Phil Lafferty 🇬🇧

The most amazing day of my life. What a feeling @tams1981 😍 #mr&mrs #familycomplete

MATCH DAY - ⚽️ We’re all set for the visit of @SidmouthTownAFC today in the @_WesternLeague_. Adults - £8 Concessions - £5 13 - 18 - £2 Cash or card 💸 Tea hut open from 2pm 🍔 💚🖤

🎶 The Cranberries From 1995! Dolores O'Riordan What A Voice! 🔥

NEXT UP - ⚽️ We host @SidmouthTownAFC at Blaise Park this weekend in the @_WesternLeague_. Looks like we’ll finally have some sun for this one, so make sure you join us! ☀️ 💚🖤

@Chels_HQ @BBCSport And have lost as many games in this last week as Arsenal have all season.

Pat Nevin: "#Chelsea are closer to relegation than to Arsenal, and this is a team that has spent £1.5bn. This is four years into the project. You have to start asking some questions." (@BBCSport)

If you enjoy this account, and care for the memory, and future of Britain's Pubs, kindly follow (if you don't already) and share this post in order to help others find us. Thank you all for your support. 🤝

@ralpha060461 👍👏🏻

The owners are rich guys. I don’t think they’d employ a lot of youngsters without experience to run their businesses but think it’s alright to run a once successful football club like it 🤷‍♂️

@MartinKnight_ Not dying. Being killed.

Where I live pubs are disappearing or empty (closing soon), restaurants giving up, shops boarded up or reincarnated as barbers or vape shops. The towns and villages we loved & knew dying before our eyes. So sad.

@CFCCath Vote with feet. All for it. But we have another 6 years minimum of this ownership 🤯😤

In the 50 years I’ve been going to bridge never seen so many walk out at HT including me. There was talk of doing it in a game later on but today’s performance brought it forward ..

The @Chelsea display tonight was: Soulless Heartless Disorganised Schoolboys And the pointing fingers can only start at the top Ownership Sporting directors

@ralpha060461 And manager!!

Inexperience has cost us again tonight Owners must learn that to compete at the very top you need experience players

@Secretgrassroo2 😂😂

Coaching an under 8s team with two Mums both named Karen

This one is a football accounting gem. I promise you will love it. In January 2023, Chelsea signed Mykhailo Mudryk from Shakhtar Donetsk for £88.5 million. The deal was jaw dropping on its own. But what really made the football world stop and stare was not the fee. It was the contract length. Eight and a half years. The longest contract in Premier League history at the time. Journalists questioned it. Rival clubs complained about it. And most fans had absolutely no idea what Chelsea were actually doing. But let me tell you. They were not being reckless. They were doing math. Very clever, very deliberate, very legal math. And the tool they were using is called amortisation. This is part of what football insiders consider during transfers. Are you with me? Good. Here is the simplest way to understand amortization. When a club signs a player, they spread the accounting of the cost of the transfer fee over the period of the contract signed by the player. So for example, when Harry Maguire signed for Manchester United in 2019 for £80 million on a six year deal, that did not show up as an £80 million expense in year one. It worked out as an annual amortisation cost of £13.3 million per year. That is the entire concept. Think of it the same way you think of a mortgage. You do not pay the full value of a house on the day you move in. You spread it. Football clubs do the exact same thing with players, and it is not a trick or a cheat. It is standard accounting practice used across every industry in the world. Check it. It's International Standard 38- used for accounting for intangible assets. The reason it matters so much in football is because of Financial Fair Play and Profitability and Sustainability Rules, which regulate how much clubs can lose in any given period. Amortisation costs are added to the profit and loss account each year, so the lower your annual amortisation figure, the healthier your books look. And here is where contract length becomes a weapon. Now let us do the math together. By using amortisation to complete Mudryk's transfer, Chelsea were able to record his £80 million fee as just £9.41 million per year for UEFA's FFP calculation. Had they signed Mudryk to a four year deal instead, his fee would have been recorded as £20 million per year. Same player. Same fee. More than double the annual accounting cost just by changing the contract length. That is the power of what Chelsea figured out. They did the same with Enzo Fernandez, signed for a then-British record of £106.8 million on an eight and a half year deal, which translated to an annual amortisation expense of approximately £13.4 million. And Moises Caicedo for £115 million on eight and a half years. And Wesley Fofana for £70 million on seven years. Repeat this across an entire squad and a billion pounds of spending starts to look manageable on paper. Did you get that? Now let's look at another part of amortization- the book value piece, because this changes how you think about every transfer you have ever watched. Book value is the difference between the transfer fee spent on a player minus what has already been amortised. For example, after two years, a £50 million player signed on a five year deal has a book value of £30 million. Any sale above £30 million is recorded as a profit. Anything below is a loss. This is why clubs can sell a player for what looks like a loss and still report a gain in their accounts. Take this example: a player is signed for £40 million on a five year contract. He is not a success and is sold two years later for £26 million. At the point of sale, his book value is £24 million, meaning the club actually books a £2 million profit on the deal. Fans see terrible business. The accountants see a gain. Same transaction, completely different reality. Manchester City lived this with Robinho. He was bought for £32.5 million on a four year deal in 2008, with annual amortisation of £8.1 million. He was sold after two years, leaving a book value of £16.3 million. City sold him for £18 million and claimed a £1.7 million profit on the sale. Supporters spent years calling it a disaster. The finance department called it a profit. There is one more trick worth knowing: contract extensions. If a player signs a new contract during their existing deal, the remaining unamortised value is spread over the length of the new contract. So if you bought a player for £60 million on a five year deal and after two years you extend his contract by three more years, the remaining £36 million book value is now spread across five new years instead of three. That reduces the annual amortisation cost and can reduce FFP losses by millions per year. Extending a contract is not always about keeping a player happy. Sometimes it is purely a financial decision dressed up as a vote of confidence. Back to Chelsea. Other clubs eventually complained loudly enough that UEFA had to act. UEFA amended its Financial Sustainability Regulations in July 2023, introducing a rule that limits the amortisation of player registrations to a maximum of five years, regardless of how long the contract actually runs. The Premier League followed in December 2023, when shareholders voted to apply the same five year maximum to all new or extended player contracts going forward. The loophole was closed. But crucially, the rule could not be applied retrospectively, meaning every player Chelsea signed on those long contracts before December 2023 continues to be amortised over the full contract length. Chelsea were already finished with their biggest spending windows by the time the door was shut. The timing was not a coincidence. As I conclude, always remember this- the contract is never just a contract. It is an accounting instrument. And the clubs that understand that are always three moves ahead of the ones that do not. I hope you enjoyed this. Tomorrow, by 7AM WAT, We get into the wage bill, and why a £50 million transfer can quietly become a £150 million commitment before you have blinked. Thanks for reading. My name is Ajoje. I am a FIFA Licensed Agent and International Sports Lawyer. I write on the Law and Business of Football, a lot. Repost and Follow if you want to read more posts like this.

