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Tom Colborne @tomcolborne.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Ta. I guess the worry is that whatever, if any, punishment is eventually enforced, it may only be for a portion of the rule breaking. And also more broadly that the PL can’t afford to enforce its own rules, and may not have ever noticed without the whistleblow. Fantastic coverage btw. Thank you

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Tom Colborne @tomcolborne.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Do you have a view on whether the period from 2019- 2026 (and ongoing) is going to be investigated?

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Tom Colborne @tomcolborne.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

And that assumes they stopped cheating in 2018. When is the investigation for 2018 onwards?

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Tom Colborne @tomcolborne.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I agree the Chelsea leniency is wild, and set a precedent. If City’s owners sold the club tomorrow and the new owners immediately fessed up to everything the previous regime had done, would they get away with a small fine?

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Tom Colborne @tomcolborne.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Premier League Clubs, including City, voted for these rules. They can’t now pretend they didn’t like or agree with them

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Tom Colborne @tomcolborne.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

I think that wage bill decline covers all staff not just playing staff - Radcliffe sacked hundreds of club employees. But also they may have right-sized for a season without europe to some extent. Plus recruitment has been so bad for so long that nobody gets a new deal on better terms.

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Tom Colborne @tomcolborne.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Did anyone else give them first names? Erik Vorlander, Thomas Valery, Matt Matt.

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Tom Colborne @tomcolborne.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

It’s also just really, really tired now. Two ex-players that used to be rivals and now work together with hilarious consequences making almost exactly the same points and running gags in the same way every 5 minutes on every sky platform forever. Just mix it up

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Tom Colborne @tomcolborne.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Pretty much. Wirtz is going to need to earn that place at some point pretty soon, and if Grav was on better form I think I’d be leaning back to the title winning midfield 3. Hoping we might be better rested than Bournemouth, who play in Spain tonight. Tough game otherwise.

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Tom Colborne @tomcolborne.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

I wonder how Jurgen Klopp Liverpool manager might have responded to that

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Tom Colborne @tomcolborne.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Did Pochettino have the same strong moral stance on this when he was….manager of Chelsea?

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Tom Colborne @tomcolborne.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Arguably those mid-jeopardy games result in better football even though/because there’s less tension. Everyone wants to win but nobody has to not lose. But there is a cost to the ever expanding fixture list, and PSG already treat the group stage - and their own league - like pre-season training.

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Tom Colborne @tomcolborne.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Oh yes, 12, sorry. You’re right, it’s a trade off. Fewer games with high jeopardy but fewer dead rubbers. In both formats, 10 points prob gets you through but you now have 2 more games to get there, plus the lure of top 8 which brings the prize of playing 2 fewer games later. Bit weird but fun.

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Tom Colborne @tomcolborne.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Yeah - there are fewer games with absolutely nothing on them, but compared to the old group stage there is a much smaller proportion where the outcome is decisive. 144 games to eliminate 8 teams is essentially pretty meh.

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Tom Colborne @tomcolborne.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

It makes you wonder what’s in it for the Bhatia consortium.

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Tom Colborne @tomcolborne.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Whether that’s good for football, even when it works, is a different question. It seems like the limiting factor is when people stop buying Sky (and TNT etc.) subscriptions because huge squad turnover, lack of competition and general corruption make it unwatchable

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Tom Colborne @tomcolborne.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Although illiquid and requires an exit, the FSG case study shows that asset value can increase rapidly without having to pour more cash in, and you can sell to commercial investors. As long as you make very smart transfer decisions over a long period and the tv bubble doesn’t burst.

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Tom Colborne @tomcolborne.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

There are exceptions though - FSG are looking at a c15x return on their £300m having put no additional money into LFC bar some cheap loans for infrastructure, now largely repaid? But I doubt that could be replicated - it needed Klopp to run on a £35m annual net transfer budget for 9 years.

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Tom Colborne @tomcolborne.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

Maaaaaybe. I think he’d already done us a solid by staying another year by then. I wonder if Brentford would consider a straight swap…

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Tom Colborne @tomcolborne.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

Tbf Kweevy only had a year left and wanted to go. If we sell Marmo his replacement would need to be ready to play 25 games this season.

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Tom Colborne @tomcolborne.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

£85m tbf. That has certainly turned my head

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Tom Colborne @tomcolborne.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

Neco Williams £30m. Frimpong to be our 5th winger. Keep Gakpo.

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Tom Colborne @tomcolborne.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

But won the sprints. That’s consistent with what iraola said the other day - his teams don’t always cover the most ground overall (although Bournemouth top 3 for that last season, probably facing fewer low blocks) but aim to make the difference with sprints and intensity.

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Tom Colborne @tomcolborne.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

I’m not quite at bare bones level, but I agree this squad has too many holes to compete on 4 (or probably even 2) fronts and a couple of injuries in key positions could derail us beyond that. But I hope this window is a step back in the right direction. Let’s see!

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Tom Colborne @tomcolborne.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

I think it’s simply because we see Bradley and Frimpong as the long term and Araujo (or by extension Gomez) as sufficient short term cover. Not sure I am totally convinced, but we do now have 9 senior defenders.

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Tom Colborne @tomcolborne.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

Early days but Jacquet looks ready to go sooner than expected, and hopefully Araujo and the return of Leoni means Gomez can cover Frimpong until Bradley returns. None of that is entirely ideal, but if we can get through the next month the options at the back look much better.

