allani

Given how far behind we seem to be behind our rivals in terms of revenue (match day income, shirt sales, sponsorship, etc) there's an awful lot pointing to more action and less words being absolutely the right way to go. I'd 100% prefer us to double our revenue and halve our communications rather than double our friendly comms and keep our revenue the same. That doesn't mean that we can't be good on both sides of the equation. But if we have to be poor at one....

Plus I suspect that trying to shorten a long discussion into a sentence or two "minute" almost always cuts out the dialogue and "fluffy" side of things.

I suspect that just the involvement of Adidas's marketing team / presence will make the launch quite "sexy", exciting and positive. A bit like when the F1 team unveil their new liveries. It gathers media attention and interest.

I was tempted to send you a PM on this rather than reply here but I am genuinely interested in your thoughts on this. I think that it's probably down to someone trying to make the notes look business like rather than more casual and so the tone of the notes is out of kilter. Which ties in with your comment above. But when I read the notes I was looking at some of the questions and wondering why the FAB were being so aggressive and that that approach is always going to end up with curt, blunt responses (which seem to have been given). Engagement is a two way street after all. So both the "tone" of the questions and the answers sound like they are both out of alignment with the generally positive and open discussion that you say the attendees (or at least those you have spoken to) felt had taken place. Is that fair? Oh and one important comment I noted about FFP and the change of the accounting date being about bringing it in line with the dates of other contracts - which makes complete sense - hopefully that clears up all the noise about it being done to try and hide a possible problem. There might be an FFP related bonus but I suspect it just makes reporting 1000 times early because you don't have to mess around with pro-rata calculations, etc. It does kind of make you think why on earth was it ever done in May?

I might be ploughing a lone farrow here but what I read between the lines is not that it less about frantic attempts to make the badge better and / or to get it approved by the FA (because that has already happened insofar as the FA have said that the correct process is being followed) but potentially more about lining it up to coincide with the Adidas deal and possibly even a new kit? Ideally there would also be a new shirt sponsor to go with that - although I'd have hoped that there might have been a tiny hint towards that in the response to the question on gambling sponsorship. I think one "launch" of all makes a lot of sense in terms of raising the profile of the event and triggering media / partner engagement and interest. However, I can also see that if that happens then it could be claimed that it is all about burying the new badge in other news.

OK. When he stays I'll take the plaudits.

Most of the media know that Ramsey is "one of our own" and so any rumours about him are going to have Villa fans reading their story and responding to it. There's also a fair few who would be delighted to cause some friction in the Villa camp and for our season to fizzle out so that Man Utd qualify for the CL. There is no way that anyone in the mainstream media has knowledge of which players we might sell (for FFP purposes or not). The BBC publish 15 transfer rumours every single day of the year - most of which don't lead to transfers. It's just noise that makes people like us read what they have to say.

It's €138m rather than €138,000 - but yes it has been widely reported from the accounts the club submitted and the report UEFA published a couple of weeks ago. Most of the independent analysis I have read seems to suggest that it sounds a lot worse than it is and that we should meet the PL FFP requirements without too much problem. Meeting the UEFA requirements is possibly a bit harder but mainly because the assessment period has been reduced whilst the limits change - but again I don't think too many people (apart from Villa fans) believe that it is a significant issue - other than limiting what we might be able to spend in the summer. So what I've read is basically that we're very unlikely to breach FFP but that we might have less to spend on transfers than we would like. On the flip side I don't think any projections have factored in the new deal with Adidas (which is rumoured to be significant), qualification for either the Europa League or CL, etc. I am also confident that we will announce a number of new sponsorship deals over the coming months - this is something that Heck did in Philadelphia and is an area that Atairos / Comcast have considerable experience of (it is unlikely to be just headline grabbing shirt or stadium sponsors - I think there will be other deals happening as well - American sports teams get sponsors / partners for almost everything).

I think given the way Everton have conducted their transfer business I wouldn't be too sure that they'd have got much more. There's a big difference between saying they could have got £20m more and any club meeting that higher price. But as I say I agree with your point and I have plenty of concerns with the way that FFP has been implemented (I have always said it's to protect the status quo more than it is to prevent clubs from going under). That said as much as FFP is our enemy it could become our friend. The "Sky 6" (I refuse to call them the big 6) all budget on finishing in the top 6 and progressing a long way in Europe. The more that clubs like us, Newcastle, Brighton and West Ham can disrupt that and make them miss these targets - the harder it will be for them to keep hitting their FFP numbers. Chelsea are almost certainly going to have to offload players this summer and if Man Utd were to miss the Europa League as well the CL then they will struggle too. The challenge is that we need to be able to be good enough to keep qualifying without becoming reliant on qualifying to keep us compliant. Qualification has to be treated as a bonus rather than an expectation. But the more often we qualify the more that becomes true for the "Sky 6" too. Of course their other revenue streams are much higher than ours so they should be better able to handle missing out on CL money - but their expenses / outgoings are also likely to be considerably higher too.

