MrBlack

A lot of time passed between these two consecutive posts. But none of it pointed to the second post being the logical next step. Ruthless.

Indeed. Its taking the old Championship Manager cheat to its logical conclusion. Why didn't anyone do it sooner... Multi club ownership has the same issues as banning trade with Saudi. They will fictionalise the ownership structure of their clubs, like they would their income/ expenditure if needing to comply with FFP.

I don't think it's going to be a simple loop hole to close. Ban the Saudi teams from trading with eu clubs until they comply with uefa FFP...they'll just use dodgy self funded sponsorship deals that circumvent the rules anyway. Establish a "fair value" governing body... they'll just just it to corruption reject /accept whatever transfers they want to happen. There's so much subjectivity to a transfer value and changes in a players form, I'm not sure i see this getting resolved. They just have to now scrap it and accept that football is now officially a case of whoever has the most money will win. It always was anyway. Banning state ownership would have been a partial solution, but they would still have found a way.

Still learning the role... funny that is. A role he's never played in his career, that he has only played in a glorified friendly against much weaker opposition. He's not "still learning the role". He hasn't started learning the role. I'm sure he'll do equally well if asked to play the same role in our next game. Doesn't mean he'll have learnt anything about playing that role in a genuinely competitive match. I also very much doubt he's learnt anything from Southgate on the training ground in relation to the role. Watch him go and score a hattrick against North Macedonia and the media blow their collective minds over it.

It's only good because we didn't know football could be played to a better standard back then. Not sure I'd get the same enjoyment from watching that now, but if it was a choice between that or a spunking contest between state owned sportswashing enterprises... sign me up for the early 90's band.

If it wasn't so sad it would be funny. Villa, finally overcome the decades of under spending and poor management to sit on the precipice of a return to the top table, and the game decides to go with the nuclear option this time. Very much the start of a rapid end to the game. We're just not meant to enjoy nice things here.

Another way of looking at it...he's played as many minutes as the average 30 year old PL player, by the age of 25

The point with 2 years left on his contract is that United can't wait 2 years for their striker. 2 years is fine for commanding the fee we want. He's also not the kind of player to kick up a fuss if we reject a 50m bid because we deem it too low. I imagine the contract we're offering him is commensurate with a player valued at over 70m, so he can't argue that angle either. If he leaves this window, it's for a huge fee. But I don't think he will be so kind of a moot point.

It's so ridiculous. Even if they caveat it with "but it was only malta", its not enough. The article shouldn't even have been written. Pick any PL football and they'd do a job there against Malta. Is the media worse than it used to be or has it always been this bad, and I've just got more cynical as I've aged?

Brain fart. For some reason I'd registered our second game as our last .

Or as seen this season, playing City on the last day when they've already won and have 2 Cup finals to worry about is actually a good thing.

He probably was at the time. I don't rate Barnes and think even if he was as good as people suggest Leicester would want to much. But there almost certainly was some interest from us there. Maybe went as far as requesting a price, before we walked away. Emery said he wants a winger also so irrelevant that he wouldn't fit in the formation he played last season. We didn't have a winger to play with one.

He hasn't paid Elon Musk for his blue tick but that is the legit Monchi account for anyone wondering.

Welcome Monchi! Great news for a Friday night.

They set some rules that dictate a few things (certain teams not playing at home at the same time, no team having more than 2 consecutive home or away games, and some specific things) but then leave it to a random automated generator to do most of it.

Just reading this thread, the reasons I've given up on England all come flooding back. Man's an imbecile. I hate him.

There's a thread for that... ahead of your time ;). If we didn't know that the PL were incompetent and couldn't plan anything without 3 years notice, I'd suggest they stole your idea.

Shame to see a few of the names associated with our youth FA Cup win there. Seems they really haven't pushed on. Any ideas where any of them will end up?

Really? Newcastle only have a small amount over us on FFP available spends this season and I would rather have our first 11 than theirs. If next season they maintain top 4 and we drop down then fair enough, but at this stage it's ludicrous to include them, and Spurs and Cheslea, but not us. Spurs losing Kane and generally having an aging squad. Cheslea having completely imploded and likely to find themselves falling foul of FFP unless they have a miraculous up turn in form next season. I couldn't care less what the daily mail actually think, but it points to the fact they're being paid to say that. And no, I won't click on it to give then the traffic so its not having their desired intent.

The scenes when we unveil Monchi, Williams and our new kit all at the same time.. Hey, one can dream can't they.

Sleeve joins the body too far down. Shit chest panel looks shit. Colour looks off for Barca. Great job Nike!

Is that legit? They clearly think ours and Brighton's season were a one off, same as chelseas and Tottenham, but that Newcastle's wasn't. There's no way that just because of the ownerships funds, newcastle are being treated to this exposure. There must be hundreds of back handers from Saudi, to anyone that will take them, if they toe the line.

Interesting considering the deal with them supposedly ran until the end of the month. Maybe it didn't. Maybe we've finally bitten the bullet to sacrifice a month's income in order to get a contract that runs for a reasonable time frame....

Do yourself a favour and block that one. They spout nonsense 95% of the time.