mrjc

Oh I agree completely - just think he will use it as an excuse to show how bad his luck is. I don't buy it at all - doesn't cover up the clear long-term failings in any way whatsoever.

The Hogan / Hourihane calamity will certainly be used as a "what could have been..."

Nope, seems a long way off. That said, we could plausibly go on a run scraping a few wins, as we did last season. They may even come in consecutive games. The problem is, it won't be the result of addressing the underlying issues, and therefore before long we'll revert to more games like Saturday (and the preceding 11 months), when we won't scrape lucky wins. The change needs to be much more fundamental than even just going on a bit of a run of results.

I understand the sentiment, but don't completely agree. If we drop points short term to result in a better solution quickly, a new manager may well have a smaller mountain to climb than if we win a few / lose a few, slowly dropping points over the next few months, then give someone barely any time to recover it. That said, I get that we're into hypotheticals here, not least for the fact that a loss tomorrow doesn't necessarily mean the sack. Complex situation.

I absolutely wouldn't

Yep, huge....if he's right then, at least £52m per year in wages. I'm presuming that will be more once you've factored in other staff, NI / benefits etc. Our revenue in the last season of the PL was around £110m. Parachute payments in year 1 of being relegated were around £27m less than we got in our last PL season, and then drop by a further £7m for this season. If gate receipts are about the same (more games in Champ vs higher crowds in PL), plus you would think we will have less commercial revenue, I would guess revenue this season would be around the £60m - £70m mark. That amount on wages therefore seems huge, and would suggest we'll certainly be loss-making after other costs. Even more worrying is next year - if we don't go up we'll get even less in parachute payments.....and any wages from contracts that are up, we would probably need to replace in the squad. For me, it reinforces the need to act soon to try and salvage this season.

Would people rather we lost or won against Middlesbrough? I struggle with the thought of going into any game wanting us to lose (instinct just takes over)...however, I don't see Bruce turning this around and so a win in itself is pretty much meaningless. Ultimately I think it would be better for our medium / long term if we were to lose and it forces the issue. But it's pretty sad to feel like that

Agree with this and @Junxs. Worryingly, it must be in Bruce's mind too. It will be his excuse for failure, and I imagine his only 'strategy' now is to get 1-0 wins with JK back in the team. Complete joke, given all the other resources

I agree with the general point - how come Warnock is managing to do it though?! Whatever the reason though, agree that Bruce seems massively outdated and outthought by less well-resourced peers.

I went into today's match with a strange sense of optimism - maybe the international break blurring my memory...the reality was utter dross. We are still showing no signs of improvement, no signs of a coherent plan coming together, and not even flashes of dominance against some average teams. I don't buy into the rationale of giving 'time' for the sake of it - after this amount of time the progress is just unacceptable.

Solid again today, it's good to see how he's progressed since first joining. He still seems to me to randomly be very very close to handling the ball outside the area when he's running to throw it out...luckily refs aren't noticing for now!

Interesting, I'm surprised to see most of these views after today. I thought positionally he looked off a couple of times, and maybe I'd expect to see more 'leadership' (although difficult to tangibly think what that means). But not to any major extent on either point. On the flip side, I think at times he still looks a very good defender (as we should expect). He reads things and cuts them out, and a few times in the first half he seemed visibly impatient with the lack of impetus - intercepting and then venturing forward, trying to get balls out wide to Elmo, for example. Basically I agree with @Uncle Albert, I think Chester has looked strangely out of sorts and is playing worse than Terry

Ah fair enough, hadn't seen those (although I still struggle to see how, given we're supposedly right on the line at the moment!)

I still think it's too difficult / too early to properly judge him. The pros: he's invested a lot, he seems to be trying to turn around the whole culture at the club, he engages with fans, he seems to genuinely care. The cons: I think by anyone standards he has made at least one bad managerial appointment, and some of the tweets come across as a bit unprofessional. Buying strategy has also maybe been a bit scattergun given we can't keep on doing it; but arguably that's the CEO's role rather than the Chairman. We'd all like to be further on this journey by now, but he's not done enough either way to convince me he is or isn't a good enough owner to properly take us back to where we should be.

Spurs and Southampton are two great examples of well-run clubs who have managed genuine progress, without huge financial excess, and seem to be doing it sustainably. Admittedly feels a long long long way off, maybe more because of the misery we've had for the last 10 years or so, but it has to be possible...or at least I hope...

