The English Football Thread

[NikkiCFC 7,582]

MARTIN SAMUEL: 'Hateful Eight' step up war against Man City in FFP saga as Jurgen Klopp and Jose Mourinho give the game away... the richest clubs are operating as a protectionist cartel

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-8523111/MARTIN-SAMUEL-Hateful-eight-step-war-against-Manchester-City-FFP-saga.html

[Vesper 27,315]

1 hour ago, NikkiCFC said:

Still injured. If SU win tomorrow we would have 4 points over Leicester with 2 games to go. And they have Spurs and Utd left. 

Can not see Wolves winning all games as well. More than 90% sure that we do not need any points to finish top4.

your maths are off

you said we do not need any more points to finish 4th (you are 90% sure if Leicester loses v SU)

if we get no more points that means we lose to Wolves (they are on 55 now) so we end on 63

Wolves other 2 games are against dregs, Burnley and Palace, which they should win (or at least be favoured)

if they win out that puts them at 64 and we are out of CL unless Manure utterly collapse (as we end on 63 and they are looking at 65 if they win their two dregs games and lose to Leicester, and they STILL top us if they go 1 win one draw and 1 loss, as that leaves them at 63 and above us on GD)

and not just 5th for us

as if Leicester (even if they lose v SU) beats spuds and draws with manure (or draws with spuds and beats manure or wins both) they go above us too, either on GD or outright on points

even if we get a draw v Liverpool, but lose v Wolves, as long as wolves win versus the dregs by a total of one goal and 2 goals (or more) (so plus 3 ior more in their GD gain n GD and thus we are only +1 (or worse) in GD versus them, going in), they would go above us on GD by simply beating us by one goal (as it is a net 2 point GD swing). even if they only win each of the other 2 games by only one goal each (thus we are +2 in GD over them going in if we draw v Liverpool) , they also would go through if they beat us by 2 or more (and remember, all that is WITH us drawing against Liverpool, if we lose to the dippers, we could still be well fucked and end up 6th, or 5th at best)

we reallllly fucked up tonight by only winning by one goal

even two draws for us could well fuck us

we would be at 65 points

but manure , if they just win 2 the 2 shit games, and lose to Leicester, top us via GD

AND Leicester, if they win 2 of the 3 games left (does not matter what combo, as if they lose to manure but win the other two, the only thing that changes is manures gets 3rd for sure) gets 4th, we would be 5th, and Wolves 6th

in theory we COULD even end up SEVENTH

IF Sheffield win out and we lose both, we both will be on 63 points

we are +10 over them in GD

but lets say we lose both games by a combined 5 goals

+5 now

and they win by say 2 versus Leicester, 3 versus Everton, and 1 versus SOTON  (or win by 2 2 2)

they go 6th, we go 7th on GD

IF we lose both remaining games

it is VERY likely we do ot get CL unless there are a lot of upsets

and in a nightmare scenario we not only are dumped out into the Europa league, BUT we have to go through fucking qualifying rounds there (unless we win the FA Cup)

and finally

we COULD even miss out on the Europa league

No Europe at all 

IF SU finshes above us ( the only not likely event even if we lose the last two games, but still possible if we get pummelled hard in those two games and SU win by 2 or so goals in each game (or even less if we get just smashed in the last two) and (of course) Leicester and Manure and Wolves finish above us and Arsenal win the FA Cup

as 7th place EPL going to the EL then poofs (as Arse cannot finish above us in the league they are mathematically eliminated from that), so their EL place gained via the FA Cup win takes away 7th place EPL team going to the EL

we are very lucky a long shot did not win the league cup, as then 6th place would also get NO EUROPE (IF Arse also win the FA Cup, and even if they did not, 7th still gets no Europe)

many people forget that the EPL only gets 5 (via league order finish) guaranteed Europe spots (4 CL. 1 EL) as the EFL Cup winners and the FA Cup winners are guaranteed so 6th and 7th place only come into play if a an already Europe-qualified team(s) wins them

[Puliiszola 519]

2 hours ago, NikkiCFC said:

Still injured. If SU win tomorrow we would have 4 points over Leicester with 2 games to go. And they have Spurs and Utd left. 

