Bellingham is 20 years old - ludicrous!

This is the only thread I'm going to be checking for the next couple of weeks I think 🤣

Of course the recent run is cause for concern but I do feel like once everything clicks we could be a handy little side. 

Moran, siggy, Sammy, a fit Ennis is a decent front 4. I think there's a player in Markanday somewhere and if Dolan found his form again then that's not a bad back up. Midfield players are good just need the right balance and defence is good if a little lacking in depth. 

I think out best 11 fully fit and played in the right system would be unplayable. 

8 minutes ago, DE. said:

Really strange that there isn't a protocol where the VAR has to explicitly state "we have concluded onside/offside", rather than just saying "check complete". VAR is supposed to remove ambiguity, but that conversation is pretty bloody ambiguous, let alone when it's happening in such a short space of time. "Good process" ... I have to disagree. This is just a very poor standard of communication between officials. The obvious question is whether it's a lack of a proper process in place, a lack of training, or if the VAR/AVAR in this instance were just being grossly incompetent in terms of not following established procedures. The fact the ref didn't request for specifics in terms of being told onside or offside suggests it's more likely to be one of the first two possibilities, though. 

Honestly, it's no wonder VAR is such a mess if this is how they're communicating with each other. 

I thought the same. You'd thought there would be a standard process for each review i.e. state what you're reviewing, what the onfield decision was and then after running through a checklist state clearly what the decision is. Other sports do it. 

Just now, DE. said:

VAR: “Thank you mate.”

Referee: “Well done boys, good process.”

Replay operator: “Wait, wait, wait, wait. The on-field decision was offside. Are you happy with this?”

Lol, the replay operator like... wtf are you doing lads? You can tell by the transcript that he's totally baffled by what they're deciding. Transcript makes it seem like total chaos tbh. 

My favourite part was 

"Oh [expletive]"

https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/every-word-var-audio-released-27827502?s=08

Transcript from the var room 

2 hours ago, chaddyrovers said:

well its does, so that's the rule

VAR Principles Explained (premierleague.com)

Video Assistant Referee (VAR) protocol | IFAB (theifab.com)

🤣🤣 always a pleasure chaddy

9 minutes ago, chaddyrovers said:

because FIFA rules says that it has to be match official in the VAR room. 

Okay. I'm not sure why Fifa rules say it has to be a ref in the VAR room 

My changes would be 

- Move to an appeals system like in cricket. VAR only gets involved if a team appeals a decision. They have to say specifically what they are appealing to avoid speculative appeals (as much as you can)

- The ref is in charge and its their decision. When an appeal is made, the ref is immediately over to the monitor and discussions with VAR is a sounding board only. The VAR doesn't recommend anything and doesn't make any decisions, it can give its opinion but the ref makes the final call. 

- A new one following this weekend but have a bit of a script. Like in cricket when an appeal is made you hear a clear process "player review for LBW, on field decision is not out" they then go through a checklist of things and then clearly say "recommend you change your decision to out". The explanation of what happened at Spurs gave the impression there was some guy sat back in his chair with a bag of crisps and a beer "Yeah it's all good move on pal". Much clearer communication is needed. 

I'm not sure why it needs to be a ref in the VAR room. If it's the ref making the final decision anyone who knows the slightest thing about football can say "you need to take a look at that" 

It's difficult to see where Liverpool can go with this as they're not going to get points or cash compensation (imagine the can of worms that would open up!). However they need to kick up a fuss over this as the list posted higher up shows that there has been some absolute VAR shockers and the bigger fuss the bigger likelihood of some reforms. 

The big decisions were wrong but the whole game was poorly reffed. 9 yellows and 2 reds would have you think it was a dirty scrappy game and it was far from it, it was a trigger happy ref who gave fouls at random. Fouls were given against both teams that just weren't fouls and a yellow card came out shortly after. Same ref as the United Wolves game so you'd think his days in the top flight are numbered. 

Shame, that had potential to be a cracking game and instead all we were talking about was the ref the whole way through. 

How many errors is that they've admitted to so far this season and its only September. This season has been shambolic for refereeing. 

35 minutes ago, Hasta said:

The offside one was strange. He looked clearly onside and VAR never showed the lines. Sky said they hadn’t been provided the image at half time.

 

What's confusing me about it is how quickly the review happened. That looks clearly onside, at the very least it's borderline enough to atleast take a few looks at it which didn't seem to happen. They made the decision very very quickly that he was offside and then to not give sky the images with the lines on like they normally do. Makes me think the technology cut out or something which is farcical. 

