bluearmyfaction

The League and Stevenage's appeal against the suspended points deduction for Macclesfield has been successful. The Macc Lads have had 6 points deducted, rather than the idiotic 2 plus 4 held over to 2020-21 that had been put in place. Which means they get relegated. By 0.1 point per game. Although I don't think they've amortized the point deduction over the season, which is what logically should happen (i.e. they've been deducted points for a 46 game season rather than the 37 they played). Had they done so, then Macclesfield would, by my maths, have gone down by 0.01 point per game. I wonder what this means for the Sheffield Wednesday case. Given that their deduction was also held over...

The refereeing in the Juventus match is the worst I've seen since Rob Styles in his pomp.

Amazing that UEFA have taken action against Wolves for FFP breaches yet the EFL and Premier League ignores them. As do the mass media who refuse to report on the Panama Papers and what they say about Wolves.

It just gives another method of swaying games into whatever outcome they want. Personally not seen any benefits from VAR. Need to look at the times it has worked - and also look at the times when it didn't exist. I'm still fuming that we lost the 2001 League Cup final thanks to a disgusting refereeing decision. It's not as if we get to Cup finals every year to get it to even out. The problem is the borked implementation. On ref interpretation, if there's no overturning in 30 seconds, it can't be an obvious error; and offside needs a margin of error. Sort those out and it'll work.

They could at least draw a thicker line to take into account that the technology has a margin of error. But I'm still to see an explanation from the FA that you can score legally with an armpit.

Dundee Violet?

I'm coming to the conclusion that my favourite pundit will automatically be the first one to call out running into the path of an opposition player rather than following the ball, and then hitting the deck, cheating, rather than "there's contact there, he's entitled to go down".

If you have something to play for EVERY year, though, it goes full circle and becomes meaningless again. Going up or down in the non-top flight can be an annual occurrence. So just missing out or sneaking through is not special. It's more special with the top flight because it is so much more restricted. Anyhoo, you could have a meaningful 2 division league, just have 4 up 4 down.

In Italy, the team in the higher league position goes up.

It has gone almost unnoticed, but there is that gap there. Look how Rotherham have been bouncing between the two. The teams fighting the Championship drop were almost all those coming up last season. That's partly due to the salary caps in L1 and L2. Means there is more ground to make up in the Championship - without the banked income to do so, and, for the most part, without sugar daddies to help them.

Queen's Park were a strong influence on football in Birmingham - the Calthorpe club was basically Scots in Brum circa 1872 and they bought a set of shirts from Queen's Park, which they alternated with a Royal Engineers-style blue and red, but with a cross of St Andrew on them. Re-run the football clock and they should have been the biggest club in the city, but they were barred from charging admission by a restrictive covenant, so remained amateur. The QP influence makes sense given that the Spiders were the first properly organized outfit that sussed out the secrets of the game. And they were quite evangelical, q.v. Dumbarton/Renton/Vale of Leven switching from shinty after QP toured there.

Start as I mean to go on.

There was a much stronger economic driver in England - the teams would have had to pay back a ridiculous amount of television money to Sky. £100m each or similar. Would have dwarfed the savings of abandoning the season. Whereas Leagues 1 and 2 get next to no money from television, their income is mostly from attendances. So there was a strong economic driver against continuing with the season. I'm guessing Scottish football television money is more along the lines of the latter.

The circle of clubs able to get promotion is narrowing. Coming down this season, Bournemouth will have twice as much in parachute money alone as the average Championship side brings in in total income. On top of which, whereas most Championship sides can rack up a £39m loss over 3 seasons, Bournemouth this season are assessed against a £93m loss over three. At the end of next season against a loss of £75m over three. Given the amount of profits they will have made over the most recent TV deal, they can spend something like five times as much as other Championship clubs to try to come straight back up. Four of the top six this season in the League were getting parachute money. The other two are Leeds, who were the biggest side in the division by a distance and who should have gone up last year, and Brentford, who have a plan that they can implement because of a rich owner. The team in 7th is almost certain to have smashed FFP (they were sitting on a £39m loss for the last three seasons, thanks to a "revaluation" that wiped out a lot of losses, and this year they're bound to have lost more than £1). On top of which the Premier League is now nearly 100% billionaire-owned. They basically need to swap Forest for Palace and they're almost there. At some point someone is going to suggest only 2 going down...then 1...then election.

