allani
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Everything posted by allani
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It's a small price to pay if it means Pau is fit for next weekend!!!!
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Brighton can do us a big favour (or not) in that respect.
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Emery's quote (on the Pau thread) seems pretty positive - definitely sounds like it was more precautionary rather than a definite injury. Fingers, toes and nuts crossed.
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I would be surprised if Pau, Carlos and Konsa are all out for another month. Pau looked fairly relaxed and comfortable on the bench rather than a player who was worried that they might be out for a few weeks (but that might just be wishful thinking).
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Pretty sure that their big chance would have been ruled out if they had scored as it looked offside to me - the reply was pretty quick so it's not certain but it looked like he was most of his upper body offside (unless there was a trailing leg somewhere along our back-line).
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I thought it looked like he maybe over-stretched making a tackle after a bad pass from Moreno near the end of the second half. Hopefully, it's just as case of it being a bit sore and so erring on the side of caution. There didn't seem to be any sign of ice or strapping and he seemed to be fairly comfortable on the bench.
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If they are the only CBs available then there's not much else we can do. Hopefully, Pau was precautionary and Konsa makes good progress in his return.
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Yes - your point is thoroughly validated by the stats. Taken the lead 13 times and won 12 of those matches. Man Utd is the ONLY time this season we've not won having taken the lead.
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Hardly killing us when we are 4th in the league... Sloppy yes. But we don't need to over-react.
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But I think the benefit to us is also that we bring more retail in house (rather than being tied into Fanatics) - so we get more from the deal, a bigger percentage of the sales and (hopefully) access to more retail outlets so more sales. It seems like a win, win, win.
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It will become an issue in about 2050 when we're trying to figure out how to layout the stars for our 32 league titles.....
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I actually quite like this. Should we have 7 stars when we play in the FA Cup (maybe not above the crest but somewhere semi-discrete on the shirt)?
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Only when we play in the Champions League (which will hopefully mean exactly the same thing!).
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A new kit manufacturer and a new shirt sponsor announced at the same time would do wonders for our FFP projections!!!
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Well he does then say that Celtic's kit / merch revenues were £29m (although it's not clear whether they rose by that amount or rose to that amount) so potentially £100m every four years.
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I think it is absolutely coming from the club. We can't release the info officially but there's nothing that directly ties us to media "speculation" or discussion (there's no way this can be speculation now). A couple of things that I noted from the article - (1) "Celtic raised £29m in kit and merchandising revenue alone, which represented nearly a quarter of the Scottish giant's overall turnover, while Leeds recorded a similar figure in 2022" and (2) "The franchise’s (96ers) valuation was under $300m when Heck first arrived, now, it stands at over $3bn." I have said for a while that though FFP might be a challenge short term - we've clearly fallen so far behind other teams in a number of areas that there's real potential that FFP could play into our hands really well in the next few years because there's so many more opportunities for us to grow our revenue numbers faster and higher (in percentage terms) than a lot of other clubs. We might not match them with the overall numbers but the difference between our "now" figure and our "then" figure could be huge which would give us some real power in the transfer market.
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Good point. Also if my big dream of a new shirt sponsor also comes true - then again that might have the same restrictions (i.e. that we can't officially announce it before the old deal expires). So maybe the less news we get on all of these fronts the better - because it makes a really big announcement more likely???!! Let me dream!
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I wouldn't be at all surprised if the badge, kit and Adidas are all confirmed at the same time. I think it might be frustrating for us as fans in the meantime - but also a single announcement of all three is likely to create a bigger wave of interest than three separate announcements. I also have a sneaky feeling (maybe more of a hope than anything else) that we might also announce a new shirt sponsor at the same time. We've already shown that we're prepared to pay off contracts to get out of them early so it's not unfeasible that we bin the current **** early. A big new sponsorship deal announcement in with the rest would become a pretty big story and potentially pack a real punch. Especially if it is a big, American based sponsor - you can see exactly how much of a media boon that would be (especially with our new connections with Comcast). Maybe I will be really disappointed when the announcements are really low-key. But I can't help thinking that there's something much bigger happening behind the scenes than we're privy too.
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I agree. But Philogene was told that he had a place in our squad this season but decided he wanted more first team football. So I'm just wondering what will have changed over the course of this season? I think he's improved as a player (although only going by second hand accounts on that) - but has he improved enough to start for us? If not then is he / are we more confident that he'll make more appearances off the bench or that he is better equipped to play in the case of injuries / suspensions. I just can't see him playing as many minutes for us as he is at the moment - so at what point does fewer minutes at a higher level become better (for him) than more minutes at a decent level? It might not be quite as simple as we might think (although presumably the fact that he's approved the buy-back clause means that he wouldn't be averse to the possibility of coming back).
