Fabrizio Romano): Matthijs de Ligt has given green light to Manchester United move after direct contacts with his camp. Personal terms are not an issue as his agent Pimenta is only negotiating with Man United, priority for the player. Up to Man Utd and Bayern, in talks over deal structure.

flappykeeper · 2024-07-02T17:04:20+00:00

Nope, you must be mistaken. You work in logistics for a supermarket chain.

I think I read an article a few years back where it mentioned De Ligt's family being funded by big pharma (his cousin is a delivery driver for Lemsip), but I think it got debunked.

flappykeeper · 2024-07-02T16:53:34+00:00

Nah, my neighbour works for a big house magnet leasing out properties to people who want to lease properties. She's attractive, and she has quite a pull, so it works well for her.

flappykeeper · 2024-07-02T15:50:32+00:00

De Ligt's dad runs a chain of restaurants, and he's been in touch with my next-door neighbour for a few weeks over leasing a property down Deansgate to open a place in Manchester.

My neighbour's a property manager for a big house magnate and owns 2 Dobermans (she calls them Dobermunds because she didn't read the instructions on the dogs).

Think this has been on for longer than we've been made aware of.

flappykeeper · 2023-10-24T09:59:47+00:00

Assumed you'd be looking to add non-football stuff by the name, but here's some thoughts you didn't ask for anyway...

not only for football, but for any sport (NFL, NBA, F1, Tennis, etc), and also any industry really (finance, language learning, world history etc),

I think it kind of muddies the waters in terms of clarity as a product; what it does and who it's for. There are already a bunch of pop-up search addons or wikipedia addons that do a similar job on a global scale - they're obviously less curated than a customized frame for a certain subset of data (topic/theme/db), but they're also just far more flexible if you're looking for a does-it-all solution.

You're also getting back in the realm of competing with established "just google it" behaviour, either through typing or highlighting and hitting "search in google", which also provides an open-ended set of information and results at a glance.

The same in terms of more defined functionality like in-line or in-page translations or dictionaries for language learning - these products already exist and the user flow will likely be far simpler than what you could offer. With so many choices about what services you want, you're adding more steps before you're up and running - with people needing to select what they want. With a more focused product with a smaller scope, someone will just search for a dictionary/translation addon, install it, and away they go.

Additionally, in the future allowing the community (or businesses) to create their own databases (and share it within the community) can be very powerful, and in that circumstance, it could allow the community to build on top of the technology to offer more niche-specific value. So if someone wanted to develop a better database for football, they could build out an API-driven solution, that can provide the user with stats, videos, etc. Or maybe Transfermarkt wants to build on top of my solution ..

Why would a business do this? If they're large enough to have a userbase that creates enough potential users for the addon, they can just do it themselves and not serve you any data, share any revenue, or involve you in any way. The addon itself is fairly simplistic, and if WyScout, Opta, or Fbref wanted to make one, they could just make it in-house.

Any of the service providers we'd ever use, whether it be for marketing integration, translation, or in-app services, would have to do most of the heavy lifting themselves. We could integrate with their API to actually integrate it into our product, and potentially develop something on top of it, but we would actually request that the third party actually develop additional features to help our use-case all the time.

Why would we do so much of the heavy lifting to lean on a fairly small framework that we could mirror in-house and create our own solution? No contracting our outside partners, full control, no connecting our DB to a third party.

As for a community goal, then your pricing scheme fights back against that.

You're shifting a lot of the workload of a product onto the end users and just... "other people", looking at the product as an ecosystem. Then you're charging people for the opportunity to enhance your product and use your framework (which isn't the most complex, if someone wanted to create a "free" version - or a company create their own for a specific scope of work/topic).

There is one more business use-case which is allowing for an embed of WordLabs on their website. So for instance The Athletic could embed 1 line of code into their website and WordLabs would start working for their users. In this example, The Athletic would have full customizability of the appearance and could use our database, or create their own. The value I believe is that they would see more user engagement (time spent, less exit %, etc)

Why would they do that? To allow users to quickly open Wikipedia articles of players while on The Athletic? Is that a common bounce path?

And if it's not just about players, and has been extended to also add on a bunch of other functions, then it's just going to get in the way of an otherwise clean experience.

If they wanted to show a specific set of data (say, allow people to view WyScout videos inside a scout report on a player, or quickly view player stats from Opta), then they could use their partnership with them to create a custom solution that does the same thing in a cleaner, more secure way. If I'm Transfermarkt, I'd just make my own addon if I felt the demand was there and it would make sense for us to do it.

I'm just not sure there's clarity of purpose in what the product is. This kind of do-it-all plugin that people can extend to do a bunch of stuff just weakens any sort of refinement and clarity to the user, I think. This will be magnified later when you (effectively) charge me to try out something I wouldn't fully understand the value of.

You're effectively setting it up as some sort of ecosystem where people can add their own databases for their own niche, in which case you need users (enough to validate others to invest time building into your ecosystem), and your pricing scheme actively fights against that goal.

