The English Football Thread

[DH1988 1,332]

Madness, the price tag that has been put on Kane is absurd, you then allow anyone to swing it any way they want ie. 6 year contract, if Grealish is worth X then Kane is worth Y, ugh zzz.

Spurs should sell him, use the money, have the other players step up and not hide in Kane's shadow. Kane is 28, gets one injury per season and isn't going to fetch a ton of money next summer after a year of sulking. It does nobody any good him staying at Spurs. City get their man, Spurs get their money and everybody wins.

[Warning_Hazard 156]

18 minutes ago, Mana said:

I'm not off the boil, you are. City have already placed a bid earlier and Spuds rejected it.

£150M is not enough to get Kane. Fabrizio Romano said City have £150M's ready on the table if Spuds open the door to it.

You and I know that door is solid shut. They won't listen for £150M.

Kane can 'wish' City bid again, but it's not up to him to make the decision to move if they did.

50M next summer? Kane doesn't have 2 years left in his contract! If he is up there in the PL top scorers list again, he will be still be AT LEAST worth £100M (and AGAIN - it's not like Spuds want to sell Kane).

I know you like to think youre a big brain but honestly I havent agreed with anything youve said in the past week or 2, I dont log in much but i do read posts, I use to agree with most of what you said, Not anymore.

If they dont sell him this season he will go for less in the summer.

Spurs holding onto a player who wants a move to then sell him for 1/3 or less than what they may get during this window or jan doesnt sound like levy although he is a bit stubborn with transfers.

Hes been included in their europa squad and some people have said he will stay this season but I wouldnt put my money on that.

The term this forum stuggles with is called hedging!

These all out statements like youre a psychic is weird

[Jap Si. 50]

19 hours ago, NikkiCFC said:

We have to win title no excuses! 

 

You are terrible poster stick to FIFA.

[Vesper 29,250]

https://football-observatory.com/IMG/sites/b5wp/2021/wp343/en/

 

 

[Vesper 29,250]

Positional play against Spurs shows that relationship between Sterling and Grealish will need work By Dan Zeqiri Pep Guardiola's football is known for positional rigour, choreographed attacking movements and careful spacing of players across the pitch. Jack Grealish is known for playing with a thrilling sense of freedom and abandon. How the two mesh together promises to be a fascinating aspect of his British record transfer to Manchester City. There were some positive signs on his debut at Tottenham despite the game ending in defeat. Grealish completed the second-most 'progressive carries' of any player who featured in the opening Premier League weekend of the season, with nobody completing more into the penalty area. Guardiola was full of praise for his performance. Grealish played in a more central role for City, starting on the left of a midfield three, with Raheem Sterling occupying the wide left position in which he thrived for Aston Villa. Both right-footed dribblers who favour the left side of the pitch, there is potentially a risk that the pair stand on each other's toes. Their touchmaps at Spurs were very similar. As explored in this piece, Guardiola might need to employ a lighter touch tactically and allow Sterling and Grealish to rotate. Despite being England team-mates, Sterling and Grealish have not played much together with Gareth Southgate tending to use Grealish as an impact substitute. Knowing to stay inside when Sterling is wide or swing wide when Sterling narrows is the kind of pattern Grealish will grow more comfortable with over the coming months at City.     More weekend analysis New Premier League signings rated: How Jadon Sancho, Ben White and Junior Firpo got on in their debuts Referee's view: Premier League referees have finally learned their lessons - and improvements are long overdue Oliver Brown: Spurs' fans ire for Harry Kane shows transformation from hero to has-been can happen in a heartbeat Back in contention: The cogs are coming together again in Liverpool's winning machine The battle for hearts and minds: How steely Rafael Benitez got his Everton tenure off to the perfect start against Southampton Picture of the weekend CREDIT: MATTHEW PETERS, MANCHESTER UNITED/VIA GETTY Crowd control: Fred celebrates Manchester United's fifth and final goal in the rout of Leeds on Saturday. The victory was built on the flourishing partnership between Paul Pogba and Bruno Fernandes.     Today's best stat   8,000 Roberto Firmino scored Liverpool's 8,000th goal in the Football League/Premier League. They are only the second side to hit that total, after Manchester United (8,089). Here's how the cogs in the winning machine might be coming back together.

