Vesper

2019-20 UEFA Europa League, Quarterfinals Manchester United v FC Copenhagen http://www.sportnews.to/sports/2020/man-vs-kop-s1/ https://www.totalsportek.com/manchester-united-football/

2019-20 UEFA Europa League, Quarterfinals Internazionale v Bayer Leverkusen http://www.sportnews.to/sports/2020/int-vs-lev-s2/ https://www.totalsportek.com/bayer-leverkusen/

posting now

'little Tonali ' is almost 6 feet tall and strong and aggressive as hell, and will do nothing but fill out more in body size and strength as he enters his prime years in a few

The Premier League 60, No 46: Claude Makelele https://theathletic.com/1923878/2020/08/10/premier-league-60-46-claude-makelele/ Running each day until the new season begins, The Premier League 60 is designed to reflect and honour the greatest players to have graced and illuminated the English top flight in the modern era, as voted for by our writers. You might not agree with their choices, you won’t agree with the order (they didn’t), but we hope you’ll enjoy their stories. You can read Oliver Kay’s introduction to the series here. Claude Makelele tends to break into a smile whenever mention of the midfield brief with which he is still synonymous crops up. Others would always draw the attention, from Real Madrid’s Galacticos to the higher profile characters in Jose Mourinho’s powerful Chelsea team from the middle of the last decade, but those stellar names always benefited from the Frenchman’s selfless industry, allied with a canny tactical reading of the play and shrewd positioning, at their side. Without his quiet, busy endeavour, those teams would have been considerably less effective. That talk of “The Makelele role” endures is a source of pride. His playing duties were distinct and conducted with the complete trust of management and fellow players. He was a master of bringing balance to a selection, freeing up those around him with his scuttling presence and ability to disrupt the opponents’ approach whether drawing markers out of team shape or, if left to his own devices, collecting possession and weighing up how best to spark his own side’s next foray upfield. When asked about his contribution to club successes in Spain, England and France, or even with his national side, he tends to bring up the need to be “generous”, to “give everything” for his team-mates. The legacy Makelele truly cherishes is the sense of appreciation for his efforts that lingered wherever he played. His team-mates at Real Madrid pined for him after he departed the Bernabeu under a cloud in 2003 to become the latest recruit swelling the ranks of Chelsea’s nouveaux riches. Zinedine Zidane bemoaned the loss of the team’s engine. Fernando Hierro claimed the club’s hierarchy had almost wilfully ignored the midfielder’s contribution and merely shrugged their shoulders at his sale, and warned they would regret ushering him towards the exit. Club president Florentino Perez had been dismissive of Makelele’s contribution at the time and quick to claim a replacement capable of contributing more would be found easily enough. As his team endured a four-year dearth of silverware following his £16 million sale, Perez must have contemplated the folly of those words. A player who made his name initially as a winger at Nantes, winning Ligue 1 and reaching the semi-finals of the Champions League in 1996, before briefer spells at Marseille and Spain’s Celta Vigo, had really finessed the more central midfield role at Real Madrid where he recognised the value in adding a further layer of security in front of the back four while a host of attack-minded free spirits made hay. They took the risks, he was the platform upon which they thrived, winning the Champions League in 2002 and a pair of La Liga titles among seven trophies in three years. Chelsea, even fuelled by Roman Abramovich’s first splurge of funds, must have pinched themselves at the ease with which such a key performer was prised away. Claudio Ranieri saw Makelele as a ball winner and defensive organiser, “our safety barrier”. “I have a fantastic watch,” explained the Italian. “It is run by battery. Claude is my new battery.” When Mourinho arrived a year later he waited for Makelele, granted a little more time post-Euro 2004, to join the squad on pre-season tour in the US before calling a team meeting in which he pointed to the midfielder as “the only one of you that’s won anything significant”. That may have been harsh on Paulo Ferreira, a UEFA Cup and Champions League winner under Mourinho with Porto in the previous 15 months (another, Ricardo Carvalho, would join a few days later), but Makelele was setting the standard to which the likes of Frank Lampard and John Terry, Petr Cech and Arjen Robben