bluebruce

Football is so weird. No league draws all season, then three in a row. With one in the cup even thrown in for good measure. 4 draws in 5 games after only one cup draw I think previously all season.

https://www.brfcs.com/magazine/articles/page/1 The articles 'Costly slip of the pen' and 'Box ticking exercise foils Rovers'

Brereton is naive if he thinks he's going there to play. There's a reason they wouldn't pay a fair fee and waited for him to be free. Players should be wiser to other clubs exploiting their contract situations, but he'll think of the short-term and the money instead.

Sickening on so many levels.

Amazed he is still in this league and nobody has bought him tbf. Class player.

(Football Manager 2020 related, skip if you're not interested) Not gonna lie, I fudge player sales. I think it's some weird sort of OCD thing in me that I feel the need to get maximum value (save, offer to clubs at what I think I should get, reload and try again with a smaller or higher ask depending what happened). Yeh it's cheating, but it's more an obsession, as I do it even when I have way too much money in the bank and for players worth about 100k! I don't do it with matches. Sometimes you can get way more for players than you think (like with JRC, I probably started asking about 12 mill which is what the game said his value was), and I don't like the idea that I'm missing out. I also like to pick apart how the transfer system on the game works, cos I like to know how stuff works. Doing so has made me see there are some really weird, sometimes unfair and unrealistic, quirks in there, which heightens my sense that I don't want to get shafted out of a good fee lol! Things like, a club is willing to pay up to 10 million, but if you ask for 10.5 million they won't even make a bid, rather than offering 9 or 10 and seeing whether you'll accept. Frankly it's a waste of my time but I weirdly enjoy it. It also helped me figure out that almost universally, you can pay exactly 1/3 of a player's price up front and the other 2/3 in 12-monthly installments over 3 years. Super useful, as only the first third comes off your budget for this season (the rest comes off when installments are due, but gives you time to make the money for it). And you can usually pay about half the fee based on league appearances (and still split the guaranteed bit into thirds), very useful for players you know won't ever play for you and are just development and resale projects. They only want slightly more (like 10 percent maybe) than they'd want if you paid it all up front. Might be different on later FMs. Ahh the inevitable Watford equaliser...

Very badly, on the version I have (20). Somehow I got an MLS side to loan him from me for way more than he was worth, for 3 seasons, which shot his value up, as for some reason player value increases quite well when they go over there, I think it's a bug. He never averaged over 6.75 in those seasons (fairly poor, for any non-FM fans reading). Then sold him to a Chinese side for an obscene £21 million even though he's clearly League One level at best on the game. Couldn't believe my luck!

My radio just won't pick this up clearly unless I'm stood in very inconvenient parts of my room...is there any way to just listen to it on a website? I can't be doing with the fuzzy commentary I'm getting.

Tbf that might be the best plan...

That would make two windows running where we brought in a player with a very good assists record and plonked them in an unfamiliar position. Hopefully just a one-off experiment (unless it works obviously!)

Unfortunately our 2-1 lead turned into a 3-2 defeat. Shame, 3 points on this one would probably have been enough to ensure we don't go down.

Just Sharpe's speculation on who plays where, for now, but that whole front line are in the wrong spots for me. At least, I'm sure I read Thomas is naturally a left winger, so it would make more sense for him on the left, Dolan out right, and BBD central.

Much of which ends up as a 'bit in the paper'.

I wouldn't worry about that if I were them. Unless there is also a quality striker deal pending that we haven't heard anything about, we aren't getting promoted or making the playoffs. If that's the scenario they should just ok the transfer.

More what? Anonymity?

Unless the clauses other clubs 'would have readily included' are actually mandatory for player registration, I don't see how the league could argue it was right to enforce a delay in the transfer. It doesn't matter what good practice is, it matters what obligatory practice is.

It's not really an update, or giving a new perspective. What Sharpe has said fits with what Nixon said about a week ago. In fact it gives less detail really. Arbitro was asking how an entire player contract between us and O'Brien in the event of promotion could be drafted up in 10 minutes, not how our obligation to buy clause with Forest could be clarified in 10 minutes. There are three competing claims I've seen about what has happened, some of which seem to have come out of nowhere, probably speculation and chinese whispers. I've ranked them in order of likelihood based on what information is out there (which may still be wrong information): 1) The club had an obligation to buy LOB if we got promoted, but the league wanted to know if we would still buy him if we got relegated. This one seems incredibly stupid but is closest to what Nixon appeared to be saying in the only story that has surfaced which seems to more or less say exactly what has happened. 2) We had an obligation to buy him if we got promoted, had drawn up a contract with him in that event, but the contract didn't include a relegation wage drop clause in the event that we then came back down to the Championship. I think this one has come about from re-interpreting of the Nixon article. A bit speculative essentially, though it does fit with the kind of thing the EFL might ask of a previously embargoed club - no good reason to actually delay the deal past the deadline though. 3) Rovers hadn't drawn up a player contract for LOB in the event that we were obligated to buy due to promotion. This one seems to be purely speculative and hasn't been mentioned much. It's also pretty unlikely, since we did a loan with an obligation to buy a few years ago (Brereton) so we know that a player contract has to be drawn up if there's an obligation to buy involved. The only difference with this deal is the obligation might not kick in, but since it's possible a contract is still essential. If it's 1 or 2, I'd think we have a strong case. Maybe not with the EFL themselves, who are pricks that only think of what's convenient for themselves, but in an independent arbitration court. As far as I'm aware, these are superfluous things to enquire about that in the case of 2, are good to have in there perhaps, and considerate to ask us about if it were say, Jan 29th, but as I said no good reason to delay us on deadline day. I highly doubt it's 3, but if it is then we don't have a leg to stand on. I doubt we would have even appealed if it was just that, let alone citing causes beyond our control or whatever it was. And I expect we'd have heard by now. Also worth considering that for 1 and arguably 3, Forest would be equally culpable for not noticing the oversight, as they'd have had eyes on the paperwork too (in the case of 3 I'd expect them to ask the basic question 'Have you and Lewis agreed terms?' before signing it all off). Therefore it would be very odd that they've publicly lambasted us if this were the only factor. Of course, Nixon's article also claimed we slightly misspelt the agent's name on the paperwork. As much as that's highly pedantic, even petty, it's incompetent so legally I can see that standing up if we were to take it beyond the EFL's appeals process. It would also give Forest the right to be mad at us regardless of whether the other factor was 1, 2 or 3. Disclaimer: I'm not a legal expert.