Can not see Wolves winning all games as well. More than 90% sure that we do not need any points to finish top4.

Was just calculating this after the game last night. 

I feel wolves will be done tonight itself. Can't see them winning against Burnley. They are 8 points behind so need all 3 wins. So wolves might be out by tonight.

Leicester need atleast 4 points from 3 games against SHU, spurs and united, if we lose both of our games. Don't see them getting that in current form

So top 4 might already be done for us 

[Vesper 27,315]

Klopp spoke out because City’s escape threatens Liverpool’s entire model

https://theathletic.co.uk/1923882/2020/07/14/jurgen-klopp-ffp-manchester-city-cas/

There was certainly no whispering from Jurgen Klopp at Melwood. The message from the title-winning Liverpool manager was loud and clear.

“I don’t think it was a good day for football,” was his blunt assessment of the Court of Arbitration for Sport’s decision to overturn Manchester City’s two-year ban from the Champions League.

When Pep Guardiola’s men were initially hit with the suspension by UEFA in February, Klopp picked his words carefully. Privately, there was a collective sense of satisfaction and relief within the club that the governing body had finally got tough with the alleged rule-breakers. But with the title still to be won and a City appeal pending, there was little to be gained by expressing those sentiments publicly.

“I really feel for Pep and the players,” Klopp told the media after the narrow win against Norwich City. “What they did since I have been in England is exceptional.”

His tone was very different on Tuesday as he spoke to the media before Wednesday’s trip to Arsenal. The gloves were off.

Klopp spoke passionately about the potential impact of City’s punishment being overturned and why financial fair play (FFP) rules must be upheld for the good of the game.

He also admitted that, on the face of it, City playing in Europe next season could actually help Liverpool when it comes to trying to retain the Premier League title, saying he’d feared that if Guardiola only had domestic football to contend with then “I don’t see any chances for any other teams”.

But this goes much deeper than the fixture list. For Klopp and Liverpool’s owners Fenway Sports Group (FSG), this is about the ongoing battle to ensure it’s a level playing field in the race of the biggest honours. That all members of Europe’s elite abide by the rules regarding expenditure and that those who fail to do so are punished accordingly.

“I think FFP is a good idea,” Klopp said. “It’s there for protecting teams and protecting competition so that nobody overspends. Clubs have to make sure that the money they want to spend is based on the right sources.”

If you lose FFP, Klopp said, then “nobody has to care any more. The richest people or countries can do whatever they want in football. That would make the competition really difficult.

“It is a little bit like Formula One — if you open the door (to competing in F1) to a private jet and you see who is quicker, the aeroplane will win. If the car is in a specific way, then the best driver wins.

“If you qualify for the Champions League, you have more money. Since I have been at Liverpool, it was always the most important thing that we qualify for the Champions League for money reasons. If we wanted to buy a player, we had to sell before. That is how it is.

“I am not worried about Liverpool in this sense, I don’t think, ‘Oh my God, what can we do?’ But I am really happy we won the championship this year because it will not be easier in the future.”

Empowered by the CAS verdict, Guardiola went on the offensive himself, demanding an apology from UEFA and criticising “whispering” Premier League bosses for speaking “behind our backs”. Yet the Spaniard’s suggestion that a traditional giant of English football such as Liverpool is “uncomfortable” with City’s emergence as a major force spectacularly misses the point.

For FSG, this has always been about fairness rather than trying to protect the established order. After all, either side of the £300 million takeover nearly a decade ago, Liverpool finished seventh, sixth, eighth and seventh from 2010-13. Liverpool had fallen out of the elite themselves and had a fight on their hands to clamber back in.

It was UEFA that decided to introduce the FFP rules that helped convince John W Henry and Tom Werner to buy Liverpool. FSG was never going to bankroll Liverpool in the same manner as Roman Abramovich at Chelsea or Sheikh Mansour at Manchester City. It was attracted by the prospect of clubs having to operate within their means and the challenge of gradually reviving Liverpool’s fortunes by raising revenues across the board.

