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The 2017-2018 Football Thread

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Alphazoid said:
I get the argument about players and agents and its true, but if someone kept blocking you from a dream job i think many of us would not be happy about it. Especially after seeing your colleagues being allowed to leave on to better things. Also since when has £60m been too small for a player you got for 400k. Lei aren't winning the league again nor are they getting into the top 4 nor are they in danger of relegation. So...why the hard line. Everyone seems to think if its City they should try and fleece them. In that regard credit to City for standing their ground with Alexis and Mahrez.

I don't see how this ends well for Lei. It hasn't ended well for any club...even United with Ronaldo. People may argue that Coutinho was professional but thats probably because he had assurances the move would happen in Jan. So if anything he was just showing his prospective employers what he can do.
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And I expect that a well paid (sorry, superlatively well paid - £60,000 a week is not a bad wage, even if the bloated six-figure weekly salaries offered elsewhere are an increasingly obscene distraction and temptation) professional who is a role model to young men of colour should conduct himself accordingly.

Bear in mind, he is still under contract to Leicester for another two years, and they have a perfect right to extract the most they can for him should they wish to sell. Smaller clubs should not have to resign themselves to playing a ripped-off feeder role endlessly for larger better-resourced clubs.

At least Alexis Sanchez vented his fury on the pitch - showing prospective employers that he was worth gambling on.

I am not impressed with Mahrez's attitude; frankly, I expected better of him.
 
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Yet again the Hammers start by letting in a goal. But Henadez who himself said he was looking for a move, has got it back to level.

A pity Leicester can't count on their want away player in the same way!
 
Apple fanboy said:
Yet again the Hammers start by letting in a goal. But Henadez who himself said he was looking for a move, has got it back to level.

A pity Leicester can't count on their want away player in the same way!
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Leicester wanted to make the point - and it was a good one, a necessary one and a fair one - that a team that won the Premiership shouldn't be prey to the vultures from better resourced teams with an automatic assumption that their players would be sold on the following season.

They have now made that point - and, with the exception of N'Golo Kante, (who was sold), and Claudio Ranieri (who was fired) to a large extent, they have succeeded in holding their Premiership winning team together, and sending a signal that they are not ripe fro the plucking.

However, this means that they can now - two years later - cash in on some of their assets if the need arises. I could well see Mahrez departing this summer, but only for an agreed fee.

An interesting recent interview with Mr Wenger on the matter of transfers, and stratospheric salaries, offered the insight that increasingly, clubs may be willing to let the clock on contracts run down.

This, he argued is due to two things: A would be purchaser finding the cost (on top of wages, agents) too much, and chasing to not buy that player, even if they may seem ideal, hoping instead to catch him on a 'free transfer', and the vendor opting to get the last out of a (possibly reluctant) player who is still contract bound, which gives them more time to find a suitable replacement, while not constrained by the need to make money on him, and recognising that they probably won't.
 
Not a great day for the Hammers.
3 points separate 11-19th.
Some of those teams have a game in hand on us. Not good at all!

No disrespect to Brighton, but these are the games we need to be winning if we intend to stay up.

3-1 isn't doing our goal difference any favours either, and I'm sure it will come down to goal difference in the end for someone.
Just hope it isn't us.
 
Apple fanboy said:
Not a great day for the Hammers.
3 points separate 11-19th.
Some of those teams have a game in hand on us. Not good at all!

No disrespect to Brighton, but these are the games we need to be winning if we intend to stay up.

3-1 isn't doing our goal difference any favours either, and I'm sure it will come down to goal difference in the end for someone.
Just hope it isn't us.
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There was a time when the Premiership had three sub-tiers; those at the top - five or six - or, sometimes, seven teams, that were clearly a cut in standard and class above everyone else.

Then, there was 'the middle' a bunch of teams usually lying between eighth and fifteenth - who were too good to be threatened by relegation - and, at the top, maybe two or three good players away from challenging for a sixth, or fifth, or fourth place - who were usually 'safe' enough by this stage of the season.

