Jype

That only works if you're really confident of landing said first choice later on, so basically if the player is desperate to join and will refuse all other offers to join next window. Can anyone honestly say they'd have been confident of getting Haaland later? The club certainly didn't seem to think so.

Depends how firm Inter stay in the negotiations. If they hold out for €120M (£101.7M) then it would go just above the Grealish price, but €115M or less would keep Lukaku slightly below £100M. Not that it really matters all that much but I'd hope for him to stay below the record price, let City have that. 😆

In the Murican sports it's easier to have a salary cap because there's only one top league in each sport (NFL, NBA, NHL etc.) that all the best players in the world aim to play in and I believe the players are contracted to the league, and not the individual clubs that they play for. The clubs then own the whole league together and they share league revenues between them, so it's very easy to control the finances and make sure everyone gets an equal piece of the pie but football has so damn many leagues and a countless amount of clubs in different countries that it's nearly impossible to do the same. Also worth noting that all the Murican sports are played as closed leagues with no relegation and promotion. And even if they somehow managed to implement a salary cap (for example to play in UCL you would need to be under a certain wage bill) the clubs in each country would still earn vastly different amounts due to their own sponsorships, broadcasting deals etc. so in the richest leagues (especially EPL) who pockets the extra money that can't be paid in wages due to the cap? The money would go straight into the pockets of the club owners, which I don't think is fair either. The only way I could see it working is if you scrap European football altogether and just have domestic leagues with internal salary caps, but even then the country with most money coming in (EPL) would end up monopolizing top level football and vacuum up all the best players, leaving others feeding on scraps. Ironically, the best way to successfully implement a salary cap in football would have been the European Super League, where I believe the plan was for the 12 founding clubs to own the league and have financial transparency between them (clubs would have to submit their books to the league).

I once signed Anjorin for my team in Football Manager and successfully converted him to play in a two man midfield where he was an absolute monster. Was a close runner for the Ballon d'Or even. 😆

Before Covid their situation was not as disastrous as now, but still quite unsustainable. I remember in 2019 when they signed Griezmann they funded the signing with a short-term bank loan with high interest rates so the financial mismanagement goes back way before the pandemic. Because Messi's salary has always been outrageously high their squad players also make more than star players at other clubs, and that's why they are having problems shipping anyone out. Obviously pre-covid they must have thought they would get away with the recklessness it if they just invest a bit more money and get the team back to their winning ways but then covid happened and their situation moved from bad to worse. Laporta just said the club are projecting losses of €487M (!!!) for the last financial year. They were already neck deep in debts that they can't pay back so I don't think many banks will grant them any more credit either. From everything I've read on the matter it sounds they need a miracle to even survive the next couple of years without the whole club going under. Either the Spanish government will have to bail them out (which would be questionable given the whole nation is deep in debt as well and always need more money from EU) or they'll have to sell out to the sheikhs or something.

Yep. Chelsea's wages to turnover ratio is somewhere around 65-70% in the last few years despite having some deadwood who get paid to do nothing (the likes of Drinkwater). Without the deadwood it would obviously be much better, but even the 70% is quite healthy. Barcelona president today said their wage to turnover is 110% so for every euro they make they spend 1,10€ on wages and that's not even counting other expenses the club have. Without Messi's absurd salary that percentage supposedly goes down to 95% but even so their situation is very, very serious and that's why they're so desperate for the Super League.

Messi could still end up staying though. In their announcement Barcelona played the victim card and blamed it all on evil La Liga who bullied them by not allowing them to register Messi's new contract even though the club and player had already agreed everything. At the moment it looks like it's all a big bluff to see if La Liga will budge with their FFP rules for Barcelona, because no Messi will mean less money (league sponsorships, broadcasting etc.) for the league too. I think it's very Liverpool of them to portray themselves as the victim in the situation. Nobody forced them to spend almost half a billion euros on duds like Coutinho, Dembele, Griezmann and pay them absurdly inflated wages for years, and nobody forced them to pay Messi €100M a year in wages either if they couldn't afford it. But instead of facing the consequences of having to do a smart rebuild of the squad and tightening their purse strings for a few years they're still going all-in on the idea of a Super League which would 'save' them of their financial problems. I think it's telling that at the moment no Barca player, neither current or former, has commented anything publicly on the matter. You would think if it's 100% settled that Messi is not staying the first thing they'd all do is go to their social medias and milk it for as much as they can by saying what a privilege it's been to play with Messi and how much they'll miss him etc. So far there's been nothing which would suggest they're still playing the waiting game to see if the club can somehow squeeze in Messi's new contract, allowing him to stay. At the moment I'd say i's about 50/50 whether he stays or joins PSG or something.

Umm, Kante?

Who's to say he even looked very hard? Didn't he and his wife just have a baby a few months ago, maybe going back to work isn't the first thing on his mind right now. He was rumored to be one of the runners for the Palace job before Vieira was appointed and probably would've taken that one if offered to him, but I'm not so sure he's so anxious to return to management that he'd take any job in the Championship. He has time on his side, because it's not like he needs the money so he can wait for the right project to appear (maybe even in the PL). Of course it could be that he applied for just about every management job out there and just wasn't hired, but I'm not convinced that's the case.

I'm not trying to do anything. If you read my post I fully admit that Lukaku has certain flaws in his game, but that doesn't mean he can't be an absolute monster of a player in a team that plays to his many strengths. For example Diego Costa had many flaws with his technique, first touch etc. as well but that didn't prevent him from being a key part of a very successful period at the club. No player is perfect, unless we're talking Messi/Ronaldo types who are very much anomalies.

