Speaking of Mbappe. Apparently while most of the psg players have "liked" the messi announcement, mbappe has shunned him on social media which has caused quite a stir after the psg owners comments saying mbappe had no choice but to stay now messi was there. I dont think Mbappe liked that much evidently. As hes already come out since the messi announcement saying hes still leaving psg. Not the 1st time ive heard of mbappe acting entitled tbh, bit of a spoilt brat in him Perhaps
Which is fair enough. If that's the ambition of the owners, then I don't expect consistent success. Feels like we're all content with winning the PL once and we can just go back to challenging every now and again ...
Xherdan Shaqiri on the verge of a cut price switch to Lion This case it's a buyer's market because Shaqiri is a ****.
Being a realist and seeing approx 40-50mil to spend on players (one a season) this feels very much like when rafa bought aquilani. The market is crazy really and you almost need to be an oil baron or human trafficker to compete. Our wages top out at 200k. We properly report our salaries (all of them) We accurately report the agents fees (all of them) We have some money, more than other clubs but less than some. we buy a lot of younger kids and stuff the academy. We spent well before but don't seem to have a real eye for an early bargain. We clearly were put off haaland when we went and bought minamino and haaland only cost 13mil more. Perhaps he was already going to dortmund who knows. We embarked on a journey with klopp and the club again experience and structure as it did so behind the scenes. theres a 120mil main stand, a 70mil second stand underway and a 50mil training ground. Now I call this making do. I have done so as we leave bit part players sat there quite happily knowing they are nowhere near good enough but the reality is if we went about hiding wages in a holding company, hiding agents fees and ignoring the cost of capital works totally we would be man city. I personally think solid hits the nail on the head. If we want to do that stuff and leave a shell company full of debt fine but we do not have an oila baron to wave a wand and make it vanish for us. As we speak john henry is worth less total than LFC is supposedly worth. (about 2.5bil) We are talking about mansour at 20billion nominally but anything his state wants to put in and abramovich who is over 1billion and anything putin wants to do. The leicester, villa, spurs and arsenal owners are all worth multiples of what john henry is worth. To put john henry in context he is worth as much as mike ashley. I don't quite get what we expect here. the club is doing "ok" We can't compete with City and cheslea, not every year, not every trophy but we can be assured both will implode from pure and utter indulgence form time to time.
BTW what I would like us to go do is pick barca's pockets for kids like fati, pedri or moriba. If this is our modal and what we are about then get about it. Barca can easily resolve a lot of issues by letting some players go and actually picking the expensive flops they signed to actually play. If we look at what we are doing right now really is we are picking up the z list kids who honestly are looking quite good as academy players but we are not precisely going for the a list kids as we seem to think the cost is too high. Gordan looks a very quick 16 year old we have robbed. Musialowski looks a right handful las a dribbler but slight. Balagiz is another right sided attacker whos not seen a minute of first team training. we've a load of them but when the top young player comes up like mbapppe did in 2017 we were obviously nowhere, when haaland came up in 2019 january window were we there with the 20mil? nope. So imo lets stop thinking about stars we can buy and think about why experience young talent that is on offer out there is not coming to the club but we are signing 16 and 15 year olds. We ought to drop 50mil on barca for fati and see if they are really flat broke.
This is the thing MITO - why settle for just 'ok'? Where is the ambition to be the biggest and best club in the world? Winning titles every season? That's what I want personally.
Playing devils advocate. Look at the state of Barca, Madrid, inter.. clubs that are seriously struggling with money at the moment. Clubs that have relied on their owners (or gov) to put money in and suddenly due to covid, owners pulling out, have found themselves in a **** tonne of trouble. City are riding on gravy train at the moment and owners seem in it for the long haul so should be fine, but football in general is in a bubble that at some point has to burst. It’s relying on huge tv deals, sponsorship deals but at some point, it doesn’t become worth it for these companies to invest. What happens if the tv deal fall through like it’s done in France and put all those clubs in serious problems? I know there’s a big difference and I don’t think many want us to go spend £200m each year like city or united do, but if we are at least self sufficient then in theory very much safer when the inevitable happens and money dries up a bit
Shirts are 90 each, we sold loads of them i reckon Another new sponsor yday = sonos. Meh, tight af they are
It's not in small fry like fsg. They have grown out of all proportion from the opportunists that grabbed a distressed asset in 2010. Nesn and all that. Regional US players. If we want to compete with unlimited funds we need unlimited funds. This argument is a long one all the way back to David moores first getting control of lfc and systematically running it into the ground compared to then only man utd. Now every professional business approach fsg can apply is trumped by oil money. If we want to win everything we have to join them cos you can't beat them
