Football 2025-26

[charlierc]

3 hours ago, balti-pie said:

Thought i'd edit that, just for clarity 😄 

 

this is the kind of season that makes me see that it really doesnt matter what i think or do, its all so far out of my control - as a person and Spurs as a fanbase as a whole! - we can be angry, i can be furious and shouting, i can smile wanly and accept my fate, what happens is what happens and we just have to deal with it.

If relegation happens, then so be it. I dont want a rape apologist as a manager (this is referencing De Zerbi's support for Mason Greenwood btw), even if it does mean we stay up - and half the fanbase think i'm a woke arsehole for suggesting that. Its all such a mess, i dont really have the energy for getting all excited about it one way or another. I'll just accept whatever happens and deal with it accordingly i suppose. 

Given the rumour is pointing towards De Zerbi, you may be sh*t out of luck on that front. 

 

When we went down in both 2009 and 2016, we made last minute manager appointments that both failed (although both got close) and I've seen similar failures elsewhere, such as Big Sam at Leeds or Norwich putting their youth team boss in charge in 2014. So it's a gamble in any case, and given how it ended for him at Brighton, feels like a gamble for De Zerbi too. Get this wrong and it's a bad thing to add to the CV alright. 

[balti-pie]

6 hours ago, thetime said:

 

The most sought after manager in Europe (enrique) and the Arsenal manager is one of them. I am sure you would not mind Louis Enrique at the club. 

nah, moral bankruptcy isn’t for me. Can’t recall what Luis Enrique might have been defending in all honesty but if you’re going in to bat, publically, for absolute rotters like Mason Greenwood and Thomas Partey, then you can get f**ked and have nothing to do with my club. 
 

in defence of the arsenal fans (and believe me it isn’t often I say that) they flew a banner campaigning against sexual crime, and a lot of them were making the point of him not representing the club. It’s the actual FC who are to be criticised, and Lego head Arteta bleating on about it being ‘such a hard time’ for him. Let’s be scrupulously honest here; if Partey wasn’t their best midfielder at the time, they’d have bumped him out. Their morals are based entirely on how useful the player is, and that’s disgusting. 
 

If relegation happens, so be it. But it would be tons worse if it happens while also being morally bankrupt. I’d rather be honest and sh*t. 

[pink_triangle]

8 hours ago, balti-pie said:

Thought i'd edit that, just for clarity 😄 

 

this is the kind of season that makes me see that it really doesnt matter what i think or do, its all so far out of my control - as a person and Spurs as a fanbase as a whole! - we can be angry, i can be furious and shouting, i can smile wanly and accept my fate, what happens is what happens and we just have to deal with it.

If relegation happens, then so be it. I dont want a rape apologist as a manager (this is referencing De Zerbi's support for Mason Greenwood btw), even if it does mean we stay up - and half the fanbase think i'm a woke arsehole for suggesting that. Its all such a mess, i dont really have the energy for getting all excited about it one way or another. I'll just accept whatever happens and deal with it accordingly i suppose. 

The sad thing is I think over half the clubs in the EPL would love to sign Greenwood, but just can’t work out how they can get away with it.

[balti-pie]

35 minutes ago, pink_triangle said:

The sad thing is I think over half the clubs in the EPL would love to sign Greenwood, but just can’t work out how they can get away with it.

Absolutely. Rape and coercion is noisy, but a winning football team is louder. And they wonder why people are turning their backs on premier league football . . . 

[thetime]

2 hours ago, balti-pie said:

nah, moral bankruptcy isn’t for me. Can’t recall what Luis Enrique might have been defending in all honesty 
 

 

 

Hakimi is on a rape charge, 1st arrested in 2023. 

[charlierc]

12 hours ago, pink_triangle said:

The sad thing is I think over half the clubs in the EPL would love to sign Greenwood, but just can’t work out how they can get away with it.

Agreed. I'm assuming similar questions could be asked elsewhere given there's been rumours of clubs above Marseille in the football food chain sniffing around him for a little while (Atletico Madrid, Barcelona and Juventus among them). 

 

On a tangent, Marseille in summer 2024 made some peculiar signing choices in trying to assemble a team with a bad reputation. 