33 minutes ago, rigger said:

I have not seen the foul. Was it a red according to the rules ? Another good way of officiating comes from the rugby today. Foul play is an immediate yellow which means ten minutes in the sin bin. In that ten minutes the foul is reviewed to see if the yellow should be upgraded to a red.

Like with most fouls it's subjective and yeah you could shoe horn in an argument to justify it but if that's a red the game has gone. 

All round its been with one of the worst refereeing performances I've seen in a long time. 

5 minutes ago, Bethnal said:

Really poor decision, as was Macallister’s earlier in the season. It can get rescinded, they can suspend the officials involved for a week, but the impacts that each has on the games are irreversible.

They might yet win this one, but I’d be asking Howard Webb for the head of the next official to incorrectly award a red card against one of my players, if I were Klopp. I’d probably go direct in the match itself.

EDIT: ref’s got the look of Steve Kean about him, so he’d definitely get a whack from me.

The fact that red cards can get rescinded, like Macallister's did, shows that VAR is not fit for purpose. 

That decision was made on a freeze frame. They froze it at the worst possible moment and showed that to the ref first. Shocking shocking decision and shocking decision making process. 

Liverpool got some good luck with VAR a few seasons ago but they have been royally fucked over this season with red cards. Curtis Jones just got one of the softest red cards I've seen. 

Obviously a very big game but of the big teams we could have got, it's the one where we could most likely cause an upset. 

Just now, Displaced Rover said:

Statutory audit quality in this country is on the whole a total joke. In my eyes it primarily exists to train new chartered accountants.

The standard of audit of unlisted entities is beyond poor. When you couple that with 95% of the general public not understanding what it involves, it becomes an almost pointless exercise.

Not to mention the extent of their fraud testing involves asking the directors to sign a letter promising there has been no fraud in the organisation. 

5 minutes ago, Andy said:

If anything dodgy was genuinely going on, it'd be picked up during annual audits.

And would have been long before now.

Torn on this one. Audit is a sham profession and couldn't find fraud if there was an invoice titled "fraudulent invoice £123,456,789.99" 

8 hours ago, tomphil said:

Has anybody said they are making a profit ?  

What's the point of a tax dodge if its not to make some sort of financial gain? That was the earlier claim that they have to write off £20m no more no less to get a tax benefit. I would love to know why venkys own us but let's cross this theory off the list. 

8 hours ago, tomphil said:

You say you know nothing about it but go to great lengths to try and prove otherwise which is a bit odd.

For context I'm a chartered accountant for a massive company and I'm involved in their corporation tax process albeit not down I'm the weeds of the detail. However I don't lead with this as I hate appeals to authority when debating - so came at it with an open mind willing to be disproved. 

I only mention it now to give context to my "I'm no good at tax" claim (i also find it insanely dull to work in). I know more than Joe bloggs but would happily give way to someone who specialises in tax if there was someone on here (I know there are a few accountants on here) 

45 minutes ago, tomphil said:

Nobody on here or posting at least has any idea how the accounting works at a huge Indian billion dollar corporation thousands of miles away.

My last on the matter. 

Losing £20m in cash for £0 return £0 in asset creation all for a couple of million tax relief is not a wealth creation tool. 

Indian GAAP is not sufficiently diverged from IFRS (of which a few on here will have detailed knowledge) as to reverse basic mathematics. 

I have no idea why venkys own us, but I'm highly certain it's not to make a profit. 

1 hour ago, philipl said:

I have an accounting and finance background and I cannot see any scenario in which the last 13 years make any sense to Venky's from a wealth improvement standpoint, no matter how convoluted the corporate structure (it is very simple compared with many I have seen) or creative the tax accountants

Same - although tax isn't my area of interest or deep knowledge - but good to know I wasn't going crazy! 

9 hours ago, Upside Down said:

What is your logic, if there is any, behind your assumptions

My logic is if you spend 20m to save  4m in tax you've lost 16m which gives you no advantage whatsoever given they don't then have 20m worth of assets as a result of expenditure. 

9 hours ago, Upside Down said:

So a multi million pound business is not an asset then?

It is. But they're not increasing the value of that asset by pumping 20m into it per season. 

