Baba Yaga

I hope there is a tipping point where the pursuit of more revenue impacts the game in a negative way. I get that if you were in charge of a club you would probably prefer the guaranteed income of tv revenue over the uncertain revenue of going on a cup run, however for the fan this is a kick in the teeth and selling out the competition for money if true. Thing about the fa cup is it can be sacrificed because it simply isn't valuable enough, but its part of a worrying pattern where tournaments are made less exciting to make more money (48 team world cup, champions league places not awarded on merit but more games, new club world cup tournament etc). With high interest rates there is going to be a big bubble that bursts soon but I hate the idea of devalued tournaments to help squeeze every last drop out of the fans.

They were very busy in the January transfer window buying 7 players and bring in another 4 on loan, so they had a go and staying in the league although if anything they got worse winning only once. It looks like a few of their experienced/key players were keen to get out in Jan too and would be interesting to know the reasons. Now they are in League 2 it seems a hard task turning them into a winning side again, surprised Dunc left now but was half expecting a poor start and for things to turn sour a month or so in. Sounds like with the board appointments too I guess there could be people tinkering trying to bring about longer term culture change so seems from the outside that it's a chaotic place to be right now, whoever is in charge would do well to stop the freefall and a boring midtable finish would probably be a decent season.

The situation you describe would definitely be bad for the game but I think the rules on squad numbers would prevent that to some degree. Clearly you need some rules to keep things competitive but I don't feel the ones in place on allowable losses etc are done with the best interest of the sport in mind, I think they were primarily for the big clubs to have barriers to entry for clubs like Man City, due to the timing of when they were brought in. I remember when City had wages to turnover of 130% or something like that when Gary Johnson was manager but it wasn't a thing back then and nobody made the argument that we were cheating. To be honest a lot of finals especially in England are billionaire A vs billionaire B these days.

I lean towards this side of the argument on the financial stuff. The FFP rules were put in place primarily to prevent newcomers from spending their way to the top. The rules are arbitrary and weren't even a thing 10-15 years ago so I don't take them too seriously. There is no asterix against their successes for me. I haven't seen them play that poorly for a while and was more impressed with Inter on the night. Of course only the result matters so fair play to them and their supporters.

Think the best attendances in history were in the years just after WW2 and I think we are going through a similar post covid bounce at the moment. I can't see it continuing when the new TV deal kicks in to be honest but we shall see.

If I was being kind I would say some of the keeper shirts have been quite creative down the years, and if we were to overlook that it looks completely awful you could say the same with the badge on the away shirt. I just wonder if a background pattern could be on the away as they seem to be the in thing right now going from quite a few clubs last season... https://www.premierleague.com/news/2611397#! , and O'Neills look to be geared up to provide pretty much anything we ask for like this.

You just know the main reason we are now with O'Neills is because they can best help Jon to show off his creativity. With that in mind I wonder if he will go all out on the away kit since the other 2 are largely based on retro designs, some interesting background patterns on the one below I wonder if City are planning something similar and can they be trusted to make it look ok?

This made me laugh last week too, Ramsey the Villa player poking fun at their fans for celebrating finishing 7th and making the conference league... As for West Ham I have seen them play much better counter attacking football than tonight but what a moment for Bowen and good to see them get something like their 6th trophy in their history and first in ages, celebrations looked fantastic.

I thought in the 2nd half of the season that we had more than enough strength in depth in forward areas (too much at times it felt like with lots of chopping and changing) but they are still some way off in all the other areas for me because inevitably there will be injuries. Not an easy balancing act especially with budget constraints and without seeing who replaces Scott assuming he goes soon I don't really see how people see us as dark horses right now. With many teams of similar strength in the division I think we can beat anyone on our day but I just cannot see them having the consistency needed to challenge for the play offs.

It's strange that a country with over 10m people and a large capital city doesn't have a stadium with over 20k (unless I'm missing something). Usually I don't care very much if the English clubs win in europe because it's mostly the same teams but would like to see West Ham get the win tonight. I went to their stadium before as a neutral and enjoyed the day out and also quite like Moyes. They have some decent players too so I see them as favourites.

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Usually I go for the underdog but my strong dislike of Man U takes over here. Would be quite happy to see Man City win the treble although more open to Inter beating them next week, so much riding on it because of that so looking forward to it.

Yes I would probably class City, Preston, Millwall and maybe Plymouth as the only ones who are in that club who haven't bounced since 1992 so we are in the unlucky 10% or so. And also there were a couple of owners at clubs like Luton and Blackpool who were incredibly fortunate to have got to the prem with what they put in.

I was looking at the league table of 2003-04 (the year we lost to the play offs to Brighton). I am amazed that 4 clubs who finished lower than us that season (Bournemouth, Brentford, Brighton, Luton) had crowds around 50% of BCFC's that season/worse infrastructure and yet will all be playing in the Premier League next season. SL has invested to be fair but it's difficult to argue that we have underachieved massively, the point I would make though is that there are probably around 40 clubs in England who have infrastructure for prem football (and we are hardly the only club who has improved stadium in 20 years) but only 20 spaces so there will always be a few clubs like City who spend a really long time outside the top flight unfortunately.