[charlierc]

13 hours ago, balti-pie said:

nah, moral bankruptcy isn’t for me. Can’t recall what Luis Enrique might have been defending in all honesty but if you’re going in to bat, publically, for absolute rotters like Mason Greenwood and Thomas Partey, then you can get f**ked and have nothing to do with my club. 
 

in defence of the arsenal fans (and believe me it isn’t often I say that) they flew a banner campaigning against sexual crime, and a lot of them were making the point of him not representing the club. It’s the actual FC who are to be criticised, and Lego head Arteta bleating on about it being ‘such a hard time’ for him. Let’s be scrupulously honest here; if Partey wasn’t their best midfielder at the time, they’d have bumped him out. Their morals are based entirely on how useful the player is, and that’s disgusting. 
 

If relegation happens, so be it. But it would be tons worse if it happens while also being morally bankrupt. I’d rather be honest and sh*t. 

Given how Spurs fans are feeling alienated and discontent with their board for a wide variety of bad decisions, appointing someone who a decent chunk of the fanbase have already taken against because of this is a bizarre choice. 

 

Even on a sporting level I would have doubts given he has a very complex tactical approach and a very combative nature when things don't go his way, as seen with how things collapsed at Marseille, and I'm not sure a demoralised team that just needs wins needs that. Factor in West Ham looking better put together and it feels like trouble. But on this other level, it really doesn't help the perception of a club run by people who don't know what they're doing. 

[pink_triangle]

1 hour ago, charlierc said:

Given how Spurs fans are feeling alienated and discontent with their board for a wide variety of bad decisions, appointing someone who a decent chunk of the fanbase have already taken against because of this is a bizarre choice. 

 

Even on a sporting level I would have doubts given he has a very complex tactical approach and a very combative nature when things don't go his way, as seen with how things collapsed at Marseille, and I'm not sure a demoralised team that just needs wins needs that. Factor in West Ham looking better put together and it feels like trouble. But on this other level, it really doesn't help the perception of a club run by people who don't know what they're doing. 

There is talk he will be one of the best paid managers in the league. Forgetting any moral issues, I’m not sure what on his CV deserves that .

[thetime]

Newcastle selling there stadium to there owners, then leasing back to get round PSR. Not dodgy at all. 

[lost]

4 minutes ago, thetime said:

Newcastle selling there stadium to there owners, then leasing back to get round PSR. Not dodgy at all. 

 

Apparently a quarter of Prem teams used a player swap or asset sales to pass PSR in this years accounts.

[charlierc]

8 minutes ago, thetime said:

Newcastle selling there stadium to there owners, then leasing back to get round PSR. Not dodgy at all. 

Easier to list the clubs that haven't done it tbh. Hell, Everton revealed today they did it with Goodison Park in their final season playing there.

 

I'm not a fan of it and think it will cause us problems down the line, but I'm taking a "Don't hate the player, hate the game" reaction. Not least given it went badly for Reading, Derby and Sheffield Wednesday after they did this.

[lost]

6 minutes ago, charlierc said:

Easier to list the clubs that haven't done it tbh. Hell, Everton revealed today they did it with Goodison Park in their final season playing there.

 

I'm not a fan of it and think it will cause us problems down the line, but I'm taking a "Don't hate the player, hate the game" reaction. Not least given it went badly for Reading, Derby and Sheffield Wednesday after they did this.

 

I think Everton women now play at Goodison Park so they broke the womens team off too, Villa did the same, Chelsea sold another hotel attached to the ground to themselves etc.. The club that appears to come out best from the dodgy deals is Nottingham Forest with the Anderson swap.

[charlierc]

1 minute ago, lost said:

 

I think Everton women now play at Goodison Park so they broke the womens team off too, Villa did the same, Chelsea sold another hotel attached to the ground to themselves etc.. The club that appears to come out best from the dodgy deals is Nottingham Forest with the Anderson swap.

Aye, seen Everton did such antics with their women's team, as did Villa and Chelsea. All things UEFA are apparently not happy with.

 

Clearly, wages are the driver here. To take the Toon as the example, wage bill for 2024/25 as per our accounts was £243.5million, for roughly 73% of turnover being spent on wages alone. And that figure is still only enough for us to be the 8th highest wage bill in the league last season, behind the Super League 6 and the wildly overspending Aston Villa. I half expect that even with Isak's tantrum and move to Liverpool, our wage bill grew for this season. So it's no wonder clubs are doing all manner of weird byzantine financial sh*t to make it work. But it's not exactly sustainable.

 

Granted, I'm more surprised the Championship's sketchy finances haven't already blown up, but that's a separate argument.

 

Oh and don't remind me. I imagine Forest are going to sell Anderson to a Super League 6 side in the summer and make a huge profit on the £35million they paid for him (which is actually more like £15mil as they somehow got us to pay £20mil for their back-up keeper as part of a you scratch my back deal that really backfired on us).