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I'm not sure that outside of Emi, Pau, Luiz and Ollie we have any players that we could sell for £100m. But seriously, I think you are right with the general point that every player has his value (even those four) and if another club are willing to exceed that then we'd be stupid not to at least consider it. I am confident that Monchi and his team would (a) already know about and (b) be able to talk to, a large number of potential replacements. So whilst I do think it would take a genuinely ridiculous bid to tempt us into selling any of our key players - I'm also confident that we've already got a list of potential replacements for everyone in the squad so that we can try and either minimise the impact of losing a key player or even capitalise on it and strengthen the team further. So I'm more confident that we won't lose a star player but also more confident that if we did we wouldn't be in a worse place (or at least wouldn't be for very long).
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Isn't the challenge still going to be that he wants to be playing every week? Emery wanted him in the squad this season (and gave him minutes in the pre-season matches) but he chose to move away. Has he done enough to prove that he's going to be in our starting XI next season? Would he be happy to be on the bench? I suspect he's probably gone from being a squad player to being in the match day squad - but is that enough for him? He's still got some seriously good players to jump ahead of to get a significant amount of playing time each week (Ramsey and Buendia). Our home grown position hasn't changed significantly from this season to next (as far as I can think) so why would it suddenly be so much more urgent?
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That's definitely my take too. I am sure that we will have no need to sell any player that Emery regards as "key" this summer. It is always possible of course that we receive an offer that becomes very difficult / impossible to turn down (and CL qualification would make it less likely that a player would push for a move to a CL team). But if that does happen then I think we're in the best position for years to find an effective replacement (who might develop into an improvement) quickly and without breaking the bank. The Home Grown consideration is an extra one that I think might get overlooked during the general speculation / rumour phase.
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If the club are gambling on us finishing Top 4 otherwise we're ****ed from an FFP perspective then ultimately we are going to get ****ed sooner or later. It's just not sensible to assume that we are going to finish in the Top 4 or 5 for the next few years. As Emery says there are up to 6 or 7 teams better than us on paper. Obviously football isn't played on paper and spending ****loads isn't a guarantee of building a good team either. The top of the PL is hopefully going to get much more competitive over the next few seasons - there's already 8 or 9 teams who could realistically claim to be aiming for Europa League qualification or better next season. Which means that some are going to miss out. Any club that is "all in" on qualifying for Europe as the only way of meeting their FFP is going to come unstuck very, very quickly. 6th would be a terrific season for us. If the owners have put us in a position that it becomes a major failure then very serious questions need to be asked indeed about the way the club is being run. Obviously qualifying for the CL would be a great boost financially - but it has to be a boost IF we qualify rather than a massive burden if we don't.
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It's an interesting exchange that you could read in very different ways. I mean I think we all expect that we will try and sell some players this summer - preferably those whose costs don't meet the value they add to the squad. It's very easy to read what Emery says as suggesting that we might have to sell a squad player that we might not necessarily want to in an ideal world. It's also very easy to read it as we might have to sell a more important player. My general feeling is that he's talking about less important players (i.e. where we already have cover or where the player's a regular part of the match day squad but not a key player) rather than hinting that we might need to sell a Watkins / Luiz type player. I'd put Ramsey closer to the latter of those two categories as he seems to be getting plenty of minutes now he's back from injury.
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I think this is more about stopping things that happened with Cardiff and Hull. So it shouldn't be possible to change the club's logo from a Bluebird to a Dragon, their main colours from blue to red or the name of the club - without the fans having some level of involvement. I don't think a minor tweak to a club badge needs a fan consultation - in the same way that fans don't need to be consulted on new kit designs. It then becomes a question as to what a "minor tweak" covers. It's almost certain that going from the Lerner badge to the anticipated Heck badge would be considered a tweak and probably wouldn't officially need to go through any fan consultation. But the Lerner - Purslow badge involves a change in the overall shape, the colour and direction of the lion and of the principal colours (although using the club's traditional colour palette) and so is less of a "tweak" but probably still not a fundamental change. (Which is probably why the 1 year kit badge narrative was later adopted to make it easier to switch back to something more similar to the "original".) It seems to be a rule introduced to handle a very specific incident around particularly bad owners (who should never have passed the ownership test anyway). It also didn't seem to stop Newcastle playing half their matches in Saudi Arabia's national kit this season (or Man City playing in colours closer to the Etihad cabin crew uniform than their traditional away kit).
