To answer your question, yeah I can rationally analyse their situation... They are pieces of trash lol. Seriously though, they are pretty much the model of exactly what we are trying to do ourselves and fair play to them for executing the plan almost perfectly so far. They rake in something like £98m a year in matchday revenue despite more than a few games of less than full capacity, second only to Manchester United, whilst we huff and puff our way just under £25m with sell out crowds. The stadium is all important these days to clubs that aren't owned by sugar daddies (Manchester City's matchday revenue is almost exactly the same as Spurs!) so if you've got 20,000 extra people paying £40-£100 a week for tickets, then things look pretty rosy.
Now that the stadium is paid off, there would be serious questions raised by the fans if Arsene didn't start to spend some of the their hard earned money. The interesting part will be if Wenger feels confident enough to splash the cash. Higuain is almost a no brainer as for the relatively acceptable fee for a player of his calibre, he almost can't fail. But will they be prepared to compete with the likes of Chelsea, Man City, PSG, Monaco, etc on transfer fees whilst his bosses are shouting about being in the top 5 richest clubs? Would he be brave enough to spend £30m on someone like Isco for instance? I'm not so sure. Although maybe that's just me praying and hoping he doesn't ;)
Yep, looks like Carlo will be rocking up at Real Madrid now doesn't it? I like Blanc and wouldn't have been unhappy had he been chosen instead of AVB at the time. As you say, he did brilliantly at Bordeaux and I don't think anyone could have managed those gigantic egos in the French dressing room at the time. I suppose there will be added pressure in the PSG job, especially with Monaco breathing down their necks, but he strikes me as composed and intelligent man who will take on the situation methodically and with passion.
Do you think the Maher situation will have any effect on Eriksen leaving or is he pretty much gone once an offer comes in for him? Quick question for you GJ - do the dutch leagues have any quotas on the number of homegrown players each team must have in their squad? Over here, I believe that each team can have a maximum of 25 players over the age of 21 with at least 8 of them being trained in England for 3 years under the age of 21. If they don't have 8 of these players - say they only have 7 - then they can only name 24 players in the squad. Thus over here, despite 90% of the English players being very average, they still command fairly high transfer fees. I only mention this as you are obviously surprised by the €10m asking fee for Maher. If there was a player like him over here, clubs would be piling up to pay twice that just to get another home grown player on their books. See Manchester City cycling Adam Johnson then Scott Sinclair and now Jack Rodwell for an example of English player quota purchasing!
But hey, at least this quota system is paying dividends in providing an abundance of top quality English internationals... Oh.
Haha, I said double figures for Spain if they could be bothered didn't I! I should have put some money on it
I almost feel a bit sorry for Tahiti, because it's not their fault they managed to qualify through FIFA's stupid system. But aside from giving 23 Tahitians a nice holiday in Brazil, it does absolutely nothing for the competition and just leaves them to be humiliated for three games.Do you think we need to re-evaluate our predictions of Spain's era of dominance coming to an end...? ;) It's an incredible amount of skilful players they have to pick from and it's scary to think that there will be some of those you listed who only end up with a handful of caps due to the coach having to pick from 2-3 other players in the same position.
Quick bit of transfer news over here: Liverpool have agreed a fee of around £10m for Mignolet from Sunderland. That raises questions about the future of Reina. And back to the Brazilians at Spurs, Paulinho seems to be looking very close to signing. There has been loads of stories about a fee being agreed and even Corinthians have pretty much confirmed too. So fingers crossed AVB gets his man.
and you can see where that bold claim about potentially being in the top 5 richest clubs comes from. Damn.
for £17m. Paulinho held a press conference last night where he confirmed he was on his way to Tottenham. Although we haven't officially confirmed the transfer, which is a bit odd, but surely even Spurs can't screw this one up now! To think that next season we could quite likely be seeing Brazil's first choice central midfield pairing of Sandro and Paulinho at White Hart Lane is quite unbelievable! Add in Dembele and I doubt there will be many opposition teams who fancy coming up against that trio, along with knowing Gareth Bale is running wild and quite possibly David Villa lurking too. This could be one hell of a season for Spurs. I can't wait!
I know that things can change very quickly in football, but I have to admit the news of his move took me totally by surprise yesterday afternoon. The sheer amount of smoke means there must have been plenty of fire in the Villa to Spurs rumours. He had been to visit our training facilities and by all accounts was incredibly impressed, plus if Daniel Levy had been given even the slightest indication that a move wasn't likely he would have soon moved on to other targets. When you also consider the fee of €5.1m, even for a 31 year old Atletico have got themselves a massive bargain.
