ExiledAjax

Wait and see exactly what the accompanying shareholder resolution says. However it's clearly some sort of share issue given the short description says there's been an allotment of securities and a waiver of pre-emption rights. It's likely either a new class of shares being created for some reason, or it's an issue of new shares simultaneous with a change in shareholder rights in the articles. You're right that this could be new investors.

Because the PL live in a world where taking 4 years (it's 14 years since the earliest allegations btw) to get the case together undoubtedly proves that they can govern themselves. Ok. Sure.

Depends where you look. Preston are also overdelivering against xG. I've seen sites as well that say Rotherham are as well - essentially they should really be so far adrift in 24th as to be almost relegated already. Luton seem to be fairly fair, perhaps you'd expect them to be a little lower in the table, but from what I see they are not an anomaly. Burnley are the other. Yes they've been good, but xG suggests that they (and their counterpart leaders Arsenal in the PL) have a few more points than they'd perhaps be expected to.

Reference at para 3 to breaching UEFA regs in seasons outside of that previous UEFA case, so as I said, it will be interesting to see whether UEFA come at them again. Plus allegations extending into the most recent seasons, including this one we are in now, around providing documents, access and information to the PL in its investigations. "the Commission’s final award will be published on the Premier League’s website." so we will hear the final decision eventually.

Bu the interesting thing here is that it's the Premier League accusing them, not the FA. The Premier League is, in effect, the other 19 clubs going against one of their own. Oh and just so we're all clear. *cough* independent regulation asap please *cough*.

See below - it may not be appealable to CAS . They have an in-house team of about 8 lawyers anyway. Plus they will no doubt hire the same barristers and Freshfields who helped them last time. However, the PL obviously have a little bit of cash to send the lawyers' way as well. First appeal would be to an "Appeal Board". Rule W.79 says that "Subject to the provisions of Section X of these Rules (Arbitration), the decision of an Appeal Board shall be final.". I've not got time to dig through Section X and through the Arbitration Act 1996 to which it refers, but a skim read shows that they are trying pretty hard to make sure decisions are final and a re not appealable to CAS.

Jesus, the best part of a decade of misreporting. Points deduction is the only thing that hurts them really. They can pay any fine that can be levied, and a transfer embargo does bugger all to hurt a club with their squad and their academy. The only thing that hurts them is a points deduction sufficient to exclude them from European football. Ziegler suggests they could be expelled form the league. I think that's very unlikely tbh but probably is possible under the PL Rules. Then other interesting point is that this might mean that UEFA can bring fresh charges against them for the 2017/18 season. Their previous case with UEFA concerned seasons 2012 through to 2016. They 'won' that eventually when they had a two-year ban from European club competitions overturned by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (Cas), after UEFA had ruled that they committed "serious breaches" of Financial Fair Play (FFP). I doubt they can be retried on anything in those seasons, but for those outside of that timeframe there's probably a chance of UEFA going at them again.

But haven't Brentford, Bournemouth and to an extent Burnley proved this wrong? Each of those clubs, at the time they earned their most recent meaningful promotion to the PL, had attendances of circa 12,000. Brentford and Bournemouth had stadia that barely held more than that, and Burnley is just a small town. Burnley averaged 13,700 in 13/14 when they went up, Bournemouth got 10,200 in 14/15, and Brentford 10,200 in 18/19 (the last non-COVID affected year prior to them going up). It's not fan numbers that determine if you go up or not. Even perennial yo-yo clubs like Fulham and WBA average circa 20,000 in their promotion seasons. To get out of this division you need four things 1) money, 2) a plan, 3) personnel able to execute the plan with the money, and 4) some luck. The way you get those four things can vary, but those are the four shared characteristics that most promoted teams in recent years have had.

Sure you can pick out individual matches where we've been on top in terms of the number of shots. But what this shows is that we shouldn't derive any conclusions about our future long-term prospects from single games or even from small samples of four or five matches. You have to look at longer stretches. Really 10 games is the bare minimum, and ideally you don't start deriving conclusions until you have 20 or 30 games to take averages from. Even that is a tiny sample size in grand statistical speak. Over that kind of span we have low mid-table numbers, and that's been the case for years now. We score goals because we take a small number of high quality shots, and have strikers that finish well. We concede goals because we allow a high number of mid-quality shots, which give us a greater number of opportunities to make individual defensive mistakes and these mistakes get punished. This is visible over 900 minutes, but not always over 90. Until and unless we shift this in some way, we won't get ourselves up to the top echelons of this division.

