Dan

For certain. If he can survive last season he can survive anything. He's essentially vice-owner.

The big thing with Southampton is they still have to go away to us, Ipswich, Leeds and West Brom. They've become as effective as us at beating the lesser teams but they've had an extremely long run of playing them. We've not got a great record against the top sides yet but theirs is worse and they've played fewer of them. Jury is still out - although I do think the consistency at beating the weaker teams is probably why us and them will be the top two.

have heard the exact same story. We had both him and a winger lined up and Rodgers / Congerton just wanted to do their own thing as they knew best.

Tanner in the Athletic back in May; There were hints on here that there was somebody digging in their heels on getting Rodgers out the door and an assumption that it was Top. Turned out it was Rudkin all along.

I'm not quite at the point of worrying but it is a bit annoying how few clear we actually are given our ridiculously high points tally. Whoever comes 3rd this season will be gutted.

If those two are what we're relying on to stop Cov getting in the top six then god help us.

I weirdly had something a bit similar - first game up in the top tier with Setubal I beat Braga away 0-6. I was just watching in amazement as we went 1, 2, 3... 0-5 up by half time. It turned out they played basically a reserve side. I don't know if it's got anything in common with your game there but I had it happen to me on the opening day as well.

I don't put it down to one man. It's a collective effort. I put it down to the one above him more than I do him frankly. I would say overall we've spent more years going backwards than going forwards under him - it would be very generous to pin 2015/16 down to him at all. It's totally fair to class it as an error. It's a perfect sign of the lack of long-term and joined up thinking that's been at the heart of our decline. I actually don't even mind Souttar as a player, I think he's a very effective defender in a team playing a low-block system and he'd be fantastic for someone like Everton. But he's been ill-fitted for us from the start and it isn't his fault. If having a player signed who has made 12 league appearances for the club, is now on the screapheap and apparently we've now got to keep him and loan him out for five years as we're probably not going to get anyone to cough up £21mil to sign him isn't an error from the club I genuinely don't know what is. It's an error and it happened on Rudkin's watch. For a shortened version I blame Rodgers for his disgraceful conduct in the final 18 months of his tenure, Rudkin for digging his heels in and not acting upon it (these are Tanner's words) and Top for allowing all of this to fester. They're the main three culprits. Rudkin has too many black marks for me. Too much smoke without fire.

Wheel of Names | Random name picker This is the wheel spinner. I've decided as a slightly niche, slightly insane idea to let the wheel decide where I'm going to. I've listed every country in Europe on there that I have never previously managed in to ensure I get a totally new league to do and one by one eliminated countries until I am left with my destination. I have repeated this process with both the league and then the club. The country is Sweden. The league is the Superettan, the second tier. The club is IK Brage. We move.

Which is ironic because he definitely gets more gametime staying here now given Ndidi's injury than he does going back there.

He'd been a little better lately too I think. He was getting to grips somewhat. If this frees us up to get Sensi then I'm good with it but surely Sensi is more an issue of wages rather than squad space. Squad space would be a very easy fix.

It's dreadful timing.

We've had some go for and some go against. Seem to remember Faes getting away with a big one against Sunderland. VAR wouldn't have changed any decision from the Coventry game either. I'm completely baffled how anyone can want more of this. I'd understand if we had a working version such as semi-auto offside but this half-baked rubbish? The Championship has been a view into better times in this regard, where bad decisions happen and as a general rule it's moved on from quickly. So much of football discourse today is about VAR, FFP etc... it's just so mundane.

It's why I thought the signing of Coady was a poor one, plenty at the time having a go at these pointing out the faults in it (and this was before we knew how good Vestergaard was going to turn out this season). Can we really afford that sort of luxury? Whether selling players is as hard as made out in this thread cannot be proven but I find it peculiar that not only do other clubs sell players more than us, but how many measures we still seem to take to make things harder for ourselves. If what Jon said about Souttar is correct then how the hell did we sanction that move while Soyuncu was wasting away? It's just bonkers.

He wasn't very good at Coventry but I think taking him off at HT was the biggest mistake on the day. You've already lost Fatawu and you'll be under the cosh, at least retain your best threat on the counter.

Worst thing he's ever said.

Well we've lost regardless on Souttar haven't we? So what do we now do with Souttar, loan him out for the next five years praying that somebody makes a big bid for him? That is now with these rules genuinely the best route for us to take? If that is the case that is utterly remarkable. And the main reason I'd advocate for selling is wages.

Add Iversen to that list too, so that's four players including the two you named and Soumare, which makes quite a difference already. I'm not claiming there's a load of clubs lining up for players like Albrighton who obviously hold very little value, but like I said, get the Everton and Southampton lists for comparison and we are clearly underperforming in this regard. Wolves as well, 17 players sold to our 5. We can seriously do no better than that? Is it beneficial to us to keep a player depreciating in value that we won't use anyway rather than cutting our losses? So we gradually let Souttar depreciate and don't use him at all. Can we just never ever cut our losses now on anybody? The other point here, presented there in plain sight, is Souttar was signed under a year ago. So that is by extension another big error made under Rudkin. It's yet another black mark that we have sanctioned money like that on a player who had nine starts under Rodgers before being consigned to the scrapheap. That's another error, indisputable when presented with those figures. Book value of £21mil and hasn't seen 100 minutes all season. I'd say there's an increasingly good chance Coady is going to be another of this ilk as well - another generous fee and wages that's offering minimal on the pitch even in this league, let alone if we go up. Like I said elsewhere, even if all of these drawbacks and restrictions were true, who did they happen under?