We could claim that but I don't see how it would hold up. When a player gets sent off in a match, and it changes the outcome, but is later rescinded because it was bollocks, the team doesn't get any points back for it. Nor do they try to. And that's much more impactful than switching a player out for another.

Nah you keep him playing where he has been playing well. Brittain isn't going to be fully sharp even if he's fully fit, I'd bring him on off the bench to begin with and see how he does.

'Every single one of those quotes could have easily come from Rich Sharpe, talking about Rovers.' This is the only part I have to correct you on. Rich Sharpe doesn't have the balls to talk about the club like this.

Honestly, I find it a bit of a strange one. We will subsidise tickets at another team's ground, but we won't just charge appropriately at our own ground. I think it's probably more about a bit of PR after the transfer deadline day fiasco, and since we will get half the ticket money for the whole ground, we will still be quids in. In fact I guess another way of thinking about it, it works out much better than if we had agreed with Leicester for the tickets to be £10 or £15, as that would apply across the board. This way we keep the cost a bit higher to rake in the dosh, and our own fans still get to go for cheap. I don't want to say it's clever if that's the case, under this regime anyway, but...

We say who we would like to borrow, they say yes or no. We could ask them who they have available, but obviously we don't have to take who is available, we are free to look elsewhere. Only feeder clubs don't really get a say in who arrives I think, but they certainly don't have to play whoever is sent. Whether we have to play a standard loanee and whether there are penalties depends on the contract that is drawn up and agreed to by both clubs. It varies.

In fact John Williams left precisely because of those constraints. The problem is, people of his calibre don't want to work under these kinds of owners, which makes you question the calibre and motives of anyone that does. You can luck out and get high competence from someone early into the relevant stage of their career, like GB is (not saying he's good), as they still need to prove themselves at it, but it's still not much use (or at least nowhere near as much use) landing someone of quality when they have a hand, or both, tied behind their back.

Unless they changed something about the rules, homegrown means they spent 3 years playing in England before the age of 21. I think it's from age 15. I'm not 100% sure Mola qualifies, as although he spent 5 years at Chelsea, I'm not entirely sure he was old enough when that 5 years started for it all to count. Morton definitely counts as homegrown. The list as shown on the LT has a confusingly large gap between both sets of 'yes'. It looks like 3 are missing, but if you count the first lot down and the second lot up, you'll see it's actually just Mola and Kaminski showing as not homegrown. So presumably Mola doesn't count because he left England at age 17 I make it, which probably means he didn't get his full 3 years in after age 15. Ayala, since he moved from Sevilla to Liverpool aged 16 I think, turning 17 shortly after, will have at least 4 years in England before turning 21, maybe 5 depending on the exact, slightly weird mechanics of the cutoff points. So yes, these rules mean an English lad who was born here and as far as I can tell, lived the first 17 years of his life here, doesn't qualify as homegrown. But a Spaniard born in Spain who possibly never set foot in England until he was nearly 17, qualifies comfortably. Yes, these rules are stupid. The irony is if Stuttgart had loaned Mola to us last season instead, I think he would qualify now as homegrown in England. He also might qualify for it by the end of this season due to being under 21 on 1st Jan 2022 (which is how someone qualifies as currently under 21 for this season), or might not because he didn't have 3 seasons here before his 21st birthday in March 2022, I think it's the latter. But can't remember which one that cutoff point works off. Anyway that probably explains the list, which I reckon is correct.

I dunno about irrelevant. Pulling off the first ever successful appeal would be pretty impressive, and a bit of a vindication that the deals weren't fucked up. Obviously Waggott needs to go anyway, he has since almost the second he stepped in the door. And there should still be questions about the failure to bring in a striker, it shouldn't gloss over that. I know there are budget issues, but we're going to need to replace Brereton in the summer, so we might as well have done it this window whilst we were a more attractive proposition in 3rd, and still had a chance of the mega jackpot of the Prem.