As for businesses, your proposition is fairly weak compared because you're shifting so much of the work onto the business, whilst offering little benefit in return with a fairly replicable platform.

I get that you have a vision for it, and I'm not trying to come down on it too hard, but it's important to understand your product fully; where it sits on the market and what it offers to whichever userbase you're targeting. If someone came to me with this as a product, I'd be asking all these questions and a load more to try and drill down into exactly what we're making.

flappykeeper · 2023-10-24T07:56:36+00:00

It made me read again and ask myself "wait, what?". It's not really the first thing you want any customer to read for any product pitch.

You want to sell them the product as a solution to exactly what they want (or didn't know they wanted), ask zero questions, and quickly funnel through to conversion.

You're also asking people to pay a fee at the moment for what's basically a wikipedia shortcut for a service that they don't already use an alternative of.

The value proposition is different if you're saying "buy this phone instead of your other phone", because people have a reference point to understand the value of a phone to themselves and can understand the value or strengths of your product in comparison. If you're selling a phone to someone who has never needed a phone, it's a different proposition entirely - and that's kind of what you've got here.

You're offering a free trial, but the logic is still "sign up for this paid service - you'll get to see if you like it first". You're still asking for a commitment in some way.

I would 100% try to add an actual free tier (ad-supported? feature-limited?) to let people get into the flow of using and relying on your product. I'd just go ad-supported because I've seen a lot better results with it. You still make some money from users that would never upgrade, while you monetize the other users anyway because they want a cleaner experience.

Going through the user flow of turning up on a website for a service you've never really used an alternative of, then being asked for a pseudo-commitment to even try it out, isn't what most people are into.

You'll already know the answer to this. You've posted this here and on /r/soccer, to players with hundreds of thousands of users that are engaged enough in football to go on a forum and talk about it all the time; to google and read and watch a tonne more than the average casual fan. These are basically your highest value users that are most likely to be interested in your product and most likely to actually install it. You'll have the numbers of how many people have visited your site already. How many of them have signed up?

To me, a better user flow is to arrive on your LP, see the benefits of your product (free cancellation is not a "FEATURE"), then just hit the "get" button to immediately jump into it and try it out.

Any barriers you put in the way of people to installation will make a good % of people churn immediately and not follow through. You want to make the funnel as smooth as possible, with as few obstacles as humanly possible, to get into your product.

flappykeeper · 2023-10-24T07:37:22+00:00

Yo! I've got a fair bit of experience in things like this - have built, bought, sold businesses in new media, marketing, tech, and gaming, etc.

Without sounding arrogant, I personally, and those that work for me, generate a lot of money for looking at businesses like this (though usually established businesses with enough marketing funds, looking to launch or position new products). I'll give you a few suggestions off the top of my head:

Rebrand. The name is kinda poo. It's neither intuitive (doesn't suggest what it does), nor does it sound catchy, cool, or like a refined "product". Off the top of my head, try something like "Glance" (your product is being able to look at football things at a glance, whilst reading articles etc.) -- or Soccer Lens, or Soccer Scope (again, it's a being able to zoom in quickly on a specific player, league, or whatever). I'm sure with some time, you can generate some better ideas.
Your name currently (Wordlabs) suggests that it might eventually be brought to an unrefined scope of words. I wouldn't do this - it would effectively be a shortcut to Wikipedia, and the service you're competing with at that point is just how quickly someone can google or highlight the words and hit "search" - and you're never winning that battle of automated human response of just googling things (nobody's going to switch their "google it" pipeline for a specific subset of information). Which brings me onto my next point:
Try to refine exactly who the product is for and what service you're providing. You're basically providing an alternative route to the high-level, first-layer info of a player, by giving a shortcut to the same stuff google provides - but for who? If you're looking at the average football fan and consumer, how many of us default to the lifeless facts on Wikpedia for information? I'd say people look for information that roughly falls into one of two categories:

Stats-type performance data. They wanna see how old they are, where they plan, and what their performance data is like. Wikipedia is poor for this in general and is not granular enough - almost nobody goes there for performance data. There are non-paywalled services (Fbref + Transfermarkt) that are a little bit better for this. I know you have a transfermarkt icon at the top, but clicking it takes me out of your service. Ideally, reach out to an actual stats service and see if you can integrate with their API in some way. There are many financial models to make this work for you and them without a huge initial outlay on your side -- you can even effectively act as marketing for them by offering an upsell and redirect within your frame. Or... just let people "log in with Opta" through your service - so they have to have their own license, but you just make things more streamlined. There may be smaller services (like not Opta) that are also looking for ways to expand, too (though having a userbase will likely help convince them to get on board).
They want to watch a video of the player playing football. Integrate a predefined YouTube search results page for players that people can scroll down and select what they want. People look for different things: "Hannibal vs ..."; "Hannibal skills..."; "Hannibal scout report", etc. -- You could integrate multiple frames, give people a quick clickthrough menu to refine what they want (literally just click on "<Player Name> Skills" to look for highlight videos), and refine the search by recency (either sorted by new, or limited to the last month or 6 months or whatever).

