pas5898

I live in Leicester (yes I have my Villa scarf today :D) The feeling is "its gone a bit stale", also Leicester fans know the second a decent job comes along he will be off in a heartbeat. Fans openly revolting against his starting lineup (no Perez, Iheanacho). Seems a matter of time, although what manager will Leicester attract better than Rodgers? Be careful what you wish for!

It will take decades for them to build up the match day revenue that Liverpool and Man United generate. Man City have the pre oil money fanbase, but many of the newer fans are kids and newer people living in the country who choose an English team (they have a growing Polish fanbase for example). The majority of Man U and Liverpools match-day revenue comes from 35-45 year old 'die hard' fans living in the Cotwolds. They started off glory hunting in school (im 34 and half my school were glory hunting Man U fans) Now they've grown up, they go to 2 matches a year, buy merchandise, food, put a bet on and of course take the photo in front of the ground holding a scarf in the air. Those 10-20,000 additional fans are where the serious revenue comes from. If Man City keep on going well, those youngsters who glory hunt now will go onto be those same "die hard Man City fans" living in the Cotswolds.

Back OT - What's happened to Marcus Rashford? He's been awful for nearly 2 years now. Doesn't seem to get criticised the same as Dele, but he's been every single bit as awful.

There's 30,660 days in 84 years. Technically at least 1 person should die the day of each home game with a normal attendance of 41k. I know there's semantics around age adjustments, but you get the point. Lots of people. It happens. Just being highlighted more now.

Gerrard just has something, almost intangible about his management. Firstly, you can tell he has extremely high standards and that's carried over from his playing days. He was a world class elite footballer and understands the dedication and effort it takes. He now expects that from every single one of his players. And. unlike Rangers if a player doesn't want to give that we have to resources to bring in a quality replacement. With his backroom staff, he is humble enough to admit he needs help from a training and perhaps tactical perspective (Beale, Gary Mac) He has that raw passion of a Simeone, Guardiola, younger Mourinho etc He is still an idol to many football players, so commands that instant respect. If he tells a Mcginn, Nakamba, Luis etc that wasn't good enough they have no choice but to listen. It's no coincidence that our midfield unit has immediately improved. He talks well and just "gets it".

Most Everton fans actually want Rooney and Duncan Ferguson. They've had 5 managers in 5/6 years and some good ones! The problem is clearly with their recruitment. Walcott 20m, Iwobi 30m, sigurddson 50m, gbamin 30m, Sneiderlin 30m. James Rodriguez was an expensive disaster with his wages. They need to reset for 2/3 years, get rid of the dead wood and build a proper team.

They'll probably offer crazy wages and signing bonus for a 6 month loan to mercenaries who just don't play for their teams (coutinho, Bale, umtiti, lingard). Risk free for Newcastle, mercenary players will have a chance of a 2/3 year contract on crazy money if Newcastle stay up. Agents will push heavily as they will want an ongoing relationship with Newcastle.

Saturday 3pm, we would easily sell out 50k each week. It's the midweek games with late kick offs when the majority of families don't go that will always be the issue.

With a 10k increase, I don't think they'll add many season tickets, maybe 3/4k (to appease the masses). Hospitality (obviously) and single tickets is where the money Is made. People who go to 1,2 games per year spend more money on merchandise, food, drinks etc. Im a season ticket holder and barely spend anything when I go to home games. Increasing the "family area" plus hospitality is where the money is. I took my kids to a game (they go 1,2 times a year), sat in the North Stand, must have spent 250 quid on tops, food and the tickets. Most games I spend £5 on parking and not a penny more.

Commercially speaking you want as many "day trip" fans as possible. Fans who go 1,2 times a year spend more per game, buy merch, food drink etc. Many Season ticket holders (me included) barely spend anything each game.

We should end up with a Portuguese team. Purslow in his interview said we need to scout worldwide markets for talent and be clever around the new post Brexit visa system. A good young Brazillian player for example would find it much easier to get into Portugal than the UK until his career and earnings mature.

Purslow going to be on Talksport shortly discussing the new solidarity payments and regulation on football clubs.

Yeah my thoughts as well. Could be a case of wrong place at the wrong time, or he just isn't good enough. We've witnessed far greater talents at his age disappear into the conference.