had to aspire. He fitted Mourinho’s 4-3-3 to perfection, all economy of tidy possession, excellent technique and a master of interceptions. In a team of giants, up and down the spine, Makelele went about his duties unnoticed. And yet everything revolved around his metronomic contribution. The manager, so eager for his linchpin’s impact to be recognised, even prompted the club to add a players’ player of the year trophy to their end of season awards in a blatant attempt to ensure Makelele was honoured while others hogged the limelight. The midfielder duly claimed the inaugural trophy in 2006, by a landslide. He made 217 appearances over five years in London, a spell that yielded two league titles, an FA Cup and two League Cups. But his impact upon a hungry, ambitious squad was immeasurable. He was revered within the set-up, and his contribution was never under-estimated. On the pitch, the defensive surety he provided — not with crunching tackles, but smart interceptions and that ability to read danger — liberated Lampard to become such a free-scoring force of nature. Off the pitch, he went out of his way to help Didier Drogba settle in new surroundings, not least with the card school he ran among the squad’s French contingent. His team-mates christened him “Papa Claude”, taking on board his advice and guidance. For Michael Essien and Mikel John Obi, very different players but his heirs-elect, every training session was an education. There were defensive midfielders before Makelele, and plenty since who have added other elements to the role — not least quarterback-like long-range passing and creativity which would have gone against the Frenchman’s more careful, calculated approach — but his impact on Chelsea and the Premier League was profound. His last appearance for the club was the defeat, on penalties, to Manchester United in the 2008 Champions League final. At 35, and with Paris Saint-Germain — a very different beast then, pre-Qatari takeover — offering him a route home on a long-term deal which would eventually incorporate a role as a coach, he left on a free transfer. “He will always be welcomed back to Stamford Bridge in the future, either as a player or friend of the club,” read a Chelsea statement. Last summer, they finally came calling. The new Makelele role at Chelsea comes with a jazzy title — “technical mentor” within the junior set-up — but is arguably far less well defined. The 47-year-old had once been advised by his manager at Nantes, Jean-Claude Suaudeau, that nothing beats working with youth teams to broaden a coaching repertoire so, in the latest twist to a nomadic post-playing career, there was no decision to make when offered a brief back at Cobham with one of the most progressive academies in England. It remains to be seen how long the job he accepted last August satisfies his desire for self-improvement. There had been an initial assumption that a figure of Makelele’s vast playing experience, and a coach who had cut his teeth under Carlo Ancelotti at PSG before managing at France’s Bastia, briefly, and Eupen in Belgium, might also play a role overseeing drills with the senior squad. One would assume both N’Golo Kante and Jorginho might be keen to learn from the master, not least with the former having been employed as the midfield pivot, when fit, of late. That advice could even be delivered in his native tongue to a compatriot. Yet Lampard’s first-team staff has remained distinct and unaltered, the head coach comfortable with its make-up. Makelele works across the road in the academy building at Chelsea’s plush training complex in Surrey, his desk in the loans department office alongside those of former team-mates Ferreira and Carlo Cudicini and another early-millennium old boy in Tore Andre Flo. There is a small element of coaching tied into his duties, but largely focused on when those players designated to his “loan group” are back at HQ, either in pre-season training or awaiting a mid-season switch to a new club. More normally, he watches the youngsters under his supervision at their respective clubs, analysing their displays either in person or on Wyscout and the like, and offering on-going assessment and advice. Flo may have visited Conor Gallagher at Charlton Athletic earlier this season, but it was Makelele who took the lead in monitoring the England Under-21 midfielder’s eye-catching progress. He was a guest of Charlton’s manager, Lee Bowyer, at the training ground in October. Once it was decided Gallagher might benefit from a mid-season switch within the Championship from a side facing a relegation battle to Steve Cooper’s promotion-chasing Swansea City, where Makelele had enjoyed a brief stint assisting Paul Clement in 2017, the