The "Ain't this season over yet" Cyberkop

[Oheddieeddie]

No fucking way is Snods gona be at ER next season.

Aye good luck Snoddy, and could you do us a favour and dump O'dear on the soccer scrap heap as you leave the Elland Road car park.

[snoozedoggydog2]

No fucking way is Snods gona be at ER next season.

Yeah he will with West Ham though

[eric olthwaite]

O'Dea is our only player whose name is 75% vowels.

That's the most interesting thing I can think of about this evening.

[Oheddieeddie]

O'Dea is our only player whose name is 75% vowels.

That's the most interesting thing I can think of about this evening.

Did you learn nothing from the fish debate man?

[alienbumnote]

the season has been fucking shite - BATES OUT

[MightyWhite]

Joyous scenes at the Majdeski as Reading get promoted.

Not jealous in the slightest

[Oheddieeddie]

Joyous scenes at Bloomfield Rd as wankers identifies Bromby and Pugh as the players who stood out for him


Colin did say on several occasions I want to tell the fans everything, but I'm having to bite my tongue at the moment

[welshwhite]

we have about five players in the squad that are top end championship players, with our end of the season collapse they now have the excuse they may have needed to jump ship (and who can blame them). so i expect if history repeats itself to lose one or two of the best players in the summer,

there is no realistic chance of getting the investment needed to build a team capable of competing for a play-off/promotion challenge so we are fucked for next season before a ball is kicked, i hope to be proved wrong of course.

there has to be full scale riots/protests before its to late to change the way the club is run,

fuck off.

[Ontolly]

Bates gamble failed miserably - should be interesting watching him and Colin

Can't be fucked - fuck off

[AndyPaul]

Just got back....

And that was the best part of the night, well that and a turkey and stuffing sandwich I got outside the ground.

[Rob]

A truly terrible, but quite inevitably predictable end of season run, entirely engineered by the quite appalling Bates. Until we are rid of the mad old bastard we are condmened by his short term penny pinching attitude to forever struggling in this god awful division. By whatever means the sooner Bate is out of our of club, the better. He is strangling Leeds. We should at least be a top six club.

Cheerio Snodgrass - good luck to you and thanks for all you've tried to do.

God help you Colin, you've little chance against Bates.

LUFC RIP until Bates departs.

Totally depressed.

[the flying pig]

A truly terrible, but quite inevitably predictable end of season run, entirely engineered by the quite appalling Bates. Until we are rid of the mad old bastard we are condmened by his short term penny pinching attitude to forever struggling in this god awful division. By whatever means the sooner Bate is out of our of club, the better. He is strangling Leeds. We should at least be a top six club.

Cheerio Snodgrass - good luck to you and thanks for all you've tried to do.

God help you Colin, you've little chance against Bates.

LUFC RIP until Bates departs.

Totally depressed.

Agreed.

The YR phone-in was remarkable IMO for its number of very downbeat contributions, both from Eddie & one or two of the callers.
My own prognosis gets drearier by the minute.

The only two possible bright spots I can see are: (a) Bates’ age – one way or another it seems fairly certain that he’s more than halfway through his time as Leeds chairman; and (b) other clubs’ compliance with ‘financial fair play’ possibly helping us a little bit.

The negative massively outweighs the positive, e.g.

(1) The seventh place we got last year was something of an overachievement with the squad we had at the time;

(2) Said squad was very significantly stronger than the one we have now or are likely to have next season without a frankly unimaginable splurge by Bates;

(3) This is already a hard division to get out of, more generous parachute [aka boomerang] payments will make it much worse.

There’s every chance that next season will be no better than this one. IMO it’s very likely, probable, even that it’ll be worse.

[gazurtoids]

(3) This is already a hard division to get out of, more generous parachute [aka boomerang] payments will make it much worse.

You say that, but not too many clubs do bounce back quickly. Instances of yo-yo-ers like WBA/Reading/West Ham seem to be outnumbered by those who never make it back (us, Leicester, Sheff Utd, N.Forest, Derby, etc etc). Similarly, plenty of clubs over the last 10--15 years have gone up and stayed up: Wigan, Stoke, Bolton, Fulham et al.

There’s every chance that next season will be no better than this one. IMO it’s very likely, probable, even that it’ll be worse.

Agreed.

[the flying pig]

(3) This is already a hard division to get out of, more generous parachute [aka boomerang] payments will make it much worse.

You say that, but not too many clubs do bounce back quickly. Instances of yo-yo-ers like WBA/Reading/West Ham seem to be outnumbered by those who never make it back (us, Leicester, Sheff Utd, N.Forest, Derby, etc etc). Similarly, plenty of clubs over the last 10--15 years have gone up and stayed up: Wigan, Stoke, Bolton, Fulham et al...

i didn't particularly mean that there's a tendency towards yo-yoing. by "hard" i just meant that last year our wage bill was only 14th highest, making it "hard" for a club with our modest appetite for spending to go up. it'll be harder still with more parachute money sloshing around.

