Yellowbelly

Fair do’s fella & I’m glad you’re in a better place & long may it continue. I’m just reminded of something someone once said to me - if you meet a person with mental health issues you’ve met one person with mental health issues. Everyone has their own battle to fight & it’s personal to them.

Im absolutely fine with that. I’m amazed we have so many strikers & not one of them is good enough to score regularly in the championship. Over the next 2-3 transfer windows we need to replace the whole lot.

If you are personally disappointed in the way Paul Gascoignes life has deteriorated over the past 20 odd years then fair enough that’s certainly your prerogative. I suppose I’m just uncomfortable with labelling a man with obvious mental health problems as a “disappointing human being”. Without knowing the particular difficulties his “illness” poses him on a day to day basis I’m unsure whether any of us could advise him on getting to grips with his life. It strikes me as similar to telling someone with depression to cheer up. Excellent footballer & a massive shame he’s never found anything to fill the void it left behind.

Bit harsh

^This The spine of our team is made up of free signings. It’s when we spend money we tend to feck it up.

If the current FFP rules were to stay in place then I believe there should be relegation clauses written into every contract that would drop the players wages to a % of their new income once relegated. Then the player stays on the reduced amount or gets sold. The only parachute payment the clubs should get is to ensure the non playing/coaching staffs wages are still paid in full or an acceptable severance payment for these individuals can be agreed. This still allows the relegated clubs to spend what they generate through player sales etc but doesn’t skew the competition. When we were relegated we basically had to let half the team walk away for pittance & rebuild from the bottom up again, I’m not saying it should be that draconian but parachute payments drive up the prices for everyone when only a small percentage have the income to afford those prices.

No, it doesn’t force clubs to do anything. If they want to be successful though it pretty much puts paid to that & keeps you in your place. The reality of modern football is you either invest or stagnate. To get from where we were to where we are to where we want to be takes money. Our owner has that money but is not allowed to invest because an owner once levied their debt against their club as a loan & then demanded that money back. Instead of making a rule to close that loophole they invented a rule to effectively protect the status quo. And yes, our business model has been seriously flawed but the bills are being paid, everyone’s getting their wages & the tax mans getting his cut - so what exactly have we done wrong? If the investment is a gift & not a loan then no harm done surely?

So FFP forces clubs to sell their assets to stay competitive whilst at the same time allowing the financial doping of 3 teams every year for 3 years? And people still think FFPs a good idea?

Unfortunately mate, and i’m sorry I have to be the one to break this to you, but football clubs are owned by very rich people nowadays who want their club to generate as much money as they possibly can. They mostly do this because they like money, but they also like success so a good number of them invest a lot of that money into their clubs in the hope of achieving that success. Fans, us irrational idiots, also love it when clubs spend that money on players. Look! there’s a “megathread” pinned to the top of this forum dedicated to the subject of getting new shiny players into the club. Maybe one day we’ll spend enough in the gathering of these players to not only make it into the Premier League but also maybe become part of a “Big ...” well, anything really. Leicester, a few years back, were us. They invested & their recruitment & ambition could see them become part of the “Big 7”, or maybe not & they get relegated back down here & the status quo is restored. I just know that the facts are the PL has the fairest wealth distribution of all the European major leagues and because of that investment in competition it is also the richest league in the world. The big clubs will always try to twist things to their advantage but they all realise what the leagues strength is and that’s why despite the doom-mongering of fossils such as yourself proclaiming “claptrap” there has been no breakaway, no carve-up, no closed shop. In fact, it’s getting stronger & more teams have a chance of winning it than ever before. Which sounds like an improvement to me.

The distribution of wealth in the PL is the most even in Europe, hence why it’s so competitive rather than the procession you get in the other major leagues. You want to see big clubs being greedy & destroying their domestic league - I give you RM, Barca, Juve, PSG, Bayern - all self entitled enemies of fair competition more concerned with the collection of wealth than giving their countries supporters a league worth watchingand destroying it in the process. You use the term “big 6” on a derogatory sense but remember in the EPL there used to be a big two, then a big 4 & now it’s a big 6. That there’s growth that is, in the next decade you could have a big 8,10,12. That’s because the draw of the big clubs drives viewing figures across the world, and the competition from the smaller clubs makes it exciting and gives all PL clubs the ability to invest, improve themselves and grow. It’s easy to be on the outside & criticise the EPL model but that’s borne out of jealousy mainly and when we get there we’ll love it as much as the rest.

I always want the English clubs to do well in the CL. As far as domestic competition, aside from Wednesday, can’t say I’m bothered who wins what as long as the footballs good. Like LFC but can’t stand Liverpudlians generally & always had a soft spot for Man Utd cos of the talent they brought through. I think my main issue may be more with some of the fans of these clubs rather than the teams themselves tbh.

352 with becks right wingback & Ashley Cole left.

The effort Beckham put in was astounding. The guy ran all day & literally covered every blade of grass. Too many people focus on the celebrity rather than the player. Similar issue with Ashley Cole & Wayne Rooney - people who profess to be football fans care more about the media portrayal rather than the value these players brought to the team. That said, I’d still pick Zidane.

We’ve lost a number of past it +30 year olds recently. This shouldn’t exclude us from signing still obviously class +30 players in the future. If he’s still got it and plays in a position we need filling and the deals right for us financially then why on earth anyone would turn their noses up at signing him? Just because we need younger players it shouldn’t prevent us from looking at other players in addition to those young fit world beaters everyone’s crying out for.

Penney, came from nowhere & showed good potential, shame about the injury cutting short his season. Failing that Thorniley.