Winter News

I don't think a second year keeper counts as a senior player and if our No.2 gets done then I'm sure we would be allowed an emergency sub. Remember a few years back when we went through almost the entire football league's spares one after the other. I'm just hoping that we won't lose both of the casualties for any length of time if at all. Mind you the way our luck seems to go................

 

I’m not sure if that either. It seems ridiculous if it is the case. We can’t all run massive squads on dirty money can we.. naming no names in the news today.

 

To give it a title do you mean "The Premier League" as a whole? What a shock that all was.............

 

No... Manchester City, this week charged with 100 breaches of financial rules by the EFL. They'll spend more on legal defence fees than the entire wage bill in Leagues 1 and 2.

 

Michael Cooper is out for the rest of the season after rupturing his anterior cruciate ligament. Very bad news indeed.

 

Bad for Coopers career and not good for Argyle either......just the wrong side of the January window...just are luck.

 

Why us? Every feckin season something happens to build a wall for us to climb. We must have done something really bad to somebody in the past. I trust Burton to perform as I think he is very competant but it is still a set back once more.

 

If it had to happen, why not 1 week before the transfer window, not 1 week after it!

 

Because the football gods, who obviously don't like us very much. decree'd it that way. Next thing will be Scarr will be out for the season or something similar.

 

It looks as if WBA will be losing their manager to Leeds in the coming days.

WBA did make inquiries about Schumacher awhile back before choosing their current manager.....and Schumacher said no.

The talk is will they try again for Schumacher if they lose their manager to Leeds.

With the lose of Cooper for the season.....and the possibility of Scarr having a long lay off as well.

The lost of Schumacher would be literally fatal regarding promotion this season.

They say that things happen quite often in threes....it surely won't happen will it ?

 

Carlos Corberan has signed a new contract at WBA....this is during speculation that Leeds wanted him to be their new manager.

Corberan has said that he is enjoying his time at WBA.....he has dramatically turned around their firtunes since arriving.

That will surely finish Leeds interest in him....and talk of Schumacher being on a short list for the WBA job now dead.

 

That Manchester City story in full(ish)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/64554257

Some random statistics:

Man City has a stadium capacity of 53,000

Manchester United 74,000 (+40%)
Spurs 63,000
West Ham 63,000
Arsenal 60,000

The London clubs also benefit from high employment and wages in the capital so you'd imagine their income per seat is higher. And yet, somehow.....

 

The Man City thing is hardly a shock is it notdistant. Their owners have mega bucks to waste and choose to waste it on that club. You cannot tell me that half of the prem league and the rest of Europes top leagues aren't fiddling the books as well. Wages are linked to income. Ok lets sponsor our stadium to the tune of £200m per season. That's income. It's not up to the FA or Europe to dictate how much a sponsorship deal can be, They should be looking at clubs in lower leagues because that's where the bigger fiddles go on. Clubs need to compete so if they have owners with bucks to waste then why not on them is a simple sum to work out.

 

Financial regulation is needed for three reasons.

Firstly, to provide a reasonably level playing field so that there can be sporting competition up and down the pyramid. Leicester City winning the EPL is a case in point. Brighton, Brentford and Fulham currently sitting 6th, 7th and 8th in the EPL is another.

Secondly, so that world famous clubs without access to commercially unjustifiable funds don’t drive themselves into financial meltdown and failure trying to compete with the unbeatable. Real Madrid is the most obvious example.

Lastly, we just can’t have people taking the ****. Stadiums being sponsored by related parties to the tune of several times the value of similar ones. Shirts being sponsored similarly excessively by the same or other parties under the same ownership. Players and staff holding bogus jobs abroad with the owner of the club in order to hide their true earnings and no doubt avoid tax at the same time.

 

Oh and fourthly, to stop pressures on the biggest clubs to form a breakaway “super league” from which they can’t be relegated, which destroys national leagues across Europe and beyond, and which turns football from a sport into some horrific Harlem Globetrotters style franchised entertainment channel.

If you won’t watch the Premier League, wait until that gets going.

 

It seems that Dan Scarr's foot isn't broken.....bone wise that is.....so he will be having another specialist look at it.....hopefully he might not be out for a long spell....lets hope so.

 

Have been reading recently that Sir Jim Ratcliffe the chief executive of the Ineos group was interested in buying Man U....you were begining to hope that some basic sense was coming into the situation....that the reign of the Glazers was coming to an end.

Now we hear that the Qatar Royal Family are showing interest as well....£6 to 8 billion that just loose cash for them....how can we get rid of these type of people wanting our Premier League clubs as toys to play with until they lose interest.

It does seem that if they want Man U.....UEFA would not allow them to still own PSG.....another of their toys.

 

Who cares about the prem clubs anyway. I don't as my team isn't one of them. If they want to do the willy waggling thing about how much cash they have then let them melt down and let the rest of the football league be competitive and put on a show. Despite what notdistant has said about this above there is no level playing field in any of the top European leagues and there hasn't been for a very long time. Money talks and that is all those leagues are about. The "remainder" are there to make up the numbers and occasionally one might win more than they are meant to and crash the party. They won't last doing it though. If the clubs without the lucre want to try to compete and crash and burn themn that's their fault and the supporters fault for wanting owners to spend what they don't have. If we ever got into the prem league then I know it would probably only be for a season and we could not compete because of the finances. I know this so have no expectations of anything else at all. I would not want our people to even try to compete. It would be the worst experience going as it was for a few other championship clubs in the last 10 years or so. Hardly any points from a complete season. Who wants to see that and how would it be any good to the supporters to witness it. I don't want to join in that merry-go-round and would be quite happy to compete in the Championship and go no further.

 

Ryan Law has been loaned to Yeovil for the rest of the season.

 

Argyle's purchase of the Goals 5-a-side site seems to be moving ahead. It's been renamed as Harper's Football, Centre, echoing the existing Harper's Park training area. Now it is to be the site of an enhanced Family Fun Centre on match days:

https://www.pafc.co.uk/news/harpers-family-fun-zone

All good stuff for community engagement.

I also saw this:

https://www.plymouthherald.co.uk/news/plymouth-news/disused-plymouth-depot-being-demolished-8142268

This is the area (outlined approximately in black) that lies between what was Goals and the bit of park adjacent to to the Lyndhurst/Devenport End corner.

I wonder who owns the bit outlined in green that joins the existing training pitches to the Goals site?