Maybe it's one of those thing like having to say 'the football club'.
Plays badly with the domestic violence focus groups, and has thus been subsumed within the great everything is a number movement.
Maybe it's one of those thing like having to say 'the football club'.
Plays badly with the domestic violence focus groups, and has thus been subsumed within the great everything is a number movement.
Under 17 World Cup kicks off today. More in the spoiler.
The Groups
Toggle Spoiler
England Squad
Toggle Spoiler
England Fixtures
Toggle Spoiler
England v New Caledonia should be a laugh.
lol at "Ted Curd"
If his nickname isn't 'Lem' then I give up.
I actually had to Google if Hashtag United is genuine.
Love this. Indirect so the keeper just let's it right in.
Ted Curd is Chelsea isn't he? If we're loaning national level 17 year olds to Hashtag United then the club really is going down the sink.
Curd is Hashtag men’s first Premier League loanee and continues to train with Chelsea’s first team alongside his time at Hashtag. “What makes it even better is that he actually asked to come to us,” Carmichael-Brown said. “He was being sent out to another team at the equivalent level and he said: ‘Well, if I’m being sent out to that level, I’d rather go to Hashtag’ because he’s grown up watching the [YouTube] videos.Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
Seems Curd has awful taste.
He’s 17. Non league loans are very normal for young goalkeepers.
Aldershot or Woking, yeah. Not some bunch of jokers from the world wide web.
Whatever his intention, it's clearly working if he's gone to the U17 World Cup.
I'm a twit
Pleased to see 'Esquerdinha' in the Brazil squad trying to bring back proper Brazilian names. This Gabriel Jesus bollocks has been going on for too long now.
Is Hashtag United an actual team in the league system? I thought it was Youtube pricks doing low-rent Soccer Aid stuff with Hollyoaks actors and that kind of thing.
They are and they're now in the same level as my local side. One below the NL North/South I believe.
Got funded by the big money the youtube channel brought in early. I suspect they struggle once they go up a level or two more because then you need to invest it all over again.
That’s Sidemen I think?
I don’t really know. Instagram makes me feel a year older every day.
I'm a twit
The FIFA Playa.
Chelsea and City really are lightyears ahead of everyone (in england) when it comes to youth development.
Not sure it's in-house player development so much as it is having ruthlessly strong recruitment networks in the north and south respectively. City and Chelsea alumni seem to populate half the lower leagues now. Chelsea is also ideally situated to hoover up talent not only from London but all the southern counties, something Arsenal/Spurs do not enjoy.
You have to laugh at the BBC puff piece on how 'tiny' Girona have made it to the top of La Liga.
Let me think.
Obviously complete coincidence that those two have been able to pour limitless funds into 'youth development', aka hoovering up all the players and giving their parents jobs and the kids scholarships to Whitgift/the northern equivalent of Whitgift.
Last edited by niko_cee; 10-11-2023 at 02:18 PM.
They also have a pact not to go after the same youth players which doesn’t sound v legal.
Man City have the best recruitment these days with Chelsea not far behind but the latter still produce a fair amount of players from primary school ages.
It's probably the best thing for the national game as well. lol
I'm sure if a certain brand of person took over the FA they'd bring in/bring back some rule about having to stay within 500 yards of your house until the age of 34, so that the big clubs don't have an unfair advantage and lawn bowls becomes the national sport.
It's certainly not just a case of Arab money being poured into them. One of the best run clubs in the world now.
I wonder what paid for these excellent club administrators.
It's Pep's brother and players loaned to them from all over the network. Has nothing to do with Arabs or Man City. Nothing at all.
Obviously it's not exclusively a money driven for on the pitch success thing [ie benefactor Sheikh owner], but it is a massive factor that they are within the City Football Group. If you were being really cynical then it's probably just an FFP laundromat which is overperforming slightly in actual football, rather than just the business of football.
Reckon if you somehow had 1 billion quid and was like lol I’m gonna invest in the local team at level 10 in the pyramid, you could get them into the Championship in like 15 years, and have plenty money left?
I'm a twit
I reckon it would be surprisingly difficult in the UK. There are a lot of structural obstructions, not least perhaps there is a reason why various teams inhabit wherever they are within the pyramid. Grounds at that level would also become a major headache if you wanted to get to a seriously good level, and improvement is rarely as easy as pressing a button in a computer game.
Bankrolling is probably more feasible at established 'fallen' clubs, as is being tried at Wrexham for example, but then the starting point is higher and it becomes much harder to money your way through the system. They seem to be doing alright though.
They’ve got more players on loan from Barcelona than anyone in the football network from what I can see.