Did you take that from the interview this week? He said that we are basically right on the brink of the limit...I took that to mean we are on the limit this season (may be wrong). Which then means next season...we don't have Terry wages, plus Gabby (I think), plus any others whose contracts are up...but we have less in parachute payments and are allowed to lose less...which makes me think we must be in trouble next year without promotion. So I suppose I'd want to clarify that - will we have a serious FFP problem if we don't go up (given he's said we are on the line at the moment)? And is there any dialogue / negotiation throughout the season, or do we just submit our numbers and get a thumbs up / thumbs down response?

But that's also because the income is so much more from the latest TV deal. I think (would need to check), that the 20th team last year got something like £90m paid to them by the Premier League for that season. When we went down it was more like £65m - still a huge reward for failure, but a lot less than Sunderland got! (So we really did choose a bad year to finally go down!) I do see what you mean though - it needs smart buying rather than just buying, and imagination...something which definitely hasn't been shown by our activity so far.

Difficult to judge as it's a completely different job, but he seems to have an ability to organise, motivate and get the best out of resources. I've only listened to one interview in depth (Big Interview podcast with Graham Hunter), and he was very impressive on there. I'd be amazed if he left before the WC (if he gets them there), but if did become available I'd be all for giving him a shot - a risk for sure, but I think that's true of anyone.

Only limited light can be shed, there's a whole load of information not in the public domain. As the Mail says, under the rules we are allowed to 'lose' £83m in a rolling three-year period (2 PL years allowed at £35m, plus 1 Championship year at £13m). That means that for this year's test (done in the Spring) our rolling allowable loss goes down to £61m (1 PL year at £35m, 2 Championship years at £13m). The complication is the definition of the word 'lose'. You're right in that, if you take our pure accounting losses as above, we almost certainly would have breached already. So it comes down to what losses / expenditure we have been able to exclude from the FFP calculation. Some things are straightforward, such as investment in training facilities (but probably fairly minor). However, you can exclude some exceptional costs, including "stadium revaluation and losses". In the year to May 2016, we had a write-off of £44.8m for the "impairment of tangible assets". This seems huge, and they don't disclose any more detail, but I wonder if they revalued Villa Park post-relegation, and it was worth that much less. If this can all be excluded, the £81m loss from 2015/16 becomes more like £36m for FFP - a much more manageable number. You can also exclude the cost of writing off a player's contract if they had a career-ending injury, but I'm not sure we had any of those? Ultimately, it's pretty complex and we can't know the answer definitively. My view is we must still be very close over the next year or so - parachute payments falling and a big wage bill...I think we must still be making losses. That said, they seem to be focused on it so I would hope it's manageable (literally). I'm trying to write up a report / blog analysing this, and our finances more generally, in more detail (nerdy but kind of interesting to me!) - I'll share once done.

Surely not at any price though? I do see what you mean, ideally, but we (probably literally) can't afford to keep paying PL (or even close to PL) wages

I also thought he looked better at CB the other night - better in the air than I was expecting, although I guess he is unusually tall for a full back. Difficult to tell given the opposition, but good to know it's an option (and even based on that, I'd probably have him as backup ahead of Samba)

Agree with this, especially given the additional wage cost (and potential loan fee)

Agree with this - he looked great today, but in previous performances I had been concerned that he looked a bit too weak in most aspects of his game. I guess two lessons...(i) let's not now presume he's the solution, or even ready to perform consistently at this level and (ii) let's not judge early poor performances too quickly. Basically - very well done, and let's hope he builds on it from here

It's so hard to be objective with football / your own club. Preseason - I was feeling optimistic - strong squad, hardened manager ready to lead us to promotion. I think I was seeing through the shortcomings of last season - basically solidity when he joined, then one good run (backed by average performances). Now it seems pretty clear - we somehow look woefully underprepared, with very little plan and no sign of improvement. I'm sure we'd be a lot more forgiving of the results if we saw flashes of good, or a plan starting to develop...but if anything our performances seem to get worse as panic kicks in. In a short space of time I've gone from thinking we could really challenge this season, to now seeing no improvement, and frankly there's no excuse. I don't understand the argument of giving 'time' just for the sake of it - we've got time (and the players) to salvage the season if we act quickly. I backed him, thought he would succeed - but absolutely cannot see that happening now. So let's get the next guy in...

Different view to some on here - I was surprised how rusty he looked. I thought his touch was a little off, and some stray passes led to panic a few times. I'm hoping it's just an early season thing and he'll get better - no reason why he shouldn't prove to be a leader and calming presence there. I'm also reluctant to be too critical, as I remember fearing the worst with Jedi early last season, who then clearly proved himself once he had settled