A combination of HG tax and needing to give the Chavs second thoughts in activating their buyback clause Imagine if, for the sake of argument, Everton agreed a £25m fee - it would have taken seconds before Uncle Roman was logging into PayPal to jump on that
Agreed. I think hes okay but 41m is quite steep in ths market and a relegated side. Especially when you think hes a left sided defender and laporte is also. Glad city have spent on this
Don’t get me wrong he’s an upgrade on Stones and Otamendi but for me he’s a squad player at best and if Laporte carries on being injury prone then they might need to rely on him and I’m unsure if he can step up to that level
Why? It's not going to stop them spending a ****load elsewhere. There's nothing to prevent them doing what they like now they've ****ed over UEFA.
Because for me maybe they think their defence is sorted when i don't think it is. Would rather they spend on someone like ake than one that i think is better and would improve them
I don't think that he's the only centre-half they'll sign in this window, unfortunately. I can see them shifting out Otamendi and/or Stones for someone like Koulibaly. Guardiola clearly doesn't rate either of them and I don't think that he sees Garcia as being 100% ready to take that role yet.
I really rate him and think he’ll thrive at City, I genuinely do. Bournemouth leaked far too many goals in every one of their 5 seasons in the PL, yet for me he still stood out as a quality defender.
Although I am glad that the Saudis haven't taken over Newcastle, for a multitude of reasons, people are saying things like it's a 'victory for football' and 'a win for the Premier League'? Erm....City's owners and Chelsea's owners don't exactly have a squeaky clean record when it comes to corruption and human rights violations either...? Maybe I'm remembered it wrong, or the prominence of social media has magnified the more current issues, but there never appeared to be this much opposition to the aforementioned parties coming into the Premier League. Let's be consistent with this logic.
Pretty sure that most neutrals were against them too, if they knew anything about it. This has gone to pot because the Newcastle lot cost the Premier League money. It's that simple. Their involvement with BeOutSport or whatever pisstakey name they used threatened the only thing that this lot care about - cold, hard cash.
The fact that this appeared to flounder on the grounds of TV rights rather than human rights says all you need to know about the priorities of the authorities in this case. A farce from start to finish and nobody comes out of it well. I know quite a few Newcastle fans and they’re equal parts distraught and livid, not because they’re massively keen on KSA running their club, but because they’ve been strung along for a long time with this and at the end of the day they’re still stuck with Ashley at the helm, who is pretty much the antithesis of what a Newcastle owner should be, to them.
I think I was 13 when Mansour took over City, and considerably younger when Abramovich took over at Chelsea, so that's probably why my memory is hazy about what happened during that time. But fair enough if people were vocal in their opposition to it at the time. But yeah, I don't doubt for one second that the fundamental issue here was to do with money - the PL have welcomed people with murky pasts into the division with open arms, so of course human rights, censorship, torture and harassment weren't the primary concerns.
Ahhhhhh does that mean that a possible Danny Rose deal will be off , I'm on the phone to my accountant to pull the plug on the North East Mars bar franchise
That's a bit like saying the wheels on a formula one car are the same design as the ones on Fred Flintstone's. Data science has made incredible advances over the last few years. I don't think it will give Brentford an edge for long as it won't be too hard for other clubs to copy but some might not even understand that they need to do it.