The third section - sixteen to twenty was survival zone, a snake-pit as teams fought hard to avoid relegation and sometimes - as survival specialists - hung on barely escaping relegation - for years on end. Eventually, most of these teams disappeared through that trap door, some reappearing as early as a year of two later. Not good enough to stay up, but too good to be permanently kept down.

Now, with the bloated salaries, and the increased power, resources and clout of the top six teams, the Premiership has become (Leicester's fairytale win of two years ago notwithstanding, and I cheered for them as well) ever more unfair and ever more stretched.

Three points separating 11th (which used to be well into safety) and 19th suggests that that 'middle tier' is becoming squashed and compressed; that the Premiership is devolving into an exceptionally powerful top tier, a tiny 'middle tier' (dwarfed by the year) and a growing 'bottom' that now encompasses the bottom ten clubs, rather than the bottom five as used to be the case.
 
Scepticalscribe said:
There was a time when the Premiership had three sub-tiers; those at the top - five or six - or, sometimes, seven teams, that were clearly a cut in standard and class above everyone else.

Then, there was 'the middle' a bunch of teams usually lying between eighth and fifteenth - who were too good to be threatened by relegation - and, at the top, maybe two or three good players away from challenging for a sixth, or fifth, or fourth place - who were usually 'safe' enough by this stage of the season.

The third section - sixteen to twenty was survival zone, a snake-pit as teams fought hard to avoid relegation and sometimes - as survival specialists - hung on barely escaping relegation - for years on end. Eventually, most of these teams disappeared through that trap door, some reappearing as early as a year of two later. Not good enough to stay up, but too good to be permanently kept down.

Now, with the bloated salaries, and the increased power, resources and clout of the top six teams, the Premiership has become (Leicester's fairytale win of two years ago notwithstanding, and I cheered for them as well) ever more unfair and ever more stretched.

Three points separating 11th (which used to be well into safety) and 19th suggests that that 'middle tier' is becoming squashed and compressed; that the Premiership is devolving into an exceptionally powerful top tier, a tiny 'middle tier' (dwarfed by the year) and a growing 'bottom' that now encompasses the bottom ten clubs, rather than the bottom five as used to be the case.
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I'd settle for mid table right now. But I'm pretty sure 12 chairman feel the same!
 
Alphazoid said:
I don't see how this ends well for Lei. It hasn't ended well for any club...even United with Ronaldo. People may argue that Coutinho was professional but thats probably because he had assurances the move would happen in Jan. So if anything he was just showing his prospective employers what he can do.
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Coutinho was professional...right up to the point he stopped being professional.

In reality, there is nothing a club can do to prevent players being poached by a 'bigger' club. The only thing that keeps a player at a given club is either they are not good enough to be poached by a bigger club, or the player shows intense loyalty to his club (always rare, and especially so these days).

In a way, its hard to feel sorry for any club about this - just think how fans of selling leagues like Ligue 1, the Eredivisie, most of the Bundesliga, and just about every league outside Europe feel...welcome to the new normal.
 
Mad game but again Liverpool classically fade in the second half, allowing Spurs back in. Surprisingly the officials got all decisions right...albeit some where soft.
 
Exactly what I expected. Scored draw. A win would have been great but Spurs are very good this season, and a draw is still a good result.

Now if only Liverpool could beat the Swanseas and West Broms of the league...
 
Alphazoid said:
I get the argument about players and agents and its true, but if someone kept blocking you from a dream job i think many of us would not be happy about it. Especially after seeing your colleagues being allowed to leave on to better things. Also since when has £60m been too small for a player you got for 400k. Lei aren't winning the league again nor are they getting into the top 4 nor are they in danger of relegation. So...why the hard line. Everyone seems to think if its City they should try and fleece them. In that regard credit to City for standing their ground with Alexis and Mahrez.

