I was wondering why the Essex shambles were struggling to sell all of their tickets for their cup final on Saturday, but now I've seen the reason. Their ticket prices are outrageous. The cheapest ticket for non-members is £55 with members getting a fiver off that and kids still paying £32-£41. The most expensive is £75 and all purchases have a booking fee of £2 per ticket, too. I'd be more offended by this, but some of our games cost even more. At least our lot can point to supply and demand, whereas they can't even shift their season tickets. It's getting ridiculous and normal fans are being priced out completely. Even more laughably for the hoofball merchants, the club have three ticket categories, much like everyone else, but there's nobody in one of them! Last season's top 7 are all Category A and the rest of the division are Category B, leaving C as TBC. To be fair though, they'll be absolutely giving the things away when they move to the Olympic Stadium and they still won't fill it.
Everton have agreed a deal with Chelsea to loan Christian Atsu for the season. The Ghanaian winger, who spent the last campaign with the rest of Abramovich's kids at Vitesse, made his senior debut at Porto under Andre Villas-Boas. I suppose that he's basically a replacement for Deulofeu, who returned to Barca in the summer. This is becoming something of a habit for the Toffees. Sensible financially, but it's a bit annoying that he won't be able to face his parent club. We've benefited from similar arrangements from both sides of the coin in the past, but it's still something that I find a little off. There's something about loans between teams in the same division that doesn't sit well with me, but those are the rules, I guess.
Atsu looks like another example of a prospect that got hoovered up by Chelsea for the sole purpose of preventing them from signing for another club - Spurs in Atsu's case - yet when they arrive there they never play, only get loaned out season after season until they get sold on.
Manchester United have banned fans from bringing tablets and laptops to their games. No comment as yet on whether it's because they're worried that people will be watching other games if they're as boring as they were under Moyes.
"Atsu looks like another example of a prospect that got hoovered up by Chelsea for the sole purpose of preventing them from signing for another club" Looking at THFC6061s' summer activity stats, Chelsky have 8 players going out on loan this season.
I... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013–14_Chelsea_F.C._season#Loan_out How many?! This season they've only got 13 out. So far...
****-a-doodle-do, they loaned out basically a whole team to other teams in the top division of major leagues. Insane.
They have more than eight, but when you see what they paid for some of those loaned out it underlines just what is wrong with hoovering up prospects that will never play for the club... Tomas Kalas: £5.2m Lucas Piazon: £5m Wallace: €5.1m Oriol Romeu: €5m Christian Atsu: £3.5m Mario Pasalic: £3m Cristian Cuevas: £1.7m Gael Kakuta: Broke his contract with Lens
I agree. I don't think it should be allowed between clubs in the same league and I wouldn't have allowed us to do it either. Too much room for abuse. You are effectively playing more than 11 players at a time when this happens. I know the affect is indirect in those that are not actually in their home side, but since they can't play against their own team the affect is still beneficial. There are also good players, as has been mentioned, that won't get into the first team of their parent club and won't be benefiting anyone else either, so it ruins their careers, presumably just to satisfy the commission rate of some greedy agent.
SSN did a piece a year or two ago on how Chelsea could field 3 starting 11's with all the players they had out on loan! Marin? Everyone's forgotten about him too. Another that was bought just to stop us.
Andre Schurle now being linked with a move away from Chelsea as well. They just seem to be the footballing equivalent of those factory fishing boats that just scoop up everything in their nets and then throw 90% of it back. I suppose there will always be young footballers stupid enough to think they can make it there and then end up never achieving their potential. Man City are heading that way to. Think Sunderland did well out of getting Rodwell for £10m of them...............
Before his injuries and exclusion from the City team I though Rodwell was England's next best thing, great talent. If he stays injury free and gets on form, Sunderland have got a bargain.
Chelsky are the drift netters of football. Catch and kill things other than what they are really looking for (Willan, Marin) . And Romeu was another of those great hopes who went invisible. Cut him loose and no doubt he'll rise up like Gio did after leaving Spurs.
Southampton have signed Shane Long from Hull for £12m. I like him, but that seems excessive. They've also picked up Florin Gardos from Steaua Bucharest for £6m. He's a former teammate of our own Vlad Chiriches.
Seems Pulis might be available soon. Bet Boss will be spitting nails if that happens. Not sure Spurs need a quitter
Chelsea are just a black hole for sucking up all the talent just so no one else can sign them. They should limit how many players you can have out on loan. 20 last season was insane
Whilst I agree, Liverpool had 16. Spurs had 24! A substantial number of ours (16) were youth academy players that were loaned to other English clubs, though. Chelsea's tend to be pretty expensive youngsters signed and instantly sent out.
Where did you see that? I can only see 17 for us(Chelsea were up to 27 after January from what I can see). Our loans also often include players we can't shift and, as you say, an overwhelming majority of academy players that we've produced. Last season Rose, Townsend and Kane returned from loan spells and got a run in the first team. This season Holtby and (possibly) Carroll will do the same. Walker, Naughton and Caulker recently did the same(possibly Livermore too, not sure). With Chelsea, De Bruyne's token stint aside, Courtois must be the first player in years to make it out of the Chelsea loan machine without getting sold off as soon as they got good.
