P3te

Where is the implication even "kind of" in those quotes? the bit that he's surprised of the timing of it coming out. he's not surprised by there being a clause (which he would've been if he didn't know there was one) but rather the timing of the news breaking

That's not entirely true. There's a minimum fee clause, but we'd have to agree the TERMS of payment with the offering team. For example if someone offered us 32.5m over 8 years, we're not going to agree to it, even though they've met the release fee

I disagree with all the legal nonsense. You wanna play in uefa competition you need to play by their rules I'm just waiting for the day when a 14 year olds parenta sues a league because they won't let him play u13 football with his mates. Ageism and all that

Liverpool will love being referred to as the red devils there

If we were, it'll be because the manager knows them and they represented good value for money. Why else? If either of them make it as top players I'm sure people will be cribbing we didn't do everything to sign them. (On that note, if we wanted them that badly I'm sure we would've offered to buy them and loan them to QPR for a minimum of a season with us picking up their wages)

I'm not fully sure letting an owner spend what they want is the right way to go either. It'd have to come with some kind of caveat like if you're investing your own money it cannot be as a loan, it must be without any fees and there can be no regulations to it. It'd need to be a 100% non refundable injection of cash with no promise or guarantee of repayment. If you succeed you can get your money back through selling the club only - no taking money out while you're there beyond a wage deemed reasonable by the league (eg not giving yourself a $50m a year pay raise after "injecting" $150m) Doing that, and insisting on a 0 debt system like Germany would keep the haves and have nots, but at least the have nots would be maybe mights

No debt is allowed. At all. Ok but they do they allow any potential debt to be avoided from private investment rather than purely via natural income? Going by Wolfburg's financial backing from Volkswagen and Leipzig with Red Bull, it appears they do? I'm not sure. One party/company cannot own more than 49% of a club, though, with exceptions only made for Wolfsburg and Leverkusen because they were originally set up as teams for companies. There's a rule that if you run into temporary debt (eg from buying a player) you cannot buy another player until you sell a player/players to service the debt, which suggests that, no, an owner or investor can't plug the gap, but I can't find anything that makes it 100% clear

Not according to Forbes: Schalke 04 Team Value1 $572 M Team Value calculated May 2015 Owner/Controlling Shareholder:club members Country: Germany League: German Bundesliga Domestic League Championships: 7 Revenue: $290 M (€214 M) Operating Income2 : $57 M (€42 M) Debt/Value3 : 0% Match Day: $99 M Broadcasting: $165 M Commercial: $223 M

No debt is allowed. At all.

They haven't been relaxed yet, and similarly I'm not fully sure a legal challenge would necessarily stand up given Germany as a precedent for it being VERY strict for membership in the league regarding finances and no lawsuits arising

Will the women's goalkeepers be as laughably bad as they are in real life?

UEFA FFP =/= domestic FFP

If Qatar is dropped, you'd have to imagine it'll go to England purely because it'll need less to pull together than anywhere else. Surely the Qataris would sue FIFA though, given the money that's been put in post green light?

Which is actually far more serious from the FIFA hierarchy's point of view than the arrests of its members, because being hit in the pocket is the only thing that really hurts them. They're totally teflon about the other stuff. Yup, this is the one and only opportunity we're likely to have for a meaningful restructuring of FIFA, or a complete breakaway by all the continental federations

Then we need it to be a few years ago before FFP. An owner cannot put any more money in than Randy has already been doing. The ONLY way we can spend more is to bring more in, and cut costs elsewhere. How do people not grasp this yet. It's got nothing to do with Lerner.

That's a great point. We're the only ones who escaped without relegation. Blackburn, Leeds, Newcastle, QPR even City (though not quite under the same circumstances) all dropped after spending big money. We didn't.

Blur or Osais

We don't even know what league QPR will be in next season!

Reilly has been back for a while

Seems like a defeatist attitude to me. As for the non Villa supporting world of course they see Arsenal as favourites but I don't they'd be especially shocked if we were to beat them. I genuinely think you see other people's posts and make up wild subtexts and meanings that aren't there. Nothing I said is defeatist. Losing to them isn't the difference between a dismal season and a good one. Losing to them is par, based on the fact that if we play them 20 times, they'll beat us around 15. Not because I'm defeatist, but because they're a better team. We aren't playing best of 20 though, we're playing a once off game.

Not in the slightest. I'm expecting us to go out and give them one hell of a game, and win the thing, but that wouldn't make that outcome any less surprising to the rest of the non-Villa supporting world

Hold on a minute... Arsenal beating us next week would not in any way shape or form make anything dismal. Arsenal beating us would be just about par for the course. They're expected to beat us, and any other result would be a major upset. Losing to them is NOT going to make the season any worse, unless they absolutely destroy us

He did the (almost) impossible and kept us up, and kept us up in a manner that we could afford to lose both our last games and STILL stay up. Job done, let's see how he fares with a much more ambitious goal of top half next season... once we get the FA Cup wrapped up of course

It's very, very, VERY rare a 22 year old goalkeeper is

If Given is out, we've no sub keeper since Steer is cup-tied and Seigrist is injured