They actually got the claret from the Jambos. And the light blue from Rangers.

Portsmouth had an extremely dodgy ownership situation. When the property crash happened, one of Gaydamak's creditors basically tried to take Portsmouth in payment of debts. That led to all sorts of manoeuvrings around non-existent Saudis (which the Premier League helpfully completely failed to do anything about) before being put into administration. Unless Maxim Demin slags off Putin, that is not likely to happen to Bournemouth. Their main risk is if he cashes in right now, as their ground is too tiny to attract anyone new.

I think there is a problem with this bit. If Wednesday and Derby smashed FFP by tens of millions because the League told them they could sell their grounds to their owners, then the defence could work. But if they had ALREADY smashed FFP, and got the League's permission to sell the grounds to the owners to get around it, then I do not see how it could fairly work. They did not break the rules with the League's blessing; they broke the rules and THEN sought the League's blessing. In fact, if it is the latter, and were I the chairman of a League club, I think I would be extremely ticked off that the League basically helped Wednesday and Derby get a massive financial advantage on the quiet by permitting them to do something that is unprofitable and unsustainable.

Point is he could have moved for buttons, rather than signing a pro deal with Blues first. Similar situation happening at West Ham with Benicio Baker-Boitey (Triple B?) going to Bayern Munich - only he will cost them £200k rather than £25m because he rejected West Ham's offer.

No, that was Luton-Blackburn.

Over the last 30 years or so, we've had Karren Brady modelling a new kit, a ref getting twatted, a diary with the club honours listed as including 7 FA Cups and the European Cup, the Jeff Hall memorial clock havinga Spinal Tap confusion between feet and inches, leisure shirts in the club shop that you could peel the Blues badge off to see the QPR one underneath, a change kit that we never wore because it clashed with our own bloody kit, and have had as successive owners a loan shark, scrap metal dealer, rag traders that even Poundland wouldn't stock, porn barons, a convicted money launderer, and a chap who once reneged on a deal to buy a vase for £57m. And the club's CEO is called Dong. So this isn't even in the top 100 cringey things we've managed.

It's thanks to the £25m that he is bringing in that we won't. Compare Louie Barry, who had been at West Brom for a decade, then refused to sign a pro deal so he could join Barcelona gratis. And now rocks up at Villa on the cheap. Basically a con to get around the rules that help the rich to steal all the good players from smaller teams. Another nail in the coffin of real clubs in favour of the Eurofranchises. It's credit to Bellingham and his family that they basically forwent millions in their skies to do the morally right thing.

Appeal being heard on Monday. Three man arbitration panel. One chosen by Wigan, one by the EFL, and the third chosen by the other panel members. Appeal is bound to fail. The only ground of success is if there is force majeure. There is no force majeure here. Can't claim Covid because Au Yeung bought the club in June. Plainly knew about it.

The ineptness was Shaun Harvey if he OK'd the stadium sale. But with Wednesday it is pretty serious. They said in the club accounts for 2017-18 that they had banked a £35m profit from selling the ground. But the Land Registry records show that the sale took place in June 2019. So there's a deception there. It also explains why it took a while for the League to do anything about it - it ramped up when they saw the Land Registry return. They've had the hearing into Wednesday. The points deduction is bound to relegate them. The starting point will be 12. Their main hope is to delay it to next season. Derby might want one this season as they're safe enough. Won't want to start next year on -15.

Love the badge of the original Icelandic team...

We beat them on the first day of the season in an absolute steal. Only had one effort on goal all match - a thumping Pedersen header from outside the box - and they had about 14 shots on target. We were mullered, frankly.