I hate the word 'Spursy' but this is very Spursy.
I hate the word 'Spursy' but this is very Spursy.
Just turned the game on, what's up with Bentancur?
Jamie Vardy 137 Premier League goals is a fucking immense effort, you have to say. Closing in on Robin van Persie and Sheringham.
Porro can't move lol
Gateshead update #3: Halifax 1 - 1 Gateshead.
Our reign at the top has been usurped by Eastleigh. 2nd for now.
Jenas has been sacked by the BBC for "inappropriate behaviour". What's he been up to then?
Hopefully because of this.
Homophobic attack on a penguin is what I'm hearing.
That dog looks supsiciously like one of the ones on the run.
Jenas been firing off dick pics to junior colleagues apparently.
Coin coin coin coin coin.
That video is strangely hypnotic, unlike his dick pics I'd imagine.
One question though, what does he mean by only certain men will know what he means about securing the coin? Every man needs money, right?
He probably means the mobile phone Ashley Cole stuck up his arse. Allegedly.
He was sacked whilst live on talksport talking about Ten Haag’s odds of being sacked by Christmas. Funny guy
Lol
Wasn't Edwards given a fully paid holiday by the same company for being a paedo?
What's the deal with the way the BBC are reporting line-ups now? They make it look like Badiashile is in goal for Chelsea. I assume he isn't [although can't rule it out entirely] but it's not as if they are just going with numerical order. Ah, it's alphabetical order. Odd.
That’s a premium Stoke City defence there. Everyone 6ft3+ and as agile as Andre the Giant
Imagine thinking this shitfest would be on TV. Not even on a channel I don't have.
I like it by squad number. Reminds me of the happy days of being at games as a boy, looking down the back of the programme as the teams were read out on the tannoy. Number 24, Sam Dalla Bona.
Alphabetically is horrendous.
Watching Mudryk and Dewsbury Hall together down the left could make the most passionate football fans fall out of love with it. Two genuinely horrendous footballers.
Another bore fest being served up by the bald Leicester manager
Let's hope the next manager doesn't want to play a high energy direct style.
Is there a thing behind Nkunku and his balloon?
Chelsea are genuinely awful. Spending £200m to become a lot worse is a great effort.
I'm sure this has been discussed and I missed it, but is there a logical explanation as to why they keep buying players?
If there is I'm not sure anyone has worked it out yet.
I saw Rory Smith speculating there was some sort of 'disruptor' business at play, where they were trying to exert some sort of critical mass in the transfer market, thus fucking it up for everyone else [?], but I didn't really understand the argument.
I assume they just want a seat at the top table when, in their view, football moves to a closed shop super league franchise model, and the way they think to do that is by spending fucktons of money on players.
Jesus wept.
The operation lives on.
The idea appears to be to bring in a lot of young purportedly talented players on long contracts but relatively low wages.
Over the next few years, the hope is enough will come good that they'll be left with a very good team. The ones that don't will still have time left on their contracts so they won't lose them for free, but they will be on reasonable wages so can still be sold relatively easily.
I guess it's a vaguely interesting approach and will be worth seeing it play out.
This is all well and good, and I agree an interesting thought experiment, but where it potentially falls down seems to be:
1 - their wage bill is astronomical,
2 - long contracts are as much of a millstone as a boon as you have to keep paying them,
3 - and they will make the players impossible to shift as no one in their right mind is going to match those wages so
4 - those amortised transfer values are illusory at best,
5 - how many big money deals, on avergae, actually 'pay off' in terms of the player actually improving these days, feels like it is a small percentage.
Guess it's all on Kendry Paez being Messi II. It's like they've sort of seen what Real Madrid have been up to for the last few years and thought how about we try that without appreciating all of the structural differences that allow Madrid to get away with their transfer strategy.
Last edited by niko_cee; 22-08-2024 at 08:44 PM.
It's a baseball-style 'rebuild' where you bake in a few years of failure, gradually get rid of all the high-earning older players, and then you're left with a load of lesser-earning younger talent who either become good and win you things, or at worst leave you with the financial space to buy in the talent at that point when other teams will be stuck with their ageing players.
What they haven't got their heads around is that football fans demand stylish victory in every single game, and so a few years of finishing 11th while this process comes to fruition just won't wash. They also keep losing their heads and going against the programme, e.g. sacking Potter when they could easily have kept their nerve.
I still don't really get it, other than via the US ownership model where the players are essentially possessions and all the power lies with the owners/'front office'. In the world where one of their very long contract youngsters become really good, they aren't going to sit their on some pittance they've signed for 4 years ago, are they? Without even getting into the fact that the pittance is actually more than most equivalent players earn and in 4 years you have mid-20s Mudryk and 30 year old Tosin Adarabioyo chewing their way through a quarter of a million quid a week.
The wage bill really isn’t that high at all. Assuming Sterling, Lukaku and Chilwell do leave then it’s fairly low. Assume 5th highest at best. Not good though because wage bills tend to reflect league position.
Wolves away on Sunday has 2-0 all over it. Look up Chelsea’s away record since wolves got promoted in 2017/18 against them, West Ham and Everton. I think they have 3 wins combined.
What is baldy actually doing there? Is he just a useful scapegoat that they can sack later? Maybe they should have just gone for Paul Heckingbottom or that guy who said bring your fucking dinner in the early 90s.
Show all the ambition in the world with the spending sprees on young footballers but hire Potter, Pochettino and baldy back to back to back.
Such an odd club
Also seem to have unlimited funds on players in positions they’re stacked in but cheap out on arguably the biggest issues (GK, LB, CF)
Last edited by Waffdon; 22-08-2024 at 09:09 PM.
When you realise they don't give a shit how the team performs in the next three seasons (short of avoiding relegation) everything makes a lot more sense.
Results simply aren't important.
It's been a great nostalgia ride seeing Servette playing Chelsea. The year I moved to Geneva they won the league. Within a year they'd moved from a 6 thousand seat stadium that they couldn't fill to a 30 thousand seat stadium that they really couldn't fill. Then they signed a 36 year old Christian Karambeu who left 3 months later because he'd never been paid, and soon after the owner fled the country because he was so corrupt he'd managed to get done for financial fraud in the city that's entire existence is based on financial fraud. They couldn't extradite him from Spain because he argued in the European Court of Human Rights that was scared of flying, which even if we ignore the fact that Spain and Switzerland are connected by land might have had his case undermined by the fact that he owned not 1 but 2 private jets. Having been bested by such a very right and justice based system the swiss were shit out of luck. Until the genius that is Marc Roger decided to try scam FLORENTINO PEREZ for 20 grand and suddenly the man was dropped off within Swiss borders.
They spent pretty much the entire time I was there in the second division. I went to a few games, it was fun because of how shit it was. Personal highlight was a cup game vs FC Sion that featured Gennaro Gattuso who must have been 40 at the time and Kyle Lafferty. We couldn't leave the car park for 2 hours after the game because the type of nutters who can bring themselves to care about this awful level of football decided to go full football factory and fight both each other and a set of riot police. So we sat on a nearby hill watching everyone launch tear gas at each other with a fucking castle in the background.
Good to see them back.
Villareal’s centreback partnership is that Willy Kwambala that United had, and Eric Bailly.
I'm a twit
How the fuck has Bailly gone from getting excluded from Besiktas' squad and released on a free for being too shit to starting for Villarreal.
The man is a walking paradox.
I really hope we can bring big Willy back one day.
I thought he was class.
Leverkusen won yesterday with a goal in the 11th minute of injury time. Who'd have thought?
Genuinely thought Billy Gilmour was already at Napoli. They cunts are the slowest negotiators in history