ram59

Although statistics suggest otherwise, 3rd place wins the play offs more than any other.

The thing is, I don't think that our fullbacks are good enough defensively in a back four, when having to go forwards as well, the extra help from the 'spare' cb gives me a bit more confidence.

I'm surprised that we were allowed to spend that much, as part of our business plan.

Whichever the case is, we'll be changing our KO times on a regular basis. In the Championship 10 teams will be affected every weekend, that's almost half the division, so every other weekend. In Lg 1, it'll be 6 to 8 teams affected every weekend, if we stay down, we'll be affected most weekends.

If Sheff Utd are getting points deducted on their return to the EFL, how come the likes of QPR, Bournemouth, etc didn't get points deductions for when they overspent to get into the Premier?

It seems that way, doesn't it. Ward, Nyambe, Fozzy, Bird, Collins, Barks and Gayle were all on fire when we lost them to injury.😡

In fairness to the new owners, anyone with that much money and ambition would think along those lines. Most new stadiums seem to attract thousands of new fans. We didn't always sell out the BBG with a modest 18,000 capacity but suddenly we were having 30k week in week out at PP. With their money, their aim must be to take any club, including Birmingham, into a position where they are challenging for Europe on a regular basis. A combination of a new super stadium and a sucessful team should bring in the crowds at a club with such a potential large fan base. The country needs a large stadium in the centre for various occasions, it's either north or south atm. One of the biggest cons, was not building the new national stadium at the site at the NEC, just outside Birmingham. It had everything in place, private finance to build the ground, car parks already there, mainline railway station and international airport next door. Also it's location at the centre of the nation's motorway network, made access easier for the entire nation and not just Londoners. The biggest pitch that the Londoners' had was that they were going to keep the iconic twin towers, which would be incorporated into the new stadium. This proved to be a total lie. Bizarrely, relegation may help them. FFP rules in lg1 allow for owners to pump money into a club, whereas the Championship FFP rules don't, unless you circumvent them by getting promotion to the Premier.

Never mind the autos, they'll be looking over their shoulders to stay in the play offs.

I think they the ref was properly punishing one of the most cynical fouls ever. A bit like when they know that a corner has been awarded incorrectly and blow the whistle for a 'foul' by the attacking team, as soon as the corner is taken.

I've got mixed emotions about the final, if Brown plays. Naturally, I want him to play well, score at Wembley, but Moors are my local team and I play for their walking football teams. Providing we can rearrange a cup game on that day, we'll be taking a coach down.

I'll be interested to see how Charlton's apparent spending spree affects their accounts. They still haven't published last year's accounts, but had an operating loss of around £10m for 21/22.

Blackburn Rovers? 😂😂😂

Is walking football big over your way? We're always looking out for good referees, preferably ones who understand the game. The refs in walking football are fairly static, taking up a position on one side of the pitch, around the half way line. I'm that if you offered your services, they would be greatly received.

Joking aside, you've made a great point there. These little teams generally see us as their big games of the season, giving them that little extra effort. Wednesdays match will arrive 3 days after their biggest game in their history, a chance to win some silverware. They should be emotionally and possibly physically drained come Wednesday. We'll need to tear into them from the first minute.

If you look a bit closely at the photo, you'll see the lino is on that side of the pitch, very close to their player. Unfortunately, he seems to be looking across the back line, looking for offside and not looking at the player with the ball.

I thought that one of the most pleasing aspects of the match last night, was CBT's all round contribution, both attacking and defending. It gave me great encouragement for him in the future.

But, you're using that outdated metric of goals scored against goals conceded, also using the other outdated metric of results. When will you catch up with the real world? 🤔😁

I think that you need to look closer at Rotherham's results last season. They only stayed up because of Warne's excellent start to the season and points deducted from other teams. Under Matt Taylor, Rotherham were comfortably the worst team in the championship last season on points per game and have continued this season. When Warne left Rotherham last season, they were 8th and had a game in hand, which had they won would have put them in the play off positions.

We almost completely nulified them second half, only conceding to a wonderstrike after a handball. We restricted them to 2 shots on goal in the second half, their fewest all season. So I don't think that the second half tactics were that bad, if we'd pressed higher up the pitch, there would have been much more space for them to exploit, we may have lost the game. I don't criticise the ref for the handball incident, but surely the linesman was in a perfect position to see it, even their player's reaction indicated that it hit his arm.

There's not much time after the Wycombe game on the Wednesday night and the match against Orient on the following Saturday.

It'll be far more than that, it was 147m last season, don't you think that they'll be strengthening their squad for a big promotion push.🙄🤔😂

So they're expecting to find someone with a spare £100m to have left over from this season's expenditure? This is why Notts couldn't get as much as they wanted before June 30th for Brennan. Why would any club keep back these eye watering amounts of money until after the season has finished, surely they will want to spend that money on players at a time when they can add value during that accounting period, ideally after 1st July and before the season starts. Generally speaking players will have less value in the early part of the summer transfer window before the end of the accounts period. Notts will have known this when they overspent before the start of the season and realised that they would have had to had a forced sale of players at the end of the season and before the end of their accounting period at 30th June, in order to comply with FFP. They chose not to comply, for which there is no defence. They chose to spend over £30m more than they should have, so that over the season, they would have had an advantage over other clubs abiding by the rules.

UB40 are giving a free concert at St Andrews tomorrow, the big downside is that you've got to pay to watch Birmingham beforehand. I would imagine that there'll be a number of people getting into the ground when the exits are opened up towards the end of the match.

Not as heavily backed as many of the clubs up there, what they have done is to rely heavily on the short term loan market in order to get the magic ticket to the Premier. We nearly did it with Mount, Wilson and Tomori, whereas they have got 8 players on loan in their squad. There are advantages and disadvantages to this tactic, it's cheaper in the short term but means a massive rebuild next season whatever league they're in, as we found out after our 3 returned to their clubs. Also it doesn't seem that they're building a team for the future, even though they have no restrictions, something PW is criticised for. Unless, LR is just buying time until a good crop of youngsters come through.

Hopefully, they'll be below us on alphabetical order, on zero points in the Championship, when the transfer window opens, Angie.