ExiledAjax

February 2017 - January 2021. Brentford were promoted in May 2021. So he wasn't on Prem wages, but was still offending whilst on Championship money (admittedly not top end Championship money). Regardless, even the very wealthiest can become desperate for money if they live beyond their means.

That's a category 2 offence. It's a Cat 1 offence for any player to place a bet on any football match anywhere in the world. That's the fundamental prohibition. As I said earlier in the thread, there are six categories and they increase in severity from the two mentioned above to the most serious - a bet placed on a particular occurrence involving the player who placed the bet. The vast majority of betting cases investigated by the FA involve category 2, 3, and 4 offences. Cat 3 is a bet placed on your own team to win, Cat 4 is betting that your own team will lose. Cat 4 is subdivided into 4(a) bet to lose and you play (or are an unused sub) in the match, and 4(b) bet to lose but you don't take part. Obviously 4(a) is very serious and tends to attract a ban of over a year, 4(b) is less serious. Looking at historical sanctions and Toney's 8 month ban, I suspect that his case involved a few Cat 4(b) offences, the average sanction for which is between 20-40 weeks (5-9 months(ish)). The record sanction for a Cat 4(b) offence is 57 weeks and that record is held by the honourable Mr. J. Barton who bet on his own team to lose no less than 15 times. A number of aggravating and mitigating factors will also have been considered in arriving at the 8 month ban. They include the obvious such as size and number of bets (of each category), did Toney win or lose his bets, his previous record in this regard, his personal circumstances, etc. The number and size of the bets tends to be the most influential of these. His admission of guilt will have been considered as a mitigating factor. It will be interesting to read the regulatory commission's reasoning when published.

Keiran Maguire (the football finance guy) sums the recipe for success in football up as: resources, opportunity, execution. You need to have the resources - financial wriggle room, income and control of outgoings, the opportunity - a division that opens up, the right squad at the right time, and then you have to have the right people making good decisions and executing your plan. We've had/have a few of these things in place, but not all at once. Opportunity has always been there. Resources are now in place after a few years of a rebuild. Execution is now key.

I travelled to watch us play Coventry on that sunny August evening in Burton 9 months ago. 4-1 and we dismantled them. Had you told me then that Coventry would be in the playoff final I'd have laughed you out of town.

And where were Burton, Derby, Sheff Wed, Bolton, and Barnsley in 2018? In our division. Stars rise and stars fall. Don't be jealous and envious of Coventry and Luton. Don't let bitterness dominate. Be inspired and encouraged that yes, if they can do it, then so can we.

There are 6 levels of severity of breach. The number of breaches he has in each category will influence the length of the ban. It's very determinate on that. And yes it applies from now because that's the rules.

If he plays every minute. If they are all at LM. Then he could be reasonably predicted to get 7. Look, maybe I misunderstood @Major Isewater's post in that I read it as setting an unreasonable expectation that signing Joe Bryan would create many goals from midfield. Based on Bryan's history that is unlikely. I'll say again though, I want him to sign. He'd be a great addition. Just about having reasonable and fair expectations of new signings is all.

The most league minutes he's ever played in a season is 3,500 - 84% of the maximum possible. So based on past performance he's not an every minute player, and so is unlikely to achieve that maximum. Maybe he plays 85% and gets 6 goals. That's obviously great, but is unlikely to solve all our issues (remember that in doing that he is replacing someone else - maybe Mehmeti or Bell, so it's not a pure net gain of +6 goals).

This is basically what they are doing now. CAS and the Swiss court have told them to pay. They're sueing Nantes for damages resulting from (and apologies for crass language) essentially not delivering what was bought.

But he won't will he.

The sponsorless kit looked lovely though right? I'd like Pirelli back for nostalgia but at least their shot of that bloody crypto nonsense. Inter were a favourite of mine growing up and I'm all Inter for this trophy.

Bryan has scored 29 goals in his 371 professional appearances a career average of 1 in 12 across League 1, Championship, Prem League and now Ligue 1 (he's at 1 in every 958 minutes). Roughly 4 per season. However in only two seasons (our 14/15 promotion season and in 17/18) has his tally exceeded 3 goals. 16 of those 29 have come when played at LM, which transfermarkt reckon he's done in 117 games. Better, but still only 1 every 590 minutes. So assuming he played every minute of a Championship season at LM that predicts 7 goals. 7 would be nice I grant you, but is that playing condition going to be fulfilled? Mehmeti and Bell would be angry. He's a good player, he's a great Bristolian, and I would/will welcome him home with open arms, but he's not a goalscorer and although he could chip in with 2 or 3, he's not the 5-10 goal midfielder we might be looking for.