Frenchman’s involvement stepped up. Gallagher has since spoken of the advice the mentor has offered him: of the need to look up and scan the scene when receiving the ball, or how best to press. Makelele visited Gallagher and another Chelsea loanee, Marc Guehi, in Wales before lockdown. They will have benefited from the qualities Clement had pinpointed when bringing his former colleague at Chelsea and PSG to the Liberty Stadium three years ago. “He has a good feel for players, one to one,” said Clement, now manager of Belgian club Cercle Bruges. “He has great knowledge of the game having played at such a high level, and brings interaction to players in small groups, giving them little gems of information and what to do in certain situations. He really captures someone when he talks to them.” Yet is the role Makelele now plays enough to satisfy his ambitions? Yes, he is a visible presence in the academy building, a full-time member of club staff and the latest in a long list of former players welcomed back to Chelsea in a non-playing capacity. Both Abramovich and key lieutenant Marina Granovskaia have championed such an approach as a means of maintaining the culture of success instigated early in the oligarch’s ownership. But Makelele, a strong-minded figure, has always suggested he is following a distinct pathway in his post-playing career. The ultimate objective always appeared to be management and at Chelsea, where there are such high hopes for Cech as technical and performance advisor, or Ashley Cole within the junior coaching set-up, there is a temporary feel to this current arrangement. Perhaps that is born of Makelele’s willingness to explore different roles as part of an ongoing quest to gain experience since curtailing his playing days at 38. He had coached at PSG under Ancelotti and alongside Clement, before taking up the reins as manager of the Ligue 1 club, Bastia. His stint there lasted a little over five months and 12 league games and, while he may have made mistakes, there were clearly mitigating circumstances to his toils. His best player, Wahbi Khazri, was sold to Bordeaux in pre-season. Two further attacking loanees were not retained, and his Brazilian striker, Brandao, was banned for six months in the September and later given a suspended jail term for headbutting PSG’s Thiago Motta. There were no funds to buy replacements. In hindsight, it was hardly the ideal platform from which to launch a managerial career, although his claim that he had effectively considered his time in Corsica “an internship”, as expressed in an interview with L’Equipe two years after his sacking, was perhaps unnecessarily provocative. Bastia were outraged and claimed that, if that was the case, it was an expensive spell of work experience. Makelele subsequently spent time with Mourinho, Vicente del Bosque, Ranieri and Suaudeau, observing their methods from the sidelines as a guest at training, then worked at Monaco, again briefly, as technical director. His remit there centred less on coaching and more on mentoring the playing staff, but he was always peripheral to the Portuguese core assembled around the head coach, Leonardo Jardim, at the club. He suggested he had no relationship whatsoever with the owner Vadim Vasilyev’s special advisor, Luis Campos, which probably rendered his stay in the Principality doomed from the outset. He then rang Clement to secure the role at Swansea early the following year. But it was the struggling Belgian top-flight club Eupen, something of an outlier near the country’s German border but under the ownership of Qatar’s Aspire Academy since 2012, who eventually offered him another managerial role in November 2017. The side were bottom of the Jupiler League when he arrived but, with Makelele’s influence permeating through the club, avoided relegation on goal difference that season then finished 12th the following year. Three of Qatar’s starting XI that won the 2019 Asian Cup final were schooled under him at the Kehrwegstadion. “Going there was not a step back,” reflected Makelele in an interview with French football website SoFoot last year. “In this profession, nothing is. All this experience has merely made me realise how passionate I am about coaching. At Eupen, people listen to me because of my past. But I convince them with the way I work.” His stated ambition at the time was to become “as good a coach as (Pep) Guardiola or (Fabio) Capello”. “Success is the story of my life because I am a very patient person, a quality my father taught me,” he added. That much was evident in his playing style. Now, back in London in his new Makelele role, he continues to learn with a view to embarking upon the next stage of a glittering career in the game.

