pas5898

15 minutes ago, MWARLEY2 said:

But when we talk about buying him back thats when i think we have gone crazy. 29 in September , all of his bravery being coached out of him . A treble on his mantelpiece means his hunger might not be what it was.  3 seasons of playing strictly on the left wing not allowed to do anything off the cuff . Spending the majority of this seasons important games on the bench . All the signs of a player that has reached his peak and is now on a downturn.

Wearing my Claret and Blue tinted glasses, if we could get the old Grealish, on that left hand side attracting 2/3 players. That would open so much space up for Diaby / Bailey on the other side. Unfortunately that guy is gone. Regardless, he's on 300k a week, only those with over inflated commercial income can sustain that type of wage. 

1 hour ago, villa89 said:

I'd be interested to see what the business plan is. I assume they plan to make a profit from the other developments in the plan rather than the stadium itself.

Council are screwed for cash (everywhere). Public services are already strangled, so it's natural "wants" such as sports will take a big hit in the next 5/10 years. There's a big opportunity here.

With big investment, the land could become Birmingham's and the midlands premier sports venue for athletics, rugby, even NFL (there's a huge NFL fanbase in the midlands). Bolting on a really good indoor arena is good revenue generator from events such as JuJitsu, Karate competitions which are held every week.

A half empty 50k ground is irrelevant, the additional 8-10m a year from lost ticket sales will be easily recouped from other sports in the area. 

It's a really good idea to out generate competitors in revenue as their fanbase and football based revenue will always be lacking compared to the bigger established premier league clubs.

As someone raised in this area I can only commend the investment. It's a shame our club appear to be quite narrow minded when it comes to this, as we could have done something similar around the airport / NEC. (Still waiting for Dr Tony's Theme park)

9 hours ago, Lichfield Dean said:

I don't really know what has changed but I've just stopped being interested this season and last. I always always watched the F1, during Schumacher's dominance, the McLaren dominance, the Vettel years, the Merc years, all of them. But this is different - and I don't really know why. As others have said, maybe it's a perfect storm of a dominant driver, ultra reliability, boring circuits and lack of in-race tactical thinking.

Genuinely not watched a single race or quali since the Hamilton / Verstappen fix in 2021.

I'm not really a Hamilton fan, but to have invested so much time (a race weekend is easily 10 hours of tv) to watch it kind of fixed just took away my care for F1, literally overnight.

2 minutes ago, Vive_La_Villa said:

You could argue it was a Germany in transition too. They didn’t even get out the group stages of the World Cup a year later.

A German team, in transition just after Covid at a fervent Wembley stadium. This would have been the first game many of the German players played in front of fans for 15 months!

Despite all of that, it took Thomas Muller inexplicably missing a 1 on 1 chance just before we sealed the game. 

I genuinely believe, we will look back on this era as a huge missed opportunity with a novice in charge. 

11 minutes ago, DCJonah said:

He was a breath of fresh air when Roy left. He's now just turned into another terrible manager stuck in his ways. 

Despite a plethora of attacking talent, his methodology is to keep it tight at the back, don't concede. Against the lesser sides Kane will inevitably score, and despite a defensive set up its enough to stat pad and win 3/4:0.

Against the better sides, despite being ultra defensive you will invariably get picked off or they will take their chances.

Brazil should scored 3 tonight, whereas we created absolutely nothing.

3 minutes ago, Panto_Villan said:

 

I never said we weren’t capable of defending Britain, I said our forces probably wouldn’t have been up to the job of defending Ukraine.

(Which is relevant if people are discussing why NATO hasn’t booted Russia out of Ukraine.)

Fair. If we was in the unfortunate position of Ukraine, we'd be conducting health and safety meetings, and ensuring our 140 tank drivers meet DEI standards, whilst Vlad walks into 10 downing street.

5 minutes ago, Panto_Villan said:

Ukraine has a far larger (and arguably more capable) army than most European countries do. We shouldn't fall into the trap of thinking that our military is far superior to theirs, and we would just be able to steamroll the Russians where they've failed. European armies are more elite and sophisticated, but a lot smaller and generally optimised for fighting insurgents rather than a high-intensity war against a major opponent. The British army only has 150 servicable tanks, and our artillery is in a terrible state. I'm not actually sure our army would have fared better against the Russians than the Ukrainian army did, and quite possibly would have fared a lot worse.

Comparing apples and oranges. Any UK based defensive warfare wouldn't be fought on land. We're an Island, if it was, it would be too late (hence the reason we don't need 500 tanks).

Our defense is made up of surface to air and naval (which is also sadly lacking due to the Nato protective blanket)

10 hours ago, Davkaus said:

After spending all season moaning about fixture congestion and injuries, Newcastlle have arranged a series of post-season friendlies, a few days after the PL season ends, in Australia.

Not pre season friendlies. Post season friendlies. In the same summer as the euros

Bunch of clearings in the woods.

Can almost guarantee the promotor is somehow Saudi backed. They will receive 10's millions for the friendly, just before the FFP cut off 

12 minutes ago, calcifer said:

Won't be surprised if Konsa doesn't even get off the bench. Happy he got another call up but I don't expect to see him on the pitch.

Now Toney is back I bet cocknose put him on before Watkins. 

