Football thread 2022/23

[Naysonymous]

It wasn’t just me then! 

[Stoppy2000]

I decided to watch Match Of The Day last night and it's quite sickening how quickly Alan Shearer has become a cheerleader for a murderous regime. Sports washing works. 

[Gabe]

He's always been in favour of the buyout, hasn't he? I recall when it happened he was trying to keep all talk purely on footballing issues. 

[Art Vandelay]

And they’ve done it all without spending any of that blood money if you listen to literally any pundit. Chelsea’s insane outgoings – that are a fraction above Newcastle’s – are the splurgings of someone who doesn’t understand Our Game, whereas good footballing man Howe’s signings are simply “shrewd”. 

[Naysonymous]

They’ve spent just the £250m since Howe took over.  
 

 

[Ork1927]

Where Newcastle have been cleverer far is they didn’t go for some big name manager that maybe past their prime (like Mourinho) or big name aging players like Ronaldo or even trying to get someone like Mbappe by offering a million a week of something.

 

That’ll probably happen next season when Howe loses a couple of games.

 

[Plissken]

25 minutes ago, Ork1927 said:

Where Newcastle have been cleverer far is they didn’t go for some big name manager that maybe past their prime (like Mourinho) or big name aging players like Ronaldo or even trying to get someone like Mbappe by offering a million a week of something.

 

That’ll probably happen next season when Howe loses a couple of games.

 

 

 I don't think so - I think that they are going to copy the Man City model, where they are very quietly going to pour a shit-ton of money it without necessarily drawing attention to it.  It's about sportwashing, which is more smooth efficiency than gauche spending.

 

As Nayson says, they've spent a quarter of a billion this year alone but in a way that hasn't garnered too much attention and all they need is a few pliant journos to put the "Eddie Howe is doing it with hard work and tactics" card.  (The Grauns Newcastle correspondent,  Louise Taylor, has previous for sportwashing articles*.)  City have not spent anywhere near the transfer record for an individual player, they just collect players at £45m-£60m so as to not draw too much attention.

 

 

*The paper were forced a couple of days later to admit that this article - https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2010/nov/25/world-cup-2022-qatar-fifa - was part of a junket paid for by the Qataris World Cup bid.

[Ork1927]

Yeah - that last sentence of mine was more tongue in cheek, but it would be interesting what their expectations are.

 

I can’t imagine that they aren’t currently exceeding them if they go into the World Cup in a Champions League spot.

[ryodi]

Newcastle's £70m record signing Isak also got injured after only playing a few games for them so the narrative now is about how great Almiron is who was at the club before the money arrived. Unlike City with Shearer they've got a prominent former player who has been in the media for years to help soften their image. 

[Shimmyhill]

What’s the difference with Arsenal spending £260m the past couple of seasons, Spurs £200m+ in same period or Liverpool spending £150m on a keeper and defender alone?

 

Im not saying Newcastle, Man City, Chelsea etc are the good guys here but the game is financially doped by all teams.

[bradigor]

You choose the narrative that suits your stance. Liverpool sold Coutinho to get VVD and Alisson, so it's all about net spend. 

 

City earning good money on player sales? It's all about outlay. 

 

They are all at it, some are better than others. 

[ryodi]

27 minutes ago, Shimmyhill said:

What’s the difference with Arsenal spending £260m the past couple of seasons, Spurs £200m+ in same period or Liverpool spending £150m on a keeper and defender alone?

 

Im not saying Newcastle, Man City, Chelsea etc are the good guys here but the game is financially doped by all teams.

The owners of Arsenal, Spurs and Liverpool can run out of money. That is something Newcastle and City don’t have to worry about. 

[Fry Crayola]

The criticism with Newcastle isn't the money they're spending, it's the regime that's providing it and the reasons why they do it.

 

The effects on the sport are a distant second.

[Shimmyhill]

16 minutes ago, bradigor said:

You choose the narrative that suits your stance. Liverpool sold Coutinho to get VVD and Alisson, so it's all about net spend. 

 

City earning good money on player sales? It's all about outlay. 

 

They are all at it, some are better than others. 

 

But all Newcastle, Chelsea and Man City sold to fund players was their soul….

[Hamus]

How bad are Liverpool after that Arsenal result? Crazy times.

 

Is Salah on the same wages as the entire Forest team?

[Shimmyhill]

26 minutes ago, ryodi said:

The owners of Arsenal, Spurs and Liverpool can run out of money. That is something Newcastle and City don’t have to worry about. 

 

They have deeper pockets, they dont have unlimited money and could walk away and destroy the clubs.

 

26 minutes ago, Fry Crayola said:

The criticism with Newcastle isn't the money they're spending, it's the regime that's providing it and the reasons why they do it.

 

The effects on the sport are a distant second.

 

Im not sure you can even hold that against the clubs given most ‘fans’ will be supporting Engerland in the winter World Cup shortly…

[Plissken]

I half joked last week that he reason Man City’s recent record against Burnley was GF 30 GA 0 was that after we had the temerity to draw 1-1, Pep employed two more analysts whose sole job was to analyse our games and come up with the plan to beat us.

 

It was a joke but it is the sort of thing you can do when you have access to unlimited resources.

[Fry Crayola]

30 minutes ago, Shimmyhill said:

Im not sure you can even hold that against the clubs given most ‘fans’ will be supporting Engerland in the winter World Cup shortly…

 

I think even though neither are great (understatement time), the Qatar World Cup isn't driving English success or otherwise in the way Saudi Arabia funding Newcastle is.

 

It's a little bit "and yet you participate in society" for my liking, though not quite as participation or engagement in said World Cup remains very much optional.

[Shimmyhill]

18 minutes ago, Fry Crayola said:

 

I think even though neither are great (understatement time), the Qatar World Cup isn't driving English success or otherwise in the way Saudi Arabia funding Newcastle is.