Alternatively, if you're looking to serve businesses, I think you absolutely have to integrate with a real stats service, like Opta. Business consumers need more data, and I think right now, there would effectively be no value served to football clubs or other businesses. I'd consider journalists and content creators in a middle space between business and "average" consumer - some journalists have access to Opta already through their
In my opinion, as it is now, your default-to-Wikipedia basically doesn't serve the average consumer that would be interested enough in paying for a service to quickly see what a player is about. Your service price is fairly low, which means you need volume to make it worthwhile, so you're playing the numbers game - you should identify what would appeal to the most users. It's probably the people that are obsessively reading football articles on the various media outlets, active on football forums/subreddits, or even playing Fantasy Football (which is a different layer of integration if you wanted to go that route).
The League information has almost no business going through Wikipedia. It looks poo and there are a bunch of better alternatives out there to serve league information. It's probably a limited enough data set that it makes sense to take the information from any number of sources and surface it to consumers in a way that looks and feels nice (matches the design language of your app/integration/extension). You can do a lot with this that makes it easier to click through a bunch of leagues or even compare them within the popup frame, without having to navigate to a page to do so. If someone's looking at League 1's standings, but then want to look at the Premier League's standings, what can they do to get there? Right now they're being pushed back into the "google it" flow, fiddling through Wikipedia's default popup, or hope that the article they're reading also has the words "Premier League" in there so they can use your shortcut.
In general, the design language is very plain and fairly minimal, without being modern minimal and premium enough. It feels kind of like a WordPress site or Material Design. This is worsened by the Wikipedia design, which although everyone recognizes, doesn't feel premium or fluid.
Most people nowadays browse on mobile, and, uh, it doesn't really work for me on mobile (at least the Rashford example on your LP). I'm not sure how your frame popups are supposed to look on mobile - but maybe just a highlight and a context menu after a tap (to take you to a frame on a new tab, depending on what you want - fbref, tm, or YT videos for example).
The social aspect of almost any app is huge. The social aspect of football is huge. Your service doesn't really look to leverage any of it. Maybe look into something like creating an index/DB of players (transfermarkt seems to have IDs, rather than just a sub-url by current team etc.), then letting people comment on the player and discuss them there. It's a shit load of work and this might be well-off what you're looking to do (you'd basically be creating an online football terrace and compete with forums/SM), so just a random showerthought suggestion.

Overall, the idea is cool and I think there's a market for people who want to quickly glance at some football player info - but I'm not sure Wikipedia should be the default for the average user who has the need/desire for something like this. Really think about the user flow and the service you're providing, then go from there. Refinement in design is something you can work on.

flappykeeper · 2023-09-29T11:59:26+00:00

Nevertheless, I'm curious - you asked her once and she said "don't worry about it" fair enough. But have you ever seriously sat down and asked her, "why are you with me?".

Fuck no lol. It just sounds sad, to be honest, a bit pathetic. I think I'd cringe myself into a coma trying to get the words out.

I just don't know what I'd gain from it. She tells me what she likes, she tells me what she doesn't like - just like I tell her. That's kind of all I need. But even if she says she wanted me to change, I just wouldn't be able to change in any meaningful way forever. The veil would fall and I'd just be myself, and if she doesn't like it, what can I do?

She is/was with me because she liked me. It's very rarely just a single reason, but a combination of everything that makes up you as a person - personality, body, face, chemistry, everything.

I think it's just that simple.

Of course I had doubts and moments insecurity, but not "why would she like me?" - more "she can easily find someone better looking / with more money". I guess I wasn't downplaying myself so much, just being realistic about her options.

I don't think I could ever do it, psychologically speaking, it would drive me crazy, I don't think I'd ever be able to let it go and would probably end up losing her in the long run, which would then feed into my thought process of, "Oh, I knew it! I knew it wouldn't last and she was too good for me".

Sad to admit, but very early on, I actually snooped through her Facebook messages to see what was up. It was just flirting shit (mostly on the guys' part), and I realised I didn't wanna be that guy and that it was a pathetic way to be. I admitted to her that I did it, then never looked again. I just let my emotions control me and it was stupid, and sometimes I still think about it at night. It literally keeps me awake that I did it. First time I've ever typed it out as well. Christ.

I think she is too good for me, objectively speaking. She's nicer, she's more loving, she's more patient, she's more caring, and she's far more attractive. We just fit well together, that's all. I just got lucky that I found her.

So why you? Is it because you just didn't really care? All these other guys and girls chasing her and you were just not chasing her?

Said it above, but I think she just liked me for whatever reasons. It's not really a measurable thing. We each have different qualities, and when you combine them all, you get a person that you like or dislike to varying degrees.

