stevegrant

Meltdown

I wasn't aware that it was a prime requirement for someone in a coaching/management role to be at the peak of fitness.

What this place really needed was another Luke Shaw to Man United thread.

Another part of the sanction is that they're not allowed to pay a transfer fee for any player in either transfer window next season who they want to register for the Champions League, so unless those players are happy to sit it out for a season, that's not an option.

The fine is much of a muchness, as you say, they can afford it. The squad reduction is a pretty tough punishment, though. The UEFA competition rules state that clubs have to name 8 "home-grown" players - four of which are club-trained (3 years between 15 and 21), four of which are country-trained. If they don't have enough players to make the numbers up, they lose a place in their squad. They already faced that situation this season, and as a result could only name 23 players in their squad list for the Champions League. Next season, the maximum they can name is 21 rather than 25, and if they can't make up the 8 home-grown players, it'll be even fewer than that (i.e. if they can still only name 6 home-grown players next season, they'll only have 19 players for the Champions League). The end result is that they're going to have to name at least 4 fewer non-UK-trained players. Some of that will be covered by players who leave, the likes of Lescott and Richards, but the kicker is that those two made up a third of their home-grown quota this season!

Osvaldo didn't even make Italy's provisional 30

Not 100% sure either Croatia or Uruguay have confirmed their final 23s yet either, tbf. The last I saw was that Uruguay had named 25 and Croatia 30.

I assume that includes standby players as well?

So considering the definition of "fan-owned" clubs now seems to stretch rather further than what we assumed the benchmark to be, i.e. a controlling majority stake owned by the fans, which club by their own definition is now the biggest fan-owned club in the country? Do Swansea count? The supporters trust there owns 20% and has a seat on the board. Of course, with 20% they don't actually have enough to block anything the other 80% want to do, so perhaps it's not them. Crystal Palace are owned by a consortium of four men, each with a 25% stake: Steve Parish is definitely a Palace fan, as is Martin Long. There's nothing I can find that suggests that either Stephen Browett or Jeremy Hosking are Palace fans, though, so that's only 50% fan ownership. Norwich fans Delia Smith and her husband Michael Wynn-Jones are both Norwich fans, and have 53% of the shares in the club, so perhaps they are the biggest fan-owned club? Newly-promoted Burnley have their three largest shareholders (72% in total) on the board and are all lifelong supporters of the club. Then in the Championship playoff positions, there is Brighton and Hove Albion, wholly owned by Tony Bloom, a lifelong fan who has invested at least £100m of his own money into the club. Take your pick from any of those, but it sure as hell isn't Pompey...

Spending on infrastructure isn't counted towards losses.

Don't think that was anything to do with the pitch, the club had covered it for a week before, but the surrounding roads and pavements were still covered in snow and ice, making it pretty dangerous.

No idea what the Turkey thing has to do with anything, Buttner was at a Dutch club when we fortunately missed out on signing him.

It probably was, but who cares?

Christ, it comes to something when I'm siding with MLG

We only know one specific bit of the figures. We don't know how much the club has made from matchday revenue (although last season's figures give us a reasonable indication), and we certainly don't know how much the wage bill and other costs have increased by. I think it's fair to say that a large part of the increase in the "equal share" parts of the Premier League money will have been eaten up by new signings and contract extensions, and there wasn't a particularly big exodus of fringe players on big money.

Not sure. Obviously the merit payment (i.e. depending on finishing position) isn't known until the end of the season, but the portions that are equally distributed are known from the start, so it's possible (probably quite likely, actually) they're paid in two or three lumps during the season to ensure clubs' cashflows remain stable.

Surely I can't be the only one that's a bit annoyed that Liverpool have had TWENTY-EIGHT of their 38 league games televised this season? No problem with the TV companies broadcasting the top teams more often than the rubbish ones, but surely there should be an upper limit of, say, 20.

(courtesy of @sportingintelligence on Twitter)

Looking at Soccerbase, he's been on the bench since the beginning of February. 13 starts, 7 sub appearances, 4 goals. His Wikipedia page presumably hasn't been updated for a few weeks.

Not that I'm aware of, I worked out the figures by using the online system to look at games which hadn't yet gone on sale.

The club would have signed off on the design, I find it difficult to believe that Adidas provided us with a kit design that we didn't approve. Sour Mash is right above that Adidas ****ed up with their supply chain, though, stock levels were well below what was deemed acceptable for months.

As a paid subscriber, you don't get adverts served to you from this site, so it must be something you've picked up from elsewhere. Suggest you run a full anti-virus and malware scan on your PC.

Or that they're falling back in line with what pretty much every other club does.

Just over 20,000 sold for 2013/14, which was a drop of around 750 from the previous season.

10%, but that figure is after segregation is taken into account. Incorrect. The Coventry game in 2012 is the stadium record as the club managed to squeeze the segregation down to the absolute bare minimum. I think the netting was only covering an area two or three seats wide, if that.