The9

This is either very dry wit or you're an absolute nutcase.

Seems "lack of investment" is always a problem when managers get offers of more money from somewhere else. We invested well enough to get into the top 6, and spent more than the team that won the League.

Nah, that was a short-term loan to cover injuries. And even then Liverpool were still pleased to get him - in the exact same circumstances.

Because we're good, and don't have the money that the clubs who buy our players do. I used to think it was about status, and trophies, and Europe, and stuff like that, but we're potentially losing a manager to a club in the bottom half who are claiming to have a decent wedge, and which doesn't even look like a career progression, so it's clearly just about money. Having said that, we have got lots more money than we did have, so managing that correctly and with some players on old deals for a while we could still challenge. We're no worse off squad-wise than the past 2 seasons and have just come 6th, so fundamentally the infrastructure and recruitment are doing their jobs.

I'm pretty confident that there might be a kernel of truth in the "mid-tier club" part, seeing as one of our youth prospects' dads once told me something similar, but the bit about "deal agreed two months ago" is garbage, and the bit about the stadium betrays a complete lack of understanding of where the club's money comes from.

That wasn't alright even before Everton's interest. He'd have gone this summer anyway if he didn't sign a new deal for at least another year, no chance the club would allow the Pellegrini lame duck situation to happen.

Because we have had a very successful recruitment programme over the past 2 seasons which hasn't necessarily involved the manager's opinion? Though it did get a bit more Netherlandy and Cuco-ish when Koeman took over...

I've said it - there will be a "closing the gap" in terms of finances from bottom to top, because the difference between bottom and top will be reduced by the extra money the rest are getting in comparison to the top sides. Also, that money will be available for player wages because it's income recognised by FFP - so the limitations clubs have had on expenditure from investment (the ones Everton are ignoring for some reason) are set at a far higher level - we'd have to eat up the extra £100m or so before hitting the investment ceiling. What that basically means is that anyone can buy a decent enough side to try and challenge for the title, if they get their recruitment right. It's how the rest choose to use it that will be the difference - you can build a side to challenge for the Premier League with a lot less than £100m, you just need sh111tloads of luck as well, as Leicester showed. But it is absolutely a fact that all Prem clubs can, at the moment, with a bunch of players under contract from the pre-new-tv deal era, pick and choose who and if they want to throw their extra cash at. If you want the player more than Man City do, you can, by all means chuck a pile of that £100m at them for a new deal - the problem is then what you do with the rest of the squad who will all want those kind of deals too. The gap is closing, it still doesn't mean the top sides have lost the massive cash advantage they have overall - they're just not quite as significantly richer than the rest as they were - but they can still afford to do more of the massive money deals if they want to get players to leave their rivals. All that's happening there is the pretence of it being for trophies or Champions League is now out of the window - just look at Zlatan's opinion of the Europa League from his book (basically "Zlatan doesn't play on Thursdays"), and him signing for Man U for evidence of that.

Size of transfer budget and ambition are not necessarily related. I suspect Everton are about to find that out.

Seems rather unlike us to pay our manager top 10 in the world money.

New boots Tahar?

Found the structure here http://www.uefa.org/MultimediaFiles/Download/Regulations/uefaorg/Regulations/02/23/69/59/2236959_DOWNLOAD.pdf NB this is the 2015/18 rules, 2015/16 season version. Page 20/96 Again, this doesn't really tell us much, we could be ANY of 1,2,3 or 4, it doesn't relate to the seeding pot we're in. The following match sequence applies: Matchday 1: 15/09/16 2 v 3 4 v 1 Matchday 2: 29/09/16 1 v 2 3 v 4 Matchday 3: 20/10/16 3 v 1 2 v 4 Matchday 4: 03/11/16 1 v 3 4 v 2 Matchday 5: 24/11/16 3 v 2 1 v 4 Matchday 6: 08/12/16 2 v 1 4 v 3 I've added the 2016/17 dates in to be helpful... At a quick glance, getting draw to fixture position 3 would probably be the best financially, all the away match dates are at the start of the month. But then the draw is made on 26 August so that's when people need to find most of the money anyway.

