Harry Kane is a prime example of how you can be a WC player without winning anything.

Saka, Saliba and Rice for me. What squads wouldn’t they get in to?

I’m sure the Ajax 3-peat winners wouldn’t have expected Liverpool to overtake their tally of wins in just a span of 7 years either, in the same decade too!

Obviously Madrid have that healthy cushion but it only takes another drought from them, and suddenly Liverpool, Bayern, Barca and maybe Milan could be right on their tails again.

Last game I went to (Sevilla) the bag queue was basically a fucking shortcut, we’re all just patiently waiting in a 100 person queue (x8) meanwhile the people with bags just waltzed straight through to the turnstile after a 5 second bag search.

Surely this concept wouldn’t have changed that outcome, because a yellow + an orange wouldn’t happen? Thats still a red.

The idea, from what I understand, is that if the first yellow is cynical but not close enough to be deemed a red, then you’ll you’re essentially be booked + given a sin bin. If you’re already on a yellow you would still just get red carded for a 2nd yellow offence.

Sadly it’s not, mainly because of the way it’s marketed to us as 14-17 year olds. You’re obviously told about the debt, but at that age you don’t really understand the long-term repercussions, and even UCAS advisors just focus on the fact “you probably won’t pay it all back anyway”. My own student debt has now surpassed £85k with my masters, and £7k of that is interest alone, it’s pretty ridiculous tbh. I kinda started in the worst year because tuition fees were increased, I missed the final maintenance grants by a year, and the threshold for paying back the loan also got lowered whilst I was still at Uni.

The whole point of the changes initially were to make Uni “more accessible” to students like myself, from poor backgrounds, shit schools but still academically achieving the required grades. Whilst I benefitted because Exeter marginally lowered its grade boundary for me due to the school underperforming, I don’t really feel I benefitted from the financial side of system because as a “poor student” I essentially get lumped with the highest student debt out of everybody anyway. (Because they took away my grants)

Yes it is to mitigate the problem, and from their perspective I understand why they’ve lowered the threshold for that purpose. But I feel like they should either lowered the threshold and kept the same 30 year repayment period, or marginally increased the threshold when they made it a 40 year debt window. There’s a massive hit in earnings after 28k (pre-tax) is eclipsed, which in this day and age isn’t all that much in the first place. At £28k you’ll have 20% tax, 12% NI + 6% Postgraduate loan and 9% Undergraduate Loan all in effect. Thats going to have a quite an effect on those earning the very minimum for graduate jobs. We should be trying to encourage people to be educated, but the way we approach it atm is all wrong imo.

I wouldn’t say that’s necessarily a good thing. University’s, in general, have lowered their standards because now there’s an incentive of claiming extra tuition funds from students that would have never previously made the cut or, as you say, are now using it as a backup option instead of finding employment.

I agree on your public sector and high earning graduates points, but your last point is too much of a broad statement to effectively to put anything in place. A lot of non-Uni educated people misunderstand that earning a degree in x must lead to a job in x. Most employers only look at the transferable skills learnt from their degrees, and for the most part the actual subject is irrelevant. So how do you define a “nothing degree”?

The current system of increasing tuition and removing grants entirely did nothing to shift the debt from public funds to individuals, it’s just created a longer term bigger deficit that will be written off against public funds anyway. Despite the sweeping changes in the last year that meant 61% of graduates will start paying off their debt, rather than just 22% previously. It still remains that only 20% will ever pay off their debt fully. We haven’t really changed anything for the positive in the last decade.

I’m not sure how fucking up our higher education system is a small issue though. SFE is already on breaking point and most universities would now probably struggle to survive if the fees ever came back down.

It’s a resource gap more than it is useless management. Both seem to have a good backing from their respective fanbases which is usually an indication of real expectations.

Sounds like 2007/08 all over again.