that's a decent (if somewhat aged, but it is the MLS, so not exactly a top league) buy

COVID-19 cock-blocks Victimpool from cashing in on Salah this summer and taking (not even all of the cash they would get in a normal market from RM or PSG (who would sell Neymar then to Barca) that dosh and buying Sancho. All three of the dippers front 3 really start to lose value after thsi season, as they age out. If they do not sell 1 or two in 2021, they REALLY will lose buying power from the monies gained via sale. They will all be 30yo plus after (or during in Frmino and Manes's cases) the 2021-22 season. That is their catch-22 I have been talking about for months. Having your top players all born within a few months of each other presents serious challenges once they hit the 29yo and up cohort (unless you are RM, or Barca, or Shitty, or PSG and probably Manure). The law of diminishing returns kicks in from a fiscal standpoint.

Marc Cucurella rumours will not go away (as our left back). I cannot stress enough that he is not even a true LB, he is a LMF/winger type. He only played 2 games all season at LB, and is not up to playing there in the EPL for a truly top team.

We have so many white elephants. Staggering.

Pirlo might prise Tonali away from Inter, which would make Conte even more likely to leave.

One if the worst footie sites on the net is called Transfer Tavern. https://www.footballtransfertavern.com/

We had one in Salah if we have just been patient. In summer 2013 (when we bought Willian) there was only one remotely Hazard level RWer available. And Real took him (Bale). Sterling was 18yo. Angel di Maria was a bust at Manure until he became WC at PSG, he was not available in 2013 anyway. It was down to 2 ways. Fight the biggest club on the planet for a Spuds player, or we could have been patient with Salah. Robben was never going to come back. Bernardo Silva was a teen, Mahrez a complete unknown. If I am missing a player I am more than open to suggestions. Great RWers are rare as fuck. It is what makes Messi stand out even more. Sterling is actually better on the left IMHO but is still a WC player on the right.

Age is the only thing stopping De Bruyne from being, along with Mbappe, the only 2 players worth £200m plus. If we are talking pounds, and with a COVID-19 market, I rate Havertz atm at £80-90m.Would love to get him for under £80m, but its not worth cocking the deal up. I am terrified of him at Victimpool or Shitty or Manure or, CL-wise, Bayern, Real, or Barca. PSG, not so much, as they soon will lose either Neymar or Mbappe (within 2 years max, plus Neymar will be 29yo in early February) and Juve is a hot mess atm, as their eggs are all in a soon to be 36 year old basket, and the rest of the team is really old as well, at far too many key positions. Victimpool and Shitty are my true nightmares for him to end up at. Plus Bayern from a global perspective.

It looks really suspicious. I have no concrete proof, but I truly think he did. He is all about the payday and look at what happened to Pedro. I think he downed tools to avoid the chance. I hope my intuition is wrong.

Bayern has one huge, built in advantage over the rest of the powerhouses (well 2 over the EPL as we still have that 2nd cup to drain off manpower resources as well, we now the only big 5 league leftw with two cups, as the Coupe de Ligue was shuttered by the French footballing association) They only play 34 league games, so are fresher the only downside is that the players league and overall stats are lower due to less games (only goals and assists matter in this regard) The FA and EPL need to close down the League Cup after this coming season, as the FWCC is expanding in 2021 to 24 teams the top EPL teams will be crushed with too many games. I think it will be possible, if you go deep into all possible cups, to play 70 or more games in one season. That is madness

atm Bayern if they win CL then they are easily, in an utter cakewalk the best IF PSG win the CL, then them (as they will have won all 5 trophies they could have and will have an easy run it to equal Pep's linear Septuple) if neither of those win the CL, it gets really murky, and I would say that IF they had won the FA Cup, you might have then made a case to Liverpool, and if they had won the CS and the league Cup, then for sure, but they failed 4 times,2 of them part of the big 3 ( CL, main Cup,(they won the league, which is the third pat of the ultimate treble) plus the not so important CS and then LC) I think it is almost impossible to name the best team if both PSG and Bayern fail, Shitty, if they win will try and claim it, but they were mediocre in the league <<<< so put thsi all down to be determined last season, (2018-19) Shitty or Liverpool, its flip a coin (if Shifty had made it to the SF or final in the CL and then lost, then them for sure for sure, as they won the domestic quad and took every trophy from the dippers save for CL (we never discussed year by year) as you went right to naming them the best in the last TWO years the year before, Real, in a cakewalk some years it is just hard to say who is actually the best team, other years it is easy as long as Bayern or PSG win the CL (I picked them preseason as the two favourites) then it will be an easy year the main 3 teams who could fuck it all up are Atleti , Shitty, and Barca Barca and Shitty (Shitty due to their buying their way out of just punishment) are the only two teams left that would make me angry to see win the CL I would love to see Atletico Madrid win it finally, always have loved Simeone and I love defensive football (that is pretty obvious when you look at my player wants and see who I bash the msot (it is lamsot always for shit defence, the only I have conssitently went off on players over offence is Azpi/Emerson as a left back, Jorginho when he slows the fuck out of the game (same for Willian) and then Bats. All the others one I am very patient with in terms of offensive cockups, save for Kante and Barkley at times (CHO has played so little it is hard to judge)

