7 hours ago, roversfan99 said:

Duff, Jones, Santa Cruz and Bentley raised nearly £70m (a long time ago) from a cost of probably £4-5m. With these players especially Bellamy, it was likely the only way they would sign up. If Venkys were regularly bringing in massive fees and continuing to sign top players as we continue to punch above our weight, I doubt there would be much uproar. 

Hold on.

No.

Because, actually, we are sort of doing that and that is still a big issue. In part because we aren't spending it - although we never spent it all under the Walker Trust either - but mostly because supporters, rightfully, want us to hold onto good players in order to put together a competitive squad.

I'm not trying to compliment our current owners, but those saying that they turned us into a selling club are absolutely wrong. 

6 hours ago, bluebruce said:

Duff had a release clause, Bellamy had a release clause, Jones had a release clause. Santa Cruz was a terrific deal for us, it was fairly clear at the time he had gone back off the boil and was a crock. Bentley dragged on for most of the summer, culminating in the player drunkenly interviewing with Sky Sports on holiday to say he wanted out. Don't think there was much chance of keeping him without him becoming hugely disruptive.

I'm not a fan of putting in release clauses, kinda think they should be banned, but Bellamy wasn't signing in the first place without it. Possible the other players weren't signing their contract extensions without them either.

Right, so think about it. How hard were we fighting to keep players when we'd made it a standard policy to put release clauses into contracts?

Under the Walker Trust and John Williams we had accepted the idea that we had to be a selling club and turn a profit on players when possible. In some instances, this probably helped us to sign certain players (Bellamy), but we also created a culture that made that the standard approach for contracts.

I'm not defending Venkys, but they would be crucified if they were putting in release clauses at the rate that we were in the 2000s. You'd struggle to find another club that not only put release clauses in for virtually all of their key first team players, but also set them at a relatively low number. 

2 hours ago, bluebruce said:

In fairness, if we had been in the second tier at the time, and that was the only opposition Duff had gotten to show his class against, that's probably about as good as we could have expected back then. I'd say it's more like selling Duff for £4-5 million from the second tier.

It's as if we would have sold Duff the season before we were promoted - although even then he was more proven than Wharton is now. Duff had made more Premier League appearances before we were relegated than Wharton made appearances for our first team before he was sold.

3 hours ago, Tyrone Shoelaces said:

I think the difference is, to a greater or lesser extent, they all wanted to leave. I don’t think Wharton did.

I just don't believe that for a second.

His agent was far more active in the months leading up to the window and a lot of effort has been put in to build his profile in the time leading up to the move and immediately following it.

I'm sure he enjoyed his time here. I'm sure he loved playing with his brother. But this was a big move to the Premier League, more money, and a bigger stepping stone.

Many believe that he wanted to stay, but it likely isn't the case. After all, if he had really wanted to stay he would have turned the move down. Oh wait, I forgot that he supposedly took the move because the club told him how desperate they were for money...

47 minutes ago, Upside Down said:

You mean the way we used to do?

Did we ever really do that?

I can't remember any point where we've really put up a great fight to keep players. Duff went fairly easily. Bellamy, Santa Cruz, Bentley, Jones...

It's not really anything new. 

13 minutes ago, Tyrone Shoelaces said:

How many are just 20 years old ?

Mainoo, Elliott, Chukwuekema, and Buonanotte have all definitely impressed this season. Then you have some highly touted prospects like Rico Lewis who is playing as a right-back but could definitely have his future in midfield and players like Lavia who haven't really played this season.

It's not a knock on Wharton. He's very talented and he could go onto big things, but as he was our player there is a tendency to look at his talent as being more unique than it probably is. Still a long way to go before he even starts putting himself in England contention.

*I'll also add that I'm almost certainly forgetting or overlooking certain players as I don't watch as many matches from some clubs. Again, we benefit from paying attention to Wharton in a way that we wouldn't have had he just signed for Palace from Leicester.

5 hours ago, den said:

I seem to remember you didn’t rate him when he came into Rovers side in the Championship. Well, here he is playing every game for Palace  and impressing almost everyone, central midfield, in the PL, at the age of 20.  Not many do that Eddie.

I think you'll struggle to find something saying that I didn't rate him. I think he's very talented, but I've always said that there are players of equal talent dotted around clubs in England. 

As for not many? It's a relatively short list, but there would definitely be 5-10 on it virtually every season (including this one).

Wharton definitely looks very comfortable at that level, but he is something of the flavour of the month and a lot of the praise is a bit overboard. Even yesterday, he played well, but he wasn't that involved and really should have been part of a Palace side that lost by 5.

I wish we had kept him for a bit longer - although I think Wharton and his agent had more to do with that move than they are given credit for - but he still has a long way to go in his development until he is the player this thread would make him seem like.