Still impressive nonetheless. Daley Blind and Eric Garcia back 2 with fucking Gazzaniga in goal
You'd definitely need an 'untapped market' to get a club to the top. Your village team wouldn't be able to do it no matter how much money you had.
I've always thought south east London would be a good one. Bromley or some club like that.
My local side has very much had this screw them. They at one point got up to the dizzy heights of the National League and started to get attendances in the thousands regularly. They decided to upgrade the "Shed end" behind one of the goals and found a way to install a modular 2000 seater stand into the existing structure. They got it done in '07, only just stayed up that season and then went down the next. They then removed what was installed because it wasn't needed with only 600odd total going to games.
The whole thing cost just under Ł200k and nearly ended the club at the end of it.
Berlin always struck me as an untapped market in that sense. Maybe not to the same extent now that Union have a decent side, but still, they haven't had a properly successful team since the early 80s.
Just take the CM logic of old. Pillage Scandinavia for all it's worth. Olivier Bernard's tenure at Durham City sounds like an ominous warning:
Bugger.In 2013 the club was purchased by former Premier League player Olivier Bernard, with a stated aim of making them a talent development club for local professional teams.[13] After finishing in the bottom three in 2015–16, the club were relegated to Division Two.[3]
Durham continued to struggle, winning only one game in four years between April 2019 to May 2023, resulting in them being labelled "England's worst football club".[14] The 2019–20 and 2020–21 seasons were not completed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and club avoided relegation.[15] However, in 2021–22 they finished bottom of Division Two and were relegated to Division One of the Wearside League.[16] The following season saw them finish bottom of Division One, resulting in relegation to the second tier of the Wearside League (renamed Division One for the 2023–24 season).
Wasn't it sort of tried with Ebbsfleet [Gravesend]?
It's just such a difficult market to muscle into.
Everything is already sewn up, so the existing and bigger clubs have better academies and facilities and established relationships that you have to some how break into. That makes it hard to go down the youth investment route, so you have to do it with journeymen cloggers, but at very low level that is hard as it isn't really professional even where it claims to be. Each tier ends up presenting entirely different problems so whilst I guess unlimited money, which a billion quid would as good as be, would help, it would hardly be the guarantor of success that you might imagine it would be.
FCUM have probably had one of the better goes at it and where are they? Tier 7? Guernsey powered through to tier 8 but that was the limit and they've been scrapping to stay there ever since.
Actually, I suppose AFC Wimbledon are probably the best example of what is possible, but they have an entirely different story.
Salford seem to have levelled out at League Two. There's a 'proper club' line somewhere in the middle of League One that is hard to breach with money alone. Obviously yer Bournemouths have done it.
FCUM are in the same tier as Hashtag United IIRC.
FC United got to the National League North. Salford City turning up probably killed their momentum a little.
Powering through tiers 10 to 7 is the easy bit, you just need the odd player who is miles above the standard.
That quickly peters out as an option though.
Just the one Chelsea product at Gateshead. 34 year-old Carl Magnay. And even he played youth football in the North-East. Looking at our squad, it's very, very local. Not as many ex-Mags as I expected and currently none are on loan to us. We do have Simon Grayson's son, though. That's got to count for something.
Last edited by Shindig; 10-11-2023 at 07:01 PM.
I have, somehow, been to Gateshead once and you wouldn't believe how far it is to the next place. Like, fucking sixty miles. If they ever do anything it will be on the strength of iron-hewn north east toil alone.
No wonder your Spain trips take forever with that sense of direction.
What the fuck is all that? Hours and hours of nothing.
FCUM aren't actually rich despite having a good following and were terribly run in the first few years. I think they've hit almost their ceiling at least until they clear some debts. They sign players based on the history and the atmosphere but lots of clubs at the same level can completely outspend them.
This game seems to be the story of Spurs' season. Look pretty rubbish, but score with their only shot on target and have the other team be rather profligate. I think they've also manged 2 goals from 1 shot on target in another game, which was a good effort.
Yeah, this Wolves effort is making me yearn for clinical Monday-night Chelsea.
The best thing about the 7 subs rule is a small injury crisis introduces you to 3 players you've never heard of and Mohammed Elneny gets an appearance fee whether you're winning or losing by 5 goals.
What a fucking goal that was. Now get another.
lol
How tf have they been playing all these street footballers ahead of that actual quality technician? His CV is bigger than the club ffs.
You'd be annoyed as a Spurs fan but flying up the league if games are based on moral victories must be a real confidence booster, mate.
Waff, get the bags, Ill get the brasses.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