[NikkiCFC 8,089]

50 minutes ago, Jap Si. said:

You are terrible poster stick to FIFA.

Welcome back! 💋

[Vesper 29,250]

fucking scouse vermin

Soccer Fans Scream Homophobic Chant at Player, Liverpool Condemns

https://www.advocate.com/sports/2021/8/16/soccer-fans-scream-homophobic-chant-player-liverpool-condemns

 

[Vesper 29,250]

It’s now Manchester City, Chelsea, Liverpool and Manchester United: The big six is no more

https://gameofthepeople.com/2021/08/16/its-now-manchester-city-Chelsea-liverpool-and-manchester-united-the-big-six-is-no-more/

 

FOR THE past decade, English football has been dominated by two clubs: Manchester City and Chelsea. Between them, they have won 17 of the 30 domestic trophies (20 out 40 counting the CS) on offer and Chelsea have won a further four five European prizes. The pandemic has left both clubs’ relatively unscathed though City made a hefty loss in 2019-20, but the economic strength behind both clubs means they can smile when it’s a rainy day. Not so for most of their rivals. 

The debacle that was the European Super League was not necessarily their idea, but they are like any other club, they suffer from FOMO (fear of missing out), so they appeared to go along with the flawed idea. The ESL needed Chelsea and Manchester City more than they needed the ESL. Paris Saint-Germain were in the same ballpark. PSG didn’t bite the bullet and steered clear and the Premier duo were the first to call time on the proposal. The fact is, for all three of these clubs, the status quo works just fine. Those desperate to regain the status and advantages they had before ultra high net worth individuals got involved in the game were the keenest advocates. 

The owners of Chelsea, Manchester City and Paris Saint-Germain have different agendas than those behind Liverpool, Arsenal and Manchester United. For US investor/owners, sports team ownership is an asset class, which is why private equity firms have developed a taste for football clubs. It is likely that Roman Abramovich and Sheikh Mansour do not expect to make money out of owning a football club, although the involvement of private equity firm Silver Lake at City does change the dynamic. One area that makes US investors squirm is relegation – it’s something they try to eradicate from American sports.

With so much wealth behind these clubs, it is no surprise that the pandemic has put paid to the Premier League’s so-called “big six”, a group of clubs founded on the basis of their financial power, their position in the game and their heritage. 

While Chelsea and City will forever be looked upon as “new money” by fans of Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester United, their modern records are impressive. Before the two clubs’ owners took over, Chelsea had won eight major prizes, City nine. Between them, they had three league titles, Chelsea’s coming in 1955 and City’s in 1937 and 1968. They were underachieving clubs that lived in the shadows of their local rivals – in Chelsea’s case, Arsenal were always the top name in London, while City’s honours list was dwarfed by Manchester United. 

Fans of English football’s old “big three” taunted Chelsea and City as having “no history”, but increasingly it counts for nothing other than making books more interesting. History is created on a daily basis, clubs are not born with a ready built honours list.  And while sceptics might claim that success has been “bought”, that has almost always been the case in football, going right back to the days when mill owners subsidised and paid for success for the local club. The figures just happen to be far greater today. 

The type of ownership at Chelsea and Manchester City enables the clubs to weather storms that affect others. The models at Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester United are different in that their owners expect a return. As a result, their clubs make money and dividends can be paid. As for Tottenham, their ownership is ENIC, a UK investment company that may have similar objectives to the club’s north London neighbours. There is a growing presence in football of private equity firms entering the market which indicates there could be a rise in professional investment that knocks companies into shape, makes them more efficient and then sells them to make a profit on their investment. 

While there is nothing legally wrong with this practice, it does not align itself to the spirit of the game. But then should it be obliged to? Football Finance experts such as Kieran Maguire of Liverpool University and The Price of Football fame have long acknowledged that football was never a well-run business from a financial perspective. Football doesn’t like the wealthy owner model, but neither does it appreciate the professional investor expecting something back. What does football really want?

