Looke posted:

The trout pout is so unappealing I don’t understand why the lasses these days do it

Bape Culture posted:

Wonder how much that cost I don’t think I’d have bothered

"Wayne" posted:

footballers in a no win situation

sticksy posted:

Pep's mom has just died from Coronavirus

Looke posted:

https://twitter.com/skysportsnews/status/1247215236815507468?s=21

Lmao

TheRat posted:

Imagine being so greedy you're upstaged by the loving Glazer family lmao

https://twitter.com/lauriewhitwell/status/1247271247815356416

quote:

In addition, United are extending goodwill payments for non-match day causal workers until June 1, covering their average weekly salary based on hours worked between December and February, and doing the same for match-day casual workers, in a scheme that covers nearly 4,000 people. United began the coronavirus outbreak by reimbursing fans who travelled to Austria for the Europa League tie against LASK that was played behind closed doors at short notice.

The Athletic posted:

FIFA is to confirm an indefinite extension to the 2019-20 season across the globe, allowing each country’s football authority to determine when campaigns can finish.

The game’s world governing body will also alter the dates of the summer transfer window and permit contract extensions for players whose deals run out on June 30.

The plans, which are likely to be revealed in the next 48 hours, will afford maximum flexibility with FIFA appreciating the spread of coronavirus is different in each country. This comes after UEFA last week committed to finishing the current season and was moved to deny a report that its own president, Aleksander Ceferin, had set a deadline of August 3 to complete all outstanding games.

While the decision from the highest authority in football does not take null and void off the table, it considerably reduces the chances of seasons being cancelled altogether. The planned announcement was greeted by one Premier League club as “really sensible”, with it removing the pressure to conclude the season at a time when the world is dealing with a pandemic.

The Athletic understands timeframes were not discussed at great length in Friday’s meeting between Premier League clubs. There are significant fears that the 20 sides may yet need to repay £762 million to broadcasters should the season not be completed, with The Athletic revealing last week that the determination to finish the campaign even led to one idea of taking games to China.

Insiders at a number of clubs say a reality seems to have finally dawned over the past week that, while ideas can be formulated for different scenarios around scheduling, until the outbreak passes over the top of the curve nobody will really be able to plan with confidence.

While some Premier League clubs accept that there might be no option other than to resume seasons behind closed doors or even at neutral grounds in other “safe” countries, other clubs believe football should only return when fans are able to enter stadiums.

It is on this battleground that the next debate in England is likely to be had, especially as some Football League clubs are concerned about extending contracts if there is no clear date for a return to football, knowing that they will have to carry out paying money with no signs of standard streams of income in that period.

The situation with football contracts is a complex one, as The Athletic’s Matt Slater explained. One manager of an EFL club told The Athletic over the weekend that he has 13 players out of contract in June and 10 of those contracts are unlikely to be renewed.

Some of his concerns related to the focus of his team and therefore the integrity of the league, considering he would have to ask a number of players to perform for him when they know they might not have jobs in the near future.

He was also worried about the length of the next transfer window, questioning whether it would be long enough for him to sign enough players to be able to register a squad for the 2020-21 season.

The Premier League summer transfer window is due to end on September 1 at 5pm and the EFL announced in February an “agreement in principle” to return to a traditional deadline day at the end of August.

The Athletic also revealed how the Premier League’s hopes of striking a deal to secure 30 per cent wage deductions or deferrals from players were in peril on Saturday night as footballers became increasingly concerned that agreements may benefit club ownerships more than non-playing staff or the emergency services. Discussions are expected to resume this week.

NotJustANumber99 posted:

King Kenny's got it but not properly.

A bit like Liverpool and the title.

NotJustANumber99 posted:

King Kenny's got it but not properly.

A bit like Liverpool and the title.

NotJustANumber99 posted:

King Kenny's got it but not properly.