Thing is if we assume that the wages are true, ie Kalas is currently on something in the high 20s, then it's feasible to both re-sign him on something near £15k, plus get that young CB understudy in for £1m plus £7.5k a week. Even that would still cut the wage bill by £5k a week. If that is what we felt was right.

I've been thinking, perhaps even assuming, that Pearson wants him to stay and it's up to Kalas/Alexander/Tinnion/Agent to get the contract to a point where all can accept it. I think the club know that we don't replace a 30 year-old (he turns 30 in May) international CB with more than 250 Championship appearances for any cheaper than re-signing the one we have. If I was Kalas I'd be talking to and observing Wells, Weimann and even Baker and seeing that re-signing here under Pearson is not a weak option.

Hasn't Weimann been generally playing deeper this season already? Someone will correct me but I'm sure he's not been as advanced as he often was last year. So I think the answer is that yes he will be primarily used as a midfielder.

Primarily because for all our improvement and stabilisation in the table we are still quite a way away from putting out numbers that compare to an average historical top 6 side. My theory is that if you want a hope of promotion you have to be performing at that level. Doing that allows you the potential for luck and fortune to catapult you into the top 2 or play off final. We're not doing that in two main ways. 1. We're averaging only 9.9 shots a game, and only 3.17 on target. Top 6 teams tend to be more like 12 and 4, and top two will often be on 15 and 5. It's a big difference and it's why we don't seem to overwhelm or dominate teams. 2. Naturally the above flows through into xG. This season we are broadly tracking our xG. By my spreadsheet (which takes 4 different sources of xG and has done me pretty solidly for 4 seasons now) we are pretty much on the points we could reasonably be expected to be on based on our xG deltas this season. We have 36 points, my sheet says 33 is par. We've scored 39, conceded 39, my numbers give 36 and 41 for those figures. So my conclusion is that right now we are about where we should be, and so we should not expect or predict any great improvement (or decline) in our points per game in the short term. Top 6 teams either put out excellent figures, or they overperform their numbers to a big degree. We're doing neither. OK, so the counter arguments are obviously that we've got new signings, that since we've played 433 we've not lost, that we will sign more in the summer, that we've already improved hugely. I hear all of that and what I say is that for me it's too soon to say whether we are genuinely on an upward trend, or whether it's just luck. We've played this new formation for just a half dozen games or so, of our new signings only Cornick has had minutes and he was...ok. but, I recognise that I may be behind the curve in my opinion, and it may need adjusting in the next month or two. There's practical considerations as well, all conjecture and guesswork but I'm not totally certain that Pearson will extend his contract past it's termination at the end of next season. Are we likely to be promoted next season? In my opinion no: therefore I don't think Pearson will take us up next season. It's an opinion, and perhaps I should be less absolute in my posts, but I will be really, really, really pleasantly delighted and surprised if Nigel Pearson guides us to promotion.

But actually likely to do neither.

That's where we need to get our points I guess. The final 6 games of the season are Boro, Watford, Sheff Utd, Burnley, QPR and Rotherham. We're pretty unlikely to get 2 points per game over those final 6. It's why it's so unlikely we're going to make playoffs. Honestly we could be 8th going into those final 6 games and we'll fade. We just aren't yet at the level of the top teams in this division.

Fivethirtyeight give us a 5% chance of relegation (ie 20/1), and a 3% chance of making the playoffs (ie about 33/1). Neither of these things will happen.

NTT20 continuing to bang the drum. Something noticeable if you pause it just as he plays the pass. 4 of Preston's players are completely focused on him. That pass takes 40% of their outfield players out of the game.

