Catch22

To be honest I dont see how what the difference is; The club will switch funds from 1 budget to another (ie/ if you spend less on wages you can spend more on transfer fees) & the market for players adjusts to accomodate both (ie/ Ballack was on a free so could get £130k/week, Sol went to Arse on a free so was highest paid player at the time, Owen had 1yr left so was relatively cheap at £7m etc). Also I find it slightly strange that you accept that when discussing Kewell but don't use the same logic when assesing Rafa's budgets... (It was you who posted "This is an old story, I posted a similar theme on 13th March but I was referring to league games only: A fee of £5m and wages of £60,000-a-week for 5 years. All for less than 100 league games at a cost in excess of £200,000 a game.") Sorry,don't want to be unneccessarily argumentative but find the different approach slightly bizarre...

Scholes missed almost the entire season in '05-06.. His return played a massive part in their improvement. (Also in '05-06 we had our worst European campaign under Rafa so I do/did not see it as an especially successful season)

Hermes- why don't you include wages in your analysis? You take them into account when (correctly) pointing out the lack of value of Kewell.....

Yes it would have been better to buy a success who is still at the club than Bellamy who was a failiure. However not every decision we make in life is going to be correct (even Paisley signed Hodgson!); minimising the damage from those mistakes is vital & is something that Rafa appears to do whilst GH for instance didn't.

Yes certainly agree that player trading profits shouldn't be our overall goal but not every signing is going to work (human error, relationship/moving issues etc) & to get out of those that don't at a small profit is surely desirable.

No-one including Rafa is beyond criticism but please dont say his budget compares to Mancs or Chavs because it clearly doesn't once wages are included. Of the 6 players you highlight as his mistake, we made £5.1m on sissoko (10.4 (13 Euro @ EUR/GBP 0.8) - 5.3), £1m on Bellamy (7.5 - 6.5) & lost £3.3m on Morientes (3 - 6.3) which is a net profit of £2.8m so hardly a disaster. That leaves £7m for Crouch which we will probably get back & then spending on Kuyt & Pennant which isn't a staggering success but neither a damning failiure. Not exactly a bad record for the 6 players you picked to criticise him with (I notice you didn't choose Torres,Masch,Agger,Skyrtel,Reina, etc).

Yes they have a higher turnover so they spend more... We have a budget at the start of the year for wages: if a certain amount goes on Torres/Gerrard then that leaves us less to spend in other areas & means we have inferior squad players to the Mancs.

We have had considerably less money than United once wages have been taken into account- as i posted earlier £16m per year on the latest numbers.

Seeing as the 'Rafa has spent more' argument is doing the rounds again, I thought I'd dig up the Deloitte football survey. Pretty conclusively shows he hasn't and i'm willing to enter into a wager for the HJC with anyone who thinks that the next report will show differently: Since Bosman, wages are far more important than transfer costs in terms of total spend (As Kewell always unfortunately reminds us...) Deloitte produce an annual review of football finance. Last year's covers season '05-'06... (source BBC NEWS | Business | Premiership wages 'to top £1bn') Total wage bills: Chelsea - £114m Manchester Utd - £85m Arsenal - £83m Liverpool - £69m Newcastle Utd - £52m This annual disparity of £16m or £45m (!) approximately re-occurs every year & in total dwarfs any differences that might come from the disputed transfer stats. So can we please stop claiming Rafa is out-spending the Mancs & Chel. (Also, i would say the Translator's 'achievement' in winning the league was not especially noteworthy but that is a seperate point) The next report is out on 31/05, covering the '06-7 season. Deloitte's Annual Review of Football Finance 2007 - Taking new direction - Deloitte & Touche LLP Does any of the 'Rafa spent more' group fancy a friendly wager on this, proceeds to the HJC? I am happy to bet that Chel & the Mancs outspent us?

Been a subscriber for over 2.5 years so my details should match up in Dave's database: he also kindly e-mailed me to adjust my internet order as i was too much of an old fool to fill in the form correctly & had originally paid for multiple orders to the same address! It is a grave pity Amazon do not show the same level of customer service as TLW....

He has won La Liga twice. If we compare European results in both those years La Liga was ahead of the Premiership: In 2001-02 Deportivo finished above Mancs,Arse above Mallorca in 1st group stage.In 2nd group stage Barca above us, Depo above Arse. In QF, Mancs beat Depo. Mancs lost in SF, Real beat Barca & then Real won it all. Clearly Spain had a much better European Cup (3-2 in direct meetings, 2-1 on SFinalists & the winner) In Uefa Sp had 1 QF, Eng had none so mild ahead for Spain. In 2003-04 no direct meetings in group stages Spain had 4 in last 16, Eng had 3. Arse beat Celta Vigo so both countries had 2 QF & both had 1 losing semi-finalist. So would say similar performance (Eng won only direct meeting but they had more thru to last 16) In addition Spain won the Uefa cup & had 2 in SF whilst Eng best result was Newc knocked out in quarters. Spain was stronger. He has won a league twice that was stronger than the Premiership at the same time. Logically taht suggest to me he is more than capable of winning the Premiership.

Thanks for all the words of welcome & no problem with any intial suspicion. No i don't have a sister! No idea why it's gold-I have contributed to the site in the past so maybe that's it...

hi, I have lurked on here for at least 5 years (!), subscribing to the fanzine; Must be some sort of record for not posting but that was mainly down to my ex-employer blocking posting, but not viewing. Was born in 1972 so I think i'm in the older crowd on this site with my 1st Reds memory being Rome '77 on TV. In the horrible aftermath of Moscow this is about the only media site I can safely access so I thought I would finally post. Will start by saying it is the European Cup I want back more than any league... #6 is more important than #19 to me.... i) "Everyone thinks they have the best looking wife at home". I know it was Wenger who uttered this but it put down WhiskyNose so hopefully Ok to use:There are 4 major leagues all claiming supremacy plus historically other countries could produce fantastic sides (eg/Ajax); The European Cup produces 1 winner amongst them. ii) Hence the standard of opposition is much higher: I don't like watching 'flat track bullying' in any sport & the modern 'everyone beats up on the bottom 12 in the league' bores me silly. When I first started watching football an away draw was never a bad result & we won in '77 (my 1st vague memory) losing 8 games. Milan/Madrid/Juve are worthier opponents than Derby/Birmingham/Wigan. iii) Barca/Milan/Lisbon etc are much more attractive places to visit than Deby/Birmingham/Wigan! iv) A few different teams can still win the European Cup; All the top leagues in Europe are now closed shops. v) Domestic leagues are much more prone to referee bias etc (Juve in Serie A, Madrid in La Liga & Mancs in ours get consistent significant bias (Steve Bennet/ Riley etc)); Although there are instances in Europe (Inter away '65) there is no 1 dominant TV station & its associated favourite. v) Statistically since it launced there have been 53 European Cup winners, of which 11 went to England. There have been 53 domestic titles won in that time so the ratio is 53:11 which means you could say 1 European Cup is worth 4.82 English leagues. vii) If you want a statistical league table to deal with consistency issues then use the UEFA co-efficients page UEFA Team Ranking 2008 Interestingly,if my maths are right, we are top of this since summer 2004 (From this I think you can guess my view on our manager...) viii) I think of myself as European.... Apologies for maybe an overlong 1st post & lets remember 'we always win in Rome'...