Yeah, because it was so competitive when United and Arsenal were finishing 20 odd points ahead of the 3rd placed team. It was signings like Ferdinand (World's most expensive defender - £30m), Rooney (Word's most expensive teenager - £30m), Vieri, Mendieta and Crespo that inflated the market, not to mention Kaka £56m and Ronaldo £80m. Blaming Chelsea and City is the easy way out, nobody can argue that their investment has made the league more competitive at the top. It's not our fault Spurs don't win trophies. As Spurf said earlier in the thread, the only way to keep top players is by winning things. AVB is trying to do that and use the Europa League as a platform to build on. You were unlucky in the sense you were clear favourites to win the EL up until the CL dropouts were thrown in. I have a feeling you'll win the EL this season though.
I think your right in your assessment of Bale and Champions League. There were a number of seemingly bad-luck issues and decisions made against Spurs last season. 'Awful refereeing' and 'long term injury to key players' are but too., those issues could be chalked up as bad luck indeed however the 'chasing of Europa Cup glory on a Thursday night, with a week squad of players', was a huge mistake of our own making. I have no doubt that the fight for a Champions League place was lost firstly on Thursday nights last season, and secondly through a combination of the so called bad-luck or even conspiratory issues. Bale was being valued at around 50 million when we started to discus his future in earnest earlier this year. There was no firm offer on the table at that time. At 50 million, I was suggesting that loyalty to Spurs might be the deciding factor and I'm still of the opinion that he (Bale) would not have left us for 50 million. I say this because there are serious signs of squad improvement, intent and abition being shown by Spurs. However we are getting reports that Madrid are now offering near 100 million and that Levy is pushing for more. Spurs would be insane not to consider an offer of this magnitude. I don't think any player is worth 100 million but unfortunately its the sort of money that turns heads., top level headed footballers included. There will be an announcement on Wednesday apparently. If this record breaking offer is true, it can only be good for the club on a whole and good for Bale in that he gets Champions League football a year or two earlier then if he had stayed put.
Hardly unlucky as Cl teams inclusion is always set to happen, so its non starter to say we're favourites until the better teams come into the competition, not to mention we got outclassed by basel in terms of passing/movement. There is very little chance of us "winning things" to keep the top players as the top players are only interested in the league or the champions league and for a club such as ours to ever stand a chance, it simply won't happen under this current ownership, even to win the EL (which is slim) that would make zero difference to keeping players such as Bale.
I think there's more of a chance than there ever has been for you. Apart from City, there is no real standout side, and even City aren't anything special IMO.
Did you watch us agaisnt inter milan and basel? we're awful agaisnt teams that pass and move, especially away from home, on paper it may look like we have a talented team and yes we can have quality games, its not all doom and gloom but in europe we will get outclassed by teams that can pass the move and keep the ball even if we have a better team on paper.
Utd has been a project Sir Alex built over 20+ years. The money spent on Rio and Rooney wasn't from some billionaire chucking money around for fun. Madrid are the richest club (or were?) in world football due to their success over the decades and their commercial world wide brand. Chelsea and City have somewhat cheated to get to the where they're at now, Chelsea were never title challengers until Roman came along and City were languishing near relegation before Mansour arrived. The money you and City are able to spend has now pretty much guaranteed you Champions League places at least for the foreseeable future, resulting in an expected top 3 of Utd, City and yourselves, leaving one CL spot to fight over between Arsenal, Spurs, Liverpool and possibly Everton. Had you not have had that sort of investment, I'd like to think that the likes of Chelsea, Spurs, Arsenal, Liverpool and Everton would've been battling it out for at least 3 of those spots, granted Utd may have maintained their dominance but then when it's been built over the period of time it did with Fergie, I can respect that. There's also a possibility that other teams in the league may have been able to improve and begin challenging for higher spots but with the market price for even average players rising all the time (not just blaming that on you and City) it makes it hard to be able to compete. I believe their needs to be a cap now, teams are spending far too much nowadays and I'm not excluding Spurs from that. A certain figure should be the maximum each team can spend per season, or some sort of procedure at least to allow other clubs a fair a chance at pushing on. Otherwise the only way a team can improve and compete is by getting a similar investment to that of Chelsea and City... Which will just become ridiculous.
I agree with Inter Milan, but with Basel it was just a case of you making them look better than they actually are. It's all to do with mentality and coaching. You concede far too many goals which hinders your progress year on year.
And we're two weeks away from the season with a back four of Walker Fryers Dawson Rose. Yes we made basel look better then they are, yet thats one of our problems, as to allow a team to control the game with players that are deemed inferior, highlights a problem within the team set-up, and that blame can either be at the manager, or the chairman for not providing the manager with the correct players, just depends how you view the situation.
Correct. It has always been my contention that Utd spent the money they did because it had been earned O.k. How they earned it, you can argue about - but earn it they did. Teams like Chelsea & City are only where they are now because, for whatever nefarious motive, their respective owners have thrown literally hundreds of millions of pounds, that were never earned by footballing achievements, into them.
Of course, I'll stick up for Utd, but SAF knew that he couldn't just buy success. Buy two or three stars, yes, but the rest had to come from a successful youth policy and from buying less heralded players (at the time) like Irwin, Schmeichel, Evra, Vidic and many others who became household names. City and Chelsea rarely produce a player of their own, who gets a first team chance and money is only ever paid for big names.