[thetime]

8 minutes ago, charlierc said:

Aye, seen Everton did such antics with their women's team, as did Villa and Chelsea. All things UEFA are apparently not happy with.

 

Clearly, wages are the driver here. To take the Toon as the example, wage bill for 2024/25 as per our accounts was £243.5million, for roughly 73% of turnover being spent on wages alone. And that figure is still only enough for us to be the 8th highest wage bill in the league last season, behind the Super League 6 and the wildly overspending Aston Villa. I half expect that even with Isak's tantrum and move to Liverpool, our wage bill grew for this season. So it's no wonder clubs are doing all manner of weird byzantine financial sh*t to make it work. But it's not exactly sustainable.

 

Granted, I'm more surprised the Championship's sketchy finances haven't already blown up, but that's a separate argument.

 

Oh and don't remind me. I imagine Forest are going to sell Anderson to a Super League 6 side in the summer and make a huge profit on the £35million they paid for him (which is actually more like £15mil as they somehow got us to pay £20mil for their back-up keeper as part of a you scratch my back deal that really backfired on us).

 

Is the super league 6 you mention a Newcastle gripe? Or your personal gripe.

 

Never heard it before. 

[charlierc]

1 minute ago, thetime said:

 

Is the super league 6 you mention a Newcastle gripe? Or your personal gripe.

 

Never heard it before. 

Stole the term from Reddit ngl.

[thetime]

1 minute ago, charlierc said:

Stole the term from Reddit ngl.

 

Oh right. 

 

Just never heard of it anywhere before, well not since the super league idea a few years ago. 

 

Thought it was Newcastle fans acting up, as X is full of them. 

[kaosmark2]

50 minutes ago, thetime said:

Newcastle selling there stadium to there owners, then leasing back to get round PSR. Not dodgy at all. 

If the Prem had actually given Chelsea a points deduction for all their nonsense instead of a £10m fine I'd probably care about it being dodgy.

 

As it is, with the shenanigans they do and the disparity of punishment between them and Everton/Forest, I think clubs like us are forced to play the game. And I will say that I also had sympathy for Villa when they sold their women's team to themselves.

 

There is a side thing for our situation of this is actually vaguely standard practice for businesses to do when redeveloping a site for the sake of managing loan/equity finances. Dodgy as well but fully legal and not just limited to football gimmicks. But I realise it comes across as a pretty weak excuse and I think my bigger attitude is "well we're doing less f**kaboutery than Chelsea".

[kaosmark2]

12 minutes ago, thetime said:

Is the super league 6 you mention a Newcastle gripe? Or your personal gripe.

 

Never heard it before. 

 

9 minutes ago, charlierc said:

Stole the term from Reddit ngl.

I find 

https://www.reddit.com/r/TheOther14/

about the best fan banter about the Prem I've seen online. I don't post but it's fun to skim and it largely dodges the American fans of the "big 6" who are very obnoxious and omnipresent online.

 

I've never really had the same bitterness about City as many though. Sure they bought the league but so has every other team who won it (including Leicester to a lesser extent who still did a lot of financial chicanery). And it felt like they weren't pushing for the Super League in the same way as Man U/Liverpool, and Spurs going all in it because they were riding their current success and wanted to lock in their current position.

[thetime]

8 minutes ago, kaosmark2 said:

If the Prem had actually given Chelsea a points deduction for all their nonsense instead of a £10m fine I'd probably care about it being dodgy.

 

As it is, with the shenanigans they do and the disparity of punishment between them and Everton/Forest, I think clubs like us are forced to play the game. And I will say that I also had sympathy for Villa when they sold their women's team to themselves.

 

There is a side thing for our situation of this is actually vaguely standard practice for businesses to do when redeveloping a site for the sake of managing loan/equity finances. Dodgy as well but fully legal and not just limited to football gimmicks. But I realise it comes across as a pretty weak excuse and I think my bigger attitude is "well we're doing less f**kaboutery than Chelsea".

 

So to summarise, everyone is corrupt as each other. We have a lovely game don't we. Said it for years, all clubs should be 51% fan owned. 

 

I can understand Newcastle getting a bit annoyed, they are getting more annoyed by the season. Being the richest club in the world, progress being slow and now losing there best players. 

 

Edited March 31 by thetime

[kaosmark2]

13 minutes ago, thetime said:

So to summarise, everyone is corrupt as each other. We have a lovely game don't we. Said it for years, all clubs should be 51% fan owned. 

