mrjc

Fair enough, agree with some parts, definitely disagree with others...but it's one approach!

I had the same - despite the email saying the 9th, it looks like it is actually tomorrow (Tuesday 10th) at 5pm

Out of interest, what makes you think we are £18m in the green on transfers? I'm not sure it will be as positive as that, although I guess it depends what you assume on Buendia / Ings / Engels. But also - I don't think £80m per window is normal / sustainable - it gets a lot more complex, but basically we wouldn't be able to keep doing what we have been the last two summers forever. There's some good analysis from Czarnikjak on the previous page which sets out our various options - essentially it depends on whether we want to go very aggressive this year (which almost certainly WILL cause us problems down the line), or take a more (sensible) longer term view. Very difficult to know though, ultimately - I could maybe see how we'd just about get one more big-ish signing done at most, but would seem odd if it's more than that.

We've effectively already 'spent' the Grealish money though. In transfer fees: Buendia + Bailey + Ings is reportedly £95m / £100m. In wages, you would think those three + Young, in total, are earning more than Jack was. So unless we have any underlying headroom (previous analysis from Czarnikjak suggests there is some, but not loads) or get some sales in, I don't think we can be overloading the P&L with lots of big signings this summer / January.

I don't think this is right - the FFP calc is on profit, not cash. So even if the cash is paid over 3 years, the profit is all recognised now, both in accounting and FFP terms

Good stuff, and interesting. One big opportunity has to be have more players in the squad with a decent resale value, even once they are surplus to our first team / squad requirements. This was the big problem when we came up - we had the extreme position of loans ending - players retiring - needing to keep some bodies - one outlier with a huge value. So basically no £ inflows and lots of £ outflows needed (wages and fees). If we've been buying well, but continue to improve the squad....the players who drop down the pecking order can hopefully maintain some value to help balance things up. This is all part of the long term problem we've been having to correct over the last few years, but should ultimately help balance between options 2 and 3.

Agree with this - it hurts, of course it does. But it's also understandable from where he is as a truly elite footballer. For what it's worth, while I'm gutted, I'll have pride as a Villa fan if he goes on to really big things.

Fair point, I hadn't taken account of that (although understand how it works). That's probably only really offsetting wages for Mings though. For McGinn - his annual amortisation would have been pretty low anyway (not more than £0.5m / £0.6m I would think)....adding a year to his contract, which I think is what was done, will only reduce that fairly marginally, so I suspect it's not offsetting his wage increase (£10k per week would effectively be worth his whole amortisation charge, for example). I guess these things are relatively marginal though, so difficult to assess with too much accuracy given the uncertainty over the overall 2020/21 position.

Haven't visited this thread for a while, and thanks for this, looks good. Only thoughts which might make this a bit less positive (admittedly without having fully thought this through....): I think using the average of 19/20 and 20/21 as the 'start point' for 21/22 maybe ends up too optimistic for a couple of things For example, even if we are saving £11m year-on-year for Barkley....because that's going into a two-year average, I think we'll only save half of that compared to the average, if that makes sense? On the 'ins', wouldn't we also need to include the fairly significant contract increases that we handed out last season to Jack, Mings, McGinn etc, which will also be diluted as being part of a 2-year average, but we will have a full year of next year? A full year of Sanson wages vs effectively a 1/4 year in a 2-yr average calc. As I say, not fully thought through, but wouldn't this eat into the ~£10m surplus? That said, this also ignores any increase in income (hopefully a bit through league position + gates + commercial), and also is pretty difficult given the uncertainty over the 20/21 numbers. Also, clearly all before any change in Jack status!

Yeah I get that impression too. Feels like he knows he's good enough (he clearly is), and the exposure to real elite football / players over the summer may have whetted the appetite even more

This might be right...but if so...is that such a good thing? Doesn't scream 'loyalty'!

Guardian article suggested exactly that, it was with a bit of a smile. I think he comes across very well with media actually - quite genuine and honest (including in this case!)

First touch was phenomenal last night, pretty much every time. He stands out so highly, against virtually everyone he plays against. Interestingly he said there was interest, Smith said (I think, as it was quick) that no bids were received (both of which are probably true). Either way, as some of those have said above, I don't think you can blame him for considering his options, but he seems genuinely excited to stay - here's to a massive season ahead!

Haha, very random but made me laugh for some reason. Maybe getting him confused with Paul Warhurst?!

For the second CB (assuming #5 is a given), are people more #4 or #6? I've always thought of #4 as a defensive midfielder, #6 as a CB. Good chat

Helpful for players to have a few mates in the press....I'll dish out the odd bit of gossip / team news...you then treat me well, decent write-ups, more importantly don't sell me out if there's anything negative going on.