Someone on an average £35k salary who works full-time will be about £1.4K worse off in 2026. Meanwhile a non-working household with five kids on benefits could be £10K better off. At what point did we start punishing work and rewarding not working? The system is becoming a joke. #BrokenBritain #RestoreBritain

@FootyHumour 😂😂

“Dear diary, day 74 of pretending to be a football coach… they still haven’t realised I’m actually Memphis Depay.” x.com/youngjohne8776…

⚽️💚🖤Tuesday Night Football⚽️🖤💚 Tomorrow night we welcome @NPFC03 to Blaise Park in the @StPiranLeague 📆 17th March 📍 Blaise Park ⚽️ 7:30 KO 🎟️ Adults - £3 Concessions - £2 Under 18 - £1 @markrapsey1 @Cornishfootball @devoncornwallfc @swsportsnews 💚🖤

@LiamNicholls9 @UndrTheCosh Thanks mate! Didn’t know about this 👌👍

Jason Cundy Out Now On Patreon! Full Release 5pm Tomorrow

When the manager says you're the best player in the world in your position, then plays you in another position where you're not the best, & plays someone in your position who's not as good as you, it's not a good look @ChelseaFC

@DominicKing_DM What’s happened to football. Mental 🤯

Everything about this is absolutely absurd. The huddle, it’s so obvious it’s a directive from the coaching team. Why doesn’t Tierney push them away or move out of the way? Well, for a starters, he’s got a camera on him.

@StBlazeyAFCRes @markrapsey1 @Cornishfootball @swsportsnews @devoncornwallfc Brushed aside a really experienced & strong St Teath side today. Physically & technically stood up to the challenge & fitness levels outstanding. Impressive 👏🏻

Great Result against a strong St Teath side. Our goals coming from: Joe Munday⚽️⚽️ Alfie Teuton⚽️⚽️ Jack Ratcliffe⚽️ Harry Blows⚽️ Rossy⚽️ Through to semi-final number 2 @markrapsey1 @Cornishfootball @swsportsnews @devoncornwallfc 💚 🖤

MATCH DAY - ⚽️ Adults - £3 Concessions - £2 13-18 - £1 Come and get your football fix today ☀️ 💚🖤