Rival Watch

“Club sponsors in Abu Dhabi are alleged to have "provided only a portion of their payments to the club themselves", with the remainder reportedly made up by club owner Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, a member of the Abu Dhabi ruling family.”
https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/61017887

City and their likes exist strictly as a result of egregious money laundering from the grotesque owners. It is beyond believe that acts on the field has become the justifiable end regardless of the means to get there. Fkin horrible club!

 

Sad to hear about the situation with Ronaldo and his wife.

 

Liverpool fans have been told to "book the hotel" for next year's Champions League final in Istanbul by Reds manager Jurgen Klopp.​

 

Well why not, like all the other top 4 PL teams they will be on for a "quadruple" on the first game of the season

 

Like you said elsewhere, they managed to get one half of the quadruple. City only got one quarter by winning the premiership title . So the RS did twice as well as City

 

The poor half

 

All the pro-RS pundits have today coined a new phrase: “Just One short”. They just fell one short of the 2 missing trophies. They would have won the title were it not for City around. And they would have won the CL if they didn’t have Real. Oh yes? the derided Ole would have won the title without City around.

And the supposedly greatest premiership team ever didn’t win the title or the CL. 2 domestic cups. They have the record of winning 2 cup finals without scoring a single goal. An unbeatable record

Their players should be embarrassed to parade cups that some top clubs don’t even take seriously and which they were fortunate to win via the lottery of pens.

 

It is incredible... every final going back to 2005, whether League Cups, FA Cups, Champions Leagues, Liverpool have needed pens to win it. Even the CL against Spurs. Something like 6 finals in a row.

 

It is reported that Liverpool may sell Salah. With Mane gone, losing the two frontmen will not make Liverpool stronger next season, I don’t think, even with their new signings.

 

Tbf they'll remain strong because of the manager. He makes the players.

 

They will be strong, but maybe not at their absolute best. Even the best managers need to refresh and that can take couple of seasons unless you’re Citey with oil money to get two £50m players for every position.

If we can get ETH’s approach and emphasis on team into the club, then maybe we can start looking at competing with City and Liverpool in couple of seasons.

 

Talking about rivals, Arsenal have been very active and successful in the market. Following their big budget splash in the last summer transfer window. I know the @Chief will come back at me and say wtf are you comparing Utd with Arsenal who should not be even mentioned with us in the same sentence. Yes, this was the response I got from him when I mentioned Arsenal one or 2 years ago. But now no one would even question that we are competing with the likes of Arsenal these days. Their targets are in the same price bracket and so is their budget. In fact with the GGs taking even more dividends from the club Utd is sliding down in terms of budget and calibre of players they can afford. Reduced to squabbling for the odd million reduction with an equally cash strapped Barcelona.

 

Are we?

So, we're struggling to convince the bang average Yuri Tielemans to come to us?

Signing £3 million punts from Brazil?

Taking punts on Portuguese complete unknowns?

Must have missed all that.

Let's see about this after the window, not just as it opens.

 

Chief is cold with that response. lol

I don’t even bother check what Arsenal are doing these days primarily because I don’t believe they will get much better under the current manager. At least they are decisive in their dealings.

I am certain that we will bring in players before the season kicks off. But even if we end up with five players, we should not mistake this transfer window execution as some sort of success. Given where we closed out the season, we should have had better plan of execution and not waiting until a week before preseason to close out deals.

From outside looking in, we have been indecisive, slow, clunky, too linear with our identified interests and unorganized. This has ultimately led to negative views that the club still doesn’t know how to deal in the transfer maker.

 

Yep. Of course we’ll all know for sure when the window closes. The omens do not look good though.

whilst I don’t disagree with your assessment of Arsenal, what does it say about us that our dealings seem to be worse than them? We look uncertain in our dealings, stuttering and not sure where we want to go. Nothing would please me more than to tell Barcelona and Ajax where to go, and having a recovery with home grown/academy players. But it looks that Ten Haag need these new recruits.

 

Again - who knows what is going on? Perhaps our targets are aware of our interest and are on holiday - perhaps our targets are aware of our interest but there has been no movement because they know we don't return to pre-season until next week etc etc etc.

It would beggar belief that Arnold isn't on top of things given that he has been so critical of Woodward. If we have a crap window it won't be for the lack of funds, the cash is there we are told, in which case there are other factors at play. ETH is possibly the sort of guy who wants deal one finished, then deal two, deal three so that he can plot the alternatives that he has in mind for each player.

I don't see the mad rush, yes it would have been nice to have signed at least a couple but up until next week they would have been sitting at home playing computer games. With most of the teams in Europe returning to business around now, so whoever we get won't have lost anything in terms of pre-season fitness.

Patience is a virtue.

 

Ok, so we all agreed that it was unrealsistic to get more than three or four new players in this window, whilst also getting rid of some.

So IF we get de Jong, Antony (both seem likely) and also Martinez. Is it then that bad a window?

There is also then a maybe in Eriksen on a free, decent squad player who is experienced.

Is that embarrassing?

This could all happen in the next week btw. **** the gossip column.

 

Ok. If we get all these deals next week I’m prepared to admit that I’ve underestimated the execs. But somehow I don’t see it.

 

In my view it would be a good window. At least we then have options, something we were lacking in last season which is why Rangnick played virtually the same side as Ole. Eriksen is another good buy, he has the skill and experience to strengthen in midfield which gives ETH the option to break up the McFred selection week in, week out.
I also like the idea that ETH is going for players that he knows, ,experienced players who can influence the rest of the squad, players who are accustomed to his training methods and so won't be the ones to complain. De Jong and Antony seem likely, Martinez less so.