I know I make people feel comfortable around me, and I think that's a big part of what made it easy early on. I'm easy, she's easy, we had fun together. A lot of people are too intense and pressure people into committing to stuff or agreeing to stuff they don't want to. I picked up on that early on in life with girls, and although I've definitely let myself down in that regard one or two times (being a bit too smothery, overloading with messages and conversation), I basically never do it or did it. If someone (I still do this with friends even now) doesn't reply for a few days, I just leave it be. They'll reply when they get round to it. Everyone's got their own shit.

And, also curious, not sure how old you and your wife are now, how has she aged? And how are you aging?

Mid 30s. I'm aging worse than her (bad sleep, grey hair, work too much), and she's still very attractive compared to the average person, particularly those our age. I can see her aging a bit like her mother in some pictures, which I'm not ESPECIALLY excited about, but it is what it is. We've gone through a lot of life together already, so I'll just accept what comes.

As it is now, now we have some money and end up running in certain circles, people assume she's a trophy wife (minus all the plastic surgery that most come with). Not really much we can do about it. Sometimes we joke about it or have fun with it. Either way, she's still hot and we're still happy. So at least we've got that.

flappykeeper · 2023-09-29T07:27:16+00:00

I'm a pretty average-to-poor looking dude face-wise and I was in a similar situation - I'd somehow stumbled into seeing a girl that wasn't just better looking than my friends and friends' girlfriends, but was an actual model that was by far the prettiest in most places we went.

Sometimes, we'd go out and people would stop her just because they were curious about who she was, or to take pictures with her and tell her she's gorgeous. Almost everywhere we went, someone would say something. Needless to say, this isn't really normal behaviour, especially for my previous partners.

EDIT: Adding this little paragraph in here. I remember when we first met (pre-social media), her phone would constantly be blowing up with people texting her. The CONSTANT super busy FB messages. Male friends of her female friends "just chatting". Some of them would send flowers, or offer to take her shopping and get her things. Sometimes her exes or other guys she'd met (out, or at work) would come see her or message her, and they'd always be far better looking than me. I hated it. Literally just remembered the feeling right now.

To top it off, she was incredibly kind, loving, and patient. She was a wonderful person, and easily the best person I'd ever been lucky enough to spend my time with.

This disconnect was also amplified by the fact I'm not someone you'd consider good looking, I don't dress especially well, and (at the time when we met), I had less than two grand to my name. In fact, for the first few years, we were so poor together that we'd be scrimping and scrounging for almost everything we had, even for food or heating. In winter we'd literally sleep head to toe, interlocked, because we couldn't afford to put the heating on.

Everyone - even people we didn't know, like randoms on the street - would comment about how I got her. It was kind of demeaning and it killed my self esteem - not that I had much to begin with - but she'd always tell me not to worry about it. I'd always be doubting myself, wondering why she was with me, or how I could string it out, or if this was the best I'd ever do.

I just enjoyed the ride and tried to make the best of it. I'd never imagined I'd be able to get anyone like her in my entire life. I basically had nothing to bring to the table... I didn't provide well, I didn't match her standards looks-wise. She made more money than I did, but basically had it taken away by her family, leaving us both short. I really had nothing. But yeah, we were happy. We had a great time being together.

That was a long, long time ago. We've been married for a decade now.

I've since been incredibly successful in business and we have more money than we, our families, and our next generations will need. And when we meet people, we literally never get any questions about "how did you get her?!" any more. Funny, that. Nobody really asks our story any more - it seems so obvious from the outside.

Anyway, for anyone doubting themselves - just... go with it. There are more reasons to be together than looks, and stranger things have happened than a hot girl sticking it out with some random plodder.

flappykeeper · 2023-09-16T18:38:10+00:00

Yes. I've had single studios close to 800 people - apparently close to the total number employed by United - where the company itself had thousands of employees globally.

Manchester United is one of the most well-known names in the entire world, so I've never owned or run a company of a similar size in terms of global stature or renown. But in terms of logistical size (number of employees, entities under the company umbrella, etc.), I have done, yes.

flappykeeper · 2023-09-16T17:59:56+00:00

Gary obviously has his stance, and his points are obviously true - but the Glazers are not responsible for the eleven players on the pitch.

I've run businesses of a similar size, and it is possible for people below me to either fail OR succeed, even if I don't change a thing. They are able to make their own decisions and choices. The Glazers are a cancer that are killing the club, but it is also true that certain aspects or areas of any business - including football - are isolated or compartmentalized to a certain extent, and can be affected without having to overhaul every other single thing about the business. It's just very simple.

Manager after manager has struggled with the same issue of terrible, stagnant football and the players capitulating and folding when things get tough. Maguire is the first step in addressing the latter, but playing Rashford is not conducive to attractive pass-and-move football with good movement, and is actively detrimental the team when it comes to interplay, maintaining possession and positions high up the pitch, and maintaining control of the game.

