MessiWillSignForVilla

If we fail FFP we face a points deduction and possibly demotion, so we can't just "pay the fine"!

If I remember rightly the company we've gone with for manufacturing (Fanatics I believe) structure the way they sell the kits in such a way that the club gets a much bigger slice of the revenue, meaning going with this route means instead of getting a couple £m from a sponsorship deal and barely anything from the sales, we get a little less in sponsorship (and as such we can go to smaller more passionate brands) but shirt sales mean more to us financially. Someone who knows this stuff better than me correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that's the gist of it.

It's £39m and the £45m is the worst case scenario shortfall we have to make up I believe.

If £40m is the starting offer, then we should hold out for an amount that would completely wipe out any FFP worries.

There's no way of knowing that currently, especially not from the statement. He could be the richest man in the world, it would mean **** all though as FFP wouldn't allow him to invest any of it.

Both Garcia and the two previous managers were sacked for having problems with the dressing room, which points more to a toxic team environment than the managers failing.

Saw a guy on twitter trying to sell a couple of tickets at £100 quid each that his "grandad" had bought, and the reason for selling them on was that his grandad was 93 and couldn't go. For some reason, he stopped responding when someone asked why his 93-year-old grandad bought them in the first place.

You can wear club colours for this game according to the Club Wembley dress code, depending on which section you are in. I would presume since each team was allocated close to 40k tickets that those sections are the ones that each club is selling tickets in.

Hegazi at West Brom supposedly has a £2.5m relegation release clause. Not seen much of him, but surely would be worth a punt if we go up? Edit: Evans has one at £3m too. Risky taking the bottom clubs CB pairing, but £5.5m for the pair is a steal.

When you get through to the ticket site, go to your account in the top right corner and in account details there'll be a section called history that has all the tickets you've bought this season in there.

Finally got my ticket after accidentally trying to get a wheelchair seat and then a seat in the family section. Can't bloody wait for this!

Ah right, I get your meaning now, hopefully not as I still have ~3000 people ahead of me in the queue.

I'm guessing it's still 1 ticket per person as it was with ST holders, or has that changed?

Taylor played for Team GB at the 2012 Olympics, which included a 3-1 win v UAE at Wembley. Which is about as high pressure as they come...

So what're the "significant penalties" that Fulham will be getting for the pitch invasion then?

Really hope Derby snatch one, could kill Fulham's confidence. Though that does rely on Derby not being shit.

Jokanovic seems to be one of those managers that has drunk the possession football kool-aid, so Fulham must play that way at all times no matter what. Games like this need pragmatism, not rigidly sticking to the "right" style of play.

But that's exactly how Derby played against Fulham on Friday, and that style is suited to nullifying Fulham. Just looking at the stats you can see that the two games were quite similar. Possession: Villa v Derby was 72.1-27.9 to Villa, Derby v Fulham was 26.2-73.8 to Fulham. Pass Success: Villa-Derby was 89%-73% in Villas favour. Derby v Fulham was 68%-90% in Fulhams favour. Dribbles: Both games exactly the same, 15-8 for Villa/Fulham. Tackles: Villa-Debry had 9-21 tackles in Derby's favour, whilst Derby v Fulham was 25-11 tackles in Derby's favour. Corners: 9-2 for Villa and 8-2 for Fulham. Basically, in both games, Derby were on the back foot against teams that took the game to them, and in both games, Derby took an early lead to facilitate this sitting back. Looking at that you might dismiss the difference in scores as simply us getting the rub of the green and Fulham not, yet if you'd watched our game against Derby then it was easy to tell we really should have run away with it. There are a couple more stats that I think explains why Fulham couldn't beat Derby whilst we should have won convincingly. And they are; Shots (On Target): Villa v Derby was 24(6) - 7(3), Derby v Fulham was 3(1) - 13(2). Expected Goals (xG): Villa v Derby was 4.43-0.77, Derby v Fulham was 0.16-0.85. (I know a lot of people don't like xG, but I think it's useful for determining performance and providing context to all the other stats.) These two stats tell us that Derby restricted not only the number of chances that Fulham had compared to our game but also the quality of chances. Looking at the shot locations for Fulham, 8 were from outside the box, and none of them were closer than the penalty spot. Fulham spent much of the game passing the ball around the midfield looking to break down Derby's defence but couldn't get the ball in the box. Looking at our game we had about 9 long shots, but as we had 11 more shots in total it means we had 15 shots in the box, more than Fulham had all night on Friday. Plus we had 7 shots inside the 6-yard box. That leads me to the final stat I want to mention, and it's a major one. Crosses: Villa v Derby had 44 - 10 crosses, whereas Derby v Fulham had 14 - 11 crosses. Fulham refused to cross the ball on Friday night, even to the point of wasting their corners by taking them short. We crossed Derby to death and it got us chances, but the way Fulham play is a rigid adherence to possession football and short passing, they look to pass through the middle and when Derby just park their team on the edge of the box, you're not gonna pass it through them. This is one of the major discrepancies between the two matches as most other stats are very similar, and it resulted in us coming away from the game feeling shortchanged and Fulham frustrated but ultimately not getting much less than they deserved. If Fulham play like they did on Friday, I can see Derby either getting the draw or nicking another win, as I can't see Fulham creating much if they rigidly stick to they way they played in that game. Sorry for the long and boring post about stats, I just find it interesting that Fulham have this aura about the way they play, yet it was the major thing that held them back against Derby. Yes, Derby performed brilliantly on Friday and will need to do so again, but Fulham didn't do enough to break them down and played into Derby's hands. Plus there's an interesting parallel between our game against Derby and Fulham's, with the major difference being the style of play that had huge differences in effectiveness. TL;DR - Fulham don't cross enough and Derby will let you pass the ball in midfield all game and put 10 men behind the ball stopping you from creating decent chances.

It used to be 4 years of parachute payments and was changed recently, so Fulham are in their last season of those payments as they went down in 2014.

Grabban would if he was moved out wide though

He'll be in the club shop 5 hours before the game doing autographs, you can just give it to him directly.

It's because he played an advantage just before then that led to the goal, I doubt he's actually got anything against us, he's just an egotistical knob that has to make everything about him.

Newly-promoted Newcastle are on course to finish 10th, they kind of prove his point that the gap in quality isn't that big.

They've been playing rubbish* for a while now though and have had quite a bit of luck, like when they should have conceded a penalty that would have to Sunderland 2-0 up and then went up the other end to equalise. A win today and they'd have gotten 2nd, bottling their chance like that has got to be deflating. *By the lofty standards they set a couple months ago.

Bet those snowmen feel like pricks now