To say FSG has felt repeatedly let down by how those rules have been enforced would be an understatement.

When Manchester City stood accused of financial doping after unveiling a £400 million sponsorship deal with Etihad Airways in 2011, Henry tweeted: “How much was the losing bid?” Etihad Airways was chaired at the time by Sheikh Mansour’s half-brother.

“The biggest challenge for us has been the ignoring of financial fair play,” Henry said in 2014. “It makes it very difficult to compete. We really don’t have financial fair play, or at least people are not abiding by it.” When City were fined £17 million (with a further £32 million suspended) for FFP breaches a few weeks later, FSG viewed it as a pitiful slap on the wrist.

Liverpool were themselves cleared of breaking FFP rules in 2015 after UEFA accepted that £49.6 million had been spent on stadium costs. FSG had to effectively write off £35 million due to the ditched plans of the club’s previous owners Tom Hicks and George Gillett.

After German newspaper Der Spiegel published damaging claims about how City had allegedly manipulated sponsorship deals and masked payments from their owners, Liverpool privately welcomed news of UEFA’s investigation. Their name was among the long list of clubs who contacted the Premier League asking them to look into City’s conduct further.

“It’s no secret that we are big supporters of financial fair play,” Werner told The Athletic last summer. “We believe it makes sport and on-pitch performance more competitive. UEFA must be successful in implementing it. If there are infringements then we would expect punishments. Everyone should abide by those rules in a very transparent way.”

The two-year Champions League ban issued to City in February was viewed at FSG as UEFA finally baring its teeth. Now there’s a sense of dismay over CAS lifting that suspension and reducing the fine from €30 million to €10 million. CAS cleared City of “disguising equity funds as sponsorship contributions” but found they had “failed to co-operate with UEFA authorities”.

The Athletic understands that Liverpool’s owners were left stunned by Monday’s decision and are awaiting the publication of the full report with interest. They believed that City had broken the rules and would be punished accordingly. They continue to view FFP as critical to a fair sporting competition.

For Liverpool, there’s frustration that UEFA was undone to a degree by City’s legal team and its own regulations, with CAS saying part of the reason for its verdict was that some alleged breaches occurred more than five years ago, so were deemed inadmissible. “Most of the alleged breaches reported by the adjudicatory chamber of the CFCB (UEFA’s Club Financial Control Body) were either not established or time-barred,” it said.

Relations between Liverpool and City have become increasingly strained in recent years. At the end of last season, Guardiola’s players were filmed mocking Liverpool as they passed the Premier League trophy around the plane flying them back to Manchester after the final day win at Brighton that ensured they pipped their rivals to the title.

To the tune of the Kop anthem “Allez Allez Allez”, they sang the version adopted by City fans.

“All the way to Kyiv, to end up in defeat, crying in the stands and battered on the streets, Kompany injured Salah, victims of it all, Sterling won the double, the Scousers won fuck all…”

Anfield officials were equally stunned by the lack of contrition that followed in a statement issued by City, before Guardiola belatedly apologised.

Since then, Liverpool have won the Champions League, UEFA Super Cup, Club World Cup and their first league title in 30 years. Trying to extend that run of success won’t be easy in the wake of CAS’s verdict.

Rather than City facing the prospect of key personnel wanting to leave following the loss of Champions League football, Guardiola is instead expected to embark on a major spending spree this summer to try to reclaim their Premier League crown.

FFP rules are being temporarily relaxed by UEFA because of the financial implications of the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet the contrasting business models between Liverpool and City will once again be laid bare. With revenue streams at Anfield having been decimated by the crisis, Klopp is expecting a quiet summer transfer window with the club unlikely to make any major signings.

The impact of the pandemic led to Liverpool deciding not to pursue a £54 million deal for Timo Werner, who subsequently signed for Chelsea. Liverpool felt they couldn’t justify that kind of outlay in the current climate for a player who would not initially have commanded a place in their starting XI.

“Strengthening the squad, you talk about like it is something I just have to ask for and somebody opens the well and away we go,” Klopp added when asked on Tuesday. “To strengthen the squad you need money, and these are uncertain times.