Again Henderson... I would have more surprised if he had been left out. 

Basically can guarantee Toney goes to the Euros instead of Ollie with this (unearned) selection. 

Under the guise of "seeing what Toney can do", he will play 70 mins, Watkins 20 mins, disjointed at the end of the game.

18 hours ago, VillaChris said:

They've already had to navigate a terrible injury crisis in November/December....Maddison and Van De Ven were out for months and they still got a decent number of wins in that period. And Bentancur of course....

We've gone all season without our equivalent of Maddison (Buendia) and De Ven (Mings) whilst juggling midweek football and we've had more wins that Tottenham all season. 

On 07/03/2024 at 13:45, OutByEaster? said:

Yep, that's a shocking one and has gone straight on the FAB agenda for our ticketing meeting - to simply say "no new concessions" for older people is horrific - people who've had season tickets for forty years will still be expecting to pay full (Spurs) price when they're eighty. Spurs don't want them.

Once they can guarantee a sell out for all games. tourist clubs want minimal season ticket holders (we will head the same way potentially). Increasing the price / removing benefits / removing concessions is another soft ploy to do this. Liverpool added 15k new seats in the last few years but 0 season ticket holders.

Liverpool have the highest spend per person, per game despite only charging £860 for a season ticket. That's because half the ground is full of accountants from the Cotswold's who go to Anfield once a year spending hundreds in merch + hospitality. To get a ticket for a game you need to be member which is another £50 per person.

I'm a season ticket holder at VP. I genuinely rarely spend a single pound at the ground. Those who go to 2 games per year spend more per game (visit the club shop, hospitality, food and drink).

With their awesome stadium, Spurs want a piece of that pie. An elderly fan, who buys his season ticket and nothing else is taking that seat up from a Korean fan kitted out in Son merch!

Interesting conversation on the Athletic Pod a few weeks ago. By being publicly traded, Man U are held to short termism to protect the share price. 

The perfect example is Anthony. Man U needed a "marquee" signing having been turned down most of the summer. They approached Ajax right at the end of the transfer window, who were delighted with 30-40 million for Anthony. Despite being happy with the fee, they declined the offer as they couldn't get a replacement in time before the end of the window, so fobbed off Man U with a 100 million Euro counter offer, or wait until the next window. To their amazement Man U agreed and signed the player!  

Despite being a limited player, to ignorant shareholder Anthonys showreel made him out to be the next Ronaldinho and the market reacted favourably. I guess the same happened with Casemiro as well after being turned down by De Jong. 

14 minutes ago, Davkaus said:

Not going to be his problem is it? They're just salting the earth now.

Indeed. No matter what they will not win the next election. It's all sabotage for the next government now! 

18 hours ago, mikeyp102 said:

Credit to O’Neil they looked an absolute shambles in the summer getting rid of the manager, but he’s gone in and done really well there. 

Apart from the 3 coming up, they were on most people cards for relegation.

He seemed a little bit punchy on their lack of Jan spending, so i'll be interested to see how this plays out over the summer. He's done a fine job and will be in demand.

1 hour ago, bobzy said:

Pochettino seems to be getting an incredibly easy ride from "the media" for how Chelsea are performing (unless I've missed something?).

Agreed, but to be fair, the issues with the club aren't necessarily manager related. I think people, the media included are starting to realise that. 

Any club could recruit 15-20 young mercenary type players, on long, very secure contracts and even Unai would struggle to get a tune out of them.

6 minutes ago, VillaChris said:

Andy Jacobs at 1pm is always a cracking listen when they've had a terrible result. He'll be saying they'll be non league within five years don't worry!

Ironically, the last guy said the Boehly will relegate and bankrupt them within 18 months 

TalkSport is a stream of Chelsea fans crying.

Fantastic.

On 02/02/2024 at 13:00, bobzy said:

Well, this didn't happen.

On 02/02/2024 at 13:49, MrBlack said:

Quite the opposite actually, didn't we spend more than anyone apart from Tottenham?

I meant in the summer, the clue was when I said "by June".

Quite pleased with the window, in light of FFP. A good, sustainable team is built around 11-15 solid, first team players with young hungry players in each position trying to take their place. 

Looks like we are slowly erasing the errors / short termism of the Gerrard tenure and going back to building sustainably. 

Gordon and Guimares both have the Grealish ability, to get a foul for any contact no matter how minimal. 

Spurs, Arsenal, Man United, Chelsea will spend another 150 million + this summer whilst we need to sell our best prospect to comply with FFP .

What happened to Everton, even Wolves should be a wake up call, not a reason to mock them. 

Realistically without a Grealish style sale every 3 seasons we are sell to buy. 

On 15/01/2024 at 11:01, pas5898 said:

As a similar sized club, we should be concerned about the likes of Everton, not laughing at them.

FFP is nothing more than a tool to restrict the likes of us, Newcastle, West Ham, Everton etc from stealing the 500m+ yearly revenue the "big 6" enjoy. Its a closed shop, nothing to do with sustainability. Remove FFP then Tottenham, Liverpool, Man U are replaced by clubs with owners willing to spend (Newcastle).

And so it begins with multiple journalists reporting we need to see someone by the end of June to meet FFP.

Meanwhile the "big 6" will spaff another 100-200+ million.