Rooney's first autobiography said he wasn't eligible for Ireland. It didn't take long before somebody pointed out that, as his grandmother is Irish, he could have represented Ireland. Or, to put it another way, he lied...
[QUOTE="bigsmithy9, post: 10726469, member: 1015527">] I remember our former full back Hughton playing for Ireland but can't remember why. Galvin too,I think.[/QUOTE] Chris' mum's Irish, so no problems there. Tony Galvin? I think he just liked a Guinness...........maybe more than one?
Los Ladrones make history...as the £63m they paid for James Rodriguez makes him the most expensive player to ever go out on loan. Meanwhile, a lot of people on Twitter are responding to Rodriguez's move and potential £35m fee by making the exact same stupid comment about Swansea wanting £50m for Sigurdsson, apparently because none of them understand how contracts work... Oh, there's also these... please log in to view this image please log in to view this image please log in to view this image
It's modern football Smithy, it's sold it's soul to the Devil. The best thing that could happen for football is that Spurs or Brighton (or even Leicester) win he Prem next season.
They sort of have, I think. It's to do with spending within certain periods. Bayern seem to be a lot more concerned about that sort of thing than other clubs.
Alves to PSG confirmed. Reports suggest that City were unwilling to match the latter's wage offer of £230k and backed out of the deal. Very peculiar for them to be quibbling over wages for a free transfer of a world class player with at least another season in the tank and for a position where they currently have no senior players. Are the Mansours tightening the belt?
Well most reports suggest that they're quibbling over the Walker fee too and have been since day 1 - not offering a penny more than £40m despite every transfer fee since 'day 1' pointing to the fact that in today's market, Walker is worth far more than that. They also apparently balked at Soton's asking price for Van Dijk. Which is why I was wondering: has the club who have spent over £700m in under a decade suddenly becoming stingy??
Good. We have nothing to gain by negotiating with any of the other top six sides in England. They won't sell us anyone worthwhile and would only want to buy important players from us. It's not a relationship that we need. Quite the opposite, in fact.
A week or so ago Pep Guardiola said that, within a decade, Man City would be as big as Barca or Los Ladrones. Just a reminder, but in 1993 Barca were managed by Johan Cruyff, won La Liga and the Europpean supercup, and their team featured the likes of Stoichkov, Laudrup, Koeman, Guardiola and Goikoetxea - while at the same time, City were partaking in what an Italian magazine has recently voted the worst twenty seconds of football in the history of the sport Yes, it was even worse than this...
The transfer values of many Spurs players are so high at present that it would be hard for any club to prise a player away. There would be many suitors for Kane or Alli, for example, that if clubs got wind of Spurs proposing to sell one of them to club x for £yM, then they would probably be gazumped by club z offering £yM plus an extra £5M. So, for all the rumours in the press, clubs aren't looking at Spurs players as realistic transfer targets and are pursuing more realistic options elsewhere - unless there is an inkling that a player might be available, which appears to have been the reported situation with Walker. But what underpins this position is Spurs results on the pitch. Spurs go into next season as realistic PL title contenders and with a good chance of last 8 or beyond in the CL. If you had a bad season next year and dropped out of the CL places, then it's a different situation. Meeting players' expectations (winning trophies, wage demands etc) becomes so much more difficult and if a player does look to move, the club is much more likely to have to negotiate about selling players. I think it's obvious Arsenal will have to sell Sanchez, even though they can probably meet his wage demands. The lack of CL football is a key factor. Top drawer players expect to play at the top level, compete to win things and get well paid. Kane, Alli and the like are no longer young players who are progressing. They are already among the PL elite. If one player agitates for a move, then it becomes more likely that clubs will be encouraged to pursue interest in other players at the club as a result. Many Spurs players are at the level of those players who win PL and/or CL trophies and command wages in the top band. How many players of this kind stay at clubs long term if they don't win trophies and pay top wages? I don't expect any main players to leave Spurs this summer, but the club has to take the next step and win something very soon or in 12 months time, it might be hard for even Levy to resist.
I think most of us are in agreement with this, which is why Poch's decision to faff about with tactics for the FAC semis seems all the more bizarre. We now have a starting xi comprised of multiple players who are quite simply the best at what they do in the entire league. Most of them seem genuinely excited to be a part of a unique 'project' at Spurs, with a young squad and young manager on the brink of moving in to a state of the art stadium. But unless that project starts yielding fruit sharpish, heads will turn. I would like us to go all out this season for one of the domestic cups, even if it is to the detriment of our league or european campaign. Realistically, we don't stand a chance in the CL whilst the league is dependent on us hitting the ground running at Wembley. It will probably take at least 5-6 games before we are used to playing there, by which time the league will be gone.
I agree completely with this. Top 4 will be so difficult next season for so many reasons. All our rivals have already signed players for more than we ever have in our history. Wembley is gonna cost us a lot of points Champions League will distract from the league too. Winning the League Cup and/or FA Cup is the mostly likely way of getting some sort of success and convincing our star players to stay.
Top 4 is always going to be difficult we are punching above our weight by qualifying 2 years in a row for the first time and if we make it 3 that will be a fantastic achievement, but the last 2 seasons have shown the progress that we have made. So our 'rivals' are chucking their money around to catch up with us, how many of those players that have been bought would we have really wanted in our side or have significantly improved the teams they are joining? I personally don't think that any of the transfer business done so far is that significant. As for Wembley it does raise a new challenge and last seasons results were not encouraging, however with the exception of Leverkusen (the worst we have played under Poch), the performances were better than the results, Monaco a much better side than anyone imagined when we got them from pot 4 were good but the match was relatively even and in the 2nd half we were well on top but couldn't score the equaliser. Moscow was a routine win, Gent we played for more than half the match with 10 men, though you would have never known, and had it not been for the extremely out dated away goals rule I am sure we would have won the match on the night as we would not need to have defended with 1 man for the last 10 mins! Then there was Chelsea semi final a cracking a game of football between the best 2 teams in the country, the original match day thread details what we thought about certain aspects of that match, but suffice to say that it was a match that could have gone either way. Chelsea first up at Wembley in the league is not what we would have wanted, but if we were to win that match then I think that it would send a message that Wembley is home.