Let's also not forget, much like the Duff kissing the Chelsea badge, Wharton has become incredibly active on social media with a lot of 'up the Palace' stuff.

But, he didn't want to leave, right?

1 hour ago, Tyrone Shoelaces said:

Who are the top players ? The best one just left the building recently. How many have we got ? I’d class top players as ones capable of getting us out of this league.  I don’t see many of them, unless you count getting out through the back door.

We can be hard on our squad, but we've got more quality than they are currently showing. Over 50% of our starting 11 would be in the running to start for most sides and a couple would be definite starters for virtually every side in the league.

What more do you need in order to be competitive?

With 1 win in 13 you'd think that he was managing a newly promoted side. And not a side promoted from League 1, but a side promoted straight from League 2 or below.

That type of form is unacceptable for ANY SIDE in this league. We can't drop our standards this low.

1 hour ago, bluebruce said:

You seem to struggle with nuance. I never said anything about a policy, nor have I implied it. I simply believe that in this current situation, we should attempt to renew the players with expiring contracts, at the right terms. I never mentioned their ages, that was all you - in fact Gally is older than the age range you said. Nor did I say it should have been a full-on policy 3/4 years ago, I was talking about a single player. It's all situational, not policy, and that's why you're putting words in my mouth by saying what you said. But what we did 3/4 years ago, not renewing the contracts of BBD, Lenihan, Rothwell, cost us an absolute fuckton in lost revenue, so even if it had been a general policy I espoused, which it wasn't and isn't, we'd still have made a lot more money on it than we'd have lost in extra contracts..

🙄

2 hours ago, bluebruce said:

I thought it was pretty obvious, but: "You're basically advocating that every player under 26/27 should be offered a new deal to protect our investment. That will work out some of the time, but it will lead to some awful contracts."

I never said this. Nor do I believe in that as an absolute policy.

But, you just happen to believe it to be sound policy at the moment and have indicated that you would have also seen it as sound policy 3/4 years ago.

It ultimately proved to be a pretty correct assumption. 

2 hours ago, bluebruce said:

None from the first team squad.

So what words was I putting into your mouth?

21 hours ago, bluebruce said:

It's not the benefit of hindsight, it's the benefit of remembering that I was relatively happy with him in that season and thought it was worth protecting our £7 million investment.

I do want to keep Gallagher, although it will have to be at the right wage level. But he has less potential to improve now than Brereton did in that season as he's a lot older. IMO we don't have the money to buy someone at a similar level but on less wages. Additionally, we were rejecting cash bids for him this January, so he does have some market value.

BBD had scored 7 goals in the league from out wide and looked like a nailed on starter who may improve and we'd invested 7 million in, to justify a new deal. At that point his wage demands wouldn't have been too high, and the understanding is he wasn't on all that much.

I'm not basically advocating that, you're entirely putting words in my mouth.

OK, which player under 23/24 do you think we should let walk at the moment? 

52 minutes ago, bluebruce said:

I'd have been perfectly fine with extending his contract after the 20/21 season where he scored 7 goals from out wide. In fact after the investment we had made, it was a pretty obvious thing to do.

Maybe you would have been. Maybe, that's the benefit of hindsight.

I know I didn't. In the same way that I don't want Gallagher to be offered a new contract right now. If Gallagher re-signs and we get more of the same then it will prove to have been a massive waste of money. If we let him go and he goes on to score 15-20 goals at a Championship club next season, supporters will be questioning the decision.

BBD had done nothing to justify a new deal and, by the time he did, he was too late.

You're basically advocating that every player under 26/27 should be offered a new deal to protect our investment. That will work out some of the time, but it will lead to some awful contracts.  

Having printed masks in the past for some events we've hosted at UNESCO, you'll need a far higher image quality than that if you want to avoid us being the laughing stock of the footballing world for a day. 

7 minutes ago, lraC said:

Remember, we had paid up the contracts of several established players and then brought in, those wanted by the manager and his agent.

Granted a team game is harder to fix than an individual sport, but if we had 3 or 4 players all in on it, then it becomes a lot more likely.

Statements made about Ryan being on traction and other crazy things said, are coming sharply back into focus.

I think a very key point has to be made here.

Sometimes those dismissing conspiracy theories are labelled as Venky's defenders.

I'm not defending our owners. They've been awful and their decision-making, particularly in those early years, has been highly questionable, negligent, and stripped this club of any sense of professionalism and dignity.

However, I don't think they're involved in match-fixing. 

6 hours ago, Upside Down said:

It's obviously not the prime reason for their ownership but it certainly can't be denied that things like that have happened here at this club.

This is just far too strong of a statement. 

