11/12 Football Thread

[Beadle]

They have Albrighton, who every Villa fan raves about, but everybody else fails to even notice.

But on the whole, they're now just a little bit dependent on Darren Bent. If Bent doesn't fire, they're going to struggle.

[Captain Clarkie]

So we got Adton Villa's star winger Ashley Young for 17 million and Liverpool picked up second best for 20 million after that? Really wierd.

Will Aston Villa have anyone dangerous to put on the wings in the upcoming season?

I'm starting to think Young is actually better in the centre.

[Aubergine~!]

They have Albrighton, who every Villa fan raves about, but everybody else fails to even notice.

But on the whole, they're now just a little bit dependent on Darren Bent. If Bent doesn't fire, they're going to struggle.

Agbonlahor's handy too, tbf.

Overall Villa have a very good youth system. If they don't buy I'd assume they have someone in the youth team in line for a promotion.

[mcgaffer]

Wesley Sneijder could join Manchester United from Inter Milan for £35m within the next 48 hours after agreeing personal terms of £190,000 a week.

Or Manchester United will use Nani as bait in their bid to lure Sneijder to Old Trafford.

Manchester City are considering a bid for highly rated Uruguay defender Sebastian Coates.

Diego Maradona's problems during his playing days in Italy could give Manchester City the upper hand as they battle with Juventus over the Argentina legend's £40m-rated son-in-law Sergio Aguero, who plays as a forward for Atletico Madrid.

Liverpool forward Milan Jovanovic is set to move to Belgian side Anderlecht - on his wife's orders.

Meanwhile, Liverpool midfielder Christian Poulsen is a £2.5m target for FC Copenhagen in his native Denmark.

Argentina forward Carlos Tevez has pleaded with Manchester City to accept a "take it or leave it" £38m bid from Corinthians so he can return to Brazil.

Everton are planning a £6m move for Schalke 04 winger Lewis Holtby, with the 20-year-old having previously admitted to being an Everton fan.

The Toffees also want to sign Real Madrid midfielder Sergio Canales on a season-long loan deal because the news from Spain is that Valencia are considering making a bid.

Midfielder Jonathan Greening is set for a £600,000 switch from Fulham to Nottingham Forest.

Swansea have opened talks with Ipswich about taking striker Jason Scotland back to Wales. Scotland scored 53 goals in 105 appearances for the Swans.

Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger has hit back at Barcelona star Xavi for claiming Gunners midfielder Cesc Fabregas is "suffering" at the London club. Barcelona have refused to up their £31.6m offer for Fabregas.

Midfielder Denilson may have played his last game for Arsenal after being substituted during a pre-season friendly in Malaysia when he had only been on the field for 20 minutes and then storming down the tunnel.

Dutch giants Ajax have taken former Aston Villa youngster Harry Forrester on trial. The 20-year-old never made a first-team appearance for the Midlands club and was released at the end of last season.

Manchester City have hit out at Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger's criticism of their stadium sponsorship deal, calling his comments "unfounded and regrettable".

[Aubergine~!]

Mcgaffer, quick question: how's Bolton's forward line at the moment? AFAIK Sturridge is back at Chelsea and Elmander is off to Galatasaray, so that leaves Kevin Davies? A look on Wiki says your squad also has Klasnic and Robbie Blake, but I've no idea if they're actually regulars.

I ask mostly because I've heard word that Danny Welbeck might be heading to your lot on loan.

[mcgaffer]

Blake isn't a regular but Klasnic definitely has the ability. I think he'd score more goals then Elmander given the opportunity, we were kind of blackmailed into playing Elmander all the time by the size of his transfer fee. We have Tom Eaves as well but he could do with a season in the championship to get match practice.

[king mob]

So Fergie buying Andy Cole was all part of a grand conspiracy to make Leeds Utd go bankrupt now? Do I have to point out that that's insane, and that most of the blame for that goes on the idiots who were running Leeds?

Worthy cause, mind you.

I never mentioned Leeds, I mentioned the tactic (which has been used for decades but seems to have increased) of buying players from any team deemed a possible threat and asset stripping clubs of their top players.

