I went over to see what reaction it got and stopped as the first post I read as it had the phrase..."some other Wop club" Classy chap. Not.
Boro sign Fletcher from Wet Spam and have now spent £30M on strikers this summer. http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/40741034 Imagine that kind of money being spent when we were in the Championship! We spent £1.8M on Billy Sharpe that year.
So were QPR when they were in the Championship that season I think? They spent £4M~ on Matty Phillips that year and that was the biggest transfer.
£30m on nothing special. Championship could be weird this year. A lot of people like Fulham, but I think only because of a good last 10 games. Aston Villa? I don't see why they are supposed to be good. Sheffield Wednesday, maybe, but none of them stand out like Newcastle and Brighton did.
I think Villa will definitely be up there. They've signed Terry and Samba, who although are old I think will be a good pairing in that league. Whelan and Elmohamady will also be decent. Squad would need a lot of work if they're promoted, but think they'll be decent in that league.
It is a **** load of money, but how many 18 year olds do you see tearing up the Champions League like he did? Big clubs have been monitoring him for years and City had a £40m bid rejected for him last summer iirc. With the money floating about and competition for his signature, the price isn't that surprising.
I see that Guardiola is determined to show everybody that he's the best manager in the World by buying up every best available player. I still remain to be convinced by him. He couldn't do anything especially dramatic with players who were very nearly amongst the best in the World, last season. We'll see. If he took fairly ordinary star players to World domination for a season then I'd be impressed. But everywhere he's been they've had the best. What's so special about that.?
Oh my god this is exactly my view. I do not rate Pep at all. Sure he has a brilliant record but even Paul Hart would struggle to not win anything with Barcelona or Bayern in the years he was there. Unlikley to happen but I'll only start to rate him if he took a smaller club to a very competitive level.
out of the top 6 team managers,i think only Wenger and MOPO would do a good job with a team with limited finances, Def not Pep or the Special One, maybe Conte and Klopp would do well for a couple of months before the players rebelled
Yeah, Paul Hart would definitely have been major factors in the development of Iniesta, Messi, PIque, Busquets, Pedro and to a lesser extent, Xavi. So much revisionism when it comes to Pep's reign at Barca.
I didn't say he would have, just that it's easy to be labelled a good manager when the team you manage already has the worlds best players in it.
Messi was already a force to be reckoned with at the time and Iniesta was already a full first teamer as well as Xavi being a regular for a long time. Busquets, Pedro and Pique were Pep. He took over a side that had underperformed under Rijkaard for 2 seasons (2nd and 3rd) when previously they had smashed it winning the CL and La Liga. He did brilliant to make barca great on a spend of ~100m over 3 seasons. However he took Bayern backwards and arguably he's done terribly at City on a massive spend. Whether he can emulate what he did at brcelona is a different matter but right now he's done exactly what Jose has done in most of Joses successes except he's done it at a more extreme level and arguably achieved even less than jose medal wise The only reason why people like Pep and not jose and let him get away with it is because Joses a mouthy git and Pep plays progressive football
Pep came in and got rid of Ronaldinho, Deco & others, It was him that made Messi the focal point of their attack and built the squad around La Masia products. He didn't take Bayern backwards, they reached 2 CL semi finals in his 2 seasons. I'm sure he is disappointed not to have won it with them, but at that level of competition I don't see how you could say he took them backwards. Real Madrid have been dominant and Atletico were/are a thorn in all the big European teams side (seemingly Real excluded). He inherited an imbalanced City squad that needed a lot of rebuilding. Yes, it's expensive and he's having to spend a lot of money, but to compete at the top level in multiple competitions you absolutely have to spend money. The market is crazy, so if you expect Guardiola (or any manager) to fulfill City's (or any elite club) ambitions by looking to their academy or then it's just not going to happen. It also helps that Pep is very humble and plays great football.