A bit like Liverpool and the title.

pik_d posted:

Perhaps he should have taken the NHS's advice and walked alone??

trem_two posted:

Juve have ordered all of their players that left Italy to return immediately, so they can go through 14 day quarantine before resuming training on May 4.

trem_two posted:

Juve have ordered all of their players that left Italy to return immediately, so they can go through 14 day quarantine before resuming training on May 4.

Total Meatlove posted:

Rangers have accused the SPFL of underhanded tactics and requested an independent investigation into the process surrounding the decision to end the season early.

CyberPingu posted:

That's very coming from Sevco.

jre posted:

This does not do justice to the extended hilarious meltdown that sevco are having right now

trem_two posted:

Know of any good articles that describe the situation? I enjoy a good meltdown.

trem_two posted:

An Italian paper was given a leaked government document, the earliest that they'll allow Serie A matches to be played with spectators is January.

trem_two posted:

Know of any good articles that describe the situation? I enjoy a good meltdown.

VVV thanks op

gently caress giving the sun clicks posted:

BIGGER MAN Rangers are shooting themselves in the foot – I can’t see what they have to lose by ending season, writes Bill Leckie

COME three o’clock on Saturday, we should throw open our windows and give thanks to Scottish football for all its wonderful work at this time of crisis.
They’d hear the silence all the way to Wuhan.
Two minutes of tumbleweed for a clueless, classless bunch who’ve become a virus in their own right.

I’m not just talking here about that slow-moving and slower-thinking target we call the Blazers — though goodness knows I’ve peppered that target often enough down the years. I’ve written the words Doncaster Must Go so often they’re programmed in as F7 on my laptop.
Yet truth is, right now I actually feel a teeny bit sorry for the guy after the pandemic of pathetic posturing that has left millions of us feeling sick these past few days.

Doncaster remains nearer curtain material than leadership material, that’s for sure.
Not so much the strong, silent type as weak and mumbling.
But let’s be honest here, what chance would Churchill himself have had of rallying the rabble we’ve become, into some sort of war cabinet?
The half-chewed cigar would have fallen from his jowls in disbelief as he watched Friday night’s mirthless farce unfold, with its 5pm deadline that wasn’t and its mystery vote lost in cyberspace.

He’d have tuned into the mud-slinging pantomime of BBC Scotland’s Sportsound on Saturday afternoon and reckoned taking on the Third Reich was a picnic in comparison.

Then he’d have put on his most serious voice to tell the nation: “They will fight each other on the beaches.

"They have nothing to offer but duds, threats and jeers. Bugger this for a game of soldiers.”

Take Rangers, whose managing director Stewart Robertson, as one of three Premiership members of the SPFL board, was in from the inception of the proposal to call time now on season Covid 19-20 and decide titles, promotion and relegation on the basis of current points.
If he was against that proposal, as it appears he was, that was the time to make a fuss.

After all, his was one of only three top-flight clubs directly represented in the talks; yet while it appears the other two have been happy to let what happens on Skype stay on Skype, he waits until he’s back at Ibrox and immediately becomes part of a guerilla exercise in setting all hell loose.
How can Robertson be a cog in the machinery one minute then throw a spanner in it the next?
Surely he can’t be with the SPFL and also against them.

As for his chairman, Douglas Park, how can he then call for Doncaster to be suspended as chief executive when his own MD is making the job impossible?
For me, the answer’s simple. Rangers are so terrified of upsetting their own supporters that their thought process is paralysed.
They’re punching themselves in the face.

I mean, you can understand perfectly, if not necessarily agree with, why Hearts, Partick Thistle and Stranraer would oppose a plan that robbed them of the chance to avoid relegation.
You can see why Falkirk would be so distraught at being denied the opportunity to overturn Raith’s single-point lead in League One.
There’s even a shred of logic in Caley Thistle and Dundee believing they might somehow both go up to the top flight if the season went the distance.

But Rangers? I simply can’t see what they have to lose by agreeing to call it quits.
They’d get some cash everyone knows they need.
They’d help a whole of lot of other clubs be sure of surviving until the shutters clatter back up.

