The English Football Thread

[communicate 2,703]

Norwich is relegated. Not really surprised, you simply can't say, you know what even if we play Liverpool I will play my football, forget about their strengths, we are sticking to our principle. That is just suicide. 

 

[Laylabelle 9,296]

19 hours ago, NikkiCFC said:

It is a joke.

Last season they had 66 points.

Now they have 58 so 70 max (I doubt).

And they spent over 200m for Bruno, AWB, James and Maguire.

Referees help aside they would have less points than last season.

And yet...unless something goes drastically wrong will finish 4th.

What a signing Bruno has been though..havent lost in 16 or so games?

[Vesper 27,310]

3 hours ago, Atomiswave said:

 

If this happens then the uefa cartel must be burned down on the spot

UEFA banned them for 2 years

that said, then yes, FFP is dead IF Shitty skate

[NikkiCFC 7,582]

2 hours ago, communicate said:

Norwich is relegated. Not really surprised, you simply can't say, you know what even if we play Liverpool I will play my football, forget about their strengths, we are sticking to our principle. That is just suicide. 

 

Next two games against teams that have nothing to play for. We must use this.

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Premier League | Brighton & Hove Albion vs Manchester City

http://www.sportnews.to/sports/2020/premier-league-brighton-hove-albion-vs-manchester-city-s1/

https://www.totalsportek.com/manchester-city/

[killer1257 3,282]

UEFA banned them for 2 years
that said, then yes, FFP is dead IF Shitty skate

Let's create fake revenues too [emoji57]

Gesendet von meinem VOG-L29 mit Tapatalk

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1 minute ago, NikkiCFC said:

Next two games against teams that have nothing to play for. We must use this.

Liverpool want the wins, biggest margin of victory, points record and revenge for the FA Cup

they get all 4 if they win out in the next 3

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nil 4 Shitty, full rout on

they look like men, we look like toddlers

[killer1257 3,282]

nil 4 Shitty, full rout on
they look like men, we look like toddlers

It is funny that we actually won against them

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5 minutes ago, killer1257 said:

It is funny that we actually won against them

Gesendet von meinem VOG-L29 mit Tapatalk
 

In January we coughed up 2 points like a bitch

we won in September 2 nil, and that score flattered us

[Atomiswave 6,072]

6 minutes ago, killer1257 said:

It is funny that we actually won against them

Gesendet von meinem VOG-L29 mit Tapatalk
 

We can look super nice vs some teams and look super ugly in others like today. Shameful how we did today as if top 4 is in the bag and even then its not acceptable.

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nil 5

Sterling hat trick

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I could so see Sterling scoring 5 or 6 or more goals in those 3 games remaining for Shitty

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delete

[Special Juan 27,103]

See that's how to do it City, relentless, pass speed, bullying, killer instinct and take no prisoners.

 

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1 hour ago, Special Juan said:

See that's how to do it City, relentless, pass speed, bullying, killer instinct and take no prisoners.

 

its Pep

he is relentless

he also is arrogant on need for players

I said he was insane last summer when he said his CB's were good enough that they needed nothing there

I said all it takes was an injury to Laporte and they were done for in the league, and even with him, all the rest were dogshit (Fernandinho is simply too old now)

and boom

that all said, ironically this might be his best shot to win the CL with Shitty

if they beat RM, they have a punchers chance against anyone in a home and away

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Why there are so few US stars in England (and why Brexit might change that)

https://theathletic.com/1911562/2020/07/07/pulisic-us-premier-league-brexit-spector-friedel/

When Christian Pulisic ran on to the Old Trafford pitch to make his Chelsea debut last August, he became the 45th American to feature in the Premier League – a trend started by John Harkes, who became the first after joining Sheffield Wednesday almost 30 years earlier.

That averages out at around 1.6 US players appearing in the top flight per season but in real terms, the numbers have peaked and troughed in fairly dramatic fashion.

Go back to the 2006-07 Premier League season, for example, and there were 13 Americans (only three of which were goalkeepers) at nine clubs. In more recent seasons that number has declined significantly. Just three Americans have played in the top flight this season – DeAndre Yedlin at Newcastle United, Pulisic at Chelsea and Aston Villa youngster Indiana Vassilev. A further four US players – Zack Steffen, Erik Palmer-Brown, Cameron Carter-Vickers and Matt Miazga – are on the books of Premier League sides Manchester City, Tottenham Hotspur and Chelsea, but are currently out on loan.

At first glance, the dearth seems simple to explain. In 2017, the US men’s national team suffered a shock defeat to the world’s 99th ranked team, Trinidad & Tobago, ending their chances of qualifying for the following year’s World Cup. For the first time in more than three decades, the US would be forced to watch the game’s top tournament unfold from afar.