“We did not invest a lot in the squad last year and that was before COVID. We do not know when supporters will be back in the stadium. Whoever knows, tell me and then we can plan with that. That is how the club has been led since before I was here. If we have money, we will spend. If we do not know if we will have money, we probably will not spend that much.”

Since the start of the 2010-11 season, City have spent £1.39 billion in the transfer market, with a net spend of £960 million. Over the same period, Liverpool have spent £915 million with a net spend of £267 million.

The new Premier League champions have bought well and they have sold even better. The £142 million sale of Philippe Coutinho in January 2018, which effectively paid for the signings of Virgil van Dijk and Alisson, is the best example of that.

FSG hoped financial fair play would help its mission to restore the club to the summit of English football, with Klopp leading the charge. But despite achieving that goal, the feeling persists that they aren’t all playing by the same set of rules. Hence the manager’s strong declaration that Monday was not a good day for football.

Liverpool have scaled the mountain, but Klopp knows that staying there will be much tougher on the back of Manchester City’s reprieve.

[Vesper 27,315]

Exclusive: Maitland-Niles feels he has to leave Arsenal for first-team football

https://theathletic.co.uk/1928376/2020/07/14/exclusive-ainsley-maitland-niles-leave-arsenal-mikel-arteta-arsenal-transfer/

Ainsley Maitland-Niles has come to the conclusion that the writing is on the wall for his career at Arsenal and in order to achieve regular first-team game time, he must leave the Emirates Stadium.

The 22-year-old England youth international came through the club’s Hale End academy to make his debut in 2014 and has accumulated 96 appearances under four different managers.

He played a full part in each of Arsenal’s six Premier League games after Mikel Arteta was appointed as head coach on December 20 but has featured in only four of the subsequent 12 top-flight fixtures, all from the substitutes’ bench and has spent about 70 minutes on the pitch in total.

Since the home draw against Sheffield United on January 18, Maitland-Niles has completed a whole match just once — in an FA Cup quarter-final win away to the same opposition on June 28.

The shortage of game time has led Maitland-Niles to seek pastures new and although he is under contract until 2023, he is thought to believe now is the right time to continue his career elsewhere.

Talks between Arsenal and his representatives were geared towards the matter coming to a head once the campaign is over, enabling Arteta’s men to focus on a push for European qualification.

However, Arsenal saw their slim hopes of reaching next season’s Champions League ended with Sunday’s defeat away to Tottenham — a game for which Maitland-Niles was an unused substitute — and he is understood to think it would be best for both parties if a resolution was found sooner.

Maitland-Niles senses a lack of trust in him from Arteta and he would welcome the chance to explore a fresh opportunity away from his boyhood club, with interest coming from England and Germany.

He has mainly been utilised by Arsene Wenger, Unai Emery, Freddie Ljungberg and Arteta as a makeshift right-back and watched other academy graduates leapfrog him. Central midfield is the player’s favoured position and where he feels best-suited to improve the side if given a chance.

There have been issues around time-keeping; Maitland-Niles admitted in recent interviews that he held discussions with Arteta and “took the consequences” after arriving late for training once.

The website Transfermarkt values him at around £13 million and a potential sale could bring in some much-needed finances as Arsenal look to strengthen their squad ahead of the 2020-21 season.

[Vesper 27,315]

Exclusive: IFAB to extend five substitutes rule to cover all of 2020-21 season

https://theathletic.co.uk/1915053/2020/07/08/five-substitutions-rule-2020-21-season-ifab/

 

World football’s law-makers are set to extend the temporary rule allowing teams to make five substitutes in a game, rather than three, for all of next season.

The International Football Association Board (IFAB) introduced the change in May as a short-term measure to protect players in leagues that would be trying to finish the 2019-20 season after the COVID-related lockdown — the rationale being that players would be playing a congested schedule after a long lay-off, with only a limited “pre-season” period to return to fitness.

The Athletic understands that IFAB’s board of directors is expected to announce the extension in the coming days.

