duncanjwitham

11 minutes ago, Duracell said:

Sone Aluko is the kind of player that always causes us massive problems when we play against him, but will immediately become useless the moment he signs for us.

Which is more often than not is because we entirely failed to understand what he and the team he was playing for actually did that caused us those problems, and then we wonder why he struggles to do something completely different...

Just bought 2 tickets with no problem.  I had the "wrong age" error, but that was because my Dad was down as an adult, not a senior. sorted that and it went through first time.

1 hour ago, Tamworthram said:

I think that is nonsense. Yes, you would imagine with the current squad (although I’m sure we’d all be stunned if there weren’t at least a couple of incoming loans) the team is very likely to struggle, be amongst the favourites for relegation and quite possibly finish bottom but, I doubt we’d be relegated by Christmas (unless we had a massive points deduction of course) and it certainly isn’t “plainly obvious”. If the squad is that poor, I can’t see how the addition the addition of just 3 players would turn us from relegation certs so early in the season to being comfortably mid table.

The weird thing is, going into last season, I thought we were a striker short of being a very good squad.  We'd kicked on under Cocu from when Rooney arrived, we'd addressed most of the major needs in the squad (with Matt Clarke back, Jozwiak and Marshall), we'd sold an asset but replaced him for a fraction of the cost (Byrne for Bogle) and so on.  Obviously things didn't pan out that way. 

This season, if you look at who we've lost compared to last season, it's only really Matt Clarke (who was excellent again) and Waghorn (who was poor for most of the season).  We've lost quite a few warm bodies - Gregory scored a few, Roberts showed the odd flash, bits and bobs from Menghi etc.  But bar Clarke, is there anyone that we've lost that will *really* be missed?

Obviously we're not in a good position at all, but there's plenty of reasons to think it can be turned around.  We desperately need a striker and 2 central defenders, but beyond that, the first XI isn't too bad.  Marshall/Roos, Byrne, Shinnie, Lawrence and CKR are still decent championship players. Jozwiak has had a decent Euros and should hopefully either be more settled and kick on, or be sold for a decent amount.  We should hopefully have Bielik for more of the season than last. Lawrence missed a lot of games last season too, he was missed. Knight, Bird, Buchanan have all got another year of championship football under their belts. Sibley started to establish himself back in the team towards the end of the season. McDonald, Ebosele, Watson etc have started to get first team football.  It's reasonable to think we can get 3 or 4 loans in relatively easily. With Rooney's name and a guarantee of first team football, I suspect we'll have a fair few top-end prem youngsters here.  And given the state of the transfer market, there are going to be a lot of players around on free transfers, so we can pick up a bunch more experienced warm bodies, if we need to.  

I'm not trying to gloss over the state of the squad, but it's not an unfixable problem.

1 hour ago, RadioactiveWaste said:

What we did was unique. I don't buy that it was somehow uniquely awful - even though that appears to be the narrative outside of Derby.

I don't think we come out well. I do hope we can move forward soon.

The relief has faded and now it's just a case of digestion of the after effects and hoping we pull together a reasonable squad next season and the takeover actually happens.

And the only real reason the narrative outside of Derby is so bad is that none of them actually seem to know what we've been charged with, and why we were found guilty.  There are still people who think it's about the stadium, and still people who think we're valuing players at more than £0 when their contracts have expired.

50 minutes ago, NottsRam77 said:

If we do breach though isn’t there a massive factor of mitigating circumstances 

ie if the efl had challenged our accounting methods at the time and not waited 3 years having allowed them through we wouldn’t have changed not only accounti by practices but our transfer policy 

That would be my argument, yes. I suppose it might come down to how bad any breaches are.  If we're only a few million over then it's certainly a big mitigating factor.  If we're like £30m over then it's a different ballgame.

23 minutes ago, G STAR RAM said:

Just had a quick scan of the decision. 

2 things I picked up in the early pages:-

1 - The EFL dont want us to be the ones preparing the revised submissions, guess they will just get one of their non accounting experts to do them

2 - The EFL urged the DC to give us a retrospective points deduction 

They really are a disgrace

The EFL wanted to be able to restate our accounts themselves, but the DC decided we were best placed to do it, so it's entirely down to us to do them.  Quite a few of the EFL's more outlandish demands were struck down by the DC.

15 minutes ago, Ghost of Clough said:

I agree that there has to be a 'formula' of some sort but doesn't that just make it systematic?

I think the key thing will be taking out the assigning of individual values to players.  Justifying a fixed (nonlinear) amortisation schedule based on historical sales is going to be much easier than justifying 20 individual prices every 6 months based on transfermarkt, agent conversations and asking your mates down the pub.

5 minutes ago, Van der MoodHoover said:

You've posted good information previously about market values and definitions of active markets. 

One element was there being willing buyers and sellers at all times, which arguably is frustrated by the fact that the transfer market only operates in discrete windows. 

Do you think we can come up with a method that can be argued to meet all those definitions? 