I think if paying for streams became widespread then the clubs income would go down not up. Obviously you have to travel far but I think even more local people would stop going to games and pay much more than £10 (much more so when you factor in food, drink etc) when there is a cheaper alternative on offer. For every fan that does this you would need probably at least 2-3 new people streaming before it made more money. Reading the details of the new TV deal I think lots more games won't be Saturday 3pm in a seasons time making people less keen to go every game and also at some point the clean air zone will expand making travel more costly or a bigger ballache. I think either the streams would have to be quite a bit higher than £10 for this to be profitable and I would also worry that streaming would fall off in a big way if the team were doing poorly so paying game by game wouldn't work. Also if the 3pm blackout was lifted like you also mentioned then many people could already have premier league games on a subscription at the same time City play lots of games, personally I think that would hurt lower league clubs at the expense of the bigger clubs.

After seeing Burnley lose lots of their players after getting relegated, I really couldn't see them coming back and changing their style and storming the league like they did. This time around Leeds for instance look awful in defence but by the start of next season it could all be completely different. Likewise the L1 clubs might have high pts totals this season but I wouldn't be surprised if none of them do as well as Sunderland did this season to finish 6th after winning last year's L1 play offs. So think this is impossible to predict really, certainly someone like Nigel Pearson who is focused on improving a group of players and doesn't look into things he can't control this won't be something he spends too much time worrying about.

Its funny that the premier league were threatened with government intervention for not going after their clubs hard enough, however what the government will definitely not want is to be faced with is a big project to boost the economy in that area to go sideways and the issues of subcontractors not being paid and the problems that could cause in an already limp construction industry. I expect the premier league going fairly soft in this situation would have government approval however if Everton did go down and it fell to the efl to handle then I see the club going into administration for sure and it being handled very differently. There is so much riding on these next PL games for Everton will be very interesting to see how it unfolds.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/65636260 It's going to be very interesting to see if this takeover goes through, sounds like they need to stay up first but if they manage that then the buyers will want to get the club for a knock down price and the current owners won't be in a position to bargain too much. Without knowing how these things work I can imagine the new owners will ask for assurances from the premier league too that nothing catastrophic is going to happen to them with ffp. I can imagine a back door understanding would be struck due to the high likelihood that the club would go under otherwise and the buyers would also have the leverage of the half built stadium on the Liverpool docks being in need of their finance. If that stadium stays half built like Valencia then that is going to piss off a lot of people, and I can imagine rules will be bent to avoid that scenario. Very much a pragmatic decision rather than a principled one but I think that will be the most likely outcome if Everton survive, if there is a 600m deal on the line then surely any pts deduction/future fine would be known ahead of time and pushed to the lowest end of the scale. Agree about Burnley, what they have done to turnover all those players last summer and build a new team/new style in the space of a year is extraordinary, however their previous owners were very prudent and would have deserved not to be screwed over by such an extremely unfair financial playing field.

The Championship is a very good league and I am not particularly ambitious about getting promoted right away because generally speaking I have enjoyed the football/days out last season. Looking at Cov they have only lost once in 19 games and Luton have lost twice in 19 games, if I was being generous I would say City were on a similar path in Jan and Feb before the injuries hit (and possibly the Man City motivation wore off). Neither of those teams are anything special but have a resilience that we also had for a while but couldn't maintain, there are quite a few positive signs with a squad of lots of academy players/bought from lower divisions so personally feeling quite patient with them (although I expect NP to be the opposite and demanding lots more).

Is this confirmed that he is a gambling addict? The info I read was 232 bets over a 4 year period and without knowing the amounts/things he bet on I would say it's hard to judge if the 8 months is a harsh or lenient punishment, or if he really has a addiction (if he does then I guess he would have had help already and will get continuing support through the ban when he can't train). Shame for Toney because I think a queue of big clubs could have offered him a much bigger contract/chance to play at a higher level this summer. I remember Suarez getting banned for biting and then tearing up the league the following season so if Toney comes back firing then this won't hold him back for too long.

To be honest if it was my business I would have probably tried to wriggle out of paying the £15m transfer fee but I'm now struggling to see why they are prolonging this further. Things are looking very ugly now from Cardiff and I would guess that the only winners at this point are going to be the lawyers.

Think after last night Leicester are 95% down but the other 3 teams have it all to play for still and it could be any of them to go, Leicester looked really poor going forwards which surprised me and think they need something against Newcastle which looks unlikely on current form. Leeds have shown something in the last couple of games under big Sam, West Ham play in europe on Thurs and Spurs are doing poorly and also have nothing to play for, it's very possible they could pick up 6pts in those last 2 games. Calvert Lewin went off at half time in Everton's last game which could possibly be a disaster if he doesn't return, but they have nice games coming up on paper so can only blame themselves if they go down. I think Forest could need one more win and their games aren't ideal but they have been playing quite well recently.

The West Ham game was an interesting one, completely dominated for 30 mins then made a silly error to get the game back to within 1 goal. There was a huge momentum shift right there and West Ham were the better side for the last hour and Saka hit a pen wide too. I didn't think they were going to win the title anyway but they definitely felt the pressure at times and their performances have fallen off when the pressure was on. However with Man City winning every game they would have had to be near perfect to stay in it. You could argue that they bottled 4th last season and I was surprised to see them improve this season let alone challenge for the title, I suspect this season will be their peak in the prem but would be good to see them go again and make some more title races exciting.

Has the state of the art disabled section in the South Stand been taken down yet? Behind this were a couple of portaloo's for the away fans and without doubt the worst smell you could ever smell at a football ground, in the same bracket as the Bristol Waste site by the fruit market, I shit you not. ?

Hard to beat 80s action movies with funny dialogue that I can quote all day... Scarface, Platoon, Commando, Rocky IV