OhForAGreavsie

How would we find out if the were not happy?

Sounds like this might be a club signing rather than a move initiated by Frank. That's fine. As long as I) Frank has control over who actually joins his squad and II) the player knows the score, then this is very good work.

This is a decent one... Disappointing that he left but inevitable with the wages offered. He wasn't as good last season as he was in 2018/19 and perhaps not as good as fuchs defensively but still a big loss to us. A much bigger loss to us than Maguire. Edited 12 minutes ago by Blue ROI

No the comments don't come under that heading at all. Even the ones trying to be positive and encouraging are including comments like, 'not bothered at all that he's gone'. As I say, very discouraging but we can only hope that we'll see Ben prove them all wrong.

True, but fans' assessments are seldom so wrong as the Leicester fans posting this afternoon would need to be for us to be highly confident that we've signed a genuine £50m player. We're in the hoping phase now.

Frank got the player he wanted so that's a big plus. Reading Foxestalk over the last few minutes was very, very discouraging however. Still, Ben's here now. It's possible that our setup will suit him better and allow him to make the most of his attributes.

I don't believe for one moment that this is true.

For once I'm going to say something nice about Paul Merson... He grew up a Chelsea fan. That's nice as far as it goes but I've said it before and I'll probably say it again sooner or later. Before anyone accuses me of boring however they need to answer this question; can you think of anything else nice you can say about Paul Merson? No, thought not.

This is double accounting. If we spent that €35m on recruitment it would bring with it new wages to pay, and a new amortisation to be accounted.

Worked out OK for him in the end so, while I'm sure that was a lesson learned for his agent, it turned out to be a pretty painless one.

When I read the rumour today that we were willing to sell Tammy it just didn't sound like a decision Frank would make at this point. This story about a loan for Mando makes the Tammy rumour even less convincing,

Well played that man. I'd have been OK with Willian staying as a squad player on squad player wages but it's understandable if he wanted more than that, both on the pitch and in the bank. In the circumstances no one blames him for taking Arsenal's money and everyone would have been up in arms if Chelsea had offered him that kind of deal. All in all, the lad can go with our best wishes. He certainly has mine.

A dose of reality.

German is just a stonking blockbuster of a language. The vocabulary is out of this world. 🙂

When we blew it in the semi against Monaco and when even Morrientes admitted that what ultimately proved the winning goal should not have stood. It's arguable of course that Jose's Porto would have beaten us in the final anyway, but it's impossible to escape the feeling that we missed a big opportunity that year.

Was it? Misery likes company so I'm delighted we're not the only team with big squad rebuilding to do.

Should have been our second!

Standing ovation to those two spectacular footballers. Yes, I know they have played for three clubs who have experienced overlapping periods of dominance during that time but even so. Outstanding stat.

Well lets hope they don't read this forum then else your game will be up.

We did it in 12/13 and survived. That season we played every possible round, of every tournament barring the League Cup Final and The Cup Final. The top clubs need the League cup because they need squad harmony. They have the power, their participation cannot be compelled. They control the Premier League and the rest of English football would gladly cut off both arms rather than give up the Premier League handouts. If the Premier League said our clubs are not playing in the League Cup anymore, the football League would try to find a way to keep them in but, ultimately, their response would be 'yes sir'. If top clubs want out they'd be out. The fact that they are still in is evidence that they've settled for the status quo. They've found an accommodation with it for now but as soon as they want out, they'll be out. I don't think we need to worry about it. P.S. I never thanked you for the recommending Blueprint For Armageddon and The Guns of August. Both excellent. I enjoyed them a lot and learned lot. That from someone who thought he knew a fair amount on this already. If I had to choose I'd go for the Dan Carlin because he set out to tell a story so his narrative flows but the quality and depth of Tuchman's work is evidenced by the number of times Carlin quotes her.

I would describe it as a rush of blood to the head rather than selfishness. It certainly wasn't stupidity. My feeling at the time was frustration, I can't abide low percentage pot shots taken at the cost of a higher percentage pass. Frank himself used to wind me up something chronic with a lot of his speculative shooting.

We're on the same page re the importance of the stadium. I wasn't so convinced by the proposed building however. Leaving that aside, two other things come to mind. Was Roman ever serious or was the planning permission a strong selling point to deliver to proposed buyers? I only pose, or rather restate, the question for discussion. I don't really believe it myself. We have a lot of players, not fringe players, but key members of the squad who fall in to at least one of the following categories: - - They are not good enough - They know they are not good enough - They know that they have no future at the club - Beyond a wage packet they don't want a future at the club. Indeed, more than a few fall into more than one of those groupings. The squad overhaul that we all desperately want, really is as necessary as our posts make it sound. Can Roman fund the rebuild and raise the money for the stadium? It's a complicated picture, for example, it's a fair bet that governments all over the world are going to be bending over backwards to incentivise major construction projects. Cheap money, tax incentives and all sorts will be out there. (Amazing how many elections European conservatives win by talking down Keynesian economics, and how often they turn to it when things go south.) Football revenue is going to be down and continue down for a long time however. Not necessarily the whole of the time we'd have to be away from The Bridge, but for a good chunk of it. In the face of that, major spend on the squad and a stadium rebuild is hard to believe in.

A normal practice. It is why the weekly calculation of Sanchez's deal at ManU is so high and even going back a long time now, it is why Sol Campbell's deal at Arsenal was huge for the time.

I need more evidence before I believe the Barcelona story, though I accept I'm out on my own there. I agree with everything else you say though.

Salou is a nickname given him by Jose.