 

I can understand Newcastle getting a bit annoyed, they are getting more annoyed by the season. Being the richest club in the world, progress being slow and now losing there best players. 

Fully agree btw. Fan ownership should be part of it.

 

Honestly don't care about us being the richest club, I'd actually prefer there's a need to grow and build. I'm annoyed with Chelsea getting away with their bullshit and distorting the playing field around PSR.

[charlierc]

1 hour ago, kaosmark2 said:

 

I find 

https://www.reddit.com/r/TheOther14/

about the best fan banter about the Prem I've seen online. I don't post but it's fun to skim and it largely dodges the American fans of the "big 6" who are very obnoxious and omnipresent online.

 

I've never really had the same bitterness about City as many though. Sure they bought the league but so has every other team who won it (including Leicester to a lesser extent who still did a lot of financial chicanery). And it felt like they weren't pushing for the Super League in the same way as Man U/Liverpool, and Spurs going all in it because they were riding their current success and wanted to lock in their current position.

The Championship sub is more fun imo. Though the Other 14 does have its moments.

1 hour ago, kaosmark2 said:

If the Prem had actually given Chelsea a points deduction for all their nonsense instead of a £10m fine I'd probably care about it being dodgy.

 

As it is, with the shenanigans they do and the disparity of punishment between them and Everton/Forest, I think clubs like us are forced to play the game. And I will say that I also had sympathy for Villa when they sold their women's team to themselves.

 

There is a side thing for our situation of this is actually vaguely standard practice for businesses to do when redeveloping a site for the sake of managing loan/equity finances. Dodgy as well but fully legal and not just limited to football gimmicks. But I realise it comes across as a pretty weak excuse and I think my bigger attitude is "well we're doing less f**kaboutery than Chelsea".

We are where we are with it. Frankly I'm surprised that every club hasn't resorted to doing something like this.

 

The Chelsea situation I think is different, partly given its about historical allegations rather than some of the financial loopholes they've been doing since the takeover and partly because they were the ones that voluntarily disclosed what Roman's Blues were doing with off the books payments. I'm sympathetic to Everton and Forest asking questions of whether the penalty Chelsea got was lenient in comparison to the ones they were saddled with though.

 

Something seems up there anyway. The fans seem to dislike the owners, Rosenior seems like he's in the wrong job, several of their best players seem to be openly talking about leaving (Enzo Fernandez and Cucurella have essentially issued come and get me pleas to La Liga's finest, while Cole Palmer is being strongly linked with a summer transfer) and it all seems a bit of a mess even with all the levers and financial chicanery going down there.

Edited March 31 by charlierc

[charlierc]

1 hour ago, thetime said:

 

So to summarise, everyone is corrupt as each other. We have a lovely game don't we. Said it for years, all clubs should be 51% fan owned. 

 

I can understand Newcastle getting a bit annoyed, they are getting more annoyed by the season. Being the richest club in the world, progress being slow and now losing there best players. 

 

I think its the gap between concept and implementation. Personally, I was aware PSR meant we weren't exactly going to have a £2trn transfer budget, and I'm aware the Saudis have other economic and sporting interests (James Montague's book Engulfed is a good exploration of this stuff) so they weren't going to just blow it all on us. Indeed, I have questions on what the investments are going to be going forward with it given I'd heard rumours of the Saudi PiF downsizing some of their investments even before antics in their backyard over the last month. Either that or just get the brothers who own the other 15% to put up some cash towards it.

 

(Although ironically as I was writing this I got Expedia adverts to Explore Saudi Arabia, something I've had quite commonly on here)

 

Player trading's just a part of football innit. Think what annoyed me about the Isak debacle was that qualifying for the Champions League should've been enough to keep him, but clearly I think too much had happened behind the scenes to keep him on side. I'm half-expecting this to be a bit of a summer of churn anyway. Some squad players are likely to be on the way out, but I'm expecting blue chip players like Tonali, Bruno, Gordon, Livramento and Hall to be the subject of bids. It's a big test of the new structure to keep a decent core together and learn from last year's messy recruitment.

Edited March 31 by charlierc

[Ryan1984]

I know you can’t read too much into a friendly but feels like Tuchel has some work to do.

[charlierc]

Italy... Ooft. 20 years this year since they won the World Cup and now confirmed as missing out for the third edition in a row. 

[thetime]

2 minutes ago, charlierc said:

Italy... Ooft. 20 years this year since they won the World Cup and now confirmed as missing out for the third edition in a row. 

 

Can't think of any other big nation, not qualify for that long. England was 12 years, cant think of another long absence.