They’d come across as The Bigger Man by handing their greatest rivals the title in the name of the greater good.

Most of all, though, by being this Bigger Man they’d be able to crow that Celtic didn’t actually win the title, that it’s only actually eight and a half in a row, that if this was an episode of Friends it would be called The One With The Asterisk.

Whereas, if somehow the season ever did restart, they could lose the last two Old Firm games, end up 20-odd points adrift, it would be nine for real and there would be a lot less chance of Steven Gerrard hanging around to try and stop ten.
Yet it seems it’s in their DNA to react to every difficult situation not with diplomacy, not with reason, but with anger and spite.
They hand their diehards a scatter-gun loaded with innuendo to spray all over social media until it — whatever “it” may be — becomes accepted as fact.
As for Scot Gardiner, the Caley Thistle chief executive who had his day in the limelight during that Sportsound bunfight?
He’s been hailed for “offering the fans clarity”, but in truth he cleared up nothing.
All he did was klype on Dundee for ticking ‘No’ on their ballot paper then failing to get it in on time.

Great radio and a story that filled acres of space in every Sunday paper, but a contribution that seemed more than a tad stage-managed, particularly when the former Rangers employee and lifelong fan had to take his dog Cooper for a pee just as Douglas Park was making his “we will not be silenced” statement.

For the record, this is also the same Scot Gardiner who, as chief executive of Dundee, accepted the SPL’s 2012 offer of a promotion they hadn’t earned after Rangers were relegated over their financial implosion.

It’s also the same Scot Gardiner who left a similar role at Hearts at the height of the fiasco over their new Main Stand project — remember when they forgot to order seats for it? — and the same Scot Gardiner who went to Caley Thistle just in time for their main investors to walk away and the wolf to start scrabbling at the door.

That he’s now been held up as a hero in one of Scottish foot-ball’s darkest hours just about says it all.
Though if Bonnie Tyler was holding out for one of THOSE right now, she’d be advised to bring a sleeping bag and a good book.
Because here we are with Rangers refusing to vote ‘Yes’ to a proposal their own Managing Director was part of in case the natives revolt.
With Hibs, I’m told, wanting to vote ‘No’ but terrified their natives would be raging at saving Hearts.

We have Dundee’s ‘No’ vote failing to hit the SPFL’s inbox, but them somehow not being able to send it again, like anyone else would.

We have Brechin chair Ken Ferguson sitting on the SPFL board as Div 1&2 rep and next thing his club being the only one spared the threat of relegation.
And then we have Celtic, unseen and unheard throughout, yet with the presence of kingmaker Peter Lawwell seeming to hang over every move that’s being made.
So let’s thank all the gods that this is only football, because if this lot were in charge of tackling coronavirus we’d all have cholera and mumps as well.
As Churchill himself almost once said, never in the field of human conflict was so much cocked up by so few . . .

Looke posted:

lmao a u turn from Tottenham as they will no longer be using the government retention scheme for their furloughed staff

Looke posted:

Bundy posted:

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1249751482968219649.html

There's not a big enough

Partick Thistle’s legal counsel opinion posted:

21. Of key importance for present purposes is that the Briefing Notes proceed on the basis that a pre-condition for making any additional payments to SPFL member clubs is that the Season 2019/20 had to be brought to an end. That position is re-iterated in the SPFL Letter, which states:
“It has been suggested that it is open to the SPFL Board to distribute end-of- season fee payments to clubs now, in the absence of league placings being finalised. That is simply not the case. For the Board to be able to authorise end- of-season fee payments to clubs (amounting to £9.3 million gross), final league placings must be determined. Those who have suggested that the SPFL may make such payments, without a line being drawn under Season 2019/20, are wrong.”

