English football 2023-24

[Durhamfootman]

Today's the day

I confess to not having any expectation of a satisfactory conclusion to the season as far as Newcastle are concerned. None whatsoever. I think today has 8th place finish written all over it

[Durhamfootman]

All 3 win, so Newcastle finish 7th and have a nervous wait to see if Man Utd do anything outrageously ridiculous next weekend

this was my scenario from 2 weeks ago. I can see Man City having a player sent off after 10 mins, Man Utd score from the penalty and hang on against 10 men for a 1-0 win and Newcastle's European place :scared

[mikesiva]

Congratulations to Manchester City on winning four straight.
:clap

[Durhamfootman]

Newcastle's 38 matches this season produced a total of 147 goals. The highest for over 10 years, seemingly. That's nearly 4 goals a game :o

[Durhamfootman]

Chelsea get rid of Pochettino

I rather imagine he'll have been very happy to have been paid off. The new owner (sweetie shop Todd) must be a nightmare to work with

a years wages in the back pocket and he'll be back in a good job in no time after a couple of weeks holiday, the chance of a stint in a Copa America studio and another holiday afterwards

[sussexpob]

They have looked a really good team as the season has gone by too, so I dont really sacking him after he turned it round.

Todd seems a bit of a lunatic mind.

[Durhamfootman]

he is like a kid in a sweetie shop. The money he's spent is crazy, the money he's wasted is even crazier. He's now having to sell home grown talent who should be forming the backbone of his side for the next 10 years just to try and massage the books into something that might pass FFP. None of the dozens of players that he's bought in the last couple of years seem to have been run by the manager first. His attitude seems to be "I've spent a billion quid, why haven't you won me the title?"

In some ways he'd be a dream owner for someone like Steve Bruce who always made a living out of getting sacked and walking away with pockets full of compen

[sussexpob]

he is like a kid in a sweetie shop. The money he's spent is crazy, the money he's wasted is even crazier. He's now having to sell home grown talent who should be forming the backbone of his side

They have wasted 100s of millions on dross. Some players have began to look better (although the main ones, Caicdeo and Enzo are about 230 million outlay between them, so to merely look good at that price after a long time looking dross hardly feels a major win), but a lot of them look rubbish. Mudryk for instance just looks like a sprinter who has never seen a football before, and while he is young and he had almost zero experience when they signed him, so he might improve with time, at this moment the idea they spent 85.5 million quid on a youngster who had played like 15 games in the Ukrainian Premier League at a time all the foreign talent left the country during a war, it feels as insane as it looks.

just to try and massage the books into something that might pass FFP.

They sold the hotel located at the ground to another business owned by Todd, and are apparently trying to argue that counts towards their revenue. Last I heard it seemed to have been accepted, so Man City will be looking at that and saying if its ok for the owner to use other companies he owns to buy up club assets and escape FFP, then there is no reason for FFP. Why even bother with it? Surely they cant get away with that.

The amazing thing is, a lot of the failed players are on huge contracts for 7 or 8 years!! Todd had the gall to come out last week and say they had made investments for the future and hadnt lost value on any players.....

Mudryk has a contract for 8.5 years for 70 million Euros value, and they extended it one year to amortise the costs of the books for FFP purposes, so its even more now..... even if someone wanted to buy him, why would the player take a pay cut or ever want to leave? At this rate he will be earning 10 million a year sitting in the reserves for a decade doing nothing.

9.5 years contract for an unproven young talent? Madness

[Durhamfootman]

you can see why Poch would have been happy to take the money and run away quickly before anyone changed their mind

[Durhamfootman]

In other news, Dan Ashworth is taking Newcastle to court to try and get his enforced gardening leave removed. He claims he was technically sacked by Newcastle because they didn't ask for his resignation in writing, by some such date, or similar bollox that I don't understand, and his contract (that he was happy to agree to when they offered him a load of money) says gardening leave if he resigns to take up another post. Then we learn that his deal at Man Utd was agreed over several weeks before Man Utd asked Newcastle for permission to speak to him (ie. he was tapped up). Ashworth copied himself into an email that he sent to a Man U executive agreeing to accept their offer and telling them how Newcastle went about getting him released from his previous club (was it Brighton?) with minimum gardening leave, but he copied it to his official NUFC email address, which Newcastle now have a copy of.

big, daft pudding.

[sussexpob]

He claims he was technically sacked by Newcastle because they didn't ask for his resignation in writing, by some such date, or similar bollox that I don't understand, and his contract says gardening leave if he resigns to take up another post

Ashworth is essentially arguing that he never "resigned to take up another post", therefore the act of placing him on garden leave before he had accepted another job was illegal, and tantamount to being unfairly dismissed.

From what I understand, Man United informed Newcastle they wanted to hire Ashworth, Newcastle informed Ashworth of the approach, and Ashworth then communicated to Newcastle that he was interested in discussing terms with Man United, and asked permission to do so. Newcastle responded by placing on Ashworth on garden leave. So Ashworth is claiming all he did was tell Newcastle he "would" be interested in hearing Man United's proposals, and had not in fact quit, resigned or otherwise informed Newcastle of a final decision while expressing an interest merely to discuss possibilities. Newcastle and United then spent 3 months arguing about the compensation to be paid, and everything stalled with United only being prepared to face 10% of the final cost.

Now on the face of it, Newcastle haven't got a leg to stand on.... until of course you get to the point that Ashworth emailed everyone his secret plan by accident, and that he both shared sensitive information with United illegally, and had already agreed a contract with United while discussing exact plans of how he could leave the club asap.

I would imagine Ashworth will lose in court, but the one thing that makes it uncertain is that Newcastle seem to have only found the email proving the legality of their actions while making investigations into the case. It would be hard to justify such a long garden leave if they in fact did not know about that, but it seems immeraterial.

To anyone with a brain, Ashworth was acting in extreme bad faith, and should not be rewarded for that.

[sussexpob]

If I were a Man United fan, I would be pretty worried. New administration, fresh start.... same disasters. D'OH....

Man United have a lot of question to answer in this case. Why were they illegally tapping up an employee of another club? Why were they discusssing information obtained illegally with an agent of another club? And then quite embarrassingly, why did they offer the exact to the penny compensation Brighton paid, when doing so made it pretty damn well obvious that the information about how much Newcastle considered his worth to be had been leaked by someone, and couldnt exactly be a co-incidence.

And to top it all off, United's incoming CEO who was doing all this isnt legally allowed to take his post at United yet, because he is also employed by another club on garden leave. So him acting on United's behalf and representing them is also, well, pretty illegal.

Its United, so nothing will happen. But really I'd like to see a global transfer embargo imposed for the tapping up for this summer window. I'd like to see criminal charges for anyone accepting, passing on or otherwise processing any of the trade secrets that Ashworth passed to United, and anyone who indirectly knew this had happened and didnt say anything should resign from the club. If Radcliffe is involved, he should have his "fit and proper person" status revoked by the PL with immediate effect. And the new CEO should be banned from football ....

Ashworth should also serve a ban from football imposed by the PL.

Like I said, nothing will happen..... but the new era at United isnt providing much hope of much change.

[Durhamfootman]

I'm led to believe that there are lots of rumblings around the club about Jim Ratcliffe and how he's making lots and lots of stuff ups and doesn't seem to have any comprehension of how football works

[Durhamfootman]

FFS

didn't I say that this was what would *modded* happen

[Durhamfootman]

Bollox!