OhForAGreavsie

Mixing up Conte and Sandro? 😊

I have to admit that I don't believe in tales of managers with magic wands. Personally I'd rather take my chances with Gandalf or Hermeone Granger. Next someone is going to tell me that Antonio has made Marcos & Victor better players. I hope no one will though because it irritates the heck out of me when people talk nonsense. Marcos is the same as he ever was and so is Victor. This time next year Ross Barkley will be the same player too. If people think Barkley already has what it takes to help us then fair enough. Anyone, however, who imagines he might fly into Cobham as just an Everton reject, and land in Oz wearing spangly red boots, has taken too many trips down the Yellow Brick Road themselves.

Or is it the rumour spreaders who have no clue?

A nonsense statement by Cruyff, surely? Are there two better team players, players whose passing is excellent, whose contribution makes their teammates more effective and improves their team? Everybody in their right mind would wonder what qualifies me to question Johan Cruyff's opinion on football, but can anyone really question that, on this subject at least, my description of what those two bring is without doubt more accurate than the late great Johan's?

Exactly. Those words do not support the headline. Nothing there talks about Pat tipping that we'll sign any players. He's just giving an opinion about what we need.

I don't know that we are not chasing this player, but how do you know that we are? Isn't it reasonable to at least acknowledge that the story might be a plant before launching into another criticism of the club based on a mere report?

The quotes do not support the headline.

Put the same group of people into our board room and you think they'd get the same results they've achieved at Milan? I don't. Transfer fees demanded of Premier League clubs in general, and of our club in particular, plus increased wage expectations of players in this league, make the task of our squad builders an entirely different one to that faced by Milan. Throw in the unhelpful reputations we've acquired, and you're just not comparing like for like.

I hope uefa's statement will shut the press up about this transfer being investigated under FFP. No individual move will, or can, be looked into. All that can be looked into is a club's financial results as a whole. In that light, it is not accurate to say UEFA will launch an investigation into that transfer. What they will do is investigate PSG's accounts for this season (probably to be published about January 2019) and assess the results under their three year rule. Nor will that investigation be specific to PSG. They will examine the books of all clubs which are subject to FFP regulations. In that regard it will be a routine check, not a special one. Of course we will be one of the clubs whose books are audited. It is not sufficient to list our revenues and announce our spending ability on the strength of them. It is our profitability which will be scrutinised, and that means revenues must be compared to costs. For example, our wage bill alone is way more than the Premier League TV money and the Nike deal combined. It even consumes most of the Yokohama cash too. I'm not suggesting that the amortised cost of this summer's spending puts us at risk of falling FFP, I don't think it does, I'm just making the point that we can't look at revenues in isolation.

I agree with you on two counts. I like Ox, and the right side is definitely in greater need of attention than the left.

Personally, I don't want competition. Competition is not enough. We should look for an upgrade; a player at least as good as Marcos technically but with more power and, very importantly, more pace. I'm a Marcos Alonso fan. In my view it would take a great player to dislodge him from the team but a great player is what we need.

Ash, partly due to technical limitations, and even more to his chronic one-footedness, was not great on the ball. He made up for this by being a defender par excellence; the best defensive left back around, bar none. Ash acquired a reputation as an attacking full back at Arsenal largely by getting on the end of their pretty passing patterns, not by being a great contributor to those moves. If Rose is worse on the ball then he absolutely, definitely is not the man for us.

Not watching but he's on for Watford against Liverpool. This lad looked interesting in his YouTube videos so looking forward to seeing how he does.

Is he as good as Ash?

Liverpool are probably in the market for a left back. They were touted to be interested in Goulham at the start of the window. Don't follow their gossip so don't know if that is still brewing, but I could see them taking an interest in Rose.

There was a conversation about this on radio the other day with the usual crew of overpaid (if they are paid at all that is overpaying them.) studio 'guests'. They all tried to pretend they knew something about this but they clearly had no clue. It's not reasonable to expect contributors to a radio show to know everything about everything (something about something every once in while, would be nice) but they have resources. There are people who will find out for them if they only had the honesty to admit that they didn't know. It P's me off when people who are paid to talk about football put absolutely no effort into it, and instead just turn up, repeat the same nonsense they said last time and collect their cash. In fact Spurs announced a few weeks ago the sections of Wembley they will allocate to away sides. Those sections contain just over 3,000 seats, and, sure enough, when our tickets went on sale yesterday we had been allocated 3,106. Tottenham claim that, in order to try to create a 'home' atmosphere in the stadium, they will not increase that figure regardless of ticket availability. To be fair though, the club says that the 3,106 tickets are an 'initial' allocation, so perhaps Spurs are reconsidering that policy and will provide extra seats if their own demand won't fill the venue.

