Peter Griffin

I wouldn't call bringing the youth into the 1st XI stagnating.

or is it fools seldom differ

I only saw this after I had written my post

The concept of amortisation is quite reasonable for a business. If you think of a small company buying a van rather than a football club buying players the idea behind it is fairly straightforward. If a company wants to buy a van for 20k to do their deliveries and if they pay 20k upfront then they have a cost to the business of 20k in that year. This impacts profitability and tax. However, the company will have value from the van for 4 years and then they may sell it on. For each of the 3 years following purchase of the van the company effectively gets the use of the van for free. Rather than have the big upfront hit on the company accounts they are allowed to write the van off over the life of the van. So if the life of the van is 4 years then that costs the company 5k a year. With a van those it may have a residual value of say 8k after 4 years. So the company says it costs 20k, after 4 years it is worth 8k so it will cost us 12k over the 4 years (20-8) which is 3k a year. With football players clubs in England are not meant to allocate a residual value to a player and must amortise the full cost of the player over the term of the contract. Derby Co allocated a residual value to their players when working out their amortisation costs. They got into trouble for this. Barcelona also allocate a residual cost to their players when calculating amortisation costs

Just looking at that 3 year table again. Our income from player sales over 3 years is our income from player sales in this window so we got no money from player sales in the previous 2 years in which 40 players left the club. That is sinful mismanagement to have 40 players leaving on a free / contract expiring / getting paid off.

The changes in coaching setup may also improve things. Yes, we could be worse without ROK and JT but it is also a new opportunity for a different perspective and that could help our players. I would think that CP would look at all change (losing ROK, JT and Jack) as opportunities to improve things and move forward

Corrected . I think Buendia was our number 1 target

Very good point. I didn't realise Sheffield United had wasted so much cash. They could be in a little trouble financially

I agree that selling Freddie has weakened us. I would have preferred to keep him. As for adding 2 new midfield starters, that would give us 2 plus Emi, Bailey and Ings as new starters. That can take time to integrate and get right. We really struggled in our first promotion season when we added too many new players. Also, bringing in 2 new MF would put a halt to our development of the youth players. They would be back in the u23s or off on loan. This would be contrary to what NSWE & CP have said they are going to do

I see that as the opposite to disappointing. It is really pleasing to see us in that position. We increased the squad size by one, spent 95m and still made a profit of close to 20m. That is a hugely successful transfer window imo

His new team may have some real quality in it. I hear they are looking to sign a new left back too

Well said Sid

+1 Although I have no doubt we will retain our PL status this season we are still a club that only came up 3 years ago and we have a completely new squad. We really do need to establish ourselves as a PL team before we can properly push for Europe imo.

I am shocked that Tarkowski is in his final year. I would have thought Burnley would have cashed in on him this window. He will be a very good free signing for someone

We should be happy with just Mbappe. It will take the pressure off Ollie and Ings

Google says he played for 35 mins for us

Does anyone else think the Mbappe 197m bid is a load of BS and a story that PSG and Real agreed between them. Real 'showed' the fans that they tried to buy Mbappe and PSG saved face by turning down such a huge offer. It all sounds like a convenient story for both clubs

You are missing a key member of the team. Bruce was our manager

One of the most positive things about this window is the quality we have across the first XI and now on the bench too. For years now we have gone into windows needing numbers and with lots of gaps we needed to plug. This meant we had to buy too many players for one window and we also had to spread our budget thinner to buy so many players. We are now in a position where we look to have saleable assets and any new signings will allow us to improve quality of our first XI or to purchase some really exciting prospect. I genuinely cannot remember when we were last in that position

I agree. Particularly Wilson, without him I can see Bruce parking the bus every game and going for 0-0.

Perhaps the majority of their followers do not speak English as a first language?

I think if Newcastle have a few injuries they will be in the mix

I would say more naive than incorrect

It is much better for AVFC if we have a net negative outlay every window. The ideal scenario is to buy cheap and develop players and to develop via the youth setup. From the beginning NSWE and CP have said this is the Aston Villa strategy. Our strategy is working and I am happy with that.

Maybe he said he wanted to join the claret & blue team