I'm hoping not. I'm hoping for a new kit manufacturer, new kit, new main shirt sponsor and new badge quadruple-whammy update. And given that two are impacted by existing commercial agreements they won't be able to be officially confirmed for a while.

Everton spent a lot of time buying players from "lower" clubs - they just spent over the odds and on questionable players. At the end of the day the reason they've had to sell their best players rather than their worst players is because they paid way over the odds for their worst players and put them on big salaries. Everton are in the position they are in because of their mismanagement not because FFP has failed. They are a bad example to use. I agree with your main point - I just take issue with using Everton as a victim of it.

I think the coefficient shown in the tables is after that calculation has taken place. But I think you are right for each team that progresses our coefficient would increase by slightly less than France (because we had 2 more teams earning points). However, the teams above us had 7 teams in Europe - compared to our 8 - and so it's not particularly relevant. I think it would be more significant for the Czech Republic (who had 4 teams qualify).

I'm not convinced that we have sold any Academy players who would feature in our strongest first team (11 + 5). Chuk maybe - but that wasn't down to FFP. Indeed you could easily argue that we have benefitted more from this than other clubs as we have been very active buying players from other academies to strengthen ours. I don't know why we are "most likely" to sell Ramsey by the end of June. This seems to have come from one rumour that we have a massive FFP hole to fill (when there are plenty of other sources that project we are fine - or at least won't need to sell a significant player) and the view that selling a player who has come through the system yields a greated FFP return. It completely fails to take into consideration the fact that Ramsey is likely to have more value to us next season as he is probably our biggest "home grown" player and so is important for the UEFA squad registration.

Indeed - plus the points you earn are the same for all UEFA competitions. So if we progress in the Conference League, England's coefficient improves by the same amount as if Man City progress in the CL. These are the relevant matches in the next rounds: Italy Germany England France Spain CL Bayern v Lazio (0-1) Bayern v Lazio (0-1) Man City v Copenhagen (3-1) Sociedad v PSG (0-2) Sociedad v PSG (0-2) Barcelona v Napoli (1-1) Real Madrid v Leipzig (1-0) Arsenal v Porto (0-1) Real Madrid v Leipzig (1-0) Atletico v Inter (0-1) Dortmund v PSV (1-1) Barcelona v Napoli (1-1) Atletico v Inter (0-1) Europa Sporting v Atalanta Qarabag v Leverkusen Roma v Brighton Marseilles v Villareal Marseilles v Villareal Roma v Brighton Freiburg v West Ham Sparta v Liverpool AC Milan v Slavia Prague Freiburg v West Ham Conf Maccabi v Fiorentina Ajax v Aston Villa Sturm Graz v Lille So there are already a few matches (particularly the CL) where a team from one of the other leagues vying for an extra CL spot is playing against a club from another. Meanwhile Brighton and West Ham's Europa matches are important because they both play teams from clubs currently higher in the UEFA coefficients. So wins for either will make it a bit more likely that England gains one of the extra spots. It also means that it is important that we progress further than Fiorentina in the Conference as again that would represent a swing in our favour. With so many of the current rounds seeing matches between teams from the 5 leagues leading the coefficients race - the coefficient table is likely to change significantly and as a result the odds will also change.

The women's team is called Canberra United. So I imagine that they would adopt that.

I was just looking at the league table too. Yes Canberra are bottom (but with one of two matches in hand on the teams above them) - but also the league seems ridiculously competitive. I think there's something like 6 points between qualifying for the end of season play-offs and being bottom - depending on Canberra picking up some points from their 2 games in hand. So it's not like they are a huge way off the rest of the teams at all. I don't know what the actual standard is like but it does seem to point to the idea that there'd be some opportunities to loan players between the two clubs. The only slight disappointment was that their top scorer (who I think is scoring at more than 1 a game this season) is 35 - so I'm not sure that we could nab her and play her up front with Rachel.