This is exactly the reason why a potential expansion could / would be blocked by the council. Residents and police could block the expansion just off the thousands queuing for the trains. Parking is already a nightmare, how would that work with an extra potential 500-1000 cars? I drive in, would love to get the train but its expensive, unreliable and I can be home driving before I'd even make it to New Street.

He had a team consisting of: Grealish, Tammy Abraham, Mcginn, Chester, Tuanzebe, Adomah, Bolasie and Hourihane sitting 14th in the championship, getting absolutely played off the park week in and week out against the likes of Wigan and Preston. The fan base wanted him out and we were universally mocked by his family and friends on Sky Sports / TalkSport. That last few months was an insult to our club and fanbase, particularly the 3-5,000 who went to the away games to be served that absolute dross, only turn the radio on for the 2-3 hour drive home to be mocked: "Who will Villa get that's better', "Bruce is a Championship expert" etc, even his son piping up telling us how lucky we are. I went to every game that season and I've never felt such resentment towards a manager (Even Remi Garde) The guy is an absolute fraud and is only where he is because of 1 good season with Hull, a ton of media influence and out of football he's probably a nice guy.

Newcastle is a wet dream for betting companies. It's a big place, mainly working class areas surrounding. Lower income, predominately working class households are more likely to place risky bets, or show addictive patterns in betting. Fans are now re-engaged with the club and will bet accordingly on all the speculative bets on signings.

After this we have: Palace Away Man City Home Leicester Home Liverpool Away. Norwich Away If we don't win this we will almost certainly be in the relegation zone by the time we play Norwich. For me this is an absolute must win game.

And the constructors which is more important for the teams and £££'s

Be interesting to see how they go about it. FFP basically stops outright spending now. Everton weren't allowed to spend this summer and they've hardly gone Man City levels. There's a new rule coming into place that means sponsorships have to be centrally verified as a market value price, so they can't get massively inflated prices. I think they'll quickly spend their way to best of the rest and hit the buffers. Financially, the top is a closed shop and would take 4/5 years on consistently hitting top 4/6 to even compete with an Arsenal. meanwhile in those 4/5 years the top 6 are cherry picking your best players for 250k a week.

If they want to offer 50 million for Mings it should be accepted. Not because he isn't a good player, but because it makes commercial sense. He's going to be nearly 29 in January. A part of the "sustainable" model that Purslow constantly refers too will involve us selling players for profit before their value diminishes. if we can spend 40/50 million on a 23/24 year old alternative then that makes sense and we keep the average age down without spending anything. They key as always is recruitment. Leicester sold Maguire + brought in Soyunchu (23 at the time) and Fofana (19).

Purslow is hired to make big decisions. He has made 2/3 of his biggest decisions in the last 5 days which will probably shape his tenure at the club. One of those decisions was to remove a Villa man (prematurely in the eyes of many) and replace him with a fairly inexperienced Liverpool man, who he clearly admired from his playing days. If this doesn't go well, it will put him firmly in the crossair of fans if this doesn't work out. He's not stupid, he knows if this doesn't go right and fairly quickly, he will be sacked by owners or the fans will make his job untenable. But he still made the decision.

They are worth billions, technically they hold back funds every window unless they want to buy every single player in the PL. A new manager coming in will necessitate new signings to suit his philosophy / put their own stamp on the team.

Grealish: 100million made sense. Most marketable British player over Euros and a fine player. Man City are sports washing, no coincidence they went for the most popular English player + the squeaky clean married, model professional England captain. The image is more important than the money (which is limitless) Declan Rice: Need to factor in age / amortisation. Man City will get 5 years of Grealish at his level for their 100million at 20million a season. Whoever buys Rice for 100million will get 10 years at 10million a season (plus he's likely to get better), Or they could get 4/5 years out of him and recoup the investment.

I read somewhere: "Losing Jack took the heart from Aston Villa. Losing Dean Smith was taking its soul." Sums it up to me. I hope he does well wherever he goes. Rangers would be a very good job for him, could see him doing a Brendan Rodgers'esque job there. Also the winner automatically gets into the CL now (no qualifiers) which is massive for Scottish football.

Newcastle will be busy signing Journeymen on 300k a week (Coutinho, Ramsey etc). In the main we operate in the young, hungry, talented sector. West Ham will be direct competition (Benhrama and Bowen look like big misses)