Possible, but I do think the forces of globalisation would've lead to the current state of things eventually. Sky accelerated the process, but it would've gotten here eventually.

Really?


The ITV bid wasn't a bid from a subscription channel and would have allowed the game to remain in the homes of 60 million people without an additional subscription fee. The Sky deal was the one that was going to reduce the TV audience for the game, as opposed to what ITV had on the table.

Things would have been very different had Sky lost the bid and Murdoch had never got his hands on the game.

Did Utd spend big in the 90s? Yes, obviously. Did they spend significantly more than their competitors/rivals? A cursory look at transfer histories will tell you no.

Did they break transfer records? Yes. This is the point.

11 men vs. 11 men is a fair game.

So I'm assuming you'll not complain about Chelsea or Man City buying top quality players and beating all in front of them?

So you admit it wasn't just Man Utd then?

If you'd read everything you'd see that.



I can't speak for millions of people, but the thing about me is that I actually look at numbers before saying things.

They clearly helped. What I am against is your misconception that it was all Utd.

They were the leaders. They set the pace.

I'm not quite sure why I've wasted time arguing this with someone clearly prepared to make ridiculous claims with near complete ignorance of what was actually spent, but there you go.

You know, I lost my rag last night but it's impossible to make a point about Man Utd in any way without it becoming a huge argument. That's amazingly annoying and not unique to here either.

[king mob]

Nobody here is claiming that access to funds didn't play a part (and a smaller part than you initially thought). However, you sound like you're trying to paint Manchester United as being dominant simply because they were richer and spent more. That, as you might say over there, is bollocks.

There was more to do with their rise than just money. As said, they were the first to realise what Sky offered them and the first to fairly ruthlessly exploit this.

The fact you yourself are a fan is some evidence of this.

I don't see this in itself as bad. If you have the funds to promote the club, go ahead and do it. The club being a tourist attraction is a good thing. Excessive money creates problems, fame isn't one of them.

There's being an attraction because of the success gathered by a club, and there's running tourist trips during games. Why do you think Old Trafford or the Emirates are so quiet a lot of the time?

Sounds like you feel like doing some slapping even now.

Probably.

The big problems I see are exhorbitant ticket prices, ridiculous wages/transfer fees and people who don't know crap about football making football decisions because they had the money to buy a club.

Part of the same problem.

Maybe an NBA-like or MLS-like system would work better.

I'm sure some clubs would love that, and indeed that was the idea behind the European League suggested in the 90's that lead to the eventual formation of the Champion's League.

You really should remember that nobody forces clubs to sell players (unless ridonkulous 'release clause' prices are put in contracts, which the club that signs it agrees to anyway). Rich clubs can offer better training facilities, staff and wages thanks to their financial clout, which helps them attract talent. Viewing that as looking to 'keep the little clubs down' has no logical grounding. You can't focus on keeping your rivals weak in football. You have too many rivals and not enough player space.

If you look at some of these clubs as football clubs you have a point, but these are aggressive businesses now. They're simply taking out competition.

[king mob]

Marina Hyde makes a valid point in regards why no current footballer has come forth to make a case in regards the current Murdoch phone hacking scandal.

Forgive the issuing of an APB, but will the world of football please second a major figure to the Celebrity Justice League currently banding together to attack Rupert Murdoch's empire? You will be aware of this surreal posse of entertainers, whose ranks began with Hugh Grant. Last week he was joined by Steve Coogan, who delivered a memorable Newsnight performance tearing strips off the former News of the World journalist Paul McMullan. Coogan even threw a bone to Alan Partridge fans by at one point appearing actually to be channelling the Norfolk-based radio presenter – "Absolute BS!" he shouted at McMullan. Next, this band of brothers was joined by George Michael, whose amusingly unsparing Twitter updates have apparently forced the Met to scramble to interview him as a whistleblower.

But from the world of football, no one.

This is a serious oversight, and not just because the Celebrity Justice League as currently composed does rather lack brawn (apologies to George Michael, but he's big enough to take it).

