*Official* English Football Season 2009-2010

[GIMH]

That time will come very soon, you'd imagine

 

[duffer]

Ashley Young had a couple of hilarious efforts the other night without so much of a cry of outrage anywhere. All well and good saying they are trying to clean up the game but where can we go from here?

Appealing for a ****ing corner or throw when you know one of your players touched it is trying to con the ref and it happens numerous times a game. There's no chance in hell of them being consistent.

As far as retribution being okay, I agree somewhat. This instance I find particularly bad because it seemingly wasn't UEFA officials who instigated it. It had to be the media kicking up a storm for the oh so mighty and altruistic UEFA to do anything. It's not like they immediately saw the dives and decided to take action. Heh, watch the Fiorentina-Sporting games over two legs and see the amount of flopping and blatant dishonesty there.

I'd be okay with a fine, but a 2 match ban when ****s like Drogba can truly disgrace football like he did after the Barca game and get 3 games is a complete farce. Across the board seems they are missing any sort of consistency or process with their punishments.

EDIT: Then you have complete ****s like Platini who laugh at Wenger for suggesting we should use video and then all of a sudden lo and behold, they don't seem to have any issues with doing it. **** off.

 

[grecian]

Hmm, Drogba gets fouled, Clattenberg waves play on. Talksport talk about more simulation when it was the clearest foul you'll see in a month of Sundays. Nothing like a good bandwagon is there.

*sighs*

 

[cpr]

It doesn't, as I've explained, since so much of your team comes before Rafa and the fact that your manager has routinely broken transfer records to get players.

No it doesnt: The only players that predate Rafa are

Ferdinand
Giggs the perpetual Man-Boy
Scholes - Important for the first years, has dropped off to be replaced in the last two years by
Fletcher
Nevillle - again dropped off to be replaced by
O'Shea
and Brown - When he's fit for 10 min a year.

So any one 'team' of ours might see 3-4 players predating Rafa, not exactly 'much' of our team. So offset that against Gerrard and Carragher, maybe 2 more at the most.

Because a) it is a ridiculously high fee that puts all that buying and selling out of perspective (in fact, if I read correctly that link says you guys would be first by a distance without the Ronaldo transfer but are 7th with it, which is lower than Everton, Villa and even Sunderland) b) it only just happened and doesn't account for the last 5 years. It's not like you had that 80 million to space out your spending in the last 5 years, it just occurred now.

Right, so under Fergies tutilage Ronaldo turns into the worlds best player, and a team offers us £80m for him, that doesnt count as income as its a high figure and we havent spent the money yet (despite Fergie saying he's spent as much as he wants to). However when were forced into a bidding war for Berbatov by Saudi Oil FC, that counts, because that must be his true worth and not out of perspective. Cant write off one not the other.

In hindsight, your manager had much more money to buy a fleet of class players when he started out. Once he had a winning team in place, he could spend his entire kitty on one player. As mentioned 10 times already, Rafa rehauled the whole squad + the youth team with what Ferguson would spend his kitty on for one player. You shouldn't even compare the two or even try to say it's been a level playing field, yet that's the point people are trying to bring across when mentioning net spending however myopic or flawed that argument is.

Errrr, no. When our manager started he didnt have a lot of money like that. The 80's utd couldnt compete with Liverpool (oh the irony) in the transfer market. We had a chairman who was always trying to sell (See Maxwell and Knighton), and most of Fergies signings were on the cheap, with the team supplimented by youth players (Beardsmore, Robbins) and cheap lower league youngsters (Sharpe for £180k).

Ferguson took over in 1986, not untill the summer of 89 did he go for a big spending spree (only £1m signing before that was bringing Hughes back) in a win or bust situation. He won, it worked, so cant really argue, and that big spend (Pallister and Ince) were cornerstones for the next 5 years. So no he didn't have "much more money to buy a fleet of class players when he started out"

We'll call the 1990 team the start of his winning team, when he could spend "his entire kitty on one player". It was another year before he spent over £1m on a player (Paul Parker). In that time he bought Irwin, Kanchelskis, and Schmeichal for approx £600k each.

We only bought 2 more £1m players between then and winning the league, namely Dublin (who broke his leg after 4 games) and Cantona.

Yes, after that he could make one big signing a year (Keane 93/94 - our only signing, Cole 18 months later, after spending £1.3m in the summer.)

The fact is, Ferguson built a championship winning team from scratch using youth and cheap players from lower leagues, plus the odd big signing scattered over the years (which tbh, each time had a big pay off at the end of that season). This team won back to back titles, then did the double for the second time, all from a team that was finishing very much mid table upto 1990 (when they won the FA cup but finished 13th). During this he completely rebuilt our youth system, which as shown right at the top, has provided all but one of the team that predates 2004, 3 of them were in the team that won the FA Cup 13 years ago.

Kinda refutes your argument Rafa has had to rebuild the youth team and deal with meddling chairman and no money and fergie didnt, because clearly he did

 

[Matteh]

Completely different world back then though. You'd need to adapt the transfer figures to 'modern levels' to make it a fair comparision.

