bobzy

1 minute ago, Dante_Lockhart said:

All is forgiven if we beat Brighton and cement 4th

**** that, we should be winning something.

Can talk about the keeper all we want, we're barely creating anything here.

He's letting a LOT go without cards - that's a nasty one from Cash.

If there's any crumb of comfort, Tel Aviv beat these lot 4-0 away from home.

(Olympiacos won the second leg 1-6 away from home!)

Fiorentina 1-0 up in the other game. 

1 hour ago, villa89 said:

These ideas are all about increasing interest. Nobody in football is bothered if some 30+ year old from Solihull isn't really interested in PL football anymore. They only care about new markets, expanding in Asia, USA, Middle East, etc. This is where the money is and money is all that matters. 

That's fair - I should've been more specific.  Would the traditional, working class (maybe middle class ) fan remain as interested in football if it continues to head down the route it is, indeed, heading?

I can only speak for myself, but each of these money-related changes just has zero appeal to me.  It's turning me away from the game more and more, but maybe that isn't elsewhere at all.

I wonder how Americanized football could become before people lost interest.

Like, all of this is being discussed as sensible.  It's bizarre!

7 minutes ago, Zatman said:

Wesley

Gah

I reckon his breakout season was the one before the one after which we signed him...  

4 minutes ago, CarryOnVilla said:

He was neither early 20s nor had been bought off the back of his breakout season  

20 hours ago, duke313 said:

Who are we looking at?

I loosely follow Belgian football without ever really watching it... strangely enough because of a really old CM game where I managed Cercle Brugge!

Denkey would be the obvious player to be scouting.  He has had an incredible season; top goalscorer in the league by a mile.  Bit of a slow burner up until this point but showed promise last season and has just massively kicked on.  They lost Ueda to Feyenoord in the summer and he hasn't (seemingly) done much there, so always a bit of caution if that's the player we'd be after.  But a striker in his early 20's having a standout season in the Belgian Pro League?  It worked out alright last time...

3 hours ago, TheAuthority said:

This is all abhorrent to me, but just spitballing, 4 beers in, but here I go.....

The league title is settled by a normal 38 season - as is relegation of the 3 PL teams to the Championship.

League winner and runner's up gets champions league after the normal 38 game season. But for the extra 2 Cl, 1 EL & 1 ECL places there is a play off.

This involves the teams who finish 3rd & 4th, and includes the EFL Championship winners and Runners Up and the domestic cup winners.... It's a sort of wild card play off.
It all takes place in a money rich haven like the US or Saudi....................

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This actually isn't the worst idea.  I think ignore the cup competitions - but a league playoff for places 2nd down to 8th or something would be good.

It would NEVER get voted in, though.

10 minutes ago, Davkaus said:

The rumours doing the rounds among Man United fans today seems to be that ETH is there for another season, I can hardly believe it.

I don’t see how they can. 

Everton having the 4th best defence in the Premier League is pretty incredible, to be fair.

12 hours ago, magnkarl said:

I do sometimes wonder - as I walk past the pro-Palestinian thugs in balaclavas wearing a uniquely Bedouin scarf screaming 'from the ri...' outside my granddaughters place of education every Friday afternoon - what would happen if Israel sent a missile with a fragmentation cluster warhead into a peaceful civilian group walking their dogs/jogging/walking/playing with their kids near a beach, when you consider in example that time when everyone was up in arms that Israel hit that parking lot outside a hospital and it then turned out to be Hamas\PIJ misfiring their water pipe rocket. I'll give it to them, they're great at stealing oxygen from conflicts that have far worse breaches of war crimes, genocide and breaches of humanitarian law in them. Everyone looks at Gaza and Israel while Vlad does as he pleases. 

Meanwhile I'll join the 20 odd people outside the Russian embassy to try to do the little I can to stop Russia trying to exterminate Ukrainians and several different peoples in Sudan\Darfur, and then I'll let the millions of people protest the conflict where one side attacked the other, one side went totally overboard, and the UN is using 90% of its resources on.

And then I wonder how much of this is whipped up online by Iranian\Russian bots as literally no one cares about Sudan or Myanmar.

There's only so much coverage of wars that we receive/can stomach.

The Israel-Palestine conflict has been going on for so long, it barely gets discussed until flashpoints happen.  It's a similar thing with Russia, they attacked Ukraine for <reasons> and people largely condemned this but then there's a fatigue of discussing it for 2 years if not involved in the war.  I imagine the same thing will happen with this current war in Gaza.  In each instance, it largely seems that Russia and Israel are being far more aggressive/ruthless on civilian lives and so people (on here) broadly align with those being the more aggressive/"baddies". 