I'm not really expert on the jurisdiction of different courts but yes Blatter was always keen on keeping disputes "in house" then allowing appeals to CAS. My understanding here is that Cardiff have exhausted that route FIFA > CAS > Swiss Federal and are now trying something under the French 'criminal' court. So this case is of a different 'flavour' and so can be tried outside the FIFA track. Very happy to be corrected by anyone who knows better though as this might not be quite right.

Legal fees don't count towards FFP do they!? ?

As I understand it (and I think the article is translated into English from French so some nuance may be lost) the argument is: 1. McKay (plus his son) was operating as Nantes' agent. McKay was unlicensed at the time. 2. McKay therefore organised everything. Cardiff had no direct involvement. 3. To the extent McKay failed to organise something, Nantes should have covered it. 4. So Cardiff say that it's McKay, and by extension his employer Nantes' fault that Sala died. 5. Nantes can't blame McKay as he was unlicensed and so they should not have used him (presumably ignoring the fact that had Nantes not used McKay, Cardiff could not have bought Sala and so presumably Cardiff were fine with McKay's involvement at the time). In March this was summarised by the ever accurate, generous, and knowledgeable Mr. Tan who told Swiss media: “We were never able to use the very promising player we had bought. Emiliano Sala could have scored the few goals that would have saved us from demotion to the Championship (Cardiff finished 18th in the Premier League at the end of the 2018-2019 season). This resulted in a loss of £100 million, at least, for the club. With Sala, we could have avoided relegation. He didn’t play a single game for us. Why should we pay for his entire transfer? FC Nantes must be punished. He negotiated with an unlicensed agent.” The word "could" is doing an awful lot of work in that monologue. Note as well the admission "we had bought". To buy something implies paying for it. So ******* pay Mr. Tan! Note also that this is Cardiff's fourth attempt, in the fourth court/tribunal, to weasel out of this whole mess. Cardiff have lost their argument three times – firstly before FIFA’s player status commitee, which ordered them to pay the first €6 million instalment to Nantes, then before CAS and then in the highest Swiss court.

Don't mind it.

On faith. And presumably some robust but fair refund policies. Their standard T&C's say they offer no refund for any element of any season ticket. There might be some extra terms around the new "stand" but I can't see those without signing up, and I'm damned if I'm going on their mailing list. But yeh, it's a risk...or maybe it's not when you only sell three tickets?

Per the linked article: "L’Équipe indicate that Cardiff are also critical of the role that agent Willie McKay reportedly played in the transfer, notably in organising the flight in question, while his son Mark held the mandate to sell Sala to a Premier League [club]. For the second-tier club [Cardiff], it was Willie McKay who was truly in charge, even though he could not act as an agent as part of his bankruptcy agreement – for Cardiff, what they consider to be “faults committed” by McKay are also Nantes’ responsibility, as a result of their “recklessness and negligence in executing the mandate […] and the duty of surveillance over their authorised representative.”" Essentially Cardiff say that it was McKay and Nantes who organised everything, and that it was Nantes who should have made sure everything, including anything that McKay organised, was done properly.

I don't even think you'd need to go so far as disproving the entire concept of xG. It would probably be enough to just pick holes in their method of calculating that, based on xG, he was personally going to earn them 2 points. We don't know the method or calculation they've used there but it's going to be pro-Cardiff and it's going to be based on a number of assumptions, extrapolations, and limitations. All are subject to attack and relatively easy statistical dismemberment. I love xG, but it's not meant to be used like this, not at all.

I don't know much about the French court attitude to indirect or consequential losses, but if this was run in the UK I'd be amazed if it succeeded. As you say the losses are too remote and too uncertain.

There's reasons the players correctly picked Vyner as their Player of the Season.

Either the hierarchy are instructing the lawyers to persist, or the lawyers keep telling them there's a chance of winning. Neither seem to be the right course of action now. "The Welsh side notably claim that – based on their analysis of expected goals and expected points – Sala’s arrival would have given them the two points necessary to keep the club in Premier League for at least another season." First example of xG being used in court? Could be interesting if it's an argument that's accepted. French court so no precedent would be created in English law, but would be interesting to read the discussion.

That is some signing on fee.

Sorry, I hadn't appreciated that our arguments were allowed to ignore large elements of each club's position. If you want to ignore the fact that Man City's wage bill is double that of Arsenal due to their state funded ownership, then I'm going to ignore Haaland's goals and deduct 35 points from Man City's total. Absolute bottlers that City lot. A 10th place finish and 50 points is useless. Pep's a bald fraud etc etc. Facetious point scoring aside - the point is that "bottling" something happens when you fail to achieve something you reasonably should have achieved with ease. That's not what Arsenal have done, due to the differences in each squad/club's make up. If you're looking for a bottle this season then wait and see if Man City yet throw this away. That would be the bottle job.