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The 2026-2027 Football Thread

Lord Blackadder said:
That's the word. There's something about nine-figure transfer fees that just feel utterly insane. No human athlete should 'cost' that much.

Which is why discussions of value just don't really mean anything anymore at the elite level. Each goal they score now 'costs' their club tens of millions. Winning a Premier League or Champions League is bad value in terms of how much it costs to get there. But football finances are bonkers, corrupt, irrational, and people will keep watching.

I remember someone claimed a few years ago that the first billion-Euro/Pound footballer has already been born. It sounds less farfetched with each passing year.
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Do you remember the first £1 million transfer. Can you name him without googling?


As for tonight’s game in the Championship, I see our home game with Wolves a must win. We need to start putting serious points on the board.
 
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Apple fanboy said:
Do you remember the first £1 million transfer. Can you name him without googling?


As for tonight’s game in the Championship, I see our home game with Wolves a must win. We need to start putting serious points on the board.
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Oh, jeez, I used to know this one...you got me, I'll have to look it up.

I'm bit younger than you I think, so the one that really jumped out to me was Andriy Shevchenko to Chelsea for £30 million. At the time it seemed utterly fantastic. Nowadays most Premier League teams could probably pay that for a backup goalkeeper and nobody would blink an eye.
 
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Lord Blackadder said:
Oh, jeez, I used to know this one...you got me, I'll have to look it up.

I'm bit youunger than you I think, so the one that really jumped out to me was Andriy Shevchenko to Chelsea for £30 million. At the time it seemed utterly fantastic. Nowadays most Premier League teams could probably pay that for a backup goalkeeper and nobody would blink an eye.
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We’ve spent a lot more than £30 million on some absolute chaff. Complete time wasters!
 
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Happy with a league win finally. I don’t think we are going to walk this promotion like some of the press pre season were saying. It’s a tough league to get out of, especially when you haven’t played in it for a long time.
 
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Silencio said:
I don't think Hull's hot start is sustainable, but maybe they'll earn enough points on the front end of the season to stave off relegation at the end.

Tonali has looked shocking for Spurs. Needs a better partner to play alongside him, like Bruno G used to be.

Good reaction from United to batter Ipswich in the end. Great day for Bruno and Mainoo. Defense still looks worrying, hopefully Baleba will help.
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It took an absolutely horrendous decision for United to get the upper hand on us on Sunday. The rule badly needs looking at. No one in their right mind can say that wasn't deliberate handball. If that's up the other end, Craig Pawson doesn't hide behind the rules. He blows for the handball and disallows the goal. Yes we then fell apart but we were well in the game up until then, And we were the better side in the first half with United having not to work hard for their equaliser thanks to Nunez's unfortunate slip. Being at Old Trafford in person on Sunday, it's crazy to see just how much Bruno makes them tick. Without him they would be in big trouble, his off the ball captaining is insane and he literally drags them forward.

Fingers crossed we can stick in games beyond 60 minutes as well as dealing with absolutely awful VAR decisions. We look much more equipped for the Premier League this time round. Just hope we can get things go our way on more occasions. The win v Sunderland was huge.
 
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Everton appear to have made a hash of the Balogun transfer. He failed his medical, Everton tried to renegotiate the deal as a result - which led to Monaco backing out of a separate deal with Chelsea they couldn’t afford without the sale of Balogun. The striker then appeared unimpressed with the way Everton handled negotiations / leaked the medical and walked away from the deal.

Everyone ended up a loser in that one, though if the reports are accurate I can’t say I blame the player.

Now the Toffees start the season with (I think) just one striker.
 
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Lord Blackadder said:
Everton appear to have made a hash of the Balogun transfer. He failed his medical, Everton tried to renegotiate the deal as a result - which led to Monaco backing out of a separate deal with Chelsea they couldn’t afford without the sale of Balogun. The striker then appeared unimpressed with the way Everton handled negotiations / leaked the medical and walked away from the deal.

Everyone ended up a loser in that one, though if the reports are accurate I can’t say I blame the player.

Now the Toffees start the season with (I think) just one striker.
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He failed his medical?

A player about to undergo a transfer, or who was to be transferred?

In such an instance, I do blame the player if he failed to meet the necessary professional standards for.a transfer (that presumably he had agreed to) to be successful.
 
Scepticalscribe said:
In such an instance, I do blame the player if he failed to meet the necessary professional standards for.a transfer (that presumably he had agreed to) to be successful.
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Doctors don’t always agree; without knowing the specifics I’m just speculating, but often these circumstances arise when one club’s doctor (or external specialist) rates a player as fit and the other club’s examining doctor makes a less sanguine assessment.

If I recall Balogun has been recovering from an injury since the World Cup, so it wasn’t actually a question of whether he had an injury - but perhaps Everton’s medical staff didn’t think he was in as good of shape as Monaco’s staff did.

Of course there is scope for skulduggery on that of either medical staff or the player.
 
Lord Blackadder said:
Doctors don’t always agree; without knowing the specifics I’m just speculating, but often these circumstances arise when one club’s doctor (or external specialist) rates a player as fit and the other club’s examining doctor makes a less sanguine assessment.

If I recall Balogun has been recovering from an injury since the World Cup, so it wasn’t actually a question of whether he had an injury - but perhaps Everton’s medical staff didn’t think he was in as good of shape as Monaco’s staff did.

Of course there is scope for skulduggery on that of either medical staff or the player.
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Well, in the absence of clear evidence, I'd be most reluctant to assume "skullduggery" on the part of medical officials - on the part of players, club officials, club owners, agents, yes, yes, yes, but assuming this of doctors and medical officials (perhaps in the US? For, nothing would surprise me about the US) would be exceedingly (I was about to write "vanishingly", but, perhaps, that is too strong an expression to summon) rare in either the UK or in Europe.

After all, players such as Christian Eriksen - who had (has?) a cardiac condition - still managed to pass medicals.

Off-hand, I cannot immediately recall another player (who presumably supported the particular transfer) ever failing a medical, especially not on the last day of the transfer window.

It beggars belief.

And yes, begs questions. Not least of the player.
 
Scepticalscribe said:
Off-hand, I cannot immediately recall another player (who presumably supported the particular transfer) ever failing a medical, especially not on the last day of the transfer window.
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Antonio Nusa - Norwegian winger, who played most of this year's World Cup matches - failed his medical with Brentford in the January 2024 window (not sure if it was the last day, though), eventually ending up in Leipzig.
 
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I don’t think ‘failed’ medicals are as rare as you think, though in high-profile transfers there is usually more vetting.

It’s probably worth pointing out that the whole pass/fail binary is something newspapers talk about but doesn’t actually exist. Before a transfer is finalized, the buying club has the player physically examined, but there is no standard in place for this, so there is nothing to pass or fail. However, the examiner’s report may contain information that leads the buying club to believe the player is not as fit as they previously believed.

It’s all subjective and negotiable. Disagreements are less likely the result of malfeasance, more likely different interpretations from two different medical reports.

Clearly Monaco wouldn’t go through the effort of setting up multiple buy/sell deals that all rely on each other going through if they thought one likely to fail. And by all accounts Balogun wasn’t against going to Everton and had agreed to personal terms. So I think the deal was badly fumbled but there were a lot of moving parts - I don’t think it was deliberately sabotaged by anyone.

But again we on the outside know only so much.

It does seem to be the case that the player ultimately rejected the move, possibly because Everton attempted to alter the personal terms in response to the medical.
 
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