coachpotato

Makelele was the epitome of a DM. Souness had pretty much everything. Arie Haan DM for THE Ajax team.

He was brought in to win the Champions League because Mancini and Pellegrini couldn’t/didn’t. Given the resources all three have had, it’s been an epic fail so far, but it’ll happen one day and all the previous failure will be conveniently forgotten about.

Fair. Maybe triple time for MNF?

Any notions that football at the highest level is a sport is a bit fanciful. It’s a business and has been for decades now. On that basis then, footballers should be allowed to earn as much as they can get for their skills, in the same way as any Electrician, Plumber or Doctor can do. Of course, Club Owners (Employers) will try to get those skills as cheap as they can to maximise their own profits, or they’ll pay a premium for the highest skilled to try and ensure their product is more attractive (successful) and sells more than their competitors, thus giving them more profits that way. For Employers and Employees it’s all about getting as much as you can. The fans (customers) can buy if they like, or not. All very cold and calculating. Welcome to modern football.

So it looks as though Messi might be being used as a (willing?) pawn in a power play between Real Madrid/Barcelona and La Liga over how they can run their respective finances. La Liga look as though they are trying to keep some form of FFP and regulation to, presumably, make things more equal between the clubs in a financial sense. Real/Barca want to be able to spend what they want, when they want and on who they want to maintain their grip over the whole of La Liga. The threat from Barca is that Messi could be off if La Liga win, taking arguably the biggest draw in the league away and no doubt causing consternation to the leagues sponsors and partners. And Barcelona’s too of course. Could this also play out here if City/United/Chelsea find the FA Premier League telling them they can’t spend as they wish? La Liga will drop their kecks over this won’t they.

They deserve each other.

Somebody posted earlier that we should learn from our mistakes, and this is the whole point. Two seasons ago we won the League and prior to that the CL and we’ve pretty much sat on our hands compared to other clubs in our league even though we have bought one decent player in Jota and potentially another in Konate. I hope Thiago can show his true worth too this season. While City, United and Chelsea have more spend than us, we’ve seen other clubs as well spend more in an effort to get into the top four, and they’ve almost succeeded. The time to speculate was when those two trophies were in our possession, when we were cash rich, and able to attract the best players, and instead we speculated we’d have enough to get by and barely scraped into the top four. Knowing this, what have we done? We’ve bought Lovren’s replacement 12 months too late and, up to now, nobody else. I don’t include contract renewals or the need to sell players on because that applies to other teams as well, and as for satisfying FFP, we’ll that’s a busted flush as proven by City and Chelsea. We always used to improve the squad when we were winning things, for those of you who remember them days, and so we shouldn’t just learn from our mistakes, we should learn from our history too.

Spurs are buying up players before Kane leaves, likely with the money they’ll get when he does leave. There have been 3 mentioned in the last few days and it looks as though Coady may go there as well. It’ll likely work out they’ll have one leave, and four come in for the same money or just a bit more with the one leaving for big money a known fitness risk. Good business? What are we doing, apart from watching from the sidelines, and buying (in this case Konate) someone who should have been here last summer when Lovren went?

If City have changed the PL into a one horse race, as was expounded on Talkshite earlier today when they took the assumption City will sign Grealish and Kane (I know, I know), and go on to have their reserves win the FA and League cups, and go on to walk the CL, then maybe the other clubs that were touted for the ESL will actually say “Fuck this!” and walk away and form a breakaway League with the wherewithal to balance things out. The greedy cunts will end up eating themselves in their thirst for glory, greedy cunts always do.

This precisely. United are the epitome of throw enough money at a problem and eventually you’ll get it right. Solskaer has been given more than enough time compared to Moyes, Van Gaal and Mourinho, even though the latter two upset too many people there probably, so I’d contend he’s an acceptable face rather than a competent coach, and it’s likely he’s getting support behind the scenes. Ultimately they’ll start winning again though, while we sit back and allow a squad to get older still believing in money ball.

Yes, the truth was they thought we were rioting and all of them were booing until the first advertising board stretchers went past them. Many of them then started applauding as I recall. Despite that, and the overwhelming evidence that there was no wrongdoing by our supporters, there are still those in this country, and beyond, who think they “know what actually happened”. They also think the earth is flat, that there are 5G chips in the COVID injections and that David Icke is a full shilling. Our differences are what make the world go round, rightly or wrongly, and it would be a boring place if we all thought and believed the same things. We can appreciate many of the differences and beliefs without agreeing with them and can scorn the others, because we were also there, and we actually do know what happened, and we’ve stood alongside the families of the 97 and the survivors since then and they’ve been proved right time and again. And that is all that matters. RIP Andrew. YNWA.

