duncanjwitham

I’m still struggling to figure out what you actually think was going to happen. Are you saying Sharp was going to get on the end of the sideways ball and roll it into the net? Because there’s no chance he does (cleanly anyway) - the ball goes at least 5 yards sideways, almost behind him with the way his momentum is carrying him, and it’s chipped high off the ground too. To get a shot off from that position, he’s probably going to have to stop his momentum, shift sideways, pivot 360 degrees, maybe wait for the ball to drop, and get a shot off as he comes back around to face goal. There’s already a defender back on the line by that point, and there’s another right where the ball lands too. There’s no way that’s an obvious goal scoring opportunity. The most rational argument for a red card is he wouldn’t have passed it if he didn’t think Roos was going to foul him, but then you’re giving decisions on what might have happened, not what actually happened. If Roos had stopped a yard short, everything he did would have been perfectly legal, and Sharp would still probably have squared it. And obviously I would have been shouting for it, like every fan shouts for everything to go their way. That doesn’t mean it would have been the right decision. You can’t referee games based on what each set of fans is shouting for.

Which goal scoring opportunity did it stop? Sharp no longer has the ball at his feet when he’s fouled, so how is he supposed to have a clear goal scoring opportunity?

So why did Sharp pass the ball? To be a red card, it basically has to be a foul that stops a player who’s about to score a goal. Passing the ball to a teammate is the thing you can do that makes it the most obvious that you *weren’t* about to score.

Just seen the red card on Twitter. Sharp has already passed the ball sideways when Roos clatters him, so don’t see how that can possibly be denying a goal scoring opportunity. There’s a defender level with Sharp too 🤷‍♂️

Fixed that for you.

We didn’t just take it, we massively improved on it, by locating it in not-Middlesbrough.

So 4 of the 6 are some form of ghost/spirit/non-corporeal entity? Still, a better bet than Erik Alonso, I suppose…

The first season we had Clarke, we finished 10th and they finished 17th. Is he really saying they would have got promoted if we didn’t have Clarke? And obviously the second season was last season when they finished above us. It just makes no sense… At least there’s some degree of logic to the Waghorn argument, here we pipped them to 6th by a point.

£10ms as in £10-19m or £10-£99m?

It might not be against the regs, but it’s absolutely against the EFLs interpretation of them. They were crystal clear with us that the only ‘value’ a player can have is their ability to play for the football team. So unless they’ve all developed long-COVID or something, there’s no way that COVID should affect their value. If they’re claiming that players have value because of their ability to be sold, and COVID has caused that to drop because it’s broken the transfer market, then they’re absolutely doing what the EFL have dragged us through the mud for 2 years for doing.

Would be absolutely hilarious if we get another day in court to present the rationale behind our accounting methods. Get a proper expert witness to back our case this time, and get a legal ruling that our accounts are absolutely compliant and we haven’t actually breached FFP spending rules. It would put the EFL in a very interesting position, all thanks to Steve Gibson.

Don’t forget bonuses (for appearances etc), and stuff like employers NICs etc. The basic wage is just a single part of the wage bill.

Mel’s explanation of what we’re doing was pretty terrible. He either didn’t understand it properly himself, or he was massively oversimplifying beyond the point of being useful. The key thing is (as far as I understand it), we’re not really saying the players value drops most in the last season, we’re saying our ability to sell them does. A subtle distinction maybe, but it makes all the difference - under FRS102, we’re losing the ability to profit from the disposal of that asset so it gets amortised away. And it doesn’t matter what KM thinks about the accuracy of transfermarkt, the Disciplinary Commission found that our method of valuing the players was reliable and systematic enough for the purposes of FRS102, and the League Appeal Panel found in our favour for all of the EFLs appeals in that regard. Not to mention our accountants, auditors etc signing off on it. We weren’t just relying on one website either, we were apparently getting valuations from multiple agents and multiple websites, to try and come up with an independent valuation, I.e not one that we were tweaking to fit our needs. And honestly, is it *that* different to valuing property by getting estate agents to value it and cross-checking similar properties on Zoopla etc? (usual caveats about whether we were actually doing what we claimed to be doing etc)

We don’t know for sure what’s happened. Maybe HMRC have demanded something, maybe MSD have been accepting lower repayments but he’s decided he can no longer even afford those. I can’t see what else it can be beyond debt though, and whatever remains of the wage bill/outstanding transfer payments.

I would rate it from 7th to 24th, as that’s probably what he’s done to our league position.