[Man Called Sun]

Talking about promotion for next season is fucking ludicrous. We would have been very lucky indeed to be promoted last season, this season it was always gonna be next to impossible, so next season, on current projections of squad quality, it just isn't gonna happen.

The parallels with the relegation to L1 are there for all to see. I honestly think we could be clinging to the cliff edge this time next year.

[the flying pig]

Talking about promotion for next season is fucking ludicrous. We would have been very lucky indeed to be promoted last season, this season it was always gonna be next to impossible, so next season, on current projections of squad quality, it just isn't gonna happen.

The parallels with the relegation to L1 are there for all to see. I honestly think we could be clinging to the cliff edge this time next year.

yeah, i dunno. the very worst teams in this division have tiny wage bills, & rubbish players. 06/07 was a particularly chaotic season for us. we probably just about had the ability [in some positions] to stay up but suffered from a shocking amount of instability - i should think we only had 4 or 5 players who clocked up 20 starts for us. the two very different ways in which we lost kilgallon & derry, the change of manager, no settled keeper, kandol, heathy, all amounted to special circumstances.

bottom half of the table seems likely enough, though.

[Man Called Sun]

Talking about promotion for next season is fucking ludicrous. We would have been very lucky indeed to be promoted last season, this season it was always gonna be next to impossible, so next season, on current projections of squad quality, it just isn't gonna happen.

The parallels with the relegation to L1 are there for all to see. I honestly think we could be clinging to the cliff edge this time next year.

yeah, i dunno. the very worst teams in this division have tiny wage bills, & rubbish players. 06/07 was a particularly chaotic season for us. we probably just about had the ability [in some positions] to stay up but suffered from a shocking amount of instability - i should think we only had 4 or 5 players who clocked up 20 starts for us. the two very different ways in which we lost kilgallon & derry, the change of manager, no settled keeper, kandol, heathy, all amounted to special circumstances.

bottom half of the table seems likely enough, though.

That instability is still there though innit?
We're all resigned to losing at least a couple of our best players, and even with them here we've been in relegation form for about half this season. A poor start to next season and renewed protests will only lead to the departure of one man, and it won't be Bates. And who'd come in then eh?

[gazurtoids]

(3) This is already a hard division to get out of, more generous parachute [aka boomerang] payments will make it much worse.

You say that, but not too many clubs do bounce back quickly. Instances of yo-yo-ers like WBA/Reading/West Ham seem to be outnumbered by those who never make it back (us, Leicester, Sheff Utd, N.Forest, Derby, etc etc). Similarly, plenty of clubs over the last 10--15 years have gone up and stayed up: Wigan, Stoke, Bolton, Fulham et al...

i didn't particularly mean that there's a tendency towards yo-yoing. by "hard" i just meant that last year our wage bill was only 14th highest, making it "hard" for a club with our modest appetite for spending to go up. it'll be harder still with more parachute money sloshing around.

I was referring to the "parachute == boomerang" thing really. It seems to me that the parachute payments prevent clubs who come down from imploding under the weight of their CL wage bill rather than necessarily giving them a platform to jump straight back up (although, obviously, Newcastle are a good example of a side who did so and West Ham might well similarly succeed this season. Did Sunderland go down and bounce straight back too?)

[Phil LUFC]

I was referring to the "parachute == boomerang" thing really. It seems to me that the parachute payments prevent clubs who come down from imploding under the weight of their CL wage bill rather than necessarily giving them a platform to jump straight back up (although, obviously, Newcastle are a good example of a side who did so and West Ham might well similarly succeed this season. Did Sunderland go down and bounce straight back too?)

It then comes down to how the teams coming down have been run in th premier league really and what sort of funds the owner is willing to throw in. Wolves and Blackburn have been flirting relegation for a few seasons anyway and probably aren't big payers anyway, so they could perhaps flog 1 or 2 but largely maintain the current squad for a year or 2. Newcastle were bankrolled because they couldn't be sold, bit like leicester in league one. Blackpool were sensible in their 1 year up there rather than going all out to try to stay up.... best for us really if the teams coming down go straight back up or go into meltdown - hopefully west ham will hit melt down if this season's gamble fails, Brum and Blackpool look to be more settled for another push next season and I recon all 3 who come down will be in a position to challenge next season.

[the flying pig]

let's say that the current prem bottom three, bolton, & wolves go down. all three would have to reduce the wagebill if they went down. 'doing a newcastle' would be pretty much out of the question.

anything could happen at blackburn given their ownership. bolton have a fair-sized debt [and a hotel]. wolves i'm not sure about.

but it's quite a stretch to imagine of them ending up shopping or players in the same places that we mostly do. i doubt we'll see too many paynter/rogers/mika/forssel/webber type signings from them. so i think we can reasonably assume that they'll be better than us.