Probably - know all about them and beaten Spurs twice etc. I'd still expect Liverpool to have more fire power too although guess Kane might be fit.
I know I'm posting this a few days late, but shortly before the incident he apparently got sent off for, he did swing an elbow, but I don't think it was aimed at anyone in particular, but may have caught someone. Depending on what the ref was able to see, the combination of both may have got him a red.
Unless the club goes for the German ( or Luton?) options, then I personally would rather have the seemingly sensible approach of the Pozzos who shock horror aren't British, whatever that means to you, than say, Mike Ashley who just wants to milk the one-club town that is Newcastle. And I'm not under any illusions that because it is business-led, they might not leave us in the merde in a few years time, but for the moment they seem to have things planned out.
At least the Pozzos are football people with an interest in the game unlike so many owners - of course the money side of things is important but they seem to care about the club as well with the naming of the stands (rather than going down the usual sponsorship route) and doing a lot to improve the ground itself. TBF they could have given up when we only finished 13th (Championship) in their 2nd season of ownership.
The German model is not really applicable to England Nascot. I glanced through a list of the biggest football clubs (actually in Germany they are mostly sports clubs) in the World based on actual club membership, and from the biggest 12 half of them were German (from the other half 3 were Spanish and 3 Portuguese). Bayern Munich have an astonishing 290,000 club members. If you ask anyone the question 'Who actually owns Bayern Munich' ? then you receive a blank stare in return - the club owns Bayern, and that is the model throughout Germany. There are exceptions to this for some clubs which came from a corporate background such as Bayer Leverkusen, but the norm is that no outsider can come in and buy more than 49% of either shares or votes. For those clubs with a large membership this is ok. but offers no real short cuts for those without this advantage. In short the Pozzo take over could not have happened in Germany. There are no Manchester City's here, but then there are no Boltons or Coventrys either. Bayern have spending power, but they are very carefull with it and only buy when necessary - they would certainly not buy a player just to stop an opponent getting him as some big clubs do. Unfortunately a club like Ajax Amsterdam does not have geography on its side and so has a spending power which is actually less than Stoke City - despite being 4 times European Champions. But then they achieved that at a time when we had a more level playing field.
It is to be expected that the bigger clubs will have more expenditure - and why not if the club gets 60,000+ each week then so they should. The tv rights need to continue to be evenly spread but there needs to be a real examination of the gulf between the haves and the, well the lesser haves... fortunately Spurs, Liverpool (to a lesser degree) and Arsenal have been relatively frugal in comparison with Chelsea, PSG and Man City. The gap is still increasing between these clubs and the rest. Surely this is as unsustainable as it is ugly? When Watford were runners up in 1982-83 we lost 15 games. Which is roughly the equivalent of losing 13/14 today. That's mid-table mediocrity at best. Notts County finished 15th that season, only ten of the clubs in the division are still in the top flight and, infamously, Manchester City were relegated... kinda puts it into perspective, eh?
There are big differences between the models in use in different countries. Here in France most clubs are playing in grounds owned by the communes, part of the social service provided for everyone, so the chances of buying a club and flogging off the property for a big gain, eg Brighton, is not possible. As the latest saga with Bolton has unfolded, we have seen the fans trying to raise a share issue so that they can have some control over the future of their club. It can be successful to a degree, and certainly helped to save Portsmouth, but the ordinary fans found out down there that they needed high worth individuals to help out, and when they had to take decisions about finance they eventually sold out because they couldn't keep raising cash in sufficient amounts, although they still have a minor stakeholding in the club.
It's a nightmare for football. They are not 'clubs' nor are they English ones. Both Arsenal and Chelsea had one English player in their starting line ups and there is not an English manager, owner or trainer in sight !
Fair points and Arsenal fans might ask why their team cannot perform like this all the time Compared to even Liverpool and Spurs they aren't get adverts for young local talent. Chelsea will be lucky to get through - Frankfurt playing well.
Fair points and Arsenal fans might ask why their team cannot perform like this all the time Compared to even Liverpool and Spurs they aren't get adverts for young local talent. Chelsea will be lucky to get through - Frankfurt playing well.
Yeah rah rah bloody rah. On the plus side at least you didn't say "tonight we are all Chelsea fans"...
Will it be a one off Yorkie ? The fact is that the only clubs which can compete with the top six of the Premiership economically are Real, Barcelona, Bayern and PSG - PSG lack the competitive edge in France and the other 3 have performed well below standards this year. Barca have the wrong manager in the wrong place at the wrong time trying to impose a style which is alien to the club - which has only been masked due to the fact that Real are in transition. Bayern went under the maxim 'If it's not broken don't fix it' and consequently have a squad which is too old. So what is left other than Premiership domination ? The fact that the best of the rest this year have been Ajax and Eintracht shows the fallen standards of European football this year. My fear is that such underdogs as Ajax, Leicester, Porto and Eintracht will come through less and less in the future and their teams will be broken up when they do. Naturally the big 4 in Europe will embark on a massive spending spree this summer - spearheaded by Real, which will lead to a further spiralling of ridiculous transfer fees, which only the 10 richest clubs in Europe can go along with. Why the domination of the Premier League ? Not because English football is better, but because they are better at selling the game and because England is more open to the injection of predatory external capital into football than any other country. Thus enabling the Premiership to drain the best playing and managerial talent from Europe. I try not to combine football and politics, but it is not possible to avoid doing it here - it is impossible for someone with my politics to have anything other than contempt for the way the Premiership is destroying the beautifull game. Like in so many other fields Capitalism sells itself with the idea of free competition - but ends up in monopolies and cartels - and this is what the elite of the Premiership has become - a cartel. The chance is there that fans may become bored with seeing the same teams in the last 8 of the Champions League, year in and year out, and with having only about 3 countries represented there, and so it may regulate itself. But the immediate future will see Real, PSG and Barca splashing out ever more money to counter the Premierships influence.
One of the guys on the horse racing forum who lives near Munich said that German TV isn't going to show the final. I don't know if that's true or not but think that's a shame really - would not have been happy if we couldn't have got to watch Dortmund vs Bayern the other year.
