That is my point sir. We now have a stadium, arguably the best in the country for generating revenue. Our top earners earn less than Arsenals recent top earners, and both of them actually play games and contribute regularly. So this talk of over inflated wages is nothing in comparison to other teams with increasingly similar resources. Benteke earns £120k Clyne earns over £80k. I'd argue that Lamala is more valuable to us than Clyne is to Palace. Despite some of us being haters on our own players.
We're haters of our own players because they're not good enough. Many seem to think boasting about mediocrity is a good thing, it's not. We're a Big Six club with many players that are of a mid-to-low table calibre player, yet earning the wages of a Big Six player in some capacity. It's why they're not worth the money they're being paid and it's why fans are disgruntled with them.
I’m not that much of a hater haha. Especially with Lamela, everyone knows I love his attitude. But realistically if the club were being ruthless with him they wouldn’t have offered him a new 4-year deal in 2018 when it was clear he was extremely injury prone. As much as I love his pure ****housery and will always have fond memories of him when he moves on, there are plenty of hardworking players out there who aren’t unavailable through injury as much as he has been.
Not the players' fault that their current club plays them wages that make them wage 'toxic' for any potential move to lesser clubs, nor for sitting tight if they have the mental resolve to do so. Blame the PL era for the wage inflation of mediocrity and sick notes. Same for managers. Jose did not have a point to primarily prove, but a pension plan to primarily fill up.
I disagree. I didn't like Mourinho when we hired him and I don't think that he did a good job, but I don't believe he coasted. He needs to be at a club that's set up well for him and his approach to the game and we're definitely not that club. Are Roma? Time will tell, I guess, but he's more suited for an Italian mindset, in my opinion.
A man with his wealth + point to prove would have been happy to end load all his money on the judgement of on-pitch performances come season end. His pension plan was on a "win win" from day 1.
Surely, those around him are letting him down more than the player himself? It’s the same issue I had when people used to blame Fabregas and van Persie for our trophy drought along with the others. Both of them were players whose ability far exceeded that of their peers and were constantly being let down by the lack of quality around them.
It's both. Should he be picked when he's clearly not fit? No. Should he say that he's not fit when that's clearly the case? Yes. Nobody wants to miss a cup final, but you can't blame everyone else when you play in them and you're ****.
In terms of Bale, him getting shat on by Zidane and the Francoists in the stands did a lot to heal the proverbial wounds, similar to Robbie Keane's dream move faltering did On the other hand, some fans still hold a grudge against Berbatov to this day and Walker's hardly endeared himself since leaving There's two things no footballer should do, and that’s take the piss when they're going and take the piss when they've gone - there's countless examples of the former from pretty much every club, while the latter there's people like Adebayor for Arsenal or Trippier for us - and then there's players who did both, which is where Walker and Judas reside
Who is boasting about mediocrity? Many mid-to-low table caliber players? I'm curious. How many? Name them.
Aurier, Doherty, Dier, Toby, Sanchez, Winks, Sissoko, Lamela. In terms of form too: Dele (please nobody mention that Jose ruined him, this guy was **** for a solid 18 months before Jose), Lo Celso, Ndombele, Bergwijn.
I get what you're saying, but I think it isn't just the cup finals themselves. It's the way you've been knocked out of competitions at an earlier stage, too, as well as being unable to sustain a title challenge. He clearly wants the Premier League. The route to the CL final is the only time (off the top of my head) where your players kept fighting without relying on Kane to be there. And even then, as I recall, you thought that luck was on your side in those games, as your league form in between was appalling.
Our league form was terrible, but the players seemed to get themselves up for the Champions League matches. We did scrape through against City and Ajax without Kane, but his return for the final was exactly what I'd feared and expected. He was nowhere near 100% and we dropped the guy who scored a hat-trick in the semi to accommodate him. It's happened repeatedly, is almost always disruptive to our form and can't be dismissed as a factor in our failure to win silverware, for me.
It is a factor for sure. But you said it yourself, Kane doesn't pick himself for matches. It's down to the manager. You can't expect a player to say "I don't want to play" because, more often than not, a player will want to play through their injuries. The decision has to be taken out of his hands by the manager and from the advice of the medical staff.
Couple things to lighten the mood at the moment. Probably should've posted this in the loan thread but this gets more traffic, plus these two returning from their loans will feel like new signings, as cliched as that sounds. Comps of Sess and Skipp's seasons. Gives a little hope that they can return and add some much needed youthful positivity to the squad:
So we've got 5 mediocre defenders who between them have covered RB and both CB positions in almost all our PL matches. We have the 4th best defensive record in the league. Surely something is wrong with your analysis.