No, there's no way of knowing which fixture pattern we'll get, because irrespective of the pot you're in they draw your position in the group separately to determine your fixture pattern. So even though Postion 1, 2, 3, and 4 have the same fixture pattern in every group, the teams in those positions aren't necessarily from the same pots, they could be from any pot depending on which position the team is drawn into.

They don't appear to be considering that FFP means they can't do what City did, either. Though I'm sure they could have a go at burying enough expenditure on a new stadium that they could pay players with it without anyone noticing. Assuming they actually apply for planning permission and stuff... anyway, it's years off.

A bit like our recruitment of Bertrand and Romeu.

I don't think he said anything that hasn't been shared on the forum already by actual ITKs - other than it being slightly out of context, seeing as most of it was re-shared a couple of pages back and came from the immediate aftermath of our run of rubbish results around Xmas.

I'll just have a look. My point is based on the balance of probability based on years working in a number of well-paid roles, rather than the specifics only his accountant knows. Even the blah blah around the Everton offer says we've chucked him £2.5m in the past couple of years.

I don't think a manager signing a contract at a club gives much indication of how players feel about him. Ask Juan Mata.

Like, by signing our best player last season to a new deal a whole year into his contract? There is going to be a TON of wage-related posturing and stand-offs this summer as everyone's agent tries to get their client a slice of the tv pie. We just need to identify our priorities and pin them down early, then see what happens with the rest of them during the summer. I've already said I can see lots of players making weird sideways moves for more money because their current deals aren't feeding their egos and new signings are much better off, should have realised that could apply to successful managers too.

I'd blame Everton, personally. But even then you can't really blame them for wanting a decent manager.

6 years at Barcelona as a player would have been good money in the late 80s/early 90s (Lineker, Hughes, Archibald, Venables etc all went there in the 80s, I suspect not just for the weather) but he'd have missed the later boom. However, he's been managing or assistant managing at big-name European clubs (plus Vitesse, AZ and Saints) for 17 years with only maybe 2 years out. He's going to be very comfortable indeed, independent of any discussion of the success of his investments, property he could pay for outright, etc.

We could theoretically refuse to let him leave as he has a binding contract, but all that happens then is in reality he's not going to do the job properly he's being paid to do, we'll be getting someone else to do it in practice and in more difficult circumstances than need be without being able to officially appoint a replacement, and logically he is then in breach of his contract and we would probably end up sacking him shortly after anyway, which helps no-one.

I held off laying Koeman for next Everton manager at 1.79 yesterday, didn't think the odds justified the risk and didn't think it was worth doing smaller amounts.

Even if he does, I still think he'll be off next summer. We're only interested in not having a lame-duck manager as an excuse for players to underperform, if he signed a new deal it would have the specifics of his release clause in it. Moving to Everton doesn't enhance his CV unless he's successful there because of what he's already done here, and nothing short of getting them to the latter stages of the CL would be that impressive. He's already in with a shout of the Barcelona job because of his playing career, which basically puts him in theoretical contention for every other job in football except Real Madrid manager. Flipside I guess is that knowing that, he can do pretty much what he wants until they decide they want him and he might just want as much money as possible in the meantime, but that seems unlikely given his insistence on mentioning seeing out his contract even when he hasn't been directly asked about it.

We have £100m of new money coming in on top of all of our existing outgoings. We absolutely, definitely can afford to pay Koeman £7m a year. If we want to. I heavily suspect we don't want to, as it sets a precedent we will not want to set. Same story with player contracts - we can afford Messi's wages now, but then all that happens is that every player after that wants something near what Messi's getting - we can afford selective high wages, but not consistently across the board. Also, FFP will prevent the Everton owner channelling a pile of cash in even if he wants to - all the TV money is covered as legit income so clubs can spend it, but everyone has that now. Anything over and above that will still hit against the same FFP rules.