 

It's a little bit "and yet you participate in society" for my liking, though not quite as participation or engagement in said World Cup remains very much optional.

 

I dunno, the Saudi state have got a far longer history of putting money into British sporting teams than American businessmen have… - what about Thai monopoly money buying success, is that allowed?

 

Are we going full Brexit and only allowing English clubs with English money - mind id argue most of that would have been made in means that make some state sponsorship look clean.

[Plissken]

I’d settle for clubs actually making a profit rather than being an endless pit for billionaires/nation states to pour money down.

 

Ironically the one Big Club which does make money does so under the most hated owners of all.

[Fry Crayola]

If I had my way, clubs would be owned by fans and only by fans, and there'd be caps to try and prevent a Bayern Munich situation arising where one club have spending power far above any others. We don't need billionaires to enjoy a sport. But that's going beyond the discussion.

 

Shimmy, you're engaged in a rather odd form whataboutery here. Newcastle's ownership has been criticised. If other clubs do similar, then it's fine to say that they're bad too.

[Plissken]

Barcelona are - theoretically - owned by their fans, so I don't think that is a great example either.

 

Football clubs have never made lots of money.  Sure, right now, a lot of money flows through them and some people involved in football clubs have become very rich indeed, but the vast majority of football clubs themselves lose fortunes most years and the bigger the club, the bigger the income and the bigger the losses.  Chelsea lost, on average, £80m every season Abramovich owned it.  We'll never know what Man City's real losses are, but if they are less than £2bn then I'd be surprised.

 

Edit: Here's a good example. You know how players stay in a hotel the night before an away game?  Despite City owning the city centre building where half of their team lives (two miles from the Etihad), they stay the night before a home game in a purpose built five star hotel with it's own ramp across to the stadium.  And neither of those appear on the club books.

[Fry Crayola]

Indeed, there are some terrible, terrible examples, though if we only looked at the worst example of things, we'd never do anything.

 

In the main, I'd rather the fanbase be in some sort of control over what's happening than when some owner comes in with notions of using the club as their own plaything, or stuffing their own pockets, or painting a pretty face on a horrible human rights record, or simply tanking the club because the rest of their business empire came toppling. 

 

I'd rather any money in the clubs be used for local projects and providing the opportunities to play the sport to people from all backgrounds, all means, and of all genders. To be a properly community-focused affair even if the first eleven hail from all over the globe. And really, to have accountability so that if it is going wrong, there's an option to collectively change direction. 

 

Mind you, I started talking about football and by the end of the second paragraph, this is basically just the world in general.

[Art Vandelay]

It doesn’t seem like much of a mystery as to why Forest are at the bottom of the league when you think that for their £120m outlay you would usually expect to get 5–7 Premier League standard footballers, whereas they somehow got 23 of them. I wouldn’t be surprised if Cooper eventually distills it down to a team he can get a tune out of but they look like strangers at the minute. 

[feltmonkey]

Regarding Forest, they were thrashed by Arsenal, but to Cooper's credit they had improved quite a bit in the weeks before that by playing deeper and being more defensively solid. It remains to be seen whether the improvement is too little, too late even at this early stage of the season. I think they might be one for a run of a few wins after the World Cup and later in the season.

 

Which teams have the fewest players going to the World Cup? And which have the most? Haaland is obviously getting a month off, but I expect the rest of the City team to be going. Man Utd have cleverly made sure that the form of all their English players dropped off a cliff for a year, so they might have them well-rested for the second half of the season. Who else might have a fresh team for when the Premier League restarts? It's going to be interesting to see how this effects things.

[Seanfl9]

If England get far in the tournament, Kane will be an utter troglodyte the rest of the season I would imagine. 

[multi]

17 hours ago, Stoppy2000 said:

I decided to watch Match Of The Day last night and it's quite sickening how quickly Alan Shearer has become a cheerleader for a murderous regime. Sports washing works. 

 

I've just caught up with MOTD myself and have stopped watching after the Newcastle game, so I might have missed something that he said afterwards. But up to now I haven't heard him say anything controversial or cheerleading about Newcastle. Have I missed something?

[Petrousgyre]

See Wales are looking to change their football team's name to Cymru - good for them. The term Wales is Anglo-Saxon and means foreigner, pretty galling given it was the English who were the invaders. It was deployed more as a pejorative too, essentially meaning slave. Not really surprising they'd like it changed.

[Fry Crayola]

Other than Tahiti, which represents all of French Polynesia rather than just their namesake island, I can't think of any national football teams whose name in English is not also the common name of the country or territory they represent. You do get the odd case like informally referring to the Netherlands as Holland, and then there's the whole Taiwan/Chinese Taipei thing.

 

But fair fucks, if they want to be Cymru, be Cymru.

[Petrousgyre]

40 minutes ago, Fry Crayola said:

Other than Tahiti, which represents all of French Polynesia rather than just their namesake island, I can't think of any national football teams whose name in English is not also the common name of the country or territory they represent. You do get the odd case like informally referring to the Netherlands as Holland, and then there's the whole Taiwan/Chinese Taipei thing.

 

But fair fucks, if they want to be Cymru, be Cymru.

 

Not sure how true that is, certainly when discussed in English speaking media they revert to English names but I'm pretty sure the German national team is officially Deutschland, Switzerland are Suisse, Spain are Espana, Ivory Coast are Cote d'Ivoire etc - a cursory google doesn't seem to reveal much though. Incidentally the Netherlands are officially Nederlandse (hence the abbreviated NED) - Holland isn't the Dutch word for the Netherlands, it's just a province in the Netherlands - we make the same mistake referring to the Netherlands as Holland as Americans do referring to Britain/UK as England.