Davefevs

Clean sheet in a 1-0 win for HWR.

Some goal from Batshuiy

Udoh continues to do well. 12th league goal today (15th in all comps). If we were looking at a player who could play anywhere along the forward line then I’d at least have a good look at him. Explosive, powerful player, a bit like Semenyo in some respects.

Really disappointing performance second half. Beever-Jones had their RB on toast first half but didn’t see the ball second half. Shame.

Worth getting a goblin teasmaid in the bedroom ???

PoF pod yesterday was suggesting 70% of “income minus wages and amortisation”…which is far simpler.

Blackburn

Misread your post ?? FWIW I think we owe SOD a lot. I think we will owe Pearson a lot too…when we look back.

Agree, just checked. https://www.transfermarkt.com/mario-balotelli/leistungsdaten/spieler/45146/saison/2011/wettbewerb/GB1 According to google, from 13/14 it was just 5 games needed. Until then it was 10, which he met. Is it one of those urban myth questions?

Why are you asking me?

Incredible

I guess the big question is were Fielding, Flint, Williams and Pack legends at the time O’Driscoll was sacked? Nope. Fielding wasn’t even in the team. Jet was a “legend”, but was too expensive to keep once Ipswich stopped paying half his £20k p.w. Waggy was “Mr 6/7 out of 10” (I liked him). Pearson has brought Scott and Pring through, improved Semenyo by playing him central, etc. Atkinson starting to show early season form, Tanner we will need to wait and see. I wouldn’t dismiss what Pearson has done so far, not least when comparing like for like with SOD a year into role. Pearson has kept us in the Championship too. I could quite happily make a case for Pearson doing better than O’Driscoll, but all about opinions. ?

Sorry for your loss. Very sad ?

Yep!

No, he has one house, it’s either on Ashton Road, Raynes Road, Winterstoke Road or Duckmoor Road….because whenever anyone signs for a club, other fans proclaim that he’s gonna live right next to the ground. Maybe he owns one of the houses behind the Atyeo…and Lansdown can’t buy it until he’s OOC!

Comments above ?

PoF has already said that covid and normal allowances might see them squeak inside the £105m.

I can’t wait.

There’s defining the strategy and there’s executing the strategy. 5 pillars all sensible stuff. We deviated from it. China sums up what we did nicely below. I still can’t believe that the expert accountant couldn’t see what was happening. Was it a case of “Son, I’m stepping back, you’re in control now”? Jon’s recent media comments (although not as bad as the reaction on here…by me too) came across as the comments of a fan, not the Chairman. That’s disappointing!!! I fully expect Luton are bottom 5 budget…and might possibly be bottom 3.

Plus keeping us up with a significantly reduced budget….and importantly reduced commitments to wages and amortisation in future years, i.e. sustainable, not a one season reduction. As it stands the budget for this season is £12-13m less, same next season if not more, and approaching £20m lower in 23/24. That’s notwithstanding any transfers in or out.

Quite simply (imho) they have a clear strategy,and they stick to it. That strategy is develop academy, buy players to polish, recruit to a system, keep costs down as a result, sell when player’s outgrow them. Something like that anyway!!!

In isolation, no it’s not bad, but it was the trend of having to sell more and more each year, whilst paying larger fees and wages (and committing us to those costs in future years) to replace them that concerned me. And it came home to roost. I started seriously looking at the finances in 17-18 when everyone was “moaning” we didn’t go for it / gamble in that Jan 18 window. We signed Diony, Walsh and Kent. My argument was that we did sort of gamble, by keeping Reid, Bryan (allegedly we turned down a bid) and Flint, but adding too with the 3 players mentioned. I wasn’t sure whether a sustainable strategy would lead to promotion. On reflection I think it can, but no surprise it relies on excellent recruitment, but also Academy players coming through. Over a period of time I thought we used the money we made to buy quantity rather than quality, we didn’t really put any money made from Kelly and Webster “behind us”, we just spent it. That worried me to Although I didn’t expect Covid, I always feared a tv deal collapse or something like that, and worried we’d end up with expensive players worth less than we paid for them. Maybe I should’ve just worried less! ? This was coupled with nothing really coming through the academy…the source of Bryan £6m, Kelly £15m and Reid £10m (or whatever their amounts really were). We only really had two big successes of players bought by LJ / MA and that was Brownhill and Webster. So I had little faith in relying on “buy cheap, sell big”. As it stands today, the big positives are that we have Scott and Semenyo coming through, and I really want to keep them. I don’t really count Massengo, but lump the three in together. We’ve possibly got Pring (and Benarous - hopefully in time) to add to that in the group below of slightly less valuable “home grown”. We could do with Conway or Bell joining that group too. That would really set us up. I see clubs like Luton and Coventry doing what we should’ve been the trailblazers for. We blew it. Until we get our costs down (which we are under Pearson) we can’t reset our course for progress. Thats how I see it anyway.

So, happy to leak news that sounds positive, but not the other way around.

Yeah, we should move on from LJ, but you know he lives in all of our heads!!! ??? My view was he did good things and bad things. With all these things it’s rarely black or white. What is important for me going forward is: - a coherent recruitment strategy (imho it should be low cost and focussed (not purely though) on younger players) - a style of play aligned to the above and vice-versa Until this summer’s window is over it’s really difficult to judge how far into that journey we are. My gut feel is that the foundations will be firm enough to build on post-summer, not pre-summer. That might sound like further behind than we would like (it probably is) but we can’t really know until we know what is happening with Massengo, Semenyo and Scott, nor until we know about Palmer, Wells, Kalas, O’Dowda etc either. I’m gonna enjoy the comings and goings.

Sorry was your initial post aimed at me to answer? The easy bit is that for City, FFP and P&S are the same thing!!! As it stands we have the 15 months, including 2 transfer windows to sort ourselves out. We either cut costs, improve revenue (inc transfers) or a combo of both. I honestly don’t think we will take a points deductions, I.e. we will find a way to comply. If this new fangled idea was to come in to the Champ for next season, and applied at 70%, then about 21/24 Championship clubs would be over 70%!!!