Each league was allowed to decide if it wanted to implement the initial change and the Premier League voted to do so in early June, although it was not unanimous, with Aston Villa, Bournemouth, Sheffield United and West Ham United voting against the proposal.

And now the debate about whether the extra substitutes favour teams with deeper squads or not is set to return, as IFAB believes the late start to next season will lead to the same player-welfare concerns existing throughout the 2020-21 campaign, too. Those who believe the change benefits richer teams, a concern raised by Crystal Palace manager Roy Hodgson yesterday, will be worried that what was meant to be a one-off solution to an unprecedented event will become permanent by next summer, when everyone will have got used to 20-strong match-day squads and five options off the bench.

Going into this week’s round of games, only Brighton, Liverpool and Manchester United have taken advantage of the option to use five substitutes in all their games since the restart, while Burnley have only made six changes in four games.

As well as debating whether the extra substitutes become permanent or not, IFAB’s technical committees are expected to continue their work on the offside law over the coming months.

The Athletic understands there is now a wide acceptance that the introduction of VAR and Hawk-Eye technology has reversed the trend of relaxing the offside law in favour of attackers, by depriving them of the benefit of the doubt. Whereas assistant referees were once encouraged to keep their flags down if they were not sure whether a player was onside or not, the technology used by video referees enables them to spot a toe, knee or nose in an offside position.

FIFA’s technical director Arsene Wenger, the former Arsenal manager, has suggested changing the law so that a player would be onside if any part of their body that they could score with was behind or level with the penultimate defender.

This, however, is unlikely to become law as IFAB’s technical experts believe this would tilt the balance too much in the attackers’ direction, as a player could theoretically score with a diving header if just his toes were level with the penultimate defender.

What is more likely will be a move to judging offsides on either the players’ shoulders, shirt or torso, as that would reduce the ultra-marginal offsides judged on toes and heels that infuriate most fans. It would also be a policy that could be easily applied at all levels of the game, whether cameras are present or not.

On the subject of VAR, there is one change that has been suggested by fans, managers and pundits that is not on IFAB’s radar at all: time limits for VAR decisions. It is understood the game’s law-makers believe accuracy is more important than speed and fans will tolerate mistakes made by officials in the heat of the moment but not if they are made after looking at replays.

They also think any time limit would be an arbitrary decision and some decisions, such as penalties after a passage of play that might include a potential offside, foul or handball before the penalty incident, require time to check.

[Special Juan 27,103]

Claude sacked from AFTV for calling Son....Heung Min DVD

[killer1257 3,282]

Claude sacked from AFTV for calling Son....Heung Min DVD

[emoji38][emoji38]

Troopz should have gone too because he said something racist, but Troopz is too big to get banned sadly

 

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[Fulham Broadway 16,392]

We need the Leicester implosion continuing on Thursday. Big night.

[Special Juan 27,103]

Fancy Burnley to get something off Wolves tonight...

Sheffield United I expect to roll over and have their bellies tickled by Leicester

[Special Juan 27,103]

Can see Newcastle beating Spurs here, JM has never won there.

[Vesper 27,315]

Burnley v Wolves HD Streams

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http://www.bfst.xyz/four.php

http://www.dubsstreamz.com/tdn.php

https://www.totalsportek.com/wolverhampton/

http://hdstreams.club/hd/ch4.php

 

[Vesper 27,315]

4 minutes ago, Special Juan said:

Can see Newcastle beating Spurs here, JM has never won there.

meaningless game for us,Spuds and Arse are already eliminated from finishing above us

Wolves atm are a huge threat to dump us out if they win tonight

a draw or a loss and they cannot

[killer1257 3,282]

Hope Burnley get at least one point of Wolves

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[Vesper 27,315]

Wolves are all over them

[Special Juan 27,103]

Spurs 1 up

[Vesper 27,315]

damn, Burnley lost Charlie Taylor, their LB, so an out of position player now on Traore

Burnley down to only 2 bench players with any real EPL experience

[killer1257 3,282]

damn, Burnley lost Charlie Taylor, their LB, so an out of position player now on Traore
Burnley down to only 2 bench players with any real EPL experience

How is Nick Pope playing?

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