With the pandemic, in all probability, ending an era of exponential growth and excess, clubs like Chelsea and Manchester City will surely only strengthen their position at the top of the game. The other members of the “big four” will be Liverpool and Manchester United, primarily because of their vast worldwide support that will be further monetised, and sound management. But both clubs will not have the same financial power of Chelsea and City.

These clubs will have to rely on skilful recruitment and player trading, along with their commercial prowess, which is considerable. No matter how successful they are, Chelsea and Manchester City will never have the same cachet as Liverpool and Manchester United. This is where history and longevity has its advantage. Liverpool won the Premier League in 2020 because they had an excellent coach and had been very astute in the transfer market. That can happen again, but ultimately, those clubs with fewer financial restrictions will rise to the top.

So how did six become four? In truth, Tottenham’s flirtation with the “big six” was brief. Their trophy haul has been abysmal in the past 40 years and their last title was in 1961. With the construction of their new stadium, they have a brilliant home, but this will undoubtedly have an impact on their disposable income for a period of time, just as Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium slowed the club down. Arsenal went nine years without a trophy before scooping a quartet of FA Cups between 2014 and 2020, but Spurs have gone into a period of possible restriction after their best team in years peaked. 

Arsenal’s problems seem to be manifold: Poor succession planning following Arsene Wenger’s long tenure; sub-optimal recruitment; lack of ambition for too long; and detached, unpopular ownership that has made them uncompetitive. The culmination of a period of stagnation is that Arsenal will not be playing in European competition for the first time in 25 years in 2021-22 season. But this is still Arsenal and their time will come again, one presumes.

Arsenal, over the past five years, have seen their revenues decline by 3%, while Spurs have enjoyed an 87% rise from £ 209 million in 2015-16 to £ 391 million in 2019-20. Chelsea and Manchester City both saw their income go up by 23%, while Liverpool’s revenues rocketed by 62%. The dynamic between Arsenal and Spurs is interesting – in 2016, Arsenal had a 

£ 150 million advantage of their rivals but are now £ 50 million behind them. Similarly, Manchester United and City is a story of one club falling and another rising – in 2016, United earned £ 123 million more, but in 2020, the gap was £ 27 million. 

With Premier League clubs likely to suffer more challenges once the 2020-21 figures are revealed, the Chelsea-City axis could take a renewed stranglehold on the English game. For the foreseeable future, we may see what many people predicted a while ago when clubs started to become the property of wealthy oligarchs and oilmen. The advantage they gave these clubs may become more and more visible. If the cry of “foul” was heard then, it may become somewhat louder when the next wave of crisis sweeps over professional football.

 

[Vesper 29,250]