I was saying the other day that it seems strange that the artificial restrictions on transfers (through two specific windows) might well come under a legal challenge soon - now that clubs can be penalised for missing their financial target. Forest are already asking how not selling Johnson in June for £10m less than they were able to sell him for in August is financial mismanagement. The collapse of the January transfer market this year further complicates things. There's a lot that can happen between August and May and one of the biggest options that clubs have to deal with unforecasted costs is to sell valuable assets - namely players. The fact that for most of that time selling players is forebidden means that a major tool for helping to balance the books has been removed. It also means that clubs with a healthy FFP position can now use this to target clubs struggling with FFP to force them into selling players at below their market value. Which again flies in the face of FFP supposedly being there to help make the game be run more sustainably. Whilst I understand that the accounts should be based on the football season - I think the relationship between accounting rules and transfer windows needs to be looked at. I would imagine that most clubs are now looking to give themselves the opportunity to sell assets at the end of the accounting period - rather than basically being in a position where the last chance to raise revenues through player sales is 8 or 9 months previously. Clubs will also have a better idea of their final financial position in May / June than they would have done in August (i.e. they can tie spending into actual performance rather than projections) and so I suspect that June might become more active as teams either utilise extra funds or try and generate some last minute revenue. I don't think that us moving our reporting period is concerning - more a recognition that the transfer market is changing: with the winter market looking like it is becoming more a chance to loan players and then clubs being a bit more active in June and then possibly later in the summer window. I would be very surprised if many clubs don't do the same / haven't already done it.

I quite like the fact that there's already a Women's team as well. It would seem a great opportunity to help develop both our Men's and Women's teams.

I think Kosta (right back) is further ahead than Sousa (left back) at the moment - he's played a handful of CL matches and did pretty well against Man City. Although my Arsenal supporting mates were disappointed that Sousa was allowed to leave as they thought that he'd be one of the youth players who would get the odd first team appearance next season (cups, etc) - I think we'll probably look to loan him at least until Christmas. As an aside - they also said there were some rumours about discontent at their Academy and the feeling that top prospects weren't being pushed through quickly enough - so I wouldn't be particularly surprised to see us pick up one of Sousa's ex-team-mates in the summer.

Livingstone or Inverness would be a decent options for the V connection. Both likely to bounce around between the bottom of the Scottish Premiership and the Championship so unlikely to have a European cup implication. Also it would be a great way to find out whether a prospect from warmer climes is likely to be able to do it on a cold Tuesday night in Sunderland - that would seem positively balmy after a winter playing in the highlands!

Our new back-up keeper has penalty shoot-out form too. I have wondered in the past whether teams should consider just having a specialist penalty keeper on the bench. Someone who maybe isn't great at catching crosses, commanding their box, etc but just has superb reflexes and good movement. I think I've seen it happen a couple of times (but can't remember when) and also that one time that happened the "match" keeper had had a great game and was taken off and the "penalty" keeper than proceeded to not save any of the penalties he faced and so "lost" the match.

PS - Having a quick look through the first of those sources and something interesting struck me. Should it be possible for a team to change their penalty kick order AFTER the coin toss to decide who goes first or second (but BEFORE the first kick is taken) and if so would anyone actually do so? This was after the point they made about their being a proven advantage to taking the first kick (if the shoot out concludes quickly) but a similar advantage to go second (if the shoot out goes on longer) - which is odd as I thought it would be the other way around - the more times a team have to score their kick to progress to the next sudden-death round the more the pressure is likely to mean that someone misses. This would be the same as serving first in a tie-break in tennis would feel to be a bigger deal the longer the tie-break goes on because you have more chances of winning the tie-break on your own serve. I don't know but I think if you knew you were going second then maybe you'd load the middle takers more to try and steal an advantage and / or wrestle back if you miss the first - whereas maybe if you go first you want to front-load the penalty takers to try and grab the initiative? This might be something that gets taken into consideration in the report - if so apologies.

The best strategy is probably just have 5 very good penalty takers with nerves of steel and have them all practice a lot. That way it doesn't matter what order you put them in!

On the flip side (and I'm sure that this isn't the way that Emery thinks) if he went to Barcelona or Real Madrid and failed to win everything (and the expectation would be that he won everything) then that would end up being the way that he was remembered rather than all the trophies he's won along the way. As he knows from PSG - winning La Liga wouldn't be enough. He'd have to win domestic and European titles - and probably in the same season.

I mean you'd hope that there is a significant enough difference in the motif for it not to be confusing at all.