That failure came the year after the US Under-23 side failed to qualify for consecutive Olympics for the first time in a half-century.

Clearly, the nation is in the midst of a talent gap.

“I think that’s probably fair,” says former USMNT defender Jonathan Spector, who is head of international recruitment for MLS side Atlanta United. “I think there’s still a lot of talented players in the national team but it’s a younger pool of players than we’ve had previously. When I was coming through, there was more of a blend of experience and youth. Now there’s very much a focus on those youth players and I think some of that older generation is on their way out.”

Spector, who spent the first 14 years of his professional career in England, playing for Manchester United, Charlton, West Ham United and Birmingham City from 2003-17, warns that it will take time for those young talents to develop and amass the kind of first-team experience that will help the USMNT get back to competing with the world’s best.

“But looking at the big picture, you’re going to have a lot of young players who have quite a bit of international experience so when they do reach their full potential they will be more experienced than most on the international stage.”

There are many who believe that pointing to the recent failures of the national team is a far too simplistic way to explain the lack of US players in the Premier League. “It really is more complicated than that,” says Lyle Yorks, global executive chairman of YM&U Group and a FIFA agent of 20 years. “Without dissecting it or if you’re not working in this industry day-to-day, it would be easy to say the Premier League continues to go from strength to strength and that maybe the US isn’t producing the same level of talent they used to.

“But look at that next generation of young players coming through – look at Pulisic and Tyler Adams (of Germany’s RB Leipzig). These players are every bit as good as the ones they are following; the Clint Dempseys and the Claudio Reynas, so I think it’s more in-depth than that.”

Yorks’ mention of Pulisic and Adams raises an interesting point; while there might only be three Americans getting minutes in the English top flight this season, there were 11 doing so in the Bundesliga during the 2019-20 season before it ended just over a week ago (The Athletic explored some of the reasons behind that number here). Of those 11, six are aged 21 or younger.

That turn towards youth is something Yorks says has been one of the biggest shifts over the two decades he’s been working as an agent, moving over 35 players from the US into the UK in that time. “The game has just gotten younger,” he says. “To give you an example, now there’s a lot of 16- to 20-year-olds who are signing for pro leagues in Europe, whereas when I moved Clint Dempsey, Carlos Bocanegra and DaMarcus Beasley across, they had already played two or three years in college and then played three or four years in MLS. They were further into their development.”

But with young British players including Jadon Sancho, Ethan Ampadu, Ademola Lookman and Jonjoe Kenny all taking their talents to Germany over the last few years in search of more playing time, the chances of a teenage American talent breaking into the Premier League straight from the US are slim-to-none.

Aside from the competition for places, the biggest obstacle they face comes in the form of red tape. Work permit regulations mean that non-EU players must meet certain criteria before they are allowed to sign for an English club, including having played for their country in a specified number of  competitive senior internationals in the two years preceding application. That number is worked out on a sliding scale, depending on the nation’s FIFA world ranking. For those teams ranked between one and 10, a player must have played in at least 30 per cent of those games, while based on the USMNT current ranking of 22 that number would rise to 60 per cent.

These regulations were in place 14 years ago when there were so many more Americans in the Premier League but according to UK-based agent Gary Mellor, who helped to bring the likes of Geoff Cameron and Brek Shea over to England, they are applied far more stringently now than they once were.

Mellor was involved in the attempted transfer of Juan Agudelo from New England Revolution to Stoke City in 2013. In the August, it was announced the then-20-year-old striker had signed a pre-contract agreement with the Premier League side and would join them in January 2014 following the expiration of his MLS contract. But the move never transpired after he was denied a work permit.

“The club went to the appeals panel twice and were refused,” says Mellor. “There is an exception for ‘special talent’ but that’s at the panel’s sole discretion. Even so, when you have Mark Hughes who was the manager of Stoke City at the time, and had three ninth-place finishes in the Premier League telling the panel that Juan Agudelo’s a special talent – the same Mark Hughes, who’s played for Bayern Munich, Barcelona, Chelsea, Manchester United, Everton – and they turn him down, that seemed a bit odd to me.

“If you look at the record of Agudelo compared to Tim Ream or Geoff Cameron when they came in, there was no reason why he shouldn’t have got in at that time. He was playing for the USMNT, he’d played for them from young and it was a good fee.”

Mellor says that in the short period of time between completing the deals that brought Ream, Cameron and Shea to England from the US in 2012 and trying to bring Agudelo over, it had become increasingly tough to secure a work permit. “I think some of that came from the FA, wanting to make sure that more English players got an opportunity to play, which I’m not averse to, I just think clubs should be trusted to manage their recruitment process to a degree.”