9 hours ago, Upside Down said:

They rent business space, lease vehicles, machinery etc, all thing they can afford to buy but choose to lease as it can be classed as an expense

Whether you rent or buy an asset you spread the cost over many years rather than take the hit all in one go. Unless you do cash accounting which the venkys most definitely won't given their size. 

But ignoring that bit. If you buy or lease a machine, at the end of the day you have a machine. The descion to buy or lease will depend on a multitude of factors, one of which will of course be tax efficiency. 

9 hours ago, Upside Down said:

It does make me laugh that people who just think they throw 15million at year away for absolutely no reason are so certain that they are right.

I don't know what the true reasons are, none of us do.

Of course I don't know what their reasoning is for continuing to own is or the thought process behind their strategy (or lack of). What I'm certain is that you're not on the right path. No textbook, no business class, not even a shady get rich quick scheme would say "you know how to make more money? Flush £20m down the toilet each year, don't buy anything" 

9 hours ago, Upside Down said:

I'll just add that when I say tax I'm using that term very loosely.

Clearly 

9 hours ago, Upside Down said:

I would hazard a guess that you don't end up a billionaire in Pune without having to deal with organised crime or the like in some way or another.

No argument there, they're crooks. 

18 minutes ago, Upside Down said:

I'll reiterate the point that only the venkys CFO actually knows how it all goes together.

So essentially you don't know and have assumed the venkys own us for a tax dodge based on very flawed logic.

19 minutes ago, Upside Down said:

You have also not said anything regarding the house purchase

Cos I wasn't disputing that point. But that's an example of an actual tax dodge- buy a 7m asset, claim it as a business expense to save £Xm in tax. End result is you pay less tax and have a £7m asset. 

21 minutes ago, Upside Down said:

Large companies make losses all over the place to write off tax

No they don't they either a) make it look like they're making a loss - massage income into a future period, over state expenditure etc (they've not actually lost money here) b) buy a load of tax deductible stuff to reduce their profits (they've lost money but gained stuff) 

What they don't do is lose actual money and gain no stuff (on purpose)

25 minutes ago, Upside Down said:

When you're turning over massive amounts each year, an asset that regularly loses 10-20million is a great tool for balancing the books.

Sharing group losses is beneficial. Creating losses for no gain is not

26 minutes ago, Upside Down said:

Please try and see the bigger picture here.

Please gain some basic knowledge of tax and accounting. 

39 minutes ago, Upside Down said:

 

So you've not grasped the concept of tax brackets then.

For example 65-40% = 39

55-25% = 41.25

 

Obviously it isn’t as simple as this and none of us know how they are doing it. The only person who could possibly kbow how the finances work across whole venkys business would be the CFO.

One of the only real consistencies overthe last 13 years have been the losses. When they threaten to change in either direction, action is taken. Lose too much it will cost money. Promotion and a sudden injection of 200 million also causes problems as you now can't write off 20 million in losses.

Remember, these people who are supposedly billionaires bought a house for 7 million, crumbs to them according to some, and ran it through the company books as a tax dodge.

Now they are having assets siezed because of this and they have had to reign in the spending on their other financial write off. Supposedly. 

That's not how tax brackets work. Take the UK for example. 

If you earn 12.5k you pay zero income tax 

If you earn 22.5k you pay 20% on the 10k over 12.5k

If you earn 60k you pay 0% on the first 12.5k 20% on 12.5 - 50k and 40% on the final 10k. You don't pay 40% on the full 60k. If you sum it all up the tax you pay on 60k is like 19% in total. 

Your logic would say that if I earn 60k I would be paying 24k in tax taking home 36k and i would be better off losing £10k so I'd only pay £10k in tax and take home £40k.

I have no doubt venkys engage in dodgy dealings in order to avoid paying tax. The annual funding of a football club is not one of them. For starters it doesn't even work mathematically. Even if it did work, there's far easier ways to lose money than to buy a football club and conspire to relegate it and play a game of spin the plates in order to keep them in the second tier. 

"Promotion and a sudden injection of 200 million also causes problems as you now can't write off 20 million in losses."

You absolutely could. If we had £200m in revenue, they could sanction spend of £220m. Just because we have revenue doesn't mean we have to run at a profit. Its not unusual for PL teams to run at a loss it wouldn't arose suspicion. 

28 minutes ago, Andy said:

So throwing £16m in the bin for no reason or benefit?

Sorry, not seeing the logic behind this one.

As far as tax avoidance goes its very aggressive and horrendously inefficient