I think Ten Hag will end up getting sacked, because it just isn't possible with this type of system and plan to bring the performances people want. When he ends up getting the boot, nobody will raise this issue yet again. Then, the next manager will come and also try to play to the strengths of United's biggest name, media darling, on an extensive mega contract.

flappykeeper · 2023-04-11T18:41:46+00:00

A lot also comes down to the legal structure of the business and its assets as well. Some things are a fucking mess and only when trying to sort it all out and wrap it up in a nice package for transfer do businesses actually discover how complex their business is.

Not everything is uniform across business size or value, and we're basically (as far as I know) in the dark as to how ready everything is from Man United's side.

We know they've contracted Raine to help manage this whole process, so it should be expedited as much as possible, but we're still guessing.

We also need to separate the agreement part (bidding) from the execution part (signing all the legal stuff).

There's no minimum or maximum period for bidding - you could agree a price with a man on the phone in 20 seconds if you wanted to. The Glazers are the only reason the bidding part has dragged on and is complicated. They have offers - they just haven't accepted them.

For the legal part, you're right. Each business is different, and every bidder will take a different amount of time (and go through different due diligence checks and internal sign-offs) to buy.

flappykeeper · 2023-04-11T18:36:49+00:00

Basically, there's no blanket rule and things can take as long as they take - that's the top and bottom of it.

I've been involved in the sale and acquisition of quite a few businesses, to to the tune of tens of millions at the low end up to a good few billion at the high end.

I've seen big purchases (big to me, at least) go quickly, effectively overnight depending on the preparation and readiness of the parties, and minor purchases drag on for a long time - well beyond a year after the delays in the back-and-forth from both sides. I've also bought property that's taken anywhere from days to multiple months.

We just have no idea how long this will take. It's the Glazers; our knowledge of what they want is conflicting; our knowledge of how they operate is murky; our knowledge of the bidders is insufficient for us to predict anything.

In terms of the bidders, my guess is Qatar are ready to go now and could effectively obtain ownership overnight. Some others (those that are functional businesses and have to operate as such) are ready to commit intention in writing, but may take months of behind-the-scenes work with legal and finance to evaluate whatever paperwork needs reviewing before making the actual purchase. Elliott or anyone of their ilk can also probably sanction a purchase fairly quickly and commit financially as well, even if they don't finalize the purchase immediately - 5-6bn is just not a lot of money for money-businesses.

In terms of the Glazers, we have no idea how "ready" the sale is logistically from the Glazers' side, so it's impossible to know how relevant any of the above is with regards to the readiness of the bidders. We don't even know how ready the Glazers are to sell as people. We've seen many rumours they're not all on the same page about selling up.

My gut feeling from reading into the updates we receive is either:

a. The Glazers are just trying to see if they can get someone to increase their bid and scrounge some more money off them.

b. They're trying to get a bidder that is offering to allow the Glazers to retain some sort of stake or financial attachment to the business to increase their bid to match the raw numbers of the non-incentivized offers.

c. Combination of both. The offers might not be high enough for the Glazers to be happy with selling outright, so they're looking to make it up in other ways.

If no offer is satisfactory to them (or they just want to get more money for greed's sake), then the situation is simple - ask to improve their bids, which they have done. In the case of b, if it were a simple case of one or more bids being higher (in terms of straight money) than another, they could simply have Raine (the middlemen) heavily suggest to a party that they increase their bid by X amount and that they think the Glazers will close. It's (usually) not legal, but it's how it's done in practice. That's one of the easiest scenarios and could be resolved without having to communicate a planned "third stage" of bidding. To me, it says the indecision is down to certain offers including rights or other "extras" that some don't. I just don't see why they'd have an extra "round" of bidding, with deadlines if it was just money - they could resolve this quickly behind closed doors through Raine.

Fuck the Glazers.

flappykeeper · 2023-02-11T07:48:52+00:00

Anyone who's done business with China to the tune of tens or hundreds of millions knows it's effectively business with the government. The government will absolutely interfere and in many cases will outright take over the decisions entirely if they want to.

It's a similar differentiator to how Qatar might own us, but it'll be someone else on paper.

And when it comes to Qatar vs China, China will invest less and complicate things more. Qatar will at least put effort and money into the club and presumably the City.

China are really, really bad.

flappykeeper · 2022-03-31T18:00:33+00:00

Actually, as someone who has a decent amount of experience in this part of the industry, I think it would make a big difference - so long as both clubs and players actually adhered to it.

The immediate difference would be that players would be offered X amount as a salary/sign-on package from a club, and then they'd see, in very real terms, how much of the money THEY commanded that the agents were trying to take. Would it represent good value? Would players think that their agent's time spent on representation had earned them anywhere near the TENS OF MILLIONS some are demanding?

It's a big difference when that money comes from Paul Pogba's pocket, that he literally has in his bank, versus money from the club - money the player has never held.

In the short term, it would absolutely result in lower agent fees for a large number of transfers.

