Rival watch

So, Frank De Boer is manager at Crystal Palace. I have some doubts. Upon being appointed yesterday he stated how happy he was to be at a club that liked to spend money. Today, Chairman Steve Parish has stated that Palace bought their way out of trouble last season and that can't happen again.

Like Alan Pardew, I expect his reign to be brief and unsuccessful and for BFS to be back at Selhurst on a bonus to keep Palace in the PL within 2 seasons. There's a conflict at the heart of the club - the board want to spending money on updating the ancient and all too small stadium. The procession of managers want to buy expensive players to earn their bonuses and **** off somewhere else where more of the money's for buying players.

All they need is a Billionaire who stole his riches from his countrymen and is bored out of his mind......and they could be a big club.

 

Or perhaps coming from the Dutch league his idea of "spending money" is not quite the same as the English idea.
Maybe he has players in mind who can be bought by the dozen for the same price English clubs pay for 2.

 

Alright, I'll say de Boer does reasonably well. It's not a surprise a Dutch manager would struggle in Italy. Palace have enthusiastic fans, and an attacking style will please them. Just to make you certain my crystal ball is cloudy, I'll predict he'll finance a top attacker or two by selling Bentecke to a very rich club, since what he really ought to be, IMO, is a late sub for a team with loads of money that needs a goal.

 

Sort of worrying the first thing De Boer talked about was "spending a lot of money" - while that could well mean meeting the Mousers' over-inflated valuation of Sakho, that's still a reckless approach to take when Palace are a club who are a couple of injuries away from a relegation dogfight.

 

Palace just don't have that kind of money. They spent this summer's budget in the January sales. Plus they're committed to huge salaries for Zaha, Cabaye and Benteke. They'll want to shop in Holland as much as possible.

 

Steve Parish has certainly said as much.

 

Steve Parish is a smart guy. I know people who work for him. He is an enormous fan of..... Daniel Levy and sees Palace's future along Spurs lines - get your stadium up to a much bigger capacity, increase the number of players coming through from the Academy, get your training and medical facilities sorted and most of all avoid pissing the money needed to do these things away on transfer fees and massive wages.

De Boer wants to move to being more of a cheque book manager and not just bringing through the kids as he did. Palace want him to do more of what he did at Ajax. Finding a middle ground may prove to be too difficult circumstances for this relationship.

 

In my view he is using them as a stepping stone to resurrect his career. If it goes well for a season he will be off to a "bigger and better " club, if it goes tits up he is off the the glue factory...either way palace will be looking for another manager by next summer at the latest imho

 

Coaching genius Pep Guardiola has is looking to raid Barca's academy for 16 year old centre back Eric Garcia, who has a £1.3m release clause

...better hope he doesn't look 35½ times better than John Stones, eh?

 

Font of all...whatever the opposite of knowledge is Mick Quinn has gone off on a quite bizarre rant at Tammy Abraham's decision to join Swansea over Chelsea, which includes one colossal gap in his logic: he points to Swansea's relegation fight last season as evidence that they aren't "big" enough...yet somehow forgets that Newcastle spent the season in the Championship having failed to avoid relegation the previous season.

 

Over Newcastle, perhaps?

Maybe the horse murderer shouldn't recommend signing for a club that he called a shambles?
Abraham should probably have looked elsewhere anyway, as both clubs have quite a few strikers.
Gayle, Perez, Mitrovic and possibly Armstrong for the Geordies, while the Swans only play one up front and that's Llorente.

 

Easy mistake to make: I was thinking of teams that bottled trophies, and the FA Cup final popped into my head...

 

Everton are reportedly on the brink of signing Michael Keane for appx £25m. Shame as for that price I wouldn't have minded us having a sniff around. It's an area we need to strengthen although I'd imagine the player wants to be a regular starter - which he will be at Goodison.

I have to say, I have been very impressed by their transfer business so far. It's all obviously being funded by Lukaku, but they've brought in highly regarded youngsters to key positions with years ahead of them to develop and learn from some of the most experienced players in the PL (it never struck me before how many of them Everton have).

I hope we can show similar ambition between now and mid August...

 

I wonder if they've already sold Lukaku and possibly Barkley?
Might be an issue with clubs lowballing them, otherwise. Competition for the Belgian would probably stop that, though.

 

It's hard to tell. They've certainly benefited from Moshiri's cash injections since he took over. They recorded net profits 5 years on the trot but are now seeing net spends of £25-30m every summer.

That said, I do think that Lukaku is gone (to one of Chelsea or United, for a fee no less than £70m. If I get that prediction right I am officially qualified to be a journalist) and that they're spending the money now to avoid getting fleeced; similar to what we did when we sold Bale (albeit in our case the only advanced purchase we needed was a large bucket to gather the piss in). However, THAT said I can't say they've picked up any bargains. I may have got slaughtered for saying it on the Mackem board (truth be told, you get slaughtered for saying anything on that board. Even a friendly 'good morning lads' lands a dozen replies challenging you to a fist fight in a car park near the Wear ), but £30m for a keeper with a single PL campaign under his belt - and that for one of the ****tiest teams in PL history - is a ludicrous sum to pay. His performances at the U21 WC highlighted that he is far from the finished product, and still has a lot to learn. £25m for Klaasie sounds about right. And they've just made Keane the second most expensive English CB in history.

I can't imagine anyone can be stupid enough to meet their insane valuation of Ross 'Joe Average' Barkley. Cue an announcement tomorrow that we've signed him for Dele Alli plus £12m and have appointed Sissoko club captain in honour of the occasion. If he goes anywhere, we seem to be the only club interested and there is no way Levy is coughing up that much for a player with a year left on his contract.

I can see them bringing in that striker from Belgium who stuck a finger up at West Ham, and we may then see some outgoings.

 

Sky Sports Austria have run an article investigating how, in the past five years, sixteen Taurine FC Salzburg players have joined Taurine FC Leipzig, with ten of those joining since the summer 2015 transfer window opened...and that's pretty much the entire article. That's real in-depth journalism there...

In less corrupt news, Roma have found a unique way to announce their signing of Lorenzo Pellegrini

 

Obviously these are different Liepzig/Salzburg teams run by Red Bull than the ones that were recently cleared to play in the Champion League as definite seperate entities.

 

Which publication is going to screw with a business with their advertising budget? Pepsi and Coca Cola are worth about £25bn and £15bn respectively. Red Bull is worth about £5bn (and growing fast) and spend about 35% of their earnings on marketing.

The bigger you get, the more you can act like a complete arse and everyone just indulges you. I seem to remember ENIC owned numerous clubs across Europe and this multiple ownership rule was created/updated to stop them doing so. A few years and a few billion quid later.........

Fortunately, German football supporters aren't fooled as Leipzig's success means that the old model of supporters having some real degree of control over their clubs is at risk

 

Probably shouldn't have sold him for £3m then...

 

Must be Toro Rosso teams then