47 minutes ago, Mr_Dogg said:

Ipswich should hold onto Kieran Maguire for 1 more season at least.

Is that how they’ll deal with PSR?

11 minutes ago, CarryOnVilla said:

It just seems like backhand way for the “poorer” clubs to actually compete. They get a chance to actually compete on spending, but if it turns out well for them and they get in to Europe, then they’re ****. 

so it doesn’t really even the playing field. It just hides the unevenness better. 

11 minutes ago, Follyfoot said:

so it basically makes challenging the Sky six impossible

From the very little I know, it does the opposite.  I don't think the details have been published/finalised though.

On 29/04/2024 at 11:40, VillaChris said:

Watch them just give it to Pep. Or Ange.

No seriously I think Emery will win if we get top 4 + win a trophy which is very possible.

Not like we even spent that much in the summer either compared to other clubs and we've had 5-6 serious injuries to key players ourselves and just got on with it rather than crying about it every five minutes like Ten Hag has.

There's not a chance Ange wins it.  I like him and how Spurs play largely - they've had a good season - but he's nowhere near the running for MOTS.  Pep obviously could but it feels a bit... I don't know, wrong?  If Man City had absolutely cruised to the title by 15 points or something then fair enough - but not like this.

16 minutes ago, CarryOnVilla said:

My interpretation of the new cap confuses me 

clubs are allowed to spend 400% of the lowest earning clubs income (estimated £400m a year)

however if you qualify for Europe, you can only spend 80/70% of your own income. Villa’s case about £170-150M ish. 
 

so what would happen if a Bournemouth maxed out their cap and qualify for European football, would they need to sell players/ reduce wage bills just to play European football? 

Yes - almost like you need to manage your finances more responsibly.

1 hour ago, Davkaus said:

The baffling thing about Man United is we think almost all of their players are shit, and that their manager is a clown, but they're only two places below us  

It's a weird one.  Fernandes and Garnacho are very good players, Mainoo may become good.  Then you have a load of... sort of good-but-why-would-you-buy-them players like Wan-Bissaka, Martinez, Mount, Hojlund maybe Rashford, Dalot and Onana.  An argument for Antony here too, but I'm not sure he's that good.  Then you've got a whole heap of older, very expensive and no longer good players like Casemiro, Maguire, Varane, Shaw, Eriksen, Evans, Lindelof, Martial.

The "rebuild" there is insane, really.  

8 minutes ago, MaVilla said:

maybe clubs in the CL it might even it, but i doubt Europa or Conference would?, they money isnt large in Europa, and its pennies in reality for the Conference League.

u club with a turnover of 300m, 85% is 255m, 70% is 210m, so a 45m difference, only the CL could have a chance of making that difference up, and if you dont get out of the groups, i doubt you could pull in 45m in prize money etc?

But if you're not in Europe at all and are a smaller club with, say, £120m turnover then it makes the league slightly more competitive in terms of being able to spend a bit more.  It won't bridge the gap to the large sides, but it helps a bit.

Just now, MaVilla said:

how on earth is it fair or reasonable for clubs in Europe to have to reach a 70% cap, while all the other non european teams can go to 85%?

thats mental.

Because teams in Europe get more revenue so spending a lower ratio "evens the field" a little bit more

35 minutes ago, MotoMkali said:

Agents fees are also included. 

I think you're missing what OP is saying.  It isn't "£400m on transfers", it's "£400m on everything including transfers (amortised) and wages and staff costs and buying toilet roll and..."

16 minutes ago, ender4 said:

The 85% cost control was voted in for 2024/25. 

The anchor cap vote today was for 2025/26 onwards to replace the 85% cost control. 
 

Not one article is saying otherwise.

Not sure about this - everything seems to say we're going from current rules to the new capped one in 2025/26.  The UEFA style one was "a proposal", but I can't see anything confirming it.

Edit:  Unless it's both, I guess.

2 hours ago, OutByEaster? said:

Yep - the chap with the twitter thread has missed the big fundamental rule that comes in first (I did too).

This is interesting:

 

Looks like Chelsea are the team most at risk in this.

Seems to be exactly what people wanted in terms of which clubs it impacts the most (and what it allows the rest to do).