Just to add further, the authorities have let the genie out of the bottle by allowing city to dictate just about anything that they want, it’s going to be like the Wild West over the next few years, would be investors with loads of money would have baulked at joining the party if city had been reigned in. I mean, why would you want to take part in a big dick contest if you couldn’t use your full length? Now any Oligarch or State funded entity who fancies flexing their muscle can do so, they’ve been shown how to do it by city’s brazen “fuck you” approach and UEFA’s inability to show who’s actually running the show.

They don’t need to have credibility, that’s the problem. Cunts who don’t give a toss for order and rules don’t care about credibility, they only care about winning at any price as has been amply demonstrated for many years now.

To be completely cynical, I can’t see UEFA allowing English clubs to dominate like we did in the 70’s/80’s. Not good for the “family” to have one country hoovering up the CL, Europa and possibly the new comp they’ve dreamed up. Although the way City fucked them over FFP it’s not easy to see how they’d stop it. Maybe a Super League?

Easier to turn water into wine.

I was lucky, I went to a few aways in the 70’s & 80’s and never got too involved, although I was too close at hand on a number of occasions when there was a kick off. You still had to cover up your colours, especially if you were on your own, and after the League Cup replay with West Ham at Villa Park, I just dug my hands into my pockets, kept my head down and kept walking while there was all sorts of mayhem happening. Wembley was iffy at times as we would get the train in from Harrow on the Hill and there were occasionally “welcoming committees” knocking about, although the serious number of reds tended to put off all except the real nutcases from opposition teams. I’ve mentioned before that there was a TV program on in the days after the Heysel game where there was an invited audience of some of the more “established” hoolies and one of them actually said, regarding the deaths, “This has been coming for a while now, the scousers were just unlucky it was them”, which in itself is a scary indictment of how violence was almost an expected part of the game all over Europe. Thankfully, it isn’t these days.

I went to Heysel, my missus went to Rome the year before, she still says she’s never been as scared at any match as that night in Rome. Shouldn’t have surprised anyone that there was trouble in Brussels given the way things were then and the club, Council and Merseyside Police warned weeks in advance that the stadium was a shithole with serious security flaws. Totally ignored of course by UEFA. There’s a whole shitload of things that went on in Belgium in the lead up to and at the start of that match that many of our fans have mentioned before. I’ve always believed some things will never get discussed openly because it meets too many agendas to have them aired, not that I’m privy to facts by the way, it’s just a feeling I’ve had. There were deaths and there had to be blame, and like it or not, it was us that were there and had there been no charge from our section, there would likely have been no deaths and so we were to blame.

Well worked that.

England look clueless. Am I allowed to say that?

Nuno has the most chance because Spurs have some half decent players to be fair. Lage will manage whoever Mendez gets Wolves to buy which might constrict him. Rafa will not be given a sporting chance at the Pit, the bile will start well before he loses a match and will be deafening if he loses a couple on the bounce. Short of winning a cup and qualifying for Europe, he’ll be hounded out as a failure and unless he plays “the School of Science” way even that might not be enough.

The Italians showed all that is good and bad about football in that game last night, some brilliant football, but then reverting to type in the closing stages with time wasting, feigning injury and general shithousery. Some might say it’s showing the ultimate in professionalism, win at any cost, but Immobile just comes across as a cunt, not a professional, just like Rivaldo will always be remembered for that idiotic holding of his face in the World Cup against Turkey. I’d like to think Immobile might be punished retrospectively for simulation, but with the head of UEFA being Italian, I doubt that will happen. On another note, fair fucks to Thiago for showing compassion to Vargas and Sommer after the game last night when many of the Spaniards were still celebrating. Class.

If the knuckledraggers are hoping England get to the final, likely against this Italian team, they could be in for a very nasty time.

When we score against City.

The Swiss have some really thick cunts playing for them, all named Widdmer.

That sending off was tough but correct. Poorly timed, over the ball, and onto the shin/ankle. Seems to me that there’s a challenge like that in almost every game, where the tackler is a fraction late and lands their foot onto the opponents foot or ankle. Almost like it’s meant to look accidental but is still guaranteed to cause pain. Happens too often to be coincidental. Thing is, every ref interprets it differently and while consistency has been good so far this tournament, with even VAR almost acceptable, this ref has done something nobody else has so far.