And that was the opening Premier League weekend that was    That’s the photo. Photograph: Eddie Keogh/Getty Images Barry Glendenning  @bglendenning WE GO AGAIN While the entirety of last season proved that football is nothing without fans, the opening weekend of this new one provided a timely reminder that despite their prolonged and enforced absence it would often be considerably better if some of them stayed at home. But despite the best attempts of assorted imbeciles in Manchester, Norfolk and Tottenham, among other nationwide locales, the sight of “House Full” signs up in Premier League grounds was enough to melt the flintiest of hearts. Brentford got the opening Premier League weekend off to a flyer, the famous bus-stop in Hounslow marking their first top-flight appearance in 74 years with a win over Arsenal that, while technically an upset, was no real surprise at all. Bees fans were left buzzing, none more so than Brentford super-fan Woody, whose post-match embrace with manager Thomas Frank adorned several of the morning papers being read by Saturday morning coffee-drinkers as they raised their heads quizzically upon hearing grown men thump each other with bins and restaurant furniture on the street outside. Sergi Canós: Brentford’s stadium can become a fortress after win over Arsenal Read more While Nasty Leeds fans set about the task of shedding their club’s reputation as neutrals’ favourites outside Old Trafford, their team did their bit inside the ground. Taken on at their own energetic, high-pressing game and soundly beaten at it by Manchester United, with Luke Ayling’s second-half screamer they could at least go home with the consolation of knowing they’d scored the game’s fourth-best goal. Meanwhile at Stamford Bridge, Trevoh Chalobah announced his Chelsea arrival at the top table in Chelsea’s humbling of Crystal Palace with a strike that made folk previously unfamiliar with his work sit up and notice that not only is he not his brother Nathan, but also that his name isn’t actually “Trevor”. At Goodison Park, Rafael Benítez got an unexpectedly warm welcome from fans of his new “small club” before their win over a Southampton team that’s shedding big-name stars in some sort of Saints supernova. Further south, everyone’s relegation-certainties Watford showed their title-winning credentials with a 3-2 demolition of Aston Villa that was nowhere near as close as the scoreline suggests. Their fellow promoted side Norwich had no answers for Liverpool, who cruised to victory under the new laser-improved gaze of Jürgen Klopp. Leicester just about triumphed over Wolves thanks to Jamie Vardy, while Sean Dyche’s Burnley XI couldn’t quite Burnley their way to a point against free-scoring Brighton xG. And so to Sunday, where normality was resumed at St James’ Park, as Newcastle’s players trudged off to the heartwarmingly unfamiliar sound of boos, albeit safe in the knowledge that they will almost certainly play worse this season. Meanwhile in London, Tottenham Hotspur weathered an early storm to pull off a somewhat surprising win over toothless champions Manchester City. Having ground out their win with a disciplined and determined team performance, their players could be forgiven for rolling their eyes at the raft of post-match headlines devoted to a certain teammate whose contribution was zero. QUOTE OF THE DAY “He’s one of the greatest legends in the history of FC Bayern. His achievements are unrivalled to this day and will forever be a part of the great history of FC Bayern and all of German football. As a player and a person Gerd Müller stands for FC Bayern and its development into one of the biggest clubs in the world. Gerd will forever be in our hearts” – Oliver Kahn pays tribute to Gerd Müller, one of the game’s all-time greats, who died on Sunday aged 75. Read Scott Murray’s brilliant tribute to the man they called Der Bomber and there’s also a lovely gallery, too.  Gerd Müller doing what he did best. RIP. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images RECOMMENDED LISTENING Listen up! Get your ears around Football Weekly here! FIVER LETTERS “Nice to see Jim Rosenthal getting a rare runout in Friday’s Fiver (Still Want Mores). Gives me an excuse to link to this monumental piece of journalism, in which our hero is transported into a dream-like netherworld. This journey ends with him naked and being covered in lather by the country’s top scorer, his captain, and two mulleted magicians. What a man” – Nick Kinsella. “Were the Premier League fixture compilers indulging in a bit of devilment with the opening-day fixtures? Starting a match top of the Premier League and ending it bottom – it could only happen to Arsenal” – John Lawton. “Given their propensity to plumb new depths each passing day, the Gunners could file for a change of emblem from the current one to the Mariana Trench” – Krishna Moorthy. “When Chelsea score at home the big screens flash up GOAL!! GOAL!! followed by the name and photo of the scorer. When Trevoh Chalobah scored on Saturday the screens duly flashed up GOAL!! GOAL!! but of name or photo there were none. So I propose a new term to describe a young player making an unexpected splash: ‘Too unknown to have his name in the big screen display computer’” – Nick Moon. Send your letters to [email protected]. And you can always tweet The Fiver via @guardian_sport. Prizes are back, baby! Today’s winner is Nick Kinsella, who gets a copy of The Hard Yards: A Season in the Championship, Football’s Toughest League by Nige Tassell. It’s available in hardback from 19 August and we have more to give away. NEWS, BITS AND BOBS Renowned rom-com enthusiast Virgil van Dijk says his return to action for Liverpool against Norwich felt “very emotional”. “It was sort of like a hurdle,” he Richard Curtis-ed. “I had to get over that.” Barcelona chief suit, Joan Laporta, has blamed Josep Bartomeu for a “terrible inheritance” which has led to debts of €1.35bn (subs, please check). “We could not pay the salaries,” Laporta blubbed. “The previous regime was full of lies.” Granit Xhaka has scrawled his name all over a new contract at Arsenal until 2025. Like an impatient parent trying to get his teenager out of bed, Spurs manager Nuno Espírito Santo wants Harry Kane to hurry up. “He has to get ready and help the team,” he pleaded. And José Mourinho has found £34m down the back of a fine leather sofa at Roma and is ready to swap it for Tammy Abraham. STILL WANT MORE? We know you’ve missed them: 10 glorious talking points coming right at ya.  Did somebody say composite photo? Composite: Reuters/Getty/AP/Getty Andy Brassell’s Bundesliga blog addresses how Robert Lewandowski and Erling Haaland will try to emulate the great Gerd Müller this season. An extract from Ryan Baldi’s new book explores the rise of Trent Alexander-Arnold, featuring sulks, a position change and fetching the balls he would kick in anger. Alan Ruschel lost 19 of his Chapecoense teammates in a plane crash five years ago. He recovered from his injuries, became the club’s captain and led them to two trophies. Josué Seixas speaks with the 31-year-old. Ligue Urrrrrrrn is already two weeks in: Eric Devin is here to update you on champions Lille getting absolutely walloped by Nice. Fans of Rumours can get their fix here, fans of transfer tittle-tattle might want to click on this link instead. Catch up with the latest moves in our women’s and men’s transfer interactives. Oh, and if it’s your thing … you can follow Big Website on Big Social FaceSpace. And INSTACHAT, TOO! £165 ANYONE?

