL, Souttar has been out of favour under 3 managers here... And obviously a 1 year deal wasn't an option - the players have a lot of leverage in those sorts of situations.

Note that I'm not the DOF. I'm not a huge fan of his. He definitely isn't a defensive midfielder. But at times he's looked one of our better midfielders this season. He's about the only one who can progress the ball from box to box. All the players with 1 year left you either have to sell, offer a new deal or accept they'll be leaving on a free. He's about the only one on that list that could get better, so a new deal could make sense.

Given we only had the money to sign Okoli in the summer, we'd be even more short of defenders had we not re-signed Vestergaard. Don't forget he was a mainstay under Maresca and was the ball playing CB for his system. The new deal was offered and signed whilst Maresca was manager too. It's not great that we're lumbered with him. But there wasn't really an alternative.

Think he's the least of out problems. Probably on a very small wage.

They have an option to sign, not an obligation

The squad is a right mess.