ExiledAjax

Next season's away kit had better be as good as the Mona Lisa.

That's nice from Cornick.

Always nice to see the shit kit get an outing. Nice badge.

If you can even just @ the SC&T in a reply to the tweet that would help.

The Heritage Archive & Trust* is coming soon. It will be an online repository/museum, and stuff like this is perfect for it. @spudski is there a chance you could send some contact detail or something to the SC&T so it can be included. *credit mainly to Scott Davidson, Richard Gould and the SC&T.

Lee Johnson signed a 4 year extension in 2019. He should be coming up to the end of that now.

Would I personally offer Pearson an extension now? Probably not. Would I be pissed off if he signs a two year extension tomorrow? Not at all. He's done a great job, and has pretty much achieved everything he was asked to do (that I can remember). But as I've posted before I'm unsure if he can take us to the next level, or if he's invested in doing that. I think it's not a bad plan to use next season as a final stabilising season where we manage a positive handover from Pearson to a new manager who can take our stable but limited squad through a new system and towards being a top 6 squad.

It's Ian playing 5 different characters and basically talking to himself for an hour. He puts on funny voices but he's fooling no-one.

Yep. It's basically a decision as to whether any new wage, bonuses, signing fee and any agent fee is worth it for Kalas. He's potentially a relatively (ie relative to buying in an equivalent defender) cheap and very experienced CB. Transfers and big ticket FFP questions are moot with this one.

When you extend it give a new contract to a player any remaining amortisation amount is "re-amortised" across the new contract. So if we have £1.5m left to amortise on a contract and we give that player a 3 year contract then it costs us £500k for the next 3 years rather than £1.5m this year. However, Kalas is OOC in June 2023, so his previous contract will be totally amortised out at that point. Thus if we give him a new contract there is nothing left to amortise anyway. So it's moot.

This is a run-in analysis. The blue number is the average points per game scored so far by the team's remaining opponents. The lower the number the better basically. The red number is points per game of teams they've already played. Higher is better there. On the right the two numbers are compared and expressed as a % swing of past opponents v future opponents. A big green number indicates and easy run in, big red is hard. Clearly shows how much tougher Forest have it in these closing weeks. Note also that Leicester have some real potential to get points.

Oh they absolutely could come down. A very real danger of that. Would they cease to exist if relegated? Well they recently confirmed in their own accounts that they would be in very real danger of ceasing to be a going concern if they get relegated. That would put them into administration. Now, if they do that in the Championship that is an instant -12 points. Once in administration they have two outcomes 1) bought by someone willing to fund them or 2) liquidation (ie ceasing to exist). Personally I suspect that a club/brand as big and famous as Everton would eventually find a buyer and so would survive. However, with a -12 points deficit and new owners paying off huge debts and trying to fund a stadium build they'd be quite likely to end up in League One with little money for players. It would be an absolute disaster for them.

Leicester have Wolves, Leeds, and then a probably MASSIVE game against Everton on 1st May. I think it's likely that going into that game Leicester will be above Everton as Everton's prior games are Palace and Newcastle.

Some potentially decisive fixtures coming up soon. Palace v Everton, Leicester v Wolves, Bournemouth v West Ham all next weekend. Then Wolves v Palace and Leeds v Leicester on Tuesday 25th. Those 5 games could make it all look a bit more certain as I think it's going to be 36 or 37 points for safety this season. So you could see Wolves (currently on 34) and Bournemouth (33) hit that mark, and I think Palace (36 are basically already there. That would reduce it properly to a 5 team battle (assuming Southampton are not going to get 13 points from 5 games).

No, I forgot about the loans. There's no doubt he's been expensive.

Oh right yeh that would include the loan wouldn't it

154 appearances. 13,000 minutes so equivalent of 144.5 full 90 minutes.

I wonder will we see Harvey WR get some minutes in the last few games? I honestly have no idea how good/ready the guy is. Watching him warm-up yesterday he's maybe an inch shorter than Max but looked a little broader in the chest and shoulders. Only 20 years old so probably some way from properly challenging Max, but I think it would be nice to see him play in one of these games.

Ah Maenpaa my sweet prince. I'm always so happy he's having a lovely bloody time in Venice.

And I can't hate you for a Weston's fueled soap box moment.

And I guess that's why I'd like us to spend the money on the outfield rather than try and improve our GK No.1. Get a good team in front of Max and I think he's fine as a Champ keeper. I respect your dissenting opinion on that though. It's certainly possible to improve on Max, I just don't necessarily think it's a priority.

Wolves scouts think Bentley is a decent training cone, I'll give you that.

Bentley v Max for us this season. Max has the better save% and a vastly better goals conceded per 90. Bents has a slightly better clean sheet ratio. Very little to choose between them. Max is fine. We can get promoted with Max as no.1.

Do you think Bentley was a keeper good enough to get us into the top 6?

I think we get better value for money by improving the rest of the squad. Max is fine, with an improved outfield in front of him it's possible to finish top ten, even top 6. Spend the money on the ten in front of him.