Way back in February, the heroically persistent Tom Watson MP penned a blog for the Guardian in which he remarked how central to the phone-hacking scandal football was. (It was received by one below-the-line commenter with the deathless observation: "Give it up Guardian. No one cares but your handful of dysfunctional lefty readers.") Watson outlined what he called "the cycle of abuse", pointing out: "BSkyB turns young athletes into stars. In turn, those stars help BSkyB sell lucrative satellite packages to fans. And at the same time, BSkyB's sister agency, the NoW, tramples over the private lives of the players, destroying reputations in order to sell newspapers."

To see football like this, you have to get your eye in. It's the kind of position held by the US sportswriter Dave Zirin, who is tireless in his attempts to divert attention away from standard targets of opprobrium, such as brash NBA stars, and towards far more sinister forces, such as the US government's attempts to cover up the fact that the NFL star Pat Tillman died in friendly fire in Afghanistan, or owners' increasing practice of using ball games to push pro-life agendas. It's a position that says owners – of clubs, and broadcast rights – need more guarding against than athletes who just accept the pay cheques the market allocates them.

And so to Sky. Murdoch has explicitly described sport as a "battering ram" for pay TV. Sky is successful and makes billions because of the Premier League, without which Murdoch would not dominate UK pay TV. In fact, without the Premier League, Sky might not even exist.

So with due respect to Grant and Coogan – and it is due – I'm sure they're aware that Murdoch couldn't really care less about actors coming out and calling him what Partridge would perhaps describe as an S. But it would be a different matter entirely if the stars of the Premier League began appearing on TV and voicing their unwillingness to be both posterboys and illegally targeted whipping boys.

You can bet that every Premier League superstar will be included in that thousands-strong list of those yet to be informed that their phone – and who knows what else at this stage – was hacked. They may not all be as articulate as the Four Weddings actor, but so what? Imagine the power of a handful of top players saying they wished their faces weren't used to push a firm whose sister operation had illegally spied on them. That would strike a blow far closer to the heart of Murdoch's moneyspinning machine.

Of course, there would be a chorus of useful idiots telling the players to shut up on the basis that Sky "pay your wages", as though agreeing to become illegal quarry was part of that particular deal. I suspect there's a continuum between this erroneous assumption and the one that says because someone has bought a ticket to a football match, and because footballers are "overpaid pampered prima donnas" they're entitled to scream at a player that they hope their kid gets cancer. They aren't.

It's a shame that the head of the players' union, Gordon Taylor, accepted the £700,000 damages from News International that rang alarm bells that started the Guardian's investigation years ago. His silence was a condition of that. But here's hoping that some high-profile individual players feel able to call out the Murdoch empire for how it uses them – they could think of doing so as an alternative way of playing for their country. After all, if the revelations of the past few weeks have taught us anything, it is that this country faces slightly more systemic problems than footballers.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/blog...-phone-hacking

And for light relief here's a River Plate fan going utterly mental...

[Aubergine~!]

I never mentioned Leeds, I mentioned the tactic (which has been used for decades but seems to have increased) of buying players from any team deemed a possible threat and asset stripping clubs of their top players.

You mentioned making clubs going under (though I might've been confusing that with your other point about chairmen from ages ago wanting their rivals to go bust), which was why I brought up Leeds.

Really?

The ITV bid wasn't a bid from a subscription channel and would have allowed the game to remain in the homes of 60 million people without an additional subscription fee. The Sky deal was the one that was going to reduce the TV audience for the game, as opposed to what ITV had on the table.

Things would have been very different had Sky lost the bid and Murdoch had never got his hands on the game.

Possible, but I do feel that the Premiership would've been commoditized eventually. Also, someone was always going to see the benefits of growing a global audience, and I don't think we could've expected Premiership chairmen to leave millions on the table forever.

Did they break transfer records? Yes. This is the point.

Once in the 90s. Why aren't we tarring the likes of Arsenal and Liverpool with the same brush then? Why is most of the blame laid at the feet of United?

United aren't innocent, I've said this before, but they were certainly not the only culprits.

So I'm assuming you'll not complain about Chelsea or Man City buying top quality players and beating all in front of them?

Oh, I certainly will.