1 hour ago, Upside Down said:

Spot fixing as in x players will start the game. Y players will come on at this time of the game.

No, as in getting players to agree to carry out very specific actions. It could be as simple as a booking. It could be the number of corners. Le Tissier has famously spoken about agreeing to have the first throw-in of a match occur within a specific period of time - although that was also spread betting so the time became an even more crucial factor.

The problem with this approach is that there isn't a ton of liquidity in those markets, so you'll have bet limits and any unusual betting patterns will be flagged - this includes across different bookmakers.

You cover that with illegal betting, but that comes with separate issues. 

2 hours ago, simongarnerisgod said:

if you wanted to fix matches,you`de have to get at the officials,there was a massive scandal in the nba a few years ago when one of the court refs was sent to jail for nobbling the points betting line,on the whole,footballers earn to much money to risk getting banned for fixing a match,suppose it could happen lower down the leagues but why would you bother fixing a game where there is hardly any money going down on it

Yes, Tim Donaghy.

We actually had the former investigator who wrote the book on the betting scandal in the NBA on our podcast a couple of years ago:

https://open.spotify.com/episode/5MBsIQIQSwsjcEY8Jo8rgf?si=bfacb337868745a3

He continues to research and speak about match-fixing and sports gambling. It's a really interesting topic and he speaks about it all very well.

1 hour ago, Upside Down said:

You have such a naive view of how the world actually works.

Believe it or not things are not black and white, there is grey area in everything.

I'm not saying match fixing and betting scams are absolutely certainly going on here but to say it isn't possible is totally childish.

See above, I might not know as little about the topic as you'd like to make out.

I 100% believe that there is match-fixing in every sport on a weekly basis. I just remain highly skeptical of the idea that a team at the highest level of a sport would be throwing matches. Spot-fixing definitely, but games being thrown is a little bit harder for me to wrap my head around.

Match fixing in individual sports or at a much lower level? That I do buy.

22 hours ago, Upside Down said:

That is absolutely beyond naive.

How much money are you going to have to pay a group of Premier League players to start throwing matches? How much would you then have to bet? Keep in mind, we were awful. Not a lot of opportunity to get value in the opposition. It is actually quite the opposite, we actually had the biggest upset (from an odds perspective) in Premier League history when we beat United.

Spot-fixing is the route you have to go in team sports to be consistently fixing outcomes. Bookings, throw-ins, corners, etc. But to think that 6/7/8 of our players were taking money to throw matches is a wild conspiracy theory. 

On 09/03/2024 at 11:50, Ossydave said:

You can make thousands if you're well informed, when Souness went to Newcastle I know a fair few who cleaned up.

Cleaned up meaning what?

A nice payday for your average person? Or something that would interest a billionaire?

The reality is that these aren't very liquid markets, so the exposure that comes with any sizeable bet is too much to be worth it - even for illegal bookmakers.

Why would you want to make a book where you are guaranteed to lose tons if a specific outcome comes in? Nevermind the fact that who in their right mind would take a big bet on a specific market like that without being suspicious of the fact that the bettor has more information than the bookmaker.

Could someone give me a decent tip on a next manager and I could have a nice day? Sure. I could spread 100-200 (absolute max) bets around across a few bookmakers and have a nice day, but we aren't talking about a payday that would interest the UHNW.

3 hours ago, Roverthechimp said:

The betting market has 2 angles - one is profit (anything above evens given a known outcome is a ROI) and the other is to move money around without direct links.

Systematic betting fraud doesn’t need every transaction to get 33-1 - multiple bets all the way down to (and beyond) evens are winning bets if you know the outcome.

If money laundering is involved then even losing money deliberately as the bookie enters the picture…
 

Eh?

Even odds-on shots are profit if you know the outcome.

10 hours ago, Upside Down said:

It's certainly a possibility, and is a really good way to move around illicit finance.

But that's the thing. It really isn't a possibility. 

16 minutes ago, Upside Down said:

Little and often.

Someone posted something on here a while back about money laundering in sports and football in particular.

Venkys ticked a lot of boxes.

Now they're under investigation for financial corruption.

I'll let you form your own conclusions.

The point remains the same. It would have to be so tiny and so often.

I've bet on next manager markets and putting 100 pounds on either radically shifts the market or makes it close altogether.

You cannot make millions, hundreds of thousands, or even thousands betting on next manager markets easily.

Do you really think they're charging someone with placing 50 pound bets at dozens of bookies?

They might be dodgy, but they are billionaires. Hardly worth it.

2 minutes ago, Darrenbot said:

Has a player ever been top scorer of a league and got relegated in the same season? 

Quiz question I had not too long ago:

Southampton went down from the First Division in 1973-74 (along with Manchester United) but Mick Channon was top scorer in the division with 21 goals.