POCH NEWS CONFERENCE: Lamela has flown home to 'deal with a family problem involving his brother' apparently. Not sure I've ever heard that reason before. Doesn't sound like a bereavement so I wonder what's going on? At least the implication is that he is fully fit. Toby will be on the bench tomorrow night and then again on Sunday, but will not be starting either of them. Shame that as I'd hope he would be fit for United. Davies won't be on the bench tomorrow but will be involved in the squad on Sunday. Looks like we'll FINALLY have all personnel back and fit in time for our B team's visit to the Lane next Wednesday.
I will front-up full-on, no suit + tie, against Spurcat and state that only the Europa should be focused on seriously and the FA Cup can be ditched if/when necessary by Pochettino (reasons long outlined in the "Season compass" article) .
We need to win this game for three reasons: 1) To stop people worrying about our Wembley jinx 2) To increase morale in the team 3) Because the Europa knock-out stages are a decent prize
His brother was kidnapped a few years ago, around the time that he first signed for us. They let him go for relatively **** money, presumably because they didn't realise who he actually was. Hopefully this hasn't happened again, but it certainly sounds odd, doesn't it?
A rotated side doesn't necessarily mean playing to lose but this is a perfect opportunity to give minutes to those who haven't featured much and therefore safeguards the first team for future games. I can't deny that if we do lose I won't lose much sleep, mainly because I know the players won't approach the Europa with the right attitude, we haven't since Jol's era unfortunately. Worst case scenario - We lose at Wembley again just like our strongest available XI has in the past two games (past 6 or 7 actually ) and therefore don't enter a competition that the players doesn't take seriously. Best case - We win/ draw the game, come third in the group, go into Europa and try and make a run for that.
The EL is another route to the CL. So all options should be kept open. The good thing is the club will have made a lot more money just out of the CL group stages than they could starting in the EL groups and going on to win the thing.
I would be interested to know how much we will make from the CL this season. I heard this morning that Celtic, who are also going out at this stage, will have made £25m.
We won't know for certain until the accounts for this season get released. If there is a standard UEFA performance-related cumulative payout for the group stages, then Spurs are currently getting more. If there is a viewing-based payout, then with Celtic being top dog in Scotland + having Barca + Citeh in their group, then they probably are getting much more.
I remember last time around it was rumoured that we'd picked up appx. £20m just for turning up, then a further £2m for the last 16 and £4m for the QF. Not sure how accurate those figures were but they sound logical when you consider who much money is sloshing around in this particular tournament. Out of interest who took all the extra gate revenue from the Wembley games? Does it go to the stadium or to us? Or is making money off of a free stadium too Upton-ey these days?
When I did the analysis on the reported accounts (2011) , the club had earned nearly 40m Euros from the CL adventure.
Wow, those media hacks are utter plank-ton. If I was the manager I would have chinned several of em. And to Jan for some eloquent speech (not his native English - and no Beckham-esque "You know" ) .
If this http://www.totalsportek.com/money/uefa-champions-league-prize-money/ is right we get EUR 14m to 15.5m (depending on tonight's result) plus our share of the market pool which looks to be about EUR 22m, plus the gate money net of Wembley's charges.
