Burnsy says one thing and they say another. Listening to the guy on the radio it was as if the player has no choice, and you'd think we were dealing with Man Utd. My knowledge of Chicago is patchy but aren't they one of the weaker sides. And I never thought I'd say this but I'm considering staying up to watch the MLS tonight
It's true though. It's a joke and no one takes it seriously. It's not even aired on one of the main networks and the champion gets $250,000 second place gets $60,000. Teams lose money by playing in it. I don't even think the SJ cup games even aired on TV and they put high school games on TV to put that in perspective.
Interesting, because our FFA Cup is overhyped and everyone loves talking about it. But this is only its second year, how long's yours been going? Was it a novelty when it started?
Their last place in their division and 19 out of 20 places in the MLS their god awful. I've watched them this season and they are just horrid. I don't remember Maloney standing out but in that side? Who would stand out. To be fair their best player has been injured for a year. We basically are ManU coming in for a player. Minus the top tier players in the MLS(Villa types) if we bid for someone it's really like Man U bidding for one of our players. The MLS actually wants clubs like us to bid for players as they think it puts the MLS in the spotlight and helps with how the rest of the footballing world looks at them.
But "Brentford have rejected the bid on the basis that it fails to meet their valuation of Gray and does not activate Odubajo’s release clause."
This time tomorrow... everything could be sorted and we could have two outstanding players with us! Think we're all jumping the gun a bit.
Yea it's been a novelty basically as it was started in 1914 and we haven't even had a "decent" league since maybe 3 years ago? Maybe not even that. So it isn't like there is a tradition of watching it or caring about it I bet most MLS fans don't even know it exists. So that's what I mean when I can't see Chicago really caring about having Maloney for that game.
Not sure how they can definitively say it doesn't hit Odubajo's release clause unless we've been very specific about the break down of the bid, in which case it defeats the point of the joint bid.
If Odubajo is worth £3.5 m and they want £7m for gray any bid below £10.5m means they haven't met the valuation for Gray.
I was looking at the salaries last night, they are tiny when you take out the DPs. Really if you want to see real progression the salary cap needs raising so that players like Maloney, BWP, Accam aren't DPs. They should be for top top players only. There's no wonder Villa etc are taking the piss in the league, but the league is improving quickly.
I mean maybe, but I can't see it mattering any. While the rest of the MLS has had growing attendances look at Chicago's. It took them until 2008 to get their average attendance they had in 1998 and their attenace now is a good thousand lower than both 16,000 and that's in a population of 9.3 million. People in Chicago don't care about the fire and I can't see them caring about having him in the final. It's not going to be on a main network in Chicago so most people won't even have the channel.
Manloney's pay is incredibly low for a DP player. He almost makes so little that his salary could be covered by a new cash deal the MLS is doing where they give teams an extra $100,000 to pay for a 4th quasi DP. Maloney really is probably one of the few DP players that we could give a heavy pay raise to get them to sign for us. Uh in general they want to control the salary cap until the league is profitable enough to cover European style salaries so you will see it being adjusted in some way the next union contract with the league.
Here's a question for you all - two questions then. (1) Is Bruce more interested in recruiting (a) a striker or (b) a fullback/wing back at the current moment ? i.e. What's his greatest need ? (2) Regardless of the answer to( 1), would we be better off with both if the price is right ? I think 1 (a) is greater than 1(b), but (2) would be the icing on the cake for Bruce and the club.
