verlaine1979

They've been giving those as penalties for years, and still do depending on who is playing.

Insane. At home for a top six club, VAR gives that every single time.

This is what you get when all you expect from one of your two main attackers is that he'll be a bit of a nuisance.

Are we going to spend the last twenty minutes swinging hopeful crosses in from the edge of the box against Burnley?

Long not having any impact on the game whatsoever.

Superb finish.

Vest is a complete f-ing liability on the deck or in the air. Absolute turd.

Ings must've gotten a shout, surely.

Ah right, yes, just went back and read it. Depressing as hell.

No chance. According to Forbes, there are 393 Chinese nationals with wealth of a billion dollars or more. Gao isn't on the list, which makes sense as the whole of Lander (which he doesn't even own any more) was only worth about £500m the last time I checked.

Really? It just looks like a bit of financial parasitism. The clubs are just electing to pay a fee in order to get their money up front from transfers and broadcasting. Some dodgy bank makes a good margin, but that's what dodgy banks do. It's all so specifically secured against guaranteed future incomes that it barely qualifies as debt.

I agree, he seemed to pop up on the wing a lot for Ajax in the CL last year, but didn't look like he quite had the speed or presence to operate there for one of the big clubs in the PL. That said, I might just be prejudiced against him for missing that absolute sitter in the first half that would've knocked Spurs out in the semi second leg.

Yup, Chelsea not exactly known for its selfless, one-for-all-and-all-for-one squads over the past decade or so.

Of course - anyone looking at Lander's value as a company could see that Gao had only ever been small time and was getting smaller, long before the sale went through. The implication being, though, that you can't actually trust anything the club tells you about our strategy or long-term direction.

He'll probably make me eat my words, but Ziyech has the look of a player who'll vanish at a club like Chelsea.

Well, at least it sounds like we're all in agreement that our owner is substantially poorer than the league average, and we got sold up the river.

C) Have an owner who puts money into the club in the form of loans converted to equity, just like most of our close rivals do.

Oh, just the perception. I've got friends who support Celtic, and they're all very happy with him.

Your reading of the accounts is just flawed, that's all. We lost money only because of player purchases, and then one line down in the accounts we made it all back again and more through player sales. It's almost as if this is part of the ordinary income of the club! Maybe that's why the club's statement of income from ordinary activities is actually calculated post-player trading. But pick whatever accounting standard you like, and year on year, the club has wound up increasing the amount of money it has sitting in the bank. That's money that isn't on the pitch.

Based on his turnaround at Celtic, I'd say he's a confidence-driven shot stopper, who isn't great coming out for crosses and has a weakness getting down to low shots. We're not the right team for a keeper with shaky confidence, or one with limitations that our defence isn't dominant enough to mitigate. Understandably, playing for the biggest club in Scotland conceals pretty much all of these.

Not quite. My point is we HAVE ALREADY SOLD, therefore should ALREADY HAVE MONEY TO BUY - especially as our player trading balance over the past five years shows an almost unheard of profit compared to every other club in the league. Your only conceivable argument is that we are uniquely financially constrained compared to all the other clubs in the league who have the same types of operating costs, but who spend more on players than they bring in through player sales. If that's the case, just say it. We're a unique case. We have to put up and shut up. I won't believe you, but it would be good to just have your position succinctly stated rather than rooting around the club's books looking for something that isn't there.

In the accounts, operating profit is calculated before profit from disposal of players. Therefore it gives you an inaccurate summary of financial performance in a business where player sales constitute a huge percentage of income.

No need to debate - you can download the full accounts from Companies House. They show a profit before interest and tax of £33.65m for the year ending June 2018.

I thought your point was that clubs were obliged to sell before they buy, not just that it was prudent to do so, which is another argument entirely.

There's a restriction on how many players you can register in your PL squad, but no restriction on how many you can have on your club's books. Newcastle still had five senior players left out when they submitted their squad at the start of the season. There's no rule saying every player above 21 taking a wage has to either be in the PL squad or loaned out/sold.