lol, now you are moving the goalposts and bringing in a THIRD season which btw #steamroller 2017-18 Liverpool ZERO trophies next after that Liverpool 2018–19 season 1 trophy, failed at the other 3 Premier League 2nd FA CupThird round EFL CupThird round UEFA Champions League Winners Liverpool 2019–20 season 3 trophies , (League, Super Cup, FWCC), failed at other 4 including first knockout round CL loss, and then losses in CS, League Cup, and FA Cup so, in your 3 years (see I am being generous) 15 possible trophies they won 4 plus the really poor last 16 game finish to the season in 2020, including being dumped out of the CL first knockout round (and were not unlucky, they were thrashed) not best team on the world now, atm,, not best over the past two years, and certainly not best not for the past 3 the board can decide if I am right or you are I also will go out on a limb now, and say they do not repeat in anything they probably win 1 trophy next season, the CS although lets see who Arse brings in, and let's see if the scousers do not suffer injuries (and of course lets see if they get some players in too, Thiago would be a MASSIVE upgrade for a 3 or so years)

I laid out a conclusive, factual results, and statistical-based case and your are spinning again in regards to the FWCC it was not some bloody 1 nil 1989 AC Milan catenaccio dominance display the dippers were on the backfoot so often they have NOT been the best team on the planet for two years they certainly are not now, based on their form since February it simply is not borne out in either the trophies the first year (and tbf, this year as well, as they failed at all the biggest ones, other than the league, as the FWCC is a pushover for the Euro teams, has been for the past 13 years) we are literally the only UEFA club to blow it in that time span the Brasil and SA Latinx teams will never have the level of players they used to, as now Europe gobbles them up like candy the only worse UEFA performance than us was the very first edition, when Manure did not even make it to the final those first 3 Brasilian teams (plus Vasco da Gama , the 2nd place team in 2000) were far better than any non UEFA since, with the exception of (just our luck) that 2012 Corinthians team we faced) and that 2017 Grêmio side, which had Arthur Melo (now at Juve, but bought by Barca in 2018), Luan, Everton, Lucas Barrios (44 goals in 2 seasons earlier under Klopp at Dortmund) etc

balance sheet accounting methodology if you are challenging the veracity of it then I am well done with you you are very problematic why don't you do some basic research and find out for yourself