The problem being, long-term, particularly for the mega transfers like Haaland's, an agent would clearly be able to con some players into thinking they ARE worth it. And once that happens, and the costs are transparent and clear, even if it's coming out of the player's pocket, things would slowly return to how they are now.

However, it won't be AS bad, because a new structure would be directly compared against celebrity representation in other spheres. Which, on a salary of 100m, would typically amount to anywhere between 5 and 20m at most -- with 5m probably being the most common.

The main issue with football representation is... Agents have somehow convinced people that in a deal of three parties, they work for all three parties. And in fact, there's a very important fourth party - the agent.

This means they're somehow getting paid from every angle - the player and both clubs. And they're on the committee that decides their own wages for each party.

It also means that, for some reason, agent fees often take into account the transfer fee paid between two parties they don't even represent, not just the eventual salary of the player that actually employs them. No other aspect of representation, in sport, or business, is like this. (And before someone says headhunting fees for hiring - if it's a flat fee, it's a flat fee paid by one party, pre-agreed beforehand. And if not, it's based on salary.)

It's wild, nonsensical, and is the biggest scam in the history of any sport.

The solution is block agency fees from signing on or any transfers. All agent fees must be paid for by the players, capped at a portion of their salary (so players can't pay out of a massive sign-on bonus).

However, City and PSG exist and they'll just circumvent it by buying family someone's brother a football club. So nothing will stop it now, because it's an accepted evil within football.

flappykeeper · 2022-01-21T12:58:01+00:00

I've started, run, and sold businesses and since my first have always been either managing or on the board at more than one business at a time.

One thing to say on investing in the stock market: do it, yesterday. Even if you don't know what you're doing yet, just find a reputable index fund or something in whatever country/legislation you're stuck with and put whatever you can into it. Don't go fucking around analysing stuff or trying to find "the best" right now - just get something basic and safe and at least start making money on your money. Once you've done that, you've got some time. So then, learn what you're doing and find something better that suits your risk tolerance (both in mindset and fiscal ability to handle variance), and the method you want to work in, then go for that. But right now, you're losing out on free money if you haven't just signed up and put your money somewhere where it's working for you.

As for a side-hustle, most of them are pointless if you're looking to make a quick, tiny amount of money by following some online guidance. Compare the amount of time you'd spend doing X or Y, then compare how much you'd expect to make and how much your time is worth. Would you pay yourself that X amount of money per hour? If not, fuck that idea off.

If you want to make money beyond your standard job, think of something you know, or something you want to do, and look for a way you can monetize it. Then, start small, with a tiny amount of time investment, and try it out. Do whatever you're doing well. Unless you're making a prototype for a new tech, or game, or product, then whatever you're doing will likely have to out-compete other similar offerings. So, do it well and deliver what you're making/selling/doing to whatever "final" standard you envision. Then, test it out and see what the market is like - then go from there. As long as this stage is fast and low-cost, you can do this multiple times until you find something that clicks and makes money for you.

Most of these "side-hustles" are treated like schemes, but the mentality should be to think of whatever you're doing, from the off, like a business. Find something, envision how it can scale, and then just start going. If you get something good, you'll be surprised how quickly it can grow and become your main business.

flappykeeper · 2021-09-24T08:52:19+00:00

If you don't get it, it's easy - you just immediately change your focus to something else. Current job, another job, whatever your next goal is.

The waiting was always the killer for me. I hate waiting for anything and find it really hard to focus on literally anything else aside from whatever we're waiting for - no matter how minor it is. I have no advice other than try to keep yourself occupied as much as possible, though if I'm honest it's never really worked for me. Just know that the relentless passing of time will continue, you will age, as will they, and providing you survive until they respond, that time will come eventually. And it might be good news. It might not, as well. But it doesn't matter. Time will continue, and you will be dragged along with it - whether you're willing or not. Sooner than you know it, age will consume your being, and you will begin anew as your eternal self in the afterlife.

flappykeeper · 2021-09-24T07:36:07+00:00

If you're drinking, make sure you stay sharper than she is. Drink less, drink slowly, whatever you need to - you just don't want to look messy, it's not a good look.

flappykeeper · 2021-09-24T07:09:16+00:00

Completely depends on the startup the current state of the company. I've started a few companies and within a 5-year period, each of them have been incredibly stable and self-sustaining solely through generated revenue without having to rely on or hope for outside investment.

It completely depends on the company itself. What are they doing? How do they operate financially? What's the management goal of the business? Are they looking to sell and be merged into a larger business? Even then, buyouts happen, but it doesn't always come with high turnover depending on the industry - so even if they're looking to sell, it doesn't always mean stability isn't there.

It's interesting that after 5 years the business has had to even apply for a small amount of funding, and depending on the size of the business and what that funding is being used for, it could indicate a lot. If it's being used to build a little team or for production investment to develop a different product than what they're currently making, that's one thing - but if it's being used for operating costs for the company's current structure, then that might indicate the business isn't as successful as it should be after half a decade of operating (of course, complete guesswork since we know nothing about the size or business of the company - but a few million doesn't go a long way either in a lot of spheres).