Active markets are basically irrelevant to this discussion, football players will never be an active market for a whole load of reasons.  The basic idea is, there has to be lots of similar transactions so you can easily make like-for-like comparisons to value things. Similar club A sold Similar player B to similar club C, so our player D is worth the same.  Transfer windows don’t really matter, because if there were enough deals done within them, you could still make comparisons.  But every club and every player is different, so it’s impossible to compare.  We sold a Bogle to Sheff Utd for £Xm, but unless another club are selling a 20 year old English attacking RB with 2 years left on his contract from a mid level champ club to a newly promoted premier club, you can’t compare.  You might at best get one or two vaguely similar deals in a year.  Contrast that with say houses, where in a given city there will be loads of similar houses sold on similar streets in a given year, so an estate agent can give a reasonable value.

I suspect we’ll always struggle to get approval for a system that involves us assigning individual values to players, which is why I was suggesting a fixed amortisation model for every development player.

3 minutes ago, Ghost of Clough said:

Is that reliably estimating values though?

The argument is that if you plan on developing a player and selling him on, the longer he spends at your club, the less likely you are to do that (I.e. he’s stagnating), plus the looming Bosman free transfer hits his value. So you figure out what percentages you think model that best, and then apply them in the same way to every player you want to develop.  That way, you’re sidestepping the argument that you’re just picking values to make sure you fit FFP.  Plus there’s no estimation for individual players, as they’re all on the same model.

2 minutes ago, Ghost of Clough said:

I had a feeling we'd be exploring a nonlinear option. It'll be interesting to see how they're 'reliably' estimating values.

I half wonder if they’re going to do something like divide players up into whether they have potential resale value or not, and then do straight line for no resale value, and just backload the amortisation for the others (so do maybe 10% 20% 30% 40% per year over a 4 year contract). You don’t have to estimate anything then.

Should’ve told him to make sure he amortises his pint in a straight line. No sipping at the start and downing the last half at the end.

Anyone else getting a bit of passive-aggressive DC-on-LAP action from this paragraph:

Just missing some sarcastic air-quotes around "the LAP has found".

5 minutes ago, Tamworthram said:

We’re not talking about us appealing. Someone posed the question “is the reason the EFL haven’t appealed is because they think we’ll get an increased penalty next season for failing FFP” (or words to that effect).

They aren’t appealing because they can’t find a mistake in the ruling. You can’t just appeal for a laugh, you actually have to have a coherent argument as to why the original judgment was wrong. Whah-whah-whah-I-don’t-like-it unsurprisingly doesn’t count.

Seriously, everyone with an interest in this should read the written reasons. They aren’t *that* long and are fairly readable for a layman. The arguments they lay out for why they've given the punishment are very clear and logical to me.

3 minutes ago, RoyMac5 said:

What would be the point in us risking our punishment being increased?

I don’t *think* there’s actually any risk in appealing (other than cost of lawyers etc) - it’s not like a red card where you can get an extra match for a frivolous appeal. The written reasons are very, very clear in why they think a points deduction isn’t appropriate in this case, and I doubt even the most stupid of appeals for us would change that. The reasons are also quite frank about there being no precedent for a fine in this kind of case, so it was almost a case of plucking a number out of the air, so that’s your angle of attack for an appeal. But I suspect it’s not worth it purely because it’s unlikely to succeed and would probably cost us more that we would save on a reduced fine.

12 minutes ago, Spanish said:

Don’t you detect the feeling that we will restate the accounts in the way we and our auditors believe is compliant with accountancy standards, doesn’t necessarily mean it will comply the elf’s view of what is the correct methodology.  All these games are killing us though, we could win this war only to find it was just a battle

There’s a section in there suggesting that we could have gotten a completely independent opinion on the amortisation model (I.e. not from the clubs normal accountants or auditors etc), so I suspect we could go down that route. Get a different set of accountants to sign off on something similar to what we do already and submit that.

1 hour ago, StarterForTen said:

So does the appeal decision now mean Wycombe are incoming with they £15m writ?

Good luck with that!

The written reasons are very clear that they didn’t deduct points because there is no evidence that the 2 breaches we have been found guilty of so far actually resulted in a sporting advantage on the pitch.  I’d say that’s a massive point in our favour if Wycombe did decide to try something on.

Obviously if the restated accounts resulted in a massive overspend then it’s a different case.  But even then, the penalties etc are clearly laid out for that kind of breach.

8 minutes ago, TaahnRam said:

Mel's got a new masterplan to avoid breaching FFP calcs?

There’s also a section in there stating that we have 2 possible amortisation models under consideration, a straight line one, and a non-straight one that we believe is FRS102 compliant. So expect everything to kick off again if we go with option 2 for the restated accounts…

9 minutes ago, rammieib said:

But why not put them in now? If we are in within P&S, put them in, show we comply and get the transfer embargo lifted.

