Davefevs

Mike is @1960maaan. Thought “everyone” knew that.

Made this point on X earlier. Depending on how much they made on Bellingham’s sell-on (not mentioned as post-account events) they are gonna be taking some baggage down with them financially. Whilst they can invest equity under SCMP they can’t go mad because that gets ignored if they come back up. Ipswich went down with small losses. Marcus Evans did something good. Birmingham don’t appear to be in anywhere near as strong a FFP / SCMP position to buy their way out of League 1.

Just Lez again.

The problem with that model / approach is you need top, top, top recruitment and a manager with a football identity to recruit towards. We didn’t have that. Luton did. They exploited a market of undervalued players that fitted their style of football. You could see clubs like City having a snobbish attitude to buying someone like Elijah Adebayo for example. Also, assuming you churn those players regularly, you only make a profit against their book value. That becomes harder the more better established players you buy. No disrespect to players like Weimann or Hunt, especially Weimann, but you were unlikely to ever get the money back on them. Their fees were sunk. you also need a steady stream of Academy players too, because they are pure profit. You can’t do it all on “buy then sell”. Someone like SL should know that “having your eggs in one basket” (one method) is poor investment advice. Squad building is an art. Very few get it right, very few get the time to get it right.

Could’ve sworn a regular banned poster told me he’d had his fun with OTIB for a few months. Over to you mods @Ian M / @phantom easiest one yet!

If I was really cynical, I might suggest that turning a business with £9m in debt to one with £200m might counter some of that positive feeling?

Was quality on debut…having not played for months, but LJ flogged him to death.

Dunno

Hasn’t played since Feb, was seen at Shrewsbury last week, catching up with his former loan teammates.

Perversely it might not be the worst thing in the world, will focus a few minds in the hierarchy that we aren’t the finished article. It possibly balances out a couple of the games in the last 7 where maybe the result exceeded the performance. Get us back on a level.

What I’m saying is that if you allow him to interfere too much in the stuff that the people with football knowledge should be doing then he’s dangerous. Keep him in his place of football “administration” and he’ll deliver. It is clear that in his opening months at Ipswich he did what he did here, got involved in recruitment, used his small pool of favourable agents, etc, etc. But he got McKenna in, the Pension fund guy came over and spelled out the objective…and it’s gone great.

When / if those materialise we can reflect appropriately.

No, definitely off. Tight, but off.

Heading for airports, or possibly heading for hotel to get ready for end of season “party” night out. I too would be surprised if they were straight off tonight to Dubai, Vegas, wherever, but you probably know a bit more than me.

Far too easy to excuse Ashton from the blame based on what he did at Ipswich. He was in the thick of it here aided on both sides, up and down the hierarchy. Let’s not overplay what he’s done at Ipswich. He may have identified a diamond in McKenna, but it’s McKenna who has delivered. He didn’t do well with Cook did he? He is a leopard whose spots won’t change, but cage him correctly and he’s a good football businessman for your club. If Ipswich hadn’t done that, he’d have run amok with their finances.