[Milan 17,881]

1 hour ago, Vesper said:

fucking scouse vermin

Soccer Fans Scream Homophobic Chant at Player, Liverpool Condemns

https://www.advocate.com/sports/2021/8/16/soccer-fans-scream-homophobic-chant-player-liverpool-condemns

 

Meh, a regular chant used for so many years.

Today’s world 😂

[Vesper 29,250]

1 hour ago, Milan said:

Meh, a regular chant used for so many years.

Today’s world 😂

oh, so now casual homophobia is cool again?

wog, nigger, faggot,, etc were regular words for millions for years too

just because that racist cunt BoJo is the PM, doesn't give license to go back to the bad old day of dehumanisation and hate

Boris Johnson called gay men 'tank-topped bumboys' and black people 'piccaninnies' with 'watermelon smiles'

https://www.businessinsider.com/boris-johnson-record-sexist-homophobic-and-racist-comments-bumboys-piccaninnies-2019-6?r=US&IR=T

 

[Milan 17,881]

Ridiculous 🤣 From Chelsea Rent Boy to this. Whatever, bro.

[MoroccanBlue 5,320]

1 minute ago, Milan said:

Ridiculous 🤣 From Chelsea Rent Boy to this. Whatever, bro.

Either its all OK or none of it is OK. 

Can't have all of this BLM and Anti Racism efforts only to still allow derogatory remarks towards homosexuals. 

[Vesper 29,250]

self delete

Edited August 16, 2021 by Vesper

[Vesper 29,250]

5 minutes ago, Milan said:

Ridiculous 🤣 From Chelsea Rent Boy to this. Whatever, bro.

Number one, I am not a bro, yours or otherwise

Number two, sod off with your homophobia rationalisation attempts and down-playing

 

[Milan 17,881]

1 minute ago, Vesper said:

Number one, I am not a bro, yours or otherwise

Number two, sod off with your homophobia rationalisation attempts and down-playing

 

Number one - I did not quote you, unlike before and now, it is a phrase roughly translated from Czech. Stop being butthurt.

Number two - could not care less what you say about this and me in relation to this. Oh and don't forget to label me.

 

[Vesper 29,250]

Just now, Milan said:

Number one - I did not quote you, unlike before and now, it is a phrase roughly translated from Czech. Stop being butthurt.

Number two - could not care less what you say about this and me in relation to this. Oh and don't forget to label me.

 

it is not oki

[NikkiCFC 8,089]

After getting us top4 last season, Spurs will get us title this season by refusing to sell Kane to City.

Dear Neighbors 💞