However, I do maintain that 11 vs 11 is a fair game. It won't be a fair playing field, as I've said, but the games themselves are still fair.

If you'd read everything you'd see that.

I do see it. I've just said it.

They were the leaders. They set the pace.

By selling most of their best players in the early 90s, and relying on youth?

There was the Andy Cole purchase, which was offset by the Ince sale. That was it. Seriously, look it up.

You know, I lost my rag last night but it's impossible to make a point about Man Utd in any way without it becoming a huge argument. That's amazingly annoying and not unique to here either.

If you'd said 'Man United were a part of transfer fees skyrocketing', I don't think anyone would've protested, as they certainly were. Saying 'Transfer fees skyrocketed because of Man United' is far more contentious.

[Aubergine~!]

Marina Hyde makes a valid point in regards why no current footballer has come forth to make a case in regards the current Murdoch phone hacking scandal.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/blog...-phone-hacking

Would be nice, but I'd also imagine that many of the players have orders from their clubs not to comment? I mean, if any organizations are going to be on Sky's side in this they'd probably be the footie clubs.

And for light relief here's a River Plate fan going utterly mental...

Heh, got that off the Guardian too?

I'm actually trying to learn Spanish now, and I picked up a few handy swear words from that video.

[mcgaffer]

The Premier League has changed their rules on so-called 'weakened' teams.

Top-flight clubs will now be allowed to pick any player in their 25-man matchday squad without fear of sanction from the Premier League.

[mcgaffer]

Liverpool have signed Brazilian goalkeeper Alexander Doni from Roma as back-up for first-choice Pepe Reina.

[mcgaffer]

Aston Villa winger Stewart Downing's transfer to Liverpool has led to talks opening up between the clubs over a move in the opposite direction for midfielder Joe Cole.

West Ham expect to receive a £7m bid for midfielder Scott Parker from Aston Villa, once Downing makes his £20m switch to Liverpool.

Manchester United are ready to make a swift bid for Napoli playmaker Marek Hamsik if they fail to sign either Wesley Sneijder or Samir Nasri from Inter Milan and Arsenal respectively.

Manchester United and Manchester City target Alexis Sanchez is finally set to end speculation over his future by signing for Barcelona this week. Both Manchester clubs had approached Udinese about signing the Chile forward.

Leeds United winger Max Gradel is ready to reject West Ham and Fulham, for a shot at the Champions League with Lille.

Chelsea have agreed a £5m fee with Belgian side Genk to make keeper Thibault Courtois the first signing for new manager Andre Villas-Boas.

QPR winger Adel Taarabt is definitely leaving Loftus Road this summer, according to leading agent Marco Sommella.

Stoke chairman Peter Coates may have wrecked the club's £4.5m move for Carlton Cole by questioning the West Ham striker's injury record in a TV interview. Angry Cole could now stay at Upton Park or move to QPR instead.

Reports from Italy indicate that AC Milan and Inter Milan are contemplating a bid for Tottenham's left-sided player Gareth Bale.

Manchester City have already identified the man they want to replace striker Carlos Tevez - Bayern Munich's Thomas Muller. City are lining up a £45m move for the 21-year-old. Argentine Tevez wants to join Brazilian side Corinthians.

Everton are again looking to take Real Madrid's Sergio Canales on a season-long loan deal. Aston Villa, QPR and Villarreal also want the young playmaker.

Liverpool plan to continue to add to their squad and are preparing a bid for Barcelona attacker Jeffren.

German side Schalke believe they have beaten Blackburn in the race to sign £10m-rated Freiburg striker Papiss Demba Cisse. The 25-year-old scored 22 goals last season.

Manager Arsene Wenger says it is Arsenal's destiny to win the Premier League after a terrible end to last season.

Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson has hit back at claims David de Gea is too young to be the club's new number one keeper.

Manchester City striker Emmanuel Adebayor says Real Madrid manager Jose Mourinho is a better manager than Arsenal's Wenger and City's Roberto Mancini.

[Karlfernswich]

Hopefully Shay Given move to Villa works out.He is to good of a goalkepper to not play regular first team.