The Bible isn't for everyone, but sometimes it just nails things. Joey the intellectual probably already knows this. "Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash." — Matthew 7:24–27

For me the season so far has simply reinforced the lesson that we should not judge our success, or that of the manager, solely on results. When results were bad in the autumn the underlying numbers and performance indicators suggested that we weren't actually that awful. Likewise right now they suggest that we aren't actually that good. Truth is we're a competent, competitive side who with a bit of good or bad luck get wins or losses respectively. This last month we've played well but bar West Brom in the cup we've not really blown anyone away, likewise before Christmas there were only a couple of games where we really didn't turn up. We weren't relegation candidates in the autumn, and we're not promotion candidates now. As I've said elsewhere across many posts Pearson (and his team) has undoubtedly and provably improved us over the last two years. We are so, so, so much better than we were for those 6 months under Holden. However, in my opinion Pearson won't ever get us promoted.

But you said he wants to play games. I don't think he would currently get games at a top 6 club. Carvalho and Spence tore this division a new one last season, got their Big Six moves, and aren't in those teams. Is Scott better than those two? Really? Honestly? Objectively and before the WBA cup game? Without your City biased goggles on? When I take mine off...I'm not sure. I think if he wants both the Premier League and minutes then he will go to Brighton, Villa, Brentford or the like.

Take his fee, deduct our losses for this season (likely £15-20m) and you'll get roughly what we can reinvest. So if £25m then I'd estimate we'd have £5-10m to spend. But that has to cover fees, wages, signing on fees, agent fees etc. How we spend it? Defenders based on the other players we tried to sign this window just gone.

OK, but who is the last young player to go from the Championship to one of those top teams and make it stick? I struggle to think of any if I am honest. Name the last player under the age of 21 that Liverpool signed from the Championship who got more than 1,000 minutes in the league in his first season. I f Scott is as talented as you presume then even if he goes to Brentford, Brighton or Leicester he will stand out and, as Webster was with us, will be flipped on for £70m the following summer. If he's actually not as good as you say and you are wearing a very big pair of Mr. & Mrs. Biased's special biased glasses for the biased, then he will not, as he will have found his level. Equally, if he goes to Liverpool and is in fact not as good as we think, then again he will not get minutes and will be loaned out to Rennes to join Djed Spence. Ultimately what I am saying is that if he really does want to play 40 games every season, then he should take that stepping stone club and break himself into the division above us at a more understanding and generous club. Alternatively you and I could twist this argument to a point where it proves beyond doubt that he may as well just play for us forever because he's so good that he will naturally drag our club with him until we both find our level. I'd prefer that we do that and I am sure that Mr. Alexander will understand.

Yes, from our perspective the £££ is key. But honestly even the poorest Premier League clubs can match our asking price. The key for Scott is minutes. He's young. He should take a 3 year contract with one of those middling PL clubs, play 70 good games for them and then get his big move at 23. He'll still have ten good years in him to win trophies, break records, and nab that Ballon d'Or we all know he's on for.

My concern with him going to any of the "Big Six" clubs is their track history with very young, very talented players who stand out in our division. Looking at U23s you see Djed Spence (Spurs), Carvalho (Liverpool), Sessegnon (Spurs), Dan James (Man Utd) in recent times. Big talents, big fees...and straight on the bench or loaned back out. These teams do not take young superstar Championship players and develop them quickly into first team players. Scott would go to Liverpool and play U23s, Carabao Cup, and warm the bench. Conversely look at the clubs lower down in the Premier League or in Germany in particular and you see players like Bowen (West Ham), Maddison (Leicester) Godfrey (Everton), Burke (Leipzig), Bellingham (Dortmund) even our own Webster (Brighton), Brownhill (Burnley), Kelly and now Semenyo (both Bournemouth) go and play. They go straight in and they get minutes and they develop. They may not win a token medal for playing 3 times in the early FA Cup rounds, but they move their career forward. That's why I'd much prefer him to go to Brighton, Brentford, maybe Leicester, those lower sides who still have the cash to give us, but he will play. If it is true that what he most wants is to play football then he and his agent have to angle for a team outside of that "Big Six". They just have to.

Stonkingly efficient shooting today. Just 6 shots on goal (PNE took 17), but 3 of those on target. Average xG per shot of 0.28 which is huge. The two goals naturally created the huge majority of that threat given where they were. Sykes' in particular was obviously almost a 1.0 xG by itself. Impressive stuff but if we want to bother the top teams we need to start adding quantity to this quality.