Damn, that's awful news. Thoughts are with the family at this time.

Every player struggled to connect a few passes together under Mourinho's United. Pogba for example is a player who at the moment is technically one of the most talented midfielders in the game and he also struggled badly under Mourinho. Lukaku, while obviously not the best player technically, hasn't had problems anywhere close to that bad at his other clubs. Lukaku's period at Man Utd was not good, but he's played much better football overall at Everton, Inter and the national team so why is everyone using the only bad period of his career as a stick to beat him with instead of looking at the bigger picture and judging him on his whole career so far? And why wouldn't Pep have perceived Lukaku as a threat back in 2018? Just the previous season at Everton he was a key part of a team that destroyed Pep's Man City side 4-0 at home and 1-1 away with Lukaku scoring two of Everton's five goals.

On one hand we have Pep Guardiola, a man who lives and breathes football 24/7/365 and has won everything there is to win in the game both as a player and a manager multiple times over. On the other hand we have 'whats happening', a fan who writes poorly worded one-liner messages on an internet forum. I don't know, when it comes to football knowledge it's a really tough choice.

See above, I posted direct quotes from Pep in 2018... You don't have to trust the newspapers if you don't want to, but ignoring actual comments by the man himself is something else.

So you trust a random armchair fan's opinion more than that of the world's best manager in the last decade (and who has a real shout for best manager in the game ever)? And just when I thought the Lukaku haters couldn't get any more ridiculous. 😂

Yep. Here are some direct quotes from Pep on Lukaku when he was playing for Man Utd: Pep has no reason to kiss a rival club player's ass if he doesn't actually rate them, and it's been widely reported that Man City enquired for Lukaku even this year but Romelu turned them down (it was when Conte was still at Inter and he had no intention to leave).

Exactly. I have no idea what people expect from a player if that is considered bad. Ever since his loan season at WBA (2012/13) I'd say only his last season at Man Utd was a big disappointment. Maybe at a stretch you can consider Lukaku's 2014-15 season at Everton below par too because he only scored ten league goals but even then he finished the season at 20 goals overall due to a strong Europa League campaign (8 goals in 9 games), and after that season he bounced back in the PL too with 18 goals and 25 goals over the following two seasons. That 2016/17 season at Everton was especially good with 24 non-penalty league goals, which is the same as Harry Kane who finished top scorer in the PL with 29 goals (5 pens). But I guess with some people Lukaku just can't win, they've already made up their minds that he's shit and they only focus on the bad things. If Lukaku now returns to the PL and stays with Chelsea for the next 4-5 years (which I would assume he does given the investment) he has every chance to finish his career in the top4 PL goalscorers ever, behind only Shearer, Rooney and Kane. In that time he would need to score only 75 goals to achieve that, which is a very reasonable expectation. And if he's a big success he can even usurp Rooney on the list (would need 95 goals to do that).

If Fofana is out with a long-term injury, could that put them after Zouma?

If he did that then it's a cuntish thing to do to his team mates, but I wouldn't underestimate the effect that constant scapegoating by the media and fans can have on a players mental health, after all they're human too and not robots. He didn't even start all that badly (first season at Utd he scored 27 goals overall) but gradually he got worse and worse until immediately getting back to performing at a good level once he got out of that club, which could suggest that there was little wrong with the player and more wrong with the environment. If a player is not mentally in the right place, he won't play well. I'm not saying that's the only reason he failed at Man Utd, but it might easily have played a part. And in any case, there have never been any problems with Lukaku in any of his other clubs, and people have always spoken highly of him wherever he's played. It's obvious Lukaku was never happy at United to begin with. On a few occasions he's suggested like he wasn't all that happy about going to United instead of Chelsea wa back in 2017. This year in his farewell message to Conte he said it's a shame they couldn't work together earlier when they had the chance, and after firing Mino Raiola as his agent in 2018 he also said something like 'after my career I will write a book and the truth will come out' which would insinuate that he wasn't happy being Raiola's puppet and go along with his agent's crazy money-grabbing plans. Also in Matt Law's article yesterday it said Man City inquired about Lukaku back in March this year but he knocked them down and made it clear he doesn't like living in Manchester.

I believe Conte's team were set up so the majority of crosses from the wing-backs were low crosses played to Lukaku's feet instead of in the air. And that's pretty much how Guardiola's teams also spam crosses into the box, it's just the way the game is played these days. Some guy analyzing the data in their basement has probably figured out that low crosses have a higher probability of ending up in the back of the net than high crosses which are cleared by the defenders quite easily most of the time. Even in the Euros we saw a record high amount of own goals, because clearing those low crosses quite often ends up as an own goal, as opposed to heading the ball out of play in a high cross. Lukakus' record of headed goals is not bad really. Last season he only got two (partly for the reasons mentioned above) but the previous season at Inter he scored 6 headers and during his time in England he regularly got 4-6 headers a season. Overall he has scored 45 headed goals in his club career according to Transfermarkt.com. According to the same website Drogba scored 45 headers in his whole career when not counting his last adventures in Murica.

Talk about a downgrade subbing Kante off for Bakayoko. 😂

And in his first game of pre-season no less. The man is unbelievable.

Am I seeing things or Werner wasn't offside there, right? Good play to round the keeper and make the finish, with VAR that would've stood.

Great goal by Ziyech. Kante crucial in the build-up.

"Where the fuck is Harry Kane" chants from the fans. Oh how I've missed the banter of a full stadium.