22. As we understand matters, moreover, and as has been widely reported in the media, various members of the SPFL enquired of the SPFL whether there was any way that payment of moneys could be made to members without the season itself being brought to an end. On their doing so, we understand that they were informed by the SPFL (consistently with the position most recently stated by the SPFL in the SPFL Letter) that it was not possible for any such payments to be made unless the season was first brought to an end. We refer in this connection, for example, to the BBC Sportsound interview given by Scott Gardiner, Chief Executive of Inverness Caledonian Thistle FC, to this effect on 11 April 2020. Mr Gardiner further stated that member clubs were presented with the Written Resolution on a “take it or leave it” basis, as the only means by which payments could be made to clubs. The BBC journalist, Tom English, confirmed that he had spoken with three other member
clubs, in addition to Rangers, who felt that they had been bullied; and one club said it felt “as if gun had been held to their head” to vote for the Written Resolution, on the basis that there was no other basis on which moneys could be advanced to members.

23. We consider the information provided by the SPFL to be materially inaccurate, in respect that:
(a) Fundamentally, it ignores the fact that the Articles and the SPFL Rules in any event require to be changed without all of the league fixtures being played – thus, it is not open to the SPFL (or its board) simply to declare the season to be over now in terms of the Articles and SPFL Rules as they stand. The Briefing Note does not address or acknowledge the fact that, such alterations being required, it would equally be possible to change the Articles and Rules to allow payments to be made at this time, based on current league positions (perhaps with some provision made for adjustment/balancing once the league fixtured were completed if league positions had changed by the end of the season), without the need to terminate the league season early. If, as we understand to be the case, the major concern of many member clubs was simply a desire to secure payment now, without promotion and relegation also being decided without all league fixtures being played, in our opinion these were matters of importance which ought to have been explained, fairly and clearly;
(b) The SPFL makes interim payments in the course of a season and we understand that it has already done so in the course of the 2019/20 Season.
(c) The SPFL had power to advance moneys to member clubs on an interim or provisional basis as loans, pending confirmation of the final payments. In this respect, it has been reported the SPFL has in fact confirmed (to Rangers FC) that it considers that has the power to make loans now without bringing the season to and end or any alteration to the Articles being required. It appears from the email exchange between Mr Britton, of PTFC, and Mr Doncaster, of the SPFL, dated 12 and 13 April 2020, that it is indeed the case that the SPFL would in principle entertain applications for loans from members clubs, possibly with the provision of personal guarantees or securities.


24. In the foregoing circumstances we consider that that there may be a basis for the argument that the directors’ duty, in respect of the provision of sufficient information, in a clear manner, so as to allow informed decisions to be reached, has been breached. In this respect, we recall that “a lack of information may constitute misrepresentation by omission”. Given that it is a “matter of fact and degree” whether sufficient information has been given to allow an informed decision to be taken by members, the failure to explain to members that a lesser alteration of the Articles and SPFL Rules, so as to allow payments to be made to member clubs, without the immediate termination of the current league season (and all that that entails in respect, notably, of promotion and relegation), and/or the failure to identify the possibility of loans being made were material and relevant omissions, could be characterised as a misrepresentation by omission, if it is indeed the case, as a matter of fact, that the principal concern of certain member clubs was to secure payment now without the immediate termination of the current league season.

25. If, moreover, as is understood may be the case, it could be shown that at least some member clubs which voted in favour of the Written Resolution would not have voted in favour of the Written Resolution had they been made aware of the alternatives discussed above, it respectfully appears to us that there would be reasonable grounds for challenging the validity of the procedure which has been adopted to date, and indeed of the Written Resolution were it now to be purportedly passed. Plainly, direct witness testimony from member clubs who were so induced to vote in favour of the Written Resolution would be required in order to allow such a claim to be advanced in proceedings.

Total Meatlove posted:

Scottish football is clearly the best football


https://cdn-5dd296c4f911cc1c581d2ef3.closte.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/2020.04.14-FINAL-Joint-Opinion-PTFC.pdf

“Give Celtic the title or you’ll go bust” isn’t a responsible platform for a league body to take.. who knew?