Andy Cole was effectively a 20mil signing and the cheapo guys would now cost somewhere between £3-5mil.

 

[cpr]

Completely different world back then though. You'd need to adapt the transfer figures to 'modern levels' to make it a fair comparision.

Andy Cole was effectively a 20mil signing and the cheapo guys would now cost somewhere between £3-5mil.

So basically Cole was our Torres and the others were the middle price pap Benitez has been signing. Point still stands that Benitez isnt hindered by his resources

 

[TT Boy]

Rafa's last game?

 

[sledger]

Heh @ Liverpool, hope the scoreline stays the same for the next 45.

 

[roseboy64]

Tottenham with basically 90% possession against Birmingham.

 

[Tom Halsey]

It doesn't, as I've explained, since so much of your team comes before Rafa and the fact that your manager has routinely broken transfer records to get players.

Bollocks, as Rose has said, the only signed player that pre-dates the Rafa era is Ferdinand.

Because a) it is a ridiculously high fee that puts all that buying and selling out of perspective (in fact, if I read correctly that link says you guys would be first by a distance without the Ronaldo transfer but are 7th with it, which is lower than Everton, Villa and even Sunderland) b) it only just happened and doesn't account for the last 5 years. It's not like you had that 80 million to space out your spending in the last 5 years, it just occurred now.

So in a discussion on the net spend of a club, buying a player for £12m and selling him for £80m is irrelevant. Riiiiight.

In hindsight, your manager had much more money to buy a fleet of class players when he started out. Once he had a winning team in place, he could spend his entire kitty on one player. As mentioned 10 times already, Rafa rehauled the whole squad + the youth team with what Ferguson would spend his kitty on for one player. You shouldn't even compare the two or even try to say it's been a level playing field, yet that's the point people are trying to bring across when mentioning net spending however myopic or flawed that argument is.

United certainly spent what was by the standards of the time a lot of money in the late 80s and early 90s, but it certainly wasn't as high as you're making out - and was less than several other clubs during the same period. Indeed, the first year that United spent more than any other club (during the Ferguson era) was 1998, with the purchases of Stam, Yorke and Blomqvist.

I meant for my last post to be my last on this as we're clearly going round in circles, this one certainly is.

 

[TT Boy]

Ref helping Pool. No way should Davis have seen red.

 

[cpr]

TBH, dont think they were particularly expensive or excessive, Considering the first £1m transfer was 1979ish, and our record was set in 1981 at £1.5m, havin a look at his signings up to the start of the Prem
1987 Viv Anderson Arsenal 250.000
Brian McClair Celtic 850.000
Steve Bruce Norwich 825.000

1988 Jim Leighton Aberdeen 750.000
Lee Sharpe Torquay 180.000
Mal Donaghy Luton Town 650.000
Ralph Mine Bristol City 170.000
Mark Hughes Barcelona 1.800.000
Giuliano Mairoana Histon 30.000

1989
Mike Phelan Norwich 750.000
Gary Pallister Middlesbrough 2.300.000
Neill Web Nott. Forest 1.500.000
Brian Carey Corke 100.000
Danny Wallace Southampton 1.200.000
Paul Ince West Ham 1.500.000

1990
Denis Irwin Oldham 625.000
Les Sealey Luton Town Free
Neil Withworth Wigan 150.000

1991
Andrei Kanchelskis Donetsk 650.000
Peter Schmeichel Bröndby 550.000
Paul Parker QPR 2.000.000


so 87, two half decent lay out, both half the club record, not exactly huge considering we were using money got 12 months before for the £2.3m sale of Hughes, in the summer Rush moved to Italy for £3m (yes, thats money for Liverpool to spend that year), cant say £1.8m on 3 players, two of which would serve the club for a best part of a decade.

Argument 88 they were big lay outs which didnt pay off in Leighton and Donaghy, bringing Hughes back was costly, but long term well worth it (can Rafa say that about his early purchases).

Summer of 89 certainly alot of money banded about, fair enough, won the cup with a mid table team and in Ince and Pallister formed the basis of a team that'd win the league 3 years later.

The Argument Rafa cant afford big names and has to buy mid price players, whereas Fergie never had to is a bit moot, as its clear most of fergies signings were not exactly expensive and were bloody good players (Kancheskis, Schmeichal, Sharpe, Irwin, all proclaimed as steals within 12 months of signings)

 

[roseboy64]

Stephen Carr.

 

[TT Boy]

Ref did a job on Bolton.

Poxy bore draw at Ewood. Midget Canadian needs to learn how to finish.

 

[S Chanderpaul]

Ref did a job on Bolton.

Poxy bore draw at Ewood. Midget Canadian needs to learn how to finish.

Of course.

Davis should of been booked twice in the first half anyway.

 

[Bravo]

Chelase!!! Looserpool finally gets it right...

 

[TT Boy]

He shouldn't have and no need for the eyes. I like Liverpool, just think Bolton were very hard done-by today.

 

[BoyBrumby]

Nah, Notlob aren't hard done by, ever. ****s.

 

[Uppercut]

Giggs has been absolutely shocking here.

 

[Pothas]

What a lad