Well done on not rising to the unnecessary insult.

Conversely, he may also have done himself out of many, many millions more, and far greater professional satisfaction, by having the career he appeared destined for. Could have sorted his whole family for generations. Instead he went to the player graveyard of Spurs and what's happens now is anyone's guess.

My problem is, where is the creativity in that midfield? JRC sure, but he is injury prone and sometimes needed elsewhere. Buckley, sort of, but inconsistent and as you say doesn't seem to be fancied. Very much doubt we have a 10 mill warchest without selling Sammie, and probably not even then. I want a good goalie before I want a striker (until we sell Sammie).

We are bitter. We have lost a potentially world class, homegrown, fan of the club for about a third of what he is probably going to be worth by the summer. Not Palace's fault though, who wouldn't take that kind of bargain? I think you should start adjusting yourself to the fact that it's very unlikely he stays with you for 3+ years. He supports our club and we only got two seasons out of him at senior level. It's one thing getting called up to a 33 man provisional squad for England and another thing altogether to become a firm fixture in the starting 11. Loads of players move to other bigger Prem teams to solidify their international credentials. Even sitting on a big 6 bench can be enough sadly. They can also pay a lot more, and money talks. If he is still with you in 3 years, it's because he didn't improve or even regressed. Unless you somehow start getting regular European football.

No shame in that of course, but pity it didn't work out for him too. Yet another Wharton brother coming through the club would have been quite something. The family have done great to churn out two talented pros though.

She's got one. Calls it her brain.

Our own website has a 'staff' section for the first team...it just has John Eustace 🤣 Christ we are bad at maintaining the website.

Yeh I'm pretty sure that's a fairly normal number of coaches.

Did they? I don't remember. It's a bit different when you could be going up a league though to a financially rich league. We could just charge our Championship prices, knowing it will entice people in to buy what might be Prem tickets, and that if we do go up we'll have so much money it won't matter to the club what we charge. Conversely, I'd be pissed if I bought tickets at Championship prices expecting Championship football and they ended up being League One tickets. I don't think it's a cop out, I think it makes sense. What doesn't make sense is what we charge in general given the local economy and the soul-crushing nature of having been a fan since Venkys showed up. Low attendances are inevitable. Side note, I don't really get why people get so annoyed they're released in May...does it really matter whether you buy it in March, April or May? It's still well before the season starts.

Gotta say, Blackpool's early bird prices are a joke compared to everyone else's, when you consider the league they're in too. Our ongoing prices are a bit of a joke compared to everyone else's when you consider the shambles we're currently in and the season we likely face.

In fairness, whilst that would work in a season where we are firmly mid-table at that point, you can't really release season ticket prices when you don't know what league we'll be in. However, they should be ready to roll out within a week of the season finishing at the very most, and there's no real excuse for anything else.

I take it Simon Wharton isn't a footballer? The number next to his name implies he might be, but the facial hair implies he's older than Adam and I've never heard about him.

Sounds like it's @wilsdenrover's actually. He said he'll do it for free and as an added bonus, he won't be value for money. Just the credentials to have Venkys salivating.

I'd do it for 20k. Would you undercut me? 😉

Without seeing either player play, I think those last few words would sum it up...you can't prove much about your goalkeeping playing in the SPL with a few European games thrown in. Couldn't break into Palace or Manure's teams.

It's worse than that. They've missed the 33-man squad, let alone the 26. I haven't been following the Prem much for many years now, but I was pretty surprised to see Sterling, Rashford and Sancho fail to even make the provisional squad.

You wouldn't be DoF for the club you love for say, £100k? Are you earning more than that right now?

On the other hand, this guy thought we were 'keen to hold on to the teenager until the summer', so maybe he doesn't know what he's talking about.

I'm pretty sure Chaddy would do it for minimum wage. So yeh, probably too much for the budget.

Really, it shouldn't have been too hard to throw in add ons like '5 million if he makes 5/10 England appearances', as any young player doing that is automatically worth about 50 million, and we should have been able to negotiate at least 20% of profit on next sale instead of the 15 we allegedly got, as there's no real risk to that as they're making profit if it happens anyway. I think 20-22 mill guaranteed is chump change to a Prem side too. But we were in too much of a rush to get the pennies in, and about as good at negotiating as Neville Chamberlain.

Wow, if I ever knew that Frank Fielding was called up to the senior England team, I've long since forgotten it. How the hell did he manage that?? Judging by his Wiki it would have been when his highest level of experience was in League One...surely there would have been several English keepers of better pedigree in higher leagues available. Ben Foster was injured but they can't all have been...

That's more than surprising, it's ridiculous...we'd just spent 2 years hearing about how we were expanding our scouting operation, and it sounds like we were actually gouging it! At least domestically (the expansion talk was mostly about Europe).

Tbf, that's not the club's stated aim as far as I know, that's Chaddy's optimism. The club are probably less ambitious than that, and are merely targetting survival (or less, if you believe the conspiracy theories).

When the most optimistic poster on the board has us down for 12th place if we are able to sign the players Eustace wants, which as you say is a big if, I think most of the rest of us can agree we're down for another relegation fight.

The thing that has gone massively down rather than up is what Venkys put into the club. It's quite a void to fill, which will have been covered by the Wharton sale but they may be thinking 'how do we cover it next season?'. Szmodics won't go for 20 million. Still, I'm not having it that a further 25% cut is the only option. Perhaps a Szmodics sale would undo that. Whatever the reasoning, this entire thing is very much Venkys fault from top to bottom, as is the more than a decade we've been living a nightmare. Although I do have to say, everybody seems to be taking this 25% cut as gospel, when as far as I can see it has come from one poster here who as far as I remember doesn't have any particular track record of inside info being proven right? Maybe I'm wrong there, but perhaps we shouldn't assume just yet that it's accurate, even though it fits the pattern of recent years.