Consigliere

Those numbers are way off. United, City, Liverpool and Chelsea's wage bills were all in excess of £300m based off the accounts published for the 2021/2022 season. The 2022/2023 accounts were submitted to the PL in December but haven't been published for the public as yet. Anyone claiming to know the wage bills for 2023/2024 are just making wild guesses.

Trump is a few years younger than Biden but he looks decrepit to me. Of the two, Biden looks the younger and healthier and sounds way more coherent. Trump still mostly spouts incoherent nonsense too from what I've seen - doing so loudly and obnoxiously doesn't make it any better. I seem to recall that during the last Dem primaries, Sanders supporters were convinced that 'dementia' Joe would be made to look foolish in a debate but that didn't happen. Then, when Biden won the nomination, the piss-their-pants lefties were convinced that 'energetic' Trump would wipe the floor with 'dementia\sleepy' Joe but that also didn't happen. Weird how some progressives seem so intent on parroting the talking points of the far right.

I'd be fine with scrapping financial restrictions provided that state ownership is also prohibited. If a club's owners decide to take huge financial risks then that's up to them.

Chelsea and City are under investigation. Those cases, especially City's case, are way more complex. The Athletic had spoken to lawyers who worked on other FFP cases when the charges were first announced and their opinion was that it's going to take years to sort out City's case. IIRC, implementation of FFP only started from the season 2011/2012 so obviously when Abramovich first took over at Chelsea and Sheikh Mansour at City there were no FFP or PSR rules to worry about so those clubs were able to spend with impunity and post huge losses without facing any consequences.

https://twitter.com/johncrossmirror/status/1747187585884017065

Roma have sacked Mourinho.

United have made pissing away money on shitty transfers an art form. I agree, United should have known that Sancho was a high maintenance man child and should have either been prepared to give him constant special treatment (which comes with its own downsides i.e. it might not sit well with other squad members) or not sign him at all. Of course, it could also be a case of things just not working out - there's been plenty of examples of players excelling at one club but then failing to replicate that level elsewhere. That's why I'm hoping Sancho actually does well enough at Dortmund. I don't think it's going to work out with him at United so we might as well cut our losses, get whatever transfer fee we can and get his wages off the books.

United did take a personal approach though. Sancho was given more leeway than, say, Rashford or Garnacho. Rashford immediately got dropped for being late only once and Garnacho was also dropped for poor timekeeping. Ten Hag gave Sancho 3 months off last season - sent him to the Netherlands to get away from the limelight and arranged for coaches to help him work on his fitness. Now, maybe Sancho was used to the kind of 24/7 coddling he got at Dortmund where, apparently, the club tasked some staff members to make sure Sancho goes to sleep and wakes up on time but not every manager or club is going to accept having to babysit a 23-year-old man.

As I said, I hope Sancho does well enough at Dortmund so we have a chance of getting rid of him. His attitude and work ethic is shit so there's every chance that he plays well for a little while before losing interest again. Might as well cut our losses.

Sancho was coddled at United. Matic's time at United overlapped with Sancho's when Ole was still in charge so Sancho has been showing up late for training ever since he joined but neither Solskjaer nor Rangnick dropped him or called him out on it publicly. His fitness levels have been a joke for 2.5 years - he could barely play an hour before being knackered. Ten Hag gave Sancho 3 months off last season to work on his fitness and personal issues. Not sure how much more coddling United and various managers should be reasonably expected to do. Too many excuses get made for Sancho - it's everybody else's fault!

Sancho couldn't even do the bare minimum though. He was constantly late for training and team meetings. Matic backed this up in an interview during the last international break saying that Sancho used to come in late for training every day as well as for team meetings. Poor form, tactical issues, issues with adapting etc. are one thing but not showing the least bit of professionalism is quite another - bad timekeeping, not maintaining proper fitness levels and a poor work rate on the pitch is not acceptable.

Good riddance. Hopefully he doesn't completely flop so we can bin him off at the end of the season. The guy has the talent but not the drive. Lazy cunt.

It's not all that surprising when you think about it. These last years post Ferguson are basically the level United's been at for the majority of the club's existence. United have been around for ~145 years and almost all the club's success has come under two managers (Busby and Ferguson) over a period of about 50 years. For the rest of the time, United were pretty much a mid-level club success wise but with a big local fanbase.

The reports are that Bayern were unsuccessful in their attempt to hijack Spurs' deal for Dragusin and have turned their attention to signing Dier - in talks with Spurs for a deal worth €4m. Spurs made a better offer to Genoa (€25m + €5m in add-ons + Spence on loan for the remainder of the season with Spurs covering his wages and Genoa having an option to buy for €10m) and Dragusin had already agreed personal terms with Spurs before Bayern came to the table

Tbf, they need both. Elneny's and Jorginho's contracts are up at the end of the season (haven't seen any reports talking about renewals) and they'll probably try to rid themselves of Partey (who's crocked anyway) too. ETA. it's also probably going to be much easier to bring in a midfielder of a good calibre in January than it would be to bring in a striker good enough to make a difference for Arsenal.

Massively. He was the most press resistant player in the league. Just about perfect at picking the ball up from deep and transitioning play. Surprised that he wasn't more highly rated at the time and bigger clubs weren't coming in for him - his injury record might have had something to do with that. Was surprised that he moved to Spurs because he was awesome at Fulham before that too and I expected all the big clubs in the league to be after him.

1.5 day Test. Pretty disappointing stuff mainly down to a horrendous batting performance from South Africa. I don't think the pitch is anything like a batting graveyard. There was some good bowling but mainly it was down to exceedingly terrible batting from South Africa in both innings and the tail end of India's first innings. India are having no trouble at all in their second innings and are rollicking along at nearly 7 rpo - that's not the sign of a bad pitch.

Hopefully semi-automated offside technology comes in next season. Enough clubs need to be on board though. The decision to use semi-automated offsides for this season didn't even make it onto the agenda of the Premier League's AGM last June. The 20 clubs unanimously decided that they didn't need to discuss the new tech in depth.

The weird thing about Nunez is that his biggest strength and biggest weakness has flipped since joining Liverpool. At Benfica, his biggest strength was his finishing and his biggest weakness was his movement against low blocks - he was deadly with space in behind but had a tendency to disappear against low blocks. At Liverpool, his movement has been excellent and he often gets himself into great positions multiple times in almost every game and mostly facing low blocks too but his finishing has deserted him.

Assuming those are even real <insert name of club> fans instead of trolls or bots.