I meant on top of spending the CL money and perhaps a little bit more. Liverpool are different to us in that they can pay well in excess of £100k a week and with CL football they could attract more established players. Liverpool could sell Suarez for £80mill spend the CL money on a top striker and then still have £80mill + sales to strengthen the squad. A similar situation to us except Liverpool could get players who are more proven rather than taking a gamble on players like both us and them have done in the recent past.
I was only pulling your leg mate but fully see what you're saying. They can do serious damage in the window with Suarez money + whatever they're willing to invest from CL money etc. Trouble is, is there realistically a player or players that can match or better what Suarez has done for Pool this season? He's been phenomenal and even the top players in world football would find it hard matching or bettering his form this season.
Exactly! Suarez may be worth £70-80mil or whatever to Real. However, to Liverpool he's priceless. Yes, they need to shore up their defence and add to the squad, but losing Suarez would be just like us losing Bale, to them. They have a very good young manager and some very good players.
Don't get me wrong, Suarez has been brilliant this season but I don't think he produces in the big games. For a man with a goal a game ratio he's only scored 1 goal in 9(all comps) against last year's top 4 and that was against United when they were already beaten and down to 10 men. 12 of his goals have come against the bottom 3 and it was a similar story last season. Doing a quick check(I might be wrong) it looks like Liverpool have scored 2 goals or less in 11 league games that Suarez has played in this season and in those games Suarez has scored 1 goal. When Liverpool are getting joy in attack there's no one better, the 30 goals in the other 21 games shows this, but I'd rather a Bale or an injury free RVP nicking goals when the rest of the attack isn't necessarily playing well. I don't mean this as an insult but he's the best flat track bully in the World. You won't find a player that can exploit the poorer defences so well but there are strikers out there that make mincemeat out of the best defences too and I think Liverpool could do just as well scoring a few less against the lower sides if they had a top striker who has a record of performing in the big games, especially if they sorted their defence out.
I think that Suarez has been hampered by Rodgers' tactics in big games, YV. He's often been given a specific job to do, rather than his normal role.
So City are flouting laws by effectively cooking the books to bankroll spending the club can't sustain itself from its income. So where will the money come from to pay the fine?
The best bit about this story is if you read the gossip column on the bbc. On the same page you had: * City fined £50m and possible further sanctions for breaching FFP * City to bid £164m for Messi
"So City are flouting laws by effectively cooking the books to bankroll spending the club can't sustain itself from its income." Supporters on JA606 are saying the club have either met the reqts, or were only just outside. "So where will the money come from to pay the fine?" Indeed. Tournament bans are the only real weapon. Or seed offenders in the lowest CL/Europa pot when the draw is made.
Does the £50m contribute to the numbers for the next round of FFP. If so, thats not a bad punishment. If it doesn't....
"Does the £50m contribute to the numbers for the next round of FFP. If so, thats not a bad punishment." That would be a fair way of doing it. But again, tis eventually about UEFA fronting up and banning a club from a tournament. We will have to wait for the actual figures to appear (announcing failure to comply + the fine amount tells us very little) .
Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho is contemplating bringing back on-loan goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois, 21, from Atletico Madrid as a buffer for the injured Peter Cech. (Source: AS (in Spanish)) Okay, let's weigh this one up... (1) come back to Chavski to play second fiddle to a "Dad's Army" keeper; or (2) stay as No.1 at Spain's top club, in one of the most enticing league's in the world, and enjoying sunshine all year round, with fantastic tax-breaks... Hm. Yeah, that's a tough one! If I was that goalie, I'd be getting my agent to tell both The Smug One and Mad Dog to go and **** themselves, and then each other.
On the contrary, the misfortunes of your own club have never, do not, and will never prevent you from enjoying the misfortunes of your rivals. I cite you as exhibit A, giving it to us (rather poorly and peevishly IMO) despite the Groundhog Day Gunners outdoing themselves this year. You not only hold on to your top players (for once) but (also for once) lay out the cash on a player some called "the best #10 in the world." The most optimistic among us Spurs fans would have assumed you would have gotten third place at the very worst. And yet there you are in the last CL spot one more time. In the interests of science, I believe the entire Real team should play for Arsenal next year, to see if anything in the world can get you unstuck from the miasma of this endlessly repeating last CL spot year. It is to laugh.
This year's Gunners have made a powerful case for losing their best player every year and not spending, which some on the Arsenal board may just try to take advantage of. Why spend more if results don't improve? That $50 million fine on City really is a paradoxical concept, isn't it? The only way it would make sense is if they would get a further fine for paying it--because it would make their finances even more out of whack with ffp regulations...which would result in another fine, and so on, until the bottom of the deep pit of oil money is finally reached.
Their rich owners who are happy to bankroll the club and lose hundreds of millions in the process anyway. Flawless logic, isn't it.
I'd assume not as they then would have to not only adjust to bring themselves inline with FFP but £50mill above it. It's totally unrealistic if that's what they are doing and, in my opinion, they're much better off refusing to let any new signings be registered for the CL until they bring themselves into the FFP limits. If they don't start bringing themselves towards the FFP margins then you just kick them out. These kinds of stupid fines are just going to get hammered by the lawyers for being totally over the top and serving no purpose other than to line UEFA's coffers.
