duncanjwitham

I’d start all of them. The best we’ve played in months was the first half against Blackburn, with a fluid front 4. CKR has done well for us this season, but it’s not working for him at the moment. Not sure if it’s still his hip, tiredness or what, but he’s not holding it up and he’s not taking his chances.  I’d start Lawrence up front with Joswiak, Sibley and Roberts behind him, and let them all rotate.  We need to go for it, we can’t sit back and try and nick something with the way we’re defending. 

I’d start all of them. The best we’ve played in months was the first half against Blackburn, with a fluid front 4. CKR has done well for us this season, but it’s not working for him at the moment. Not sure if it’s still his hip, tiredness or what, but he’s not holding it up and he’s not taking his chances.  I’d start Lawrence up front with Joswiak, Sibley and Roberts behind him, and let them all rotate.  We need to go for it, we can’t sit back and try and nick something with the way we’re defending. 

I’d start all of them. The best we’ve played in months was the first half against Blackburn, with a fluid front 4. CKR has done well for us this season, but it’s not working for him at the moment. Not sure if it’s still his hip, tiredness or what, but he’s not holding it up and he’s not taking his chances.  I’d start Lawrence up front with Joswiak, Sibley and Roberts behind him, and let them all rotate.  We need to go for it, we can’t sit back and try and nick something with the way we’re defending. 

Does this actually matter to us? As far as I know, it's the window of the buying club that matters. You can sell or release a player at any time, the transfer window is just a restriction on when you can register an incoming player at your club.
Obviously if they want to sign a replacement before they sell him then it matters to them.

You're technically correct, in that there's no net change in the long term. Ultimately the players value will be amortised away if he leaves for free.  What it does (from my limited understanding) is smooth out the financial implications of signing a player, assuming that we can sell them on for something reasonable towards the end of their contract.  Obviously that's a big assumption.  If you buy a player for £5m on a 5 year deal, then sell them for £5m after 4 years, under the old system you'd lose £1m a year, then gain £4m in year 4.  That's biggish losses and an even bigger gain.  Under our system, you'd lose maybe £100k a year, then gain £400k in year 4, which is much more manageable.  Our system makes it much easier to fit in with the idea of the FFP rolling 3-year allowable-loss windows.  The only problem is the big bear-trap that's waiting at the end of year 5, where you suddenly lose almost £5m in one go, if you're not careful.

That's pretty much my take on it too.  If you're going to effectively take (some or all) players purchases/sales out of the FFP calculations, you may as well drop the whole thing and just have a wages-to-turnover ratio limit.  Let owners invest as much as they like to fund signings, but don't let clubs build up the massive wage bills, which are what ultimately end up crippling them if they can't fund it.

That was never in doubt, the rules (post 2017-ish) explicitly allow it.  We weren't charged for the actual stadium sale at all, and neither were Sheffield Wednesday. The only issues were the valuation (us) and the timing of the sale (Sheff Wed).

You're technically correct, in that there's no net change in the long term. Ultimately the players value will be amortised away if he leaves for free.  What it does (from my limited understanding) is smooth out the financial implications of signing a player, assuming that we can sell them on for something reasonable towards the end of their contract.  Obviously that's a big assumption.  If you buy a player for £5m on a 5 year deal, then sell them for £5m after 4 years, under the old system you'd lose £1m a year, then gain £4m in year 4.  That's biggish losses and an even bigger gain.  Under our system, you'd lose maybe £100k a year, then gain £400k in year 4, which is much more manageable.  Our system makes it much easier to fit in with the idea of the FFP rolling 3-year allowable-loss windows.  The only problem is the big bear-trap that's waiting at the end of year 5, where you suddenly lose almost £5m in one go, if you're not careful.

You're technically correct, in that there's no net change in the long term. Ultimately the players value will be amortised away if he leaves for free.  What it does (from my limited understanding) is smooth out the financial implications of signing a player, assuming that we can sell them on for something reasonable towards the end of their contract.  Obviously that's a big assumption.  If you buy a player for £5m on a 5 year deal, then sell them for £5m after 4 years, under the old system you'd lose £1m a year, then gain £4m in year 4.  That's biggish losses and an even bigger gain.  Under our system, you'd lose maybe £100k a year, then gain £400k in year 4, which is much more manageable.  Our system makes it much easier to fit in with the idea of the FFP rolling 3-year allowable-loss windows.  The only problem is the big bear-trap that's waiting at the end of year 5, where you suddenly lose almost £5m in one go, if you're not careful.

But this policy won't really come into play for older players. If we think the player is likely to leave for a free, then they straight-line amortise down to 0 over their contract, like players at other clubs do.  Nothing has changed here with our new policy.  Admittedly, Johnson is probably borderline at age 28 (compared to say Davies or Huddlestone at ~32), but we're supposedly setting different ERVs for different players, so we could have easily used something like £1-2m for Johnson.
Obviously there are other concerns at paying £6m for a 28 year old outside of amortisation.