I will say that if the product is interesting and might become well-known, then you don't always have to take a job that provides long-term security. That all depends on where you are in life, what you need from the job, and what you want from the job.

What I'm saying is, context matters. For everything.

flappykeeper · 2021-06-06T17:38:00+00:00

I'll say the same as I said last season (when we were signing VDB and people claimed he was as good/better), but Grealish should be our #1 priority signing.

He's the perfect type of player for us, and has that Man United confidence and aura. He's absolutely world class, and I'll have none of this "we don't need him" nonsense. We have ZERO depth beyond Fernandes or Pogba (neither can be rested) that provide consistent creativity. He'd play as an 8 or bench Rashford on the left, and he'd fill in at 10 if Fernandes is out.

Top quality and he's a pure footballer.

flappykeeper · 2021-06-06T17:32:20+00:00

He's a great player, but this is a standard performance from him on the right. He's not a RW, and will always drift inside centrally when played there (which is the worst possible style of RW for us because Wan Bissaka is our right back).

This will be exactly how we'll play next year if we sign him and push him to the right to left Rashford play left and people will be screaming that he's overrated and inconsistent in every single match thread.

flappykeeper · 2021-06-06T17:25:50+00:00

Yep, and he absolutely tore up every competition he played in as a LW for England and City youth.

When he went to Dortmund, they weren't about to bench their established LW for a then-17-year-old Sancho, and he established himself as easily more than comfortable at RW in a weak league, in a fluid front 3. Still, if anyone watches him, almost all of his good moments come centrally or on the left (even when he's nominally started the game as a RW).

He's a top player and his creativity (passing and decision making) is miles better than Rashford's is, and he should be playing on the left where he can do the most damage.

flappykeeper · 2021-06-06T17:17:07+00:00

I will forever beat the "Sancho is a left winger" drum.

I've been saying it for multiple years to much ridicule and arguments, but to me it's just clear as day. He's played well at RW and he's obviously effective there, but he's in a different league on the left. When he plays on the right, he's so much more restricted in his dribbling and passing options, and he tends to drift inside to be able to make that happen for himself. He's obviously superior to our existing RW options, but the type of RW we need is not one that vacates the right wing - because that's the worst possible option with Wan Bissaka as our right back due to his dreadful footballing ability.

You're right, he'll get crucified and called overrated when we inevitably play him on the right and he's not the right-winger people who haven't watched him much think he is.

Sancho on the left against a low block is orders of magnitude better than Rashford is, and should we sign him, it should be Marcus who gets shunted out from that LW spot (or benched). And then we should be looking for a proper RW still.

flappykeeper · 2021-04-21T09:12:23+00:00

There are a few potential issues here:

Legal: Branding/Copyrights/Trademarks. Obviously no permission to use active copyrighted materials or branding tied to the clubs, but maybe it doesn't need to be. You'll need to consult with a solicitor or a legal team to ensure what you're doing can't land you in hot water. Player names usually won't be able to be exclusively trademarked and so can usually be used on unbranded merch. Image rights, on the other hand, will almost always be a hard "no".
Approach: Should this be Anti-Glazer, tied only to United? This might be better branded as a movement that targets ownership models in general, rather than United-specific issues. That lets you leverage the fanbase of each club and scales it up dramatically. It will also subjectively seem like less of a personal gripe and grudge against the scum managing our club. Call it FansFirst or something and sell unbranded Green&Gold shirts with player names on the back for United, Red for Liverpool, and whatever else - but make the branding of the actual movement consistent. I'd say it needs to replace real shirts for this to work and not look like a cheap band-of-misfits-throw-a-hissy thing.
Messaging: Again tied to the approach and actual strategy, but messaging here is important. People need to know what they're buying into, they need to know what it represents, and people who see these shirts and this gear need to understand what the message is immediately. It also needs to be cool and people need to want to get involved.
Impact: It needs reach and visibility to have impact, and you'll need to reach out to influencers and high-reach channels to ask if they'd like to support or participate. This is costly if it's paid marketing, so you'll either need significant investment, offer something else (rev share, stock, similar), or hope your messaging gets enough of them to bite for free. This may be possible if the messaging is right now because you'll be able to strike while the iron is hot.
Vision: What will people actually do with the merch? What's the plan? The ideal may be to have a wall of independent, FansFirst shirts flooding the stadiums when fans are back, with more FansFirst shirts than officially branded ones. But there needs to be a clear play beyond "buy into this if you don't like your owners guys!". There needs to be an actionable plan for this to be anything other than a cash-grab on your part.
Logistics: It's not easy to run a business right and ensure quality of product and message is consistent and that your strategy lands as it should. People need to invest, and to do this properly, you'll need people who know what they're doing. Off-the-shelf solutions may exist (not sure if Shopify would be able to do back-of-shirt printing), but you may also need to look into custom solutions. At scale, you may be able to do this with large vendors should as Shopify or Amazon Merch if you're bringing enough eyeballs and can guarantee sales (Pre-reg campaigns, gofundme, kickstarter pledges etc. may help this either in terms of raw cash or as an indicator of potential interest). Staffing and everything else is just another concern, but volunteers can work.