The idea that Premier League clubs are missing out on the chance to sign ‘special talents’ from the US at a stage in their career when their potential would far outweigh their price, is one supported by Wasserman’s executive vice president Richard Motzkin, who counts 21-year-old Schalke midfielder Weston McKennie and Werder Bremen striker Josh Sargent, 20, among his clients.

“The truth is a guy like McKennie could absolutely play in the Premier League,” says Motzkin, “but when he was signing at Schalke as an 18-year-old he couldn’t have signed for a Premier League side because he didn’t have an EU passport.

“Over the last few years we have had interest in some of our players who either were high-performing MLS players or young talented players but unfortunately when we did the analysis, Premier League clubs came back and said, ‘We really rate this player and think he could do very well but we’re not going to be able to get a work permit’. To me, that whole system seems a bit silly. If a club believes in a player and wants to sign him then it makes more sense to me to have a restriction on the number of international players a club can sign and then let the clubs choose to sign who they want to sign.”

Motzkin agrees with Mellor’s belief that the work permit rules for entry to the UK have been applied “more stringently” in recent years.

He represents former Manchester United and Everton goalkeeper Tim Howard and was also responsible for bringing another goalkeeper, Brad Guzan, to England in 2008. During that period he explains that the high levels of respect for American keepers made their pathway into England a smoother one – ”they were given a lot of credibility in terms of ‘wiggle room’.” In the case of outfield players such as Claudio Reyna, Brian McBride and Landon Donovan, Motzkin says that even if they didn’t qualify automatically, “more often than not they were able to get their work permits on appeal”.

He points to two other factors as possible reasons why the number of Americans in the Premier League has shrunk in recent years. One being the fact that Germany is somewhere they can go without any restrictions and where they have seen young players given opportunities to play at the highest level. The other is the continued growth and improvement in the level of MLS, which is providing a more attractive opportunity for young American players than it perhaps was a decade or so ago.

The way MLS is structured can put a further barrier in place when it comes to US players transferring to other leagues, though. Spector highlights the case of New York Red Bulls defender Aaron Long, who was linked with moves to West Ham and Southampton in 2019. That summer West Ham put forward a $3 million transfer offer for Long, but he was one international cap short of the number required and work permit issues would have meant going to an appeals panel if the deal progressed.

In January, West Ham went back in. They tabled a $500,000 (£382,000) offer to take the 2018 MLS defender of the year on loan until the end of the MLS transfer window around May 1, with a $4.5 million (£3.4 million) option to buy him outright. This time, the bid was rejected by New York Red Bulls.

“It’s difficult for clubs within MLS to try and replace a player like Aaron with the way the league is structured,” says Spector, “with the salary cap and the fact that when you have to go out and buy a player, whatever that transfer fee is counts against your salary cap. So some of those moves might not be quite as straightforward as they seem. I think a lot of players would want to play in the Premier League but sometimes for the clubs and the league it just doesn’t make sense to allow them to go if they are still under contract.”

Those with an interest in seeing the number of US players in the English top-flight rise again harbour hopes Brexit will bring changes that could work in their favour.

“It should be a level playing field,” says Mellor, suggesting that from January 1, 2021 the same rules should apply whether English clubs are trying to sign players from the US or European nations such as Spain, France and Germany. He points to the example of Spain, where clubs are allowed four non-EU players and it’s up to the club to identify who those four are.

“We’re hopeful work permit regulations will change,” says Mellor. “We don’t yet know what that looks like but we’re already getting so many calls from Premier League and Championship clubs about players in North America. We’ve always had those calls but clubs have always been nervous about the work permit regulations. Everyone is waiting to see what they look like moving forwards.”

There are various layers to the decline in numbers of American players in the Premier League. For some, the USA’s ‘talent gap’ is the flimsiest of them all, with players including Bundesliga-based Adams, Sargent and Giovanni Reyna proving that there is plenty of quality coming through the ranks.

“We didn’t make one World Cup,” says Motzkin, “which was of course extremely disappointing and surprising but it happens to every country – England hasn’t made every World Cup either, right?

“I am a firm believer that there are many Americans who could not only play in the Premier League but who, in the right situation, could do extremely well – not only the national team players and the ones who are performing at a high level in MLS but also the players who happen to be in the Bundesliga now. When you talk about the quality of US players, arguably Pulisic has been the best player for Chelsea since the restart. So I don’t think it’s a quality issue, I think it’s an opportunity issue.”

If Brexit does leave the door slightly more ajar for such players, we could see the numbers head back towards 2006-07 levels, giving English clubs the chance to sign a Pulisic-type before his value climbs high enough to secure him a place in the record books as America’s most expensive star.