sparrow1988

That was a cherry on top of a massive cake so not too much of it I'd imagine.

Would have been strange for our board not to include a clause in case of promotion though. I'm no expert but I'd assume that would have been possible. No?

That's what you get for buying players with no sell on value and holding on to the few who could have potentially been sold for a profit until their contract was up or until we got relegated. I think Benteke is the only one where we got his market value in the last 10 years. Delph went for a pittance because his contract was let run to nothing that he had the club over a barrel during the negotiations. I think that these players we have now will, in general, bring in a profit when they are inevitably moved on.

You know when you come on to this site and just want to see what is happening so you click next unread topic and it keeps sending you to a thread over and over again? That's never good.

Don't forget the Tanzanian international.

You could say that yeah.

Ding Ding Ding 🛎 Swiss ramble thread.

Ouch! Get well soon.

I do get it. I'm not suggesting that you're looking for players to go around injuring people. You think Burnley are more physical that us and are more willing to put in a challenge. I presented some evidence to say that they are not as physical as you think. In fact they are pretty similar to us. You didn't produce any evidence to the contrary just your opinion. Maybe they come across as more physical because they don't engage the oppositon until 30 yards from their own box and then when they start defending it's a kind of a heroic/last ditch effort whereas our defending is more low key than theirs and actually more efficient. We have played some games with last ditch defending, the Southampton game away was a very Burnley type performance from us but let's face it we should have been beaten back up the motorway that night. My original point was Burnley are not the example that we need to follow, even in terms of physicality. There are many better teams ahead of us in the table which would be much better examples. Liverpool, Chelsea, Everton, City, even Leeds. We should be aiming to win the ball higher up the pitch and more often. Burnley's sitting deep, "Battle of the Somme" type defending is not the way to go to achieve this.

At least we've got a player with a bit of passion and willing to damage equipment...

It wasn't really a rant, just a post detailing why we shouldn't be looking to Burnley to see where we can improve. Regarding physicality - which one of their bruising midfielders would you take? Ashley Westwood or Jack Cork? Physicality and purpose are fairly subjective. We win the ball more often than they do in midfield so I don't think that they can teach us a thing or two about physicality and purpose in midfield.

No, nobody should look at Burnley to see what we are lacking. They are a team 9 points behind us in spite of our horrendous form so obviously they are lacking more than us. Granted they won easily yesterday but to cite Burnley as an example of how our team can improve is not right. I assume your talking about physicality and willingness to fight for the ball but there are enough examples of this above us in the table to choose from. I don't get why we should be aspiring to be more like a team 9 points behind us. They've conceded more goals than us and scored less. We have a better pass completion rate. We put pressure on the opposition player with the ball more than they do, we have attempted more tackles and won more tackles than them over the course of the season so far. Even in aerial duels, we are level with them. What aspects of Burnley's play do you think would improve us?

The lads in claret and blue John. Pass it to them. Good lad.

Yep apparently during his rehab he got lost in a QAnon rabbit hole while doing a bit of shopping on Amazon, was one of the main instigators of the raid on the Capitol and has gone to ground since then. Despite his absence on the website he still maintains a significant influence in Alt-right circles, and was reported to have been invloved in the creation of the failed Super League. Based on this I don't expect to see him in the squad this season. However I do anticipate that he will be right as rain for the start of the new season.

Potentially available for the squad at the weekend according to Deano at the presser today.

They can see it but they don't want it. Do you really think that they are interested in competition for their clubs? The problem is that they have been running their clubs unsustainably for too long to keep up with the petrodollars. Abramovich et al broke football. PSG's chairman basically said this was the plan when they bought Neymar - to create a completely overinflated market. The big clubs of 20 years ago remained at the top and Barca struck gold with a ridiculous crop of homegrown talent, but their control is being slowly eroded. They think that the solution is to bring in more and more money. It just hasn't occured to them yet that the solution is to restrict the spending power of the oil financed clubs through regulations UEFA/FIFA. FFP tried to do this but didn't work.

Elite is Ederson's ball for their first. If Pirlo had done it back in the day people would still be creaming themselves over it.

I believe the issues are upstairs as well. The majority of them at least. He's not fit at all but that can be worked on, but not without sorting out the rest first. Remember the same was being said about Lingard not too long back that he was finished and what not. Look at the praise that he is getting now. Nobody saw that turnaround coming either. The turnaround for Ross won't come this season or may never come but it is just one example of someone rediscovering form.

A bit like when your ex is much more attractive than your current missus.

Only saw the first half but he wasn't very good at all. He broke the line to pressure the player in posession a lot of times but the other two in midfield didn't press as well so it just left a hole for a City player to move in to the space that he was in. I thought at first that it was the fault of McGinn and Dougie but they never went so I assume that it was Marv losing his positional discipline. He created so much space for players who need very little space to play.

And an even more confused one in the background thinking "these two are professional footballers?"

Here's an extract from The Athletic detailing why the German clubs would have been hesitant to go along with the Super League plans; But that’s not all of it. “The strength of sentiment against a Super League is so strong (in Germany) that BVB and Bayern would have had a riot on their hands,” a well-placed source tells The Athletic. More than 100 Bayern fans turned up at the club HQ on Tuesday to voice their opposition against the new competition and there were similar protests in Dortmund. Going against your supporters’ express wishes is a lot more difficult in Germany, due to the democratic ownership structure. All bar a handful of professional clubs are majority-controlled by their members, who vote in the chairman and supervisory board. Bayern president Herbert Hainer could, in theory, be thrown out of office at the next AGM if the members don’t agree with the way the club is run. Even though such grassroots revolts are extremely rare, the members’ involvement creates a real sense of accountability, strengthened by the physical proximity between supporters and leaders. .... The men in charge of football in Germany’s top division live in or near the cities of their clubs, readily exposed to everyday people and their emotions. Neither Dortmund CEO Hans-Joachim Watzke, a conservative politician and successful businessman, nor Hainer, Rummenigge or Uli Hoeness would want to run a gauntlet in restaurants (or the media), getting blamed for ruining the existing football ecosystem and exacting potentially fatal damage to their domestic peers in pursuit of extra income. “None of these guys could have shown their face again if they’d agreed to a Super League,” somebody in a position of power at one the Bundesliga’s biggest clubs contends. 100 people turned up at Bayern's HQ on Tuesday even though they weren't part of it. Between that and getting acosted in restaurants you can see why they would be hesitant to commit to it.

I'm a big fan of Mr. Purslow. He fills me with confidence every time that I hear him speak.

There is that too, but Hoeness is still a man who ended up imprisoned for a couple of years for tax evasion. Rummenigge has produced his fair share of gaffs over the last couple of years also. I wouldn't give them too much credit - better than Levy and Woodward - yes. However, they are no angels either.