I suppose there's a chance that the report might clarify exactly how we need to restate the accounts.  Maybe they give us some leeway to cover having to switch methods or something, or even (unlikely I know) say we can carry on with our method providing we document it properly or something.

22 minutes ago, Ambitious said:

I guess we will get the report within the next week which takes us to 9th July. The EFL (and ourselves) then have 14 days to appeal the decision which takes us to 23rd July.

It's probably worth saying, you don't just stand up and say "I appeal!", you have to submit the specific grounds on which you think a mistake was made during the original decision. You can see bits of the detailed EFL submissions in the written reasons from the previous appeal, for example.  So don't expect a decision on whether to appeal (from either side) on the day the reasons come out.  And if takes the full 14 days to submit, it probably isn't the EFL deliberately delaying things to screw over our transfer plans, it's their lawyers doing their proper due diligence etc.

2 hours ago, Rich84 said:

Can the accountants on here break this down? Are the EFL as an organisation sat on a pot of money while a lot of their members are struggling?  And then they ask the members to fund the ongoing court case with us.......

Also, what intangible assets would they have, as an organisation? Understand tangible as that would be property wouldn't it? 

 

Not an accountant, so take with a (massive) pinch of salt...

Tangible assets are physical things, like property, factory machinery etc. Intangible assets are non-physical things like Trademarks, Intellectual Property, brand recognition etc.  I suspect the EFLs biggest intangible assets is the EFL brand, and the agreements in they have in place to have the 72 clubs competing in their competitions.  That must be worth a fair amount, given the amount of money it generates.

I'd be very wary of judging the cash that the EFL have around at any given moment. A lot of stuff they're involved with basically boils down to collecting money and funnelling it to clubs - e.g. selling TV rights, collecting the payments and then paying it prize money etc to the clubs.  So I suspect at any given moment there could be plenty of payments that have been collected but not yet passed on.  That doesn't necessarily mean they are sitting on piles of cash for no reason. (Caveat: this is total speculation, and I could be very, very wrong here.)

In terms of the accounts submission extension, if we wanted to be generous to the EFL, they aren't directly under the FFP rules that requires clubs to submit accounts at the same time to 'ensure' 'fairness' (quote marks fully intentional here!).  The clubs have to comply with additional rules that the EFL don't.  They aren't competing with other football leagues, and have no requirement to be 'fair' to other leagues.  It's very much a "one rule for me, one rule for thee" situation though. Not a great look. 

Also, obviously, **** the EFL!

4 minutes ago, Rample said:

Never really got a solid run in a formation that suited him/played to his strengths under the last couple of managers, coupled with pretty poor service. Not sure he'll go straight back to banging 20+ a season in for Peterborough but I imagine he will start scoring a bit more regularly, definitely a shoe in for a couple against us next year.. Good luck to him, not sure he was the right player but it was definitely the wrong time.

That's pretty much it for me.  At the point we signed him, we knew we'd almost certainly be playing one up front (having loaned in Mount and Wilson etc), and he'd only ever been productive in a 2 at Peterborough.  The only time we ever got close to making him work was with Waghorn sort of playing a wide-right-but-almost-a-striker position, so he was almost in a 2.  It was just another stupid signing really, with no thought into how he was going to be used or where he fit in the team.

He may well go on to score a decent amount for them, but that doesn't necessarily mean he would have scored them for us, playing with our squad in our system.  Obviously caveat is we have no idea what our squad or system is yet for next season though.

13 minutes ago, Ghost of Clough said:

It allowed us to spend more, but didn't originally factor in a stadium sale. The profit from that should mean we sneak inside the limits

And of course it's not really straight pass/fail, it's how much you fail by. Given the stadium sale, it's unlikely we're failing by untold millions of overspending, so any points deductions that might arise *should* be relatively minor.

We still don't know *for sure* the exact reasons we are under an embargo. We know it's at least in part due to the 2019 and 2020 accounts not being submitted yet. We have no idea if it's also related to the EFL charges, and the 3 sets we need to re-submit.  We know for sure that the embargo relating to the charges was dropped when we were cleared originally and I haven't seen any mention of it starting again since the EFL appeal victory or the punishment decision.  It may well be that we can now submit the 2019/2020 sets with the 'correct' amortisation model and have the embargo lifted. We can then sit on the 2016/17/18 sets until the last minute.

11 minutes ago, JuanFloEvraTheCocu'sNesta said:

It's a 100% commission based role with commission paid on a per goal basis. Still interested?

Why not? I can't be any worse then anybody else that played up front last year. (Narrator: He was worse in every possible way.)

5 hours ago, RoyMac5 said:

I'd rather save the money and give Duncan a go - he looked to be able to run around in a Waghorn-like manner! 

I'm the wrong side of 40, but I'm up for it if you want? What's the weekly wage?

2 minutes ago, Spanish said:

both appeals?

We could appeal to reduce the punishment, the EFL could appeal to raise it. Presumably both appeals would be handled in a single hearing.