my dream window Havertz (we have that in the budget) then Dunk Ginter or (cray time, José Giménez) Rice Reguilon or Telles (Theo is a bridge too far I truly think ) Predrag Rajkovic or Onana we manage to liquidate a shedload of the dregs, enough to make the numbers work, which, removing Havertz (as he is already budgeted for) means we have to come up with £200m to £225m in additional revenue to do the whole thing (very rough calculations) have at it even at bargain basement cut rate deals there is FAR more than £350m on this list Andreas Christensen (he has GOT to go and be upgraded upon, I would prefer both he and Zouma be sold, but that is probably not happening in one window unless we get 2 incredible buy deals tossed into our laps, which is so unlikely) I just do not see what Lamps sees in our 4 main CB's, they (and Kepa) make my tummy churn every game. Even Alonso has not done that for ages (I have been happy with his pay overall, except for that West Ham choke, arrrrffff). Ross Barkley (if we can get say £30m, even 35m (he is English and is only 26 and is in his prime) for him, he will never be worth more (well COVID maybe lowers that a bit, but not much) plus Bayer failed to get CL then a Barks sale plus Havertz buy is only around £45-55m or so net spend) Tiemoué Bakayoko Emerson Michy Batshuayi Davide Zappacosta Danny Drinkwater (SMDH) Jorginho (Juve need to cough up serious cash or work a swap deal involving de Ligt for Jorgi plus cash or maybe Emerson as I rate those 2 as being worth £70-80m-ish, although that is probably an pipe dream now that he has rebounded a bit the last 6 months) Abdul Rahman Baba Victor Moses Kenedy Marco van Ginkel Juan Familia-Castillo (as Ajax did not exercise their option to buy, or keep him and see if he can ever be a decent LB, which looks doubtful atm, based off my watching him in Holland) Nathan (sold for almost £3m) Charly Musonda Jr. Danilo Pantic (transferred on a free, BUT we get a cut of his next sale) Matt Miazga Lewis Baker Jamal Blackman Lucas Piazón Jake Clarke-Salter Izzy Brown Josh Grant (released) Richard Nartey (released) Luke McCormick Jacob Maddox We could sell Kepa (not likely, especially due to crazy wages for the next 5 years and his £72m transfer fee, ie. how much are we willing to lose of that overall) Zouma (sorry, he is shit too and as I am list two CB's purchased PLUS Rice, he needs to GO GO GO) Marcos Alonso (only if we buy two LB's which is not likely this window, I am oki with him as a the backup as he is curve ball option in certain types of games) N'Golo Kanté (only way I see him being sold is if we get Rice and a really HIGH offer comes in. Here is a reality check either way: he is injured far too often and his value has already plummeted and truly will plummet after this summer. It is complicated, and made further complicated by the fact he is NOWHERE near WC as an RMF in a 3 man MF, he simply is not that great there, other than an odd game here and there, Lampard jacked up the team forcing him back in too early) plus if Boga is sold, we get nice sell on fee

spin spin spin they fucking tanked m8 and this is just pure tosh they went out in the first knockout round in the CL they bare beat a dodgy Flamengo side (took added time, which was the worst performance by a UEFA team at the FWCC, other than our 1 nil loss in 2012 to fucking Corinthians (a far better side than this Flamego team), since the first 3 FWCC's) barely beat us in the Super Cup (pens, grrrrrrrrrrr) they lost the CS they lost BOTH domestic Cups and the year before they only trophy they won was the CL (granted a big one) so no I am not buying you pro scouser spin sorry fuck victimpool

are you talking euros or pounds? and he was the first and ONLY teenage MFer ever in a top 10 euro league to score 20 goals in a season he has now shown he can tear it up as a striker and a winger as well his last 23 games all his games in 2020 22 total goals produced 14 goals, 8 assists as a 19yo

The book on Bakayoko Transfer fee + add-ons paid £40m £110K PW (some reports say£120K PW, but I am going with lower number to give this all the most positive spin possible) £5.72m per year we paid the majority of his wages whilst he was on loan at AC Milan roughly £4m at AC Milan and £2.2m of his wages at Monaco (as they paid a lower loan fee plus wanted an option to buy, which we STUPIDLY set far too high (42m euro) roughly £12m in wages paid by us so far total cost so far in monies paid £52m now, subtract his two loan fees £4.5m at AC Milan, and £2.7m at Monaco 7.2m quid leaves us on the hook so far for roughly £45m when his insurance cost is tallied in now, we are supposedly willing to take only €20m (£18m for him, but AC only want to pay €15m (£13.5m) split the difference €17.5m (16.8m quid) and IF this deal goes through we have a final NET LOSS when the books are closed of £28.2m IF Milan plays hardball, it might be a £30m or £31m net loss and he is only fucking 25yo (26 in a week), so age has zero factor BAD BAD business people who are saying we make a profit off him are fucking gas-lighting the hell out of you

I love Mount. I rate Mount. Mount is going to be a superb player for us for years. That is all. Carry on.