I don't see how this ends well for Lei. It hasn't ended well for any club...even United with Ronaldo. People may argue that Coutinho was professional but thats probably because he had assurances the move would happen in Jan. So if anything he was just showing his prospective employers what he can do.
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To answer the first part, Gylfi Sigurdsson. If he's worth what, £45m, then surely Mahrez, who many pundits were rating as world class only a season or so ago, can command a £60m fee? That's before I even mention Van Dijk...

So it's not Leicester trying to fleece anyone, or inflating the fees, they're already inflated!

I do think he'll leave Leciester in the summer, I'm surprised he was still there at the start of the season, but credit to Leicester for not being bullied into selling one of their best assets off cheaply (in today's market)
 
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Fizzoid said:
To answer the first part, Gylfi Sigurdsson. If he's worth what, £45m, then surely Mahrez, who many pundits were rating as world class only a season or so ago, can command a £60m fee? That's before I even mention Van Dijk...

So it's not Leicester trying to fleece anyone, or inflating the fees, they're already inflated!

I do think he'll leave Leciester in the summer, I'm surprised he was still there at the start of the season, but credit to Leicester for not being bullied into selling one of their best assets off cheaply (in today's market)
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Exactly and well said.

I think Leicester felt that they had a point to prove that their Premiership winning team would not be gutted and sold off before the start of the following season - as was thought to be inevitable.

And I agree: Why shouldn't they hold out for a high price in today's inflated market for a player who is considered one of their prize assets?
 
At the end though he’s worth what people are willing to pay. If City and Arsenal have turned their nose up then i dont see Lei getting more money for him.

Mou has already ruled himself out of buying attacking players in summer.
 
Alphazoid said:
At the end though he’s worth what people are willing to pay. If City and Arsenal have turned their nose up then i dont see Lei getting more money for him.

Mou has already ruled himself out of buying attacking players in summer.
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Depends on how 1) he performs for the rest of the season, and 2) how he conducts himself for the remainder of the season.
 
Mo Salah has now scored 21 goals in the league, 28 in all competitions. Chelsea sold him to Inter for less than £14m, Liverpool paid £37.8m for him and he is now rumored to be worth at least £70m.

The short termism of the football transfer market is truly staggering. It's all paper value of course - one bad season and he could be worth less than Daniel Sturridge.
 
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Lord Blackadder said:
Mo Salah has now scored 21 goals in the league, 28 in all competitions. Chelsea sold him to Inter for less than £14m, Liverpool paid £37.8m for him and he is now rumored to be worth at least £70m.

The short termism of the football transfer market is truly staggering. It's all paper value of course - one bad season and he could be worth less than Daniel Sturridge.
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And let us not allow the quite striking difference in the sum obtained for the sale of - with the sum expended in the subsequent purchase of - Mr Paul Pogba - by a certain club in the north west to slip from our minds, memories, and collective unconscious.
 
Conte's time is just about up. Was hoping he'd last though the United match in a few weeks, but not looking likely anymore.
 
Apple fanboy said:
Just checked on the Watford verses Chelsea match!
I had to show my friend as he wouldn't believe me! What a shock.
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Just checked the results, and was stunned at this outcome - not one that anyone would have expected or predicted.

Very well laid, Watford.

Silencio said:
Conte's time is just about up. Was hoping he'd last though the United match in a few weeks, but not looking likely anymore.
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Mr Conte has not been at all happy this year, - indeed, he never enjoyed London, and - last year, remember - his family had remained behind in Italy as his wife was studying for an advanced degree.

Moreover, he was unhappy with what he saw as the lack of support (financial) he was given during last summer's transfer window, and made it clear that a robust defence of the time would be exceptionally difficult in the circumstances - and - even if Chelsea were doing a lot better - I doubt he would have stayed beyond this coming summer.

Apple fanboy said:
Agree it does look like the end is nigh!
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In fairness to Antonio Conte, Roman Abramovich has a long history of discarding and dispensing with the services of managers (as The Special One knows al too well to his cost - not once, but twice) once he feels they are superfluous to requirements.

However, in the case, the desire to cut ties may well be mutual, and I suspect that it is.
 
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