£19.5m might not be much, but you’ve got to have a cut off somewhere. Sure, there’s some issues with the PL changing how interest payments are considered with regards to FFP, but “gambles that didn’t pay off” would be the exact reasoning for punishment. Most clubs over-investing are hoping for a gamble to pay off, lower league clubs do it all the time to try and secure PL finances. If they manage to get promoted they’re all good, if they don’t, they’re fucked, and normally find themselves relegated within 2 years.

This £19.5m is on top of the £200m they already lost “due to Covid”. They were fortunate that a lot of the losses were disregarded because of that excuse. One of the ridiculous claims that the PL did reject was “depreciation of assets”, Everton overvalued their players and then tried claiming that covid cost them 50% of the value of sales.

Financial doping is worse I agree, and the only reason why we’ve got this reaction is because City and Chelsea haven’t been punished as of yet. There’s very little trust that they will do so either. But, Everton’s losses were a very deliberate gamble and they should rightly be punished for that. As for the administration comparison, maybe it’s a case of old rulings weren’t harsh enough. As long as this new harsh precedent is consistent I have no issue with it, and that’s the real talking point for many tbh.

I loved Xhaka but if you watch his highlights closely you’ll just see how much more time and space he’s afforded in the Bundesliga. His progression stats are because the league is just that touch slower.

I don’t think Arsenal are seen as a big club today purely because of 1997-2004 though. Arsenal were a genuine powerhouse in English football 100 years ago. They’ve won a title in every decade bar like 2? since the 1930s. They were one of the main reasons why London football developed from district level leagues to being an attractive proposition for the established football league to adopt. They were the most successful team in England until 1970. Arsenals former chairman David Dein was the leading figure for “the Big 5” when the FA was initially approached for development of the PL format.

It isn’t ego that makes Arsenal a big club, it’s genuine history.

“No history” has never meant “no trophies” in a literal sense. Virtually every top division club will have a few honours in their 100+ year history. But, if you’re discussing a club that has won 80-90% of its honours in the last decade, it’s “history” was clearly pretty irrelevant when you then compare it to clubs that have won things consistently across the last 100 years.

I think the problem with both of those scenarios is they can now be 50/50 calls. Both Alisson and Gabby’s examples are ones in which some of us will say “he’s got to be stronger there”, because if you don’t get the foul then you’ve just conceded a real soft goal. Fans and teammates would then both be pissed that the defensive player didn’t show more aggression in the challenge.

Yeah it always makes me laugh when people are out here calling PL players “bang average”, they’re literally the 1% of the 1%, regardless of which PL team they’re playing for.

I wouldn’t call Rashford invisible though. Most Utd highlights are filled with him having about 50 shots a game whilst ignoring obvious openings for his teammates.

I would assume Chelsea operate a similar system to most clubs that have demand issues.

For pretty much any official game it’ll be a case of 1 membership = 1 opportunity to buy a ticket.

What I mean by that is, simply obtaining a membership doesn’t give you any guarentee of actually being able to purchase 1 ticket, let alone 2 together. On their website they’ll likely have windows of what dates each of their membership tiers go on sale, or on ballet, and you have to follow those dates accordingly. The last official route you’ll have is some kind of ticket exchange where season ticket holders sell on their tickets to the members market. Again, demand for these will be high and it’ll be unlikely you’ll get two together unless you get “club level”, but these are usually 2-3x price of a normal top price ticket at minimum.

I know some clubs operate official channels for overseas fans so it might be worth checking these out before you take the gamble of a touted reseller market.

That’s kinda my point though. Overdramatic Arsenal fans (or other big 6 clubs) shouldn’t be a point of discussion for “the other 14”. The whole point that sub exists is to avoid talking about clubs like mine. But all it ends up being, more often than not, is an opportunity for people to slag off big clubs, their players, or their fans with very little opposition, and then thinking they’re definitely right because everyone else in the sub shares the same bias? It’s literally become a circlejerk.

I had a recent example of that when discussing the pointlessness of Xg with someone. A Villa fan essentially came in afterwards and made exactly the same point. I got downvoted in to oblivion and the Villa fan ended up on like +10. The tribalism is just silly at times.