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Tom Colborne @tomcolborne.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

Tbf to both Hughes and Slot we had 2 right backs, they were just injured all season, along with Leoni. Dom made sense at first but came at too big a cost in midfield. Agree on overall depth. We are going to need youth, luck with injuries and a return to razor-sharp recruitment. A long road.

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Tom Colborne @tomcolborne.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

The upside possibility is Nyoni showed enough in pre-season to convince Iraola that we could focus on wingers. He was asked if Nyoni was at the level to replace Curtis and said yes. I also think/hope we won’t see Dom at rb ever again. That was maybe Slot’s biggest mistake in retrospect.

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Tom Colborne @tomcolborne.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

We were chasing the game so he chose Koumas instead, plus we had to use up a sub on Jacquet. I’m very much hoping that the answer to your original question is that Nyoni impressed Iraola enough to decide we didn’t need a new signing. If not we’re in trouble, but benefit of the doubt for now.

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Tom Colborne @tomcolborne.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

I’m worried about midfield depth too, but Iraola has said publicly that he thinks Nyoni is at the required level. Now we’ve spent ~£200m net elsewhere it does feel like young players stepping up needs to be a big part of our rebuild. That gives us 5 centre mids with Endo and McConnell on top.

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Tom Colborne @tomcolborne.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Each individual move can be defended, but as a whole the result was a predictable massive drop off in intensity, and way more change both numerically and stylistically than was needed or wanted. Defo some mitigation too, but this summer backs up the suspicion we simply stopped signing to a plan.

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Tom Colborne @tomcolborne.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

There were some quotes from Slot about the importance of the role Hughes played tbf. But yes who knows exactly did what in that multi-SD setup. Leoni and Jacquet might still turn out to be very good signings, possibly a couple of the others. Doing my best here.

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Tom Colborne @tomcolborne.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Tbf to Hughes he brought in Slot who immediately won the league with no help. That was a masterstroke regardless of what has happened on the player recruitment side.

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Tom Colborne @tomcolborne.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Possibly. There’s a double international break in Sept/oct so he might not miss that many games. It’s not really clear what the injury was, so hard to guess recovery times but I think Isak is the slowest healer in world football. Definitely not a good idea to sign an injured player either way

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Tom Colborne @tomcolborne.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Because we waited until the last week and got a last week price. He’ll be back in October so the injury is not the end of the world for them, compared to having to replace him at short notice. Sign Barcola, keep Cody and re-evaluate Minteh for Jan/next summer. Not ideal but better than being rash

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Tom Colborne @tomcolborne.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

It’s just way too much for too long. Time to mix it up, they’re basically just making the same joke 400 times a day for 15 years

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Tom Colborne @tomcolborne.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

Wirtz is a bit of a softy, probably due to growing up in the pre-school that is the Bundesliga, but I get the sense he cares. Isak struggles to look like he wants to be on the pitch most of the time. Surely when confidence/form is low then visible effort should be even higher.

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Tom Colborne @tomcolborne.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

Tbf the bottom 5 were hooked. 107 is exceptionally low even by last season’s standards. Didn’t feel like that, I thought we were much more energetic.

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Tom Colborne @tomcolborne.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

That 5km difference is probably all on the two number 9s

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Tom Colborne @tomcolborne.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

Yep the problem is we’ve lost our edge in identifying undervalued young players with ~200 games that have high potential to improve. Signing them earlier than that involves giving very young players a lot of game time. Very rare at elite clubs, but let’s see how Rio, Leoni and Nyoni get on.

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Tom Colborne @tomcolborne.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

He wouldn’t have got much game time for us then. And tbf prices for everyone have doubled in that period, and there’s clearly a shortage of left footed wingers. I actually think he could have been a decent buy on 1st July when he still had two legs, and might even have been cheaper.

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Tom Colborne @tomcolborne.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

We’ve gone from £35m net per year over the first decade to £250m last year and maybe £200m this. The spending and planning is Hughes’ job. He inherited some problems but compounded them with disastrous decisions and a bit of bad luck.

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Tom Colborne @tomcolborne.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Sure, but that’s always been the case.

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Tom Colborne @tomcolborne.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Totally agree - I just think that’s more a result of bad execution rather than FSG losing interest or stepping back. They brought in a whole new structure to make recruitment decisions and backed it with big money.

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Tom Colborne @tomcolborne.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

It’s a fair concern, but tbf if Barcola comes off we could be looking at close to half a billion net in two summers. That’s a massive outlay - the problem is we’ve managed it badly, not that the money wasn’t there.

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Tom Colborne @tomcolborne.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

He’s nearly 22 and has played pretty much 0 senior football at any level. Needs games, I think he’ll be loaned to the championship.

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Tom Colborne @tomcolborne.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

If Jones leaves and isn’t replaced that leaves us with 4 plus Nyoni, Elliott and Endo. The numbers are probably ok, and I think it’s reasonable to expect more from Wirtz, Grav and Mac this year, but you wouldn’t really want to be fielding two of the others in the same game very often.

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Tom Colborne @tomcolborne.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

Wouldn’t be a surprise, and probably à bit of loan shop-window going on. Not much of a sniff for Elliott. Nyoni looks like he might get a chance

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Tom Colborne @tomcolborne.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

Be the change you want to see

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