Ex City players and various pundits and journalists getting frustrated that their tapping up and Kane's tantrum haven't got him on the cheap. Plenty of rubbish on line about how Levy is causing the problem (not Kane) cos he is unwilling to be as reasonable as Villa were with Grealish (totally ignoring he put a £100m buyout price in his new contract). Kane encouraged this with the interview last season where he said that Spurs should be aware that his value will drop if they don't sell (me) this summer. As far as I am concerned he ain't no Sol Cambell but is way worse than Walker Rose, Berbatov, Keane, Bale and Modric...he was one of our own and has treated us with no respect. I will never sing his name again and hope he goes as soon as so this poxy circus ends.
Argentina's football is much closer to British football in style than Portugal's an Italian DOF is a good barrier to more Jose style football. I hope.
My understanding of the saga is that this stems from La Liga's decision in 2013 to limit wage bills to 70% of overall revenue across 'floating' terms of 3 seasons IIRC. With 2 of the past 3 seasons hugely impacted by Coronavirus, Barca's wage bill stood at 107% of revenue, which meant they had to shed something to the tune of €200m in wages over the next cycle in time for Friday's registration deadline. So I think you're part right. The main issue is that they haven't managed to sell a single high earner this window, despite the likes of Griezmann, Dembele, Umtiti and Coutinho all being linked with moves. So even if he agreed to play for free, they'd be able to register him but would still need to move other players on to make any further moves in the market. In hindsight, signing a year's extension on higher terms last summer after the whole fax machine fiasco was a huge mistake. Signing Aguero and Depay on mega wages when the wage bill was already so high and no major sales had been achieved was just plain dumb and goes to the core of how incompetently the club has navigated the past 18 months.
And how arrogantly. They assume that the problem is just going to go away. They must think that the league is going to roll over. Too late to stop Messi leaving if they do, which is quite a massive **** up.
Wow. He's a superb player. Him and Son either side of a refocused Kane is instantly the best attack in the league by a country mile. Just hope this isn't step 1 of spending the Kane money.
Neither they or Real Madrid are used to operating in the real world. Perhaps they should change their names: Getreal Madrid and BarcaLoantime.
Barella is also reportedly off, with Man Utd and Chelsea fans on Twitter being as entitled as one another Now I have a suggestion here: we already signed two players from one club with black and blue stripes this summer, why not sign two from two?
I say take the £130 mio + Bernardo Silva, if that's what's being offered and get in Martinez + Vlahovic and still have some left over for the Japanese lad and another CB. Then we have to clear out the dross, Dier, Aurier, Sanchez, Sissoko and Dele
What wouldn't I give to see what has happened to Inter, Real and Barca happen to City and Chelsea. It beggars belief that any club can emerge from the biggest global crisis since World War II and still drop £100m transfer fees like it's no big deal.
Here's the intriguing part of the saga: A private equity firm (registered as Friends of Florentino Trust) offered a one-off €300m cash injection to help alleviate the wages:revenue imbalance. Barca and Real rejected it and deferred to the all-team vote on the matter due to take place in a few weeks. There are a number of theories doing the rounds behind the rejection, but for me the simplest explanation is the arrogance you've highlighted. Accepting a cash injection admits: we screwed up. It also doesn't guarantee the problem won't occur again, as it is a temporary patch on a much bigger wound. To my mind, it is obvious that they expected La Liga to roll over and agree to waive the 70% cap until Barca and Real say so. They didn't. And good on them. I wish the PL had the same minerals.
It plummeted for months in the midst of the pandemic because no one was going anywhere. The Saudis had their biggest oil crisis since the Gulf War, allowing something like 15 million barrels to go to waste because no one wanted them and storage was more expensive than the oil being stored. I just don't buy it. It's dirty money, simple. Spending goes up just as the Taliban reopens the drug lines into central Asia. Coincidence?
I'm beginning to wonder if the signings of Romero and Martinez are part of a ruse to get Messi to come and play for us on reduced money. I hear that Aguero is so furious with the Messi situation that he's trying to get out of his contract with Barca too