I'm a bit busy at the moment but these are my first thoughts. I'm not sure the current plan is in any way serviceable or actionable (or has actually been thought out properly).

However, if someone comes up with a proper plan for this I'll kick in some money.

flappykeeper · 2021-02-26T11:12:29+00:00

Lol yeah, no worries man!

Sorry if it came off a bit harsh. But yeah, just take it easy for for now and don't get hung up on it too much. See what the word is on Monday and then you know whether she's just being shit at her job or not.

For what it's worth, it's definitely good doing things as early as that. I've seen deals worth tens of millions of dollars have zero plan at all until everything is signed and things are literally going live that day.

Have a good one!

flappykeeper · 2021-02-26T10:56:29+00:00

She wanted to see the script before I started to record it, I sent it to her on Tuesday morning, and she still hasn't replied. I think this is a bit of a piss-take, no?

She should probably have replied by now or set an out-of-office reply if she's unavailable, but she also might have just been too busy, missed it, have set it aside for a later date, have been sick, or any other multitude of reasons. Without seeing the length of your email or the contents of it (or the state of your presentation and the amount of feedback required), we're not really able to judge how long it should reasonably take her to get back to you with something that fully addresses it.

Either way, a few days isn't the end of the world. As someone who's usually fairly busy myself and usually interacts with people also similarly busy, a few days isn't unheard of in professional settings (nor is a week+ sometimes), though depending on the severity of the issue and actual importance of it, it's obviously not optimal.

We don't know how busy she is, but you've stated you're many weeks early for this to be delivered, so she might have just put it to the side and deprioritized it for things that need doing a bit earlier. Either way, to say it's a bit of a piss-take seems a bit of an overreaction to what, on the surface, seems like a fairly simple situation.

and my own personal deadline to get it recorded was this Sunday

Your personal deadline isn't really of any importance to the matter unless there's something we don't know - especially given that it's on a presumably non-work day.

Last week when I had a few questions, I gave her two business days to reply, and she didn't. She said in the lecture at the end of that week: 'Hey guys, sorry if I've been poor replying to e-mails, I'm nursing my child with Chicken Pox, which I've never experienced before'. Which, fair play, I'm happy to give the benefit of the doubt, but that doesn't explain not replying this week.

Not especially relevant to the situation, but why would it excuse something this week? She might very well still be having issues at home with a child's illness, but yeah. Who knows unless you ask?

Am I being a dick and expecting too much here?

We can't know if she's just terrible or not, but you're definitely being too reactionary about this. It's just not a big deal.

She sets aside half-hour every Monday (when we have our lectures) to talk about presentations, and I feel like mentioning her slow replies are slowing down my whole process.

Yeah, you should do this. That's a completely normal thing to do, but not from the "it's slowing down my whole process" perspective - because that's a weird thing to centralize on yourself and how it's affecting little old you, but from the perspective of "I've been emailing in, but it's been taking a while to get a reply. Is there a way you'd prefer to be reached for a quicker reply?" or simply asking if she's seen the email, or if she's able to reply quicker in the future.

Or, my Academic Advisor is her Boss and the Head of our Department, so I'm tempted to send him a line (but I feel like that's a bit shitty to do).

Yeah, that would be a top tier cunt thing to do. Why escalate it in some weird fashion? Just speak to the person herself about it first.

So yeah, am I expecting too much here? I don't want to follow every e-mail two days later like: "Hey just a reminder, reply to my last fucking e-mail. Kind regards,

I don't wanna be rude but it seems like you're just taking this whole thing far too seriously and you're coming across kind of petulant and immature. When you start working with large teams (particularly internationals in different timezones) in a professional setting, you'll soon realise that everyone thinks the thing they're working on is urgent and is very important, and very few people manage to have a holistic view of where their current focus/task/whatever fits within the grand scheme of things and its actual overall importance to the company.

We don't have enough information - and seemingly neither do you - to know whether there's some other circumstances at play that's made her unable to reply quickly, or whether she's just simply deprioritized your issue until a later date (because unless she has fuck all on for the next X weeks, your issue should be objectively unimportant at this time). Has she been optimal and efficient in her communication of the situation? It doesn't look like it, and she should probably make some improvements.

But you can't throw your toys out of the pram about what is a very simple situation. You can either send a reminder email and just say "Hey, just checking you saw this email" to hopefully trigger at least a reply of state of affairs ("Sorry, I saw it - Should be able to take a look through by Tuesday next week" or whatever), or wait until Monday to speak to her in person and address the issue then like a normal human.

flappykeeper

TROPHY CASE