The majority of them. You're just accustomed to us being unable to get it done. Look at the lists provided of the Everton and Southampton players and tell me which world beaters they were flogging. What's indisputable is that our hand has gotten substantially weaker than it was a few years ago and that all happened on his watch. So even if everything you said was true, how is he blameless?

Already resigned. It's such crap though - it's a game fault rather than the board one. It doesn't even seem to register the fact I've not had a proper budget. It's like whatever money I get it goes into a black hole. Like it didn't just give me none of the money for Ellertson, it deducted what little I had left over as well. I've quite liked 24 but this is just a nonsense. Has this happened to anyone else?

No idea how anyone expected any different. Same inept people. Same inept outcomes. Whatever reasons about FFP and amortisation are given on here, I just cannot believe it can be this much harder for us to make sales than Everton, than Wolves, than Southampton.

I really thought I was beyond constant budget complaints on this game but this is so ridiculous that I feel like it's a glitch and it's stuffed me over, and frankly, I can't be arsed with this save anymore because what's the point. So I got Setubal from the 4th tier to the 1st. The brief summary is this; 2023/24 - 4th tier, didn't get promoted, blew the playoffs 2024/25 - 4th tier, got promoted, came runner up in the playoff final (this will make sense if you've done this league) 2025/26 - 3rd tier, won the league 2026/27 - 2nd tier, won the league 2027/28 - 1st tier, finished about 9th in the league 2028/29 - 1st tier, finished 4th, automatic place to the Europa League, finishing behind the big three of Portugal Now even in Portugal obviously it isn't big money, albeit it feels like every other year one of the other small clubs gets bought out. Mafra came up and spent £10mil which is absurd. The point is, my board just give me absolute buttons and it's hit the point there's no point playing on. In the second tier I bought a winger from Benfica called Pedro Santos. Raw but very technically good player, bought him for about £45k and he got me over the line to be honest. He really kicked on in the top tier and he went from a decent option to my best player. I'd sold £400k worth of players in the second tier and barely scratched together the money to buy him at the time but in January of the first season up, Blackburn buy him off me for £2.6mil rising to £6mil. Of this, I see about £200k in budget which I'm a bit annoyed at but I understand that often, when you're at a small and not particularly rich club, that the first sale of significance is usually used to get you on a sound footing as a club and from then on you should probably see a good % of any revenue. So while even despite all of this I'd hoped for a bit more to spend (and given I did have to downgrade on him as a replacement) I did think we had some decent assets we could make similarish sorts of sales for going forward, so I grin and bare it. In the second season one of my centre halves gets a quite bad injury in August and I bring in a loanee from Brazil called Ramon. Now he's of a similar level but he develops so well over the season that he becomes pretty much my best player, essentially finishing the career of the other CB I have. He for some bizarre reason has a £250k release clause in his contract and despite having £0 budget, I activate it and hope that I can convince the board to give it to me, as he's worth probably 20 times that and it would represent a massive bargain, as well as the fact we'd just received another £1mil instalment for the Santos deal. Nothing. Ramon a month later signs a new contact with Palmeiras, albeit with a release clause of £1.6mil which frankly I still think is a bargain so I'll try and activate that. We qualify for the Europa League, our projected balance is now going up year on year. I have an Icelandic midfielder called Ellertson, a good player, but this season proved he wasn't all that key and his value was enormous. So I decide after receiving a pathetic £600k budget that I'm going to try and get an agent to shift him, as apparently we'd be able to get an offer of £15-20mil for him, which... I like him, I'd sooner not sell him but that's absolutely crazy money. I offer him through an agent and a Saudi side takes the bait, they pay £17.75mil up front and he agrees the move. We're now rolling in it. Our bank balance is £15mil. This deal goes through at the same time I sign a replacement from Paraguay, an 18 year old wonderkid who will be better than him probably within a year for £850k up front, no clauses. I somehow come out of this deal with a budget of £0, wage budget free of £0, a 0% of transfer revenue into my budget and basically no room at all to do things such as buy Ramon and 4/5 others to make us a really decent side. We came 4th, but we'd only been expected to finish 15th so we massively overachieved. How the hell can I possibly come out of this deal with nothing to spend? I can't request more budget as it won't even let me for some reason. It lets me request either a bigger budget for next season or a higher % of generated revenue. I ask for both. I'm rebuffed on the bigger budget for next season as apparently my £0 is sufficient (despite our bank balance of £15mil), they turn down the % of revenue request initially, I kick off and I'm basically happy to sack this off at this point so I protest it. They said no because I've apparently "not got a good track record with signings" () and eventually, they up it to 15% of revenue, which is a disgrace given how big our bank balance is now, and redundant because I've already made my big sale. So the save is binned. What is the point

Is the Premier League not essentially a super league within the traditional system?

FFP needed introducing years before clubs became 'established' because now it will only serve to protect their positions.

A frequent theme in here is the amount of times I see "we couldn't do X because of Y", correctly by the way, but Y was another previous Rudkin / Top error. Like I said earlier I can only conclude he's still here because these are instructions. There's no other logic. He isn't doing well.