Yes, the Championship figure includes the stadium sale. Basically our exceptionals virtually netted out that year for accounting purposes (+£36m stadium, +£14m from land (BMH?), -£30m Xia payment, -£16m promotion bonuses), but I am presuming that all were included in the FFP calc apart from the Xia payment. Don't know for sure though. Totally agree on the cloudiness (although it's definitely helped us!). PL income - sounds about right, although I'm not sure on our share of the repayments to Sky et al for disruption, which I think are spread over 2 / 3 years.

I think, from an initial look: - From the PL rules, it looks like we aren't allowed to lose more than £105m over a rolling three-year period. - For this coming season, that will therefore cover the last year in the Championship, and 2 x years in the PL. - In that last year in the Championship, we had a loss of -£69m...but I'm pretty sure from that you can exclude the £30m we paid off the Doc with, and £9m of youth development expenditure. So maybe a £30m loss for the test. - That leaves £75m of losses allowed for the two years in the PL...and here it's just really hard (impossible) to know. Clearly revenue's gone up massively (although this is maybe partly repayable I think, due to Covid disruption)....unconfirmed rumours of a reduced wage bill....and a lot of transfer fees paid without (so far) many meaningful ones in. I suspect we're okay as the club seem to know what they're doing on this, but there's not really enough public information to conclude.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if he's left out. Two main reasons - firstly, the lockdown incident. Yes, it was a while ago now, but it was still really really bad imo. Secondly - for most of the period post lockdown, he wasn't anywhere near his best. He grabbed the headlines on the last day, but was otherwise below par for the month or so below that. I hope he is picked as I think he is clearly good enough (despite recent form), but it feels like Southgate has doubts, and the above could be easy reasons he uses to leave him out.

I thought he'd come back from the break raring to go, effectively having had a decent rest (from looking drained / losing heart with some pretty average performances pre-lockdown), and basically having got away with the lockdown issue as cleanly as he could have done (obviously speculating, but I imagine that could have been a whole lot worse had the circumstances behind the car crash fully come out, rather than being quietly managed away). But he's looked laboured, like he knows the game is up, like he has no faith in his teammates any more (maybe fair!), and like he's conceded we've gone. Which sadly, we now probably have. I don't think he doesn't care at all....but that is how it's panned out. There was a short spell towards the end of the Newcastle game where he looked unplayable, but other than that it's been a really disappointing return - and with short term sentiment weirdly meaning a lot, it's probably cost us a few £m and him potentially an England call up soon.

Happy with that at £8m (swayed by reading Burnley post above!)

Let's hope so. I guess the difference with that £45m is that (a) you could tell from the accounts that something had happened, as it showed up as a huge exceptional item, which we haven't had since and (b) it made our losses bigger before we could 'save' it, if that makes sense, so didn't really help the underlying position. There is obviously stuff we don't know though, so I hope you're right

I agree, I think he's credible and he knows what he's doing. I doubt they are lying about it, or just hoping we'll be okay. But...other than signing a new contract (which we know can be done to help manage a selling price), I don't think there's been any guarantee of not selling JG this summer, although I could easily have missed this. So the most feasible outcome I know of...based on the publicly available information, what seems like the size of the gap, and being able to avoid a breach...is that we do have to sell him this summer. That would be consistent with Purslow saying we are okay, would have made sense last summer when we could turn Spurs down, and would make more sense of our continued spending, knowing we had a £25m+ pure profit up our sleeve that we are technically allowed to put towards this season's losses. Obviously I hope it's not, and that Purslow has some better way up his sleeve - I just have no idea, and have seen no real suggestion, of what that might be.

No probs. Honestly, he might be wrong. But I've read up on the rules a fair bit myself (not to the same level of detail as him), and have a finance background, and what he says / writes makes a lot of sense to my understanding of how it works. That said, it's only based on publicly available information, so don't have the full picture - and in fairness, he doesn't claim to be ITK, he just analyses what is available to us all, including reading FFP small print! Re the rest of it....I had struggled to understand why we didn't need to sell Jack last summer, to be compliant for this season....and then was even more confused when we signed Bolasie and Tammy in particular, given the wages. I don't actually think the January moves will make that much difference to this season's numbers...the £7m transfer fee doesn't totally hit our profit this year, and while we have Mings / Hause, we have sent some more out on loan and returned some loans. The only thing that has made sense to me, as to how we can avoid a breach this season, is the theory about having to sell Jack post-season, and put it towards this season's losses. Obviously I hope this is wrong and there's something big we're missing...but sadly not sure what that is...

Yep, agreed. Although...not to put more bad news on it...but even if we get promoted, we will still have maybe failed the test for our time in the Championship (if we don't sell Jack). Previous clubs have done that, got promoted and it's been ignored (not close to the detail, but I think Bournemouth, Brighton, Leicester maybe). But I think now the PL has said it will work with the EFL to put sanctions on clubs...so it may even be that we need to sell him even if we get promoted. I guess they'd basically be saying that you can't gain an unfair advantage by spending loads to get promoted, without there being some punishment. That's a bit of an unknown though, so hopefully I'm wrong!