I don't agree with that but I do believe that some of his worst performances for Chelsea came in midfield. DL is no midfielder so I agree with the post to which you replied. I don't want to sEe David in midfield again either.

Antonio has demonstrated his potential to help this team. Andreas has not yet done that in my opinion. This leads me to conclude that it would be plain wrong to sacrifice the former for the latter. Your concern about the captaincy only makes sense if you believe that Gary's status will influence Antonio's selection decisions. I don't. If Gaz is starting it'll be because Antonio thinks he's the best option, not because he's the club captain. Now, if Antonio making Gary skipper is evidence that the boss expects him to be a regular, then the captaincy itself makes no difference. If the manager thinks he's the best then Gaz will play, armband or no armband. Although I don't share the widespread belief in the badness of Gary Cahill, I'm not one who accepts that football professionals automatically have a better understanding of the game than we fans do. In the end though someone has to decide who plays and that someone has to be the manager. We would all be outraged if the board was telling Antonio who to select but it would be no less outrageous if the head coach was taking his instructions from you or me. He's got to choose, and he's going to choose. I'm more comfortable with that than you seem you be.

I didn't see the game - big family day - was there a great stand up if you hate Tottenham? I'd have enjoyed that.

That's not quite what Steve Atkins meant. He reconfirmed that Diego and his representatives were informed in January that our Brazilian Spaniard would not be a part of the manager's plans after the end of the 2016/17 season. He did not specifically deny that Antonio had sent the infamous text message, indeed the message must be real, or no lawyer would be making so much of it. Atkins just made it clear that Diego already knew in January that the club did not want him to continue beyond the end of last season and pointed out that the claim that Diego had heard it for the first time in a text message is just nonsense. The lawyer's description of the text message is a pretty obvious and shallow attempt to manufacture some extra leverage for his client. His strange, and all too transparent, claim that Antonio had 'released' Diego in that text is silly and will fool no one. Antonio did answer, and did so in the same way he has done several times previously. Steve Atkins just added a specific response, on behalf of the club, to comments made by Diego's lawyer earlier this week. (Because the question asked of Antonio was about those comments.)

What will it take for people to stop swallowing the hype and actually watch the player play? Bayern fans are not telling him to leave because they think he's a brilliant prospect; German media did not describe one of his performances as scarily bad, because he demonstrated his much talked about, but little seen, world class quality. I have only watched him play in the Euros, the baby Euros and the Singapore friendly. If Sanches has demonstrated world class potential in those games, then it has gone right over my head because I didn't notice it.

My feeling, based on what Antonio has had to say, is that the coach did want Nate to stay, but it's unlikely he felt he could keep such a promise. If Antonio did not intend to give Nate a bigger role then, never mind simple honesty, it would just be storing up trouble to lie to a member of your squad. Talking about the greater number of games, and Nate's share of appearances therefore being greater, is about as far as the boss could have gone I think. In their conversations Antonio would certainly have made that point, indeed Nate would have worked it out for himself anyway, but seemingly that was not enough for the young man. Looks like Antonio was simply unable to sell the idea of staying to the player. Nate wasn't being unreasonable, but he wanted more than Antonio could offer so a parting of the ways was inevitable. It certainly could not be true to think that Antonio would be capable of persuading Nate to stay by mere argument, or force of character. Antonio could have encouraged him to stay only by promising Nate enough starts to keep him happy. That was not a promise Antonio was willing to make, so Nate decided to go. Once again, good luck to him at Watford.

Clearly Antonio either did not want to persuade him to stay, or was not able to. Almost certainly the latter. Either way, given Nate had just a year remaining on his deal, the matter was out of the hands of coach and club. Good luck to him at Watford.

Would Bertie have accepted that role though?

That poster believes the real star of their team is Wendel. I agree with you though, Richarlison's skill set does look good in his YouTube vids. I look forward to seeing more from him. If it transpires that work permit issues mean he needs to go to a European club on loan then I'd ask why let Watford do it when we have so much expertise in this area? In that circumstance, we should try to hijack The Hornets' deal. There's always room for one more in the loan army, and this one could be a good one.