Football: Windows of missed opportunities

[Consigliere]

1 hour ago, polishgenius said:

Don't understand this one. Like I don't know if he's really good enough for us but to see him not even given a chance is weird.

I don't think EtH rated him. Mainoo moved ahead of him in the pecking order and would probably have seen more game time had he not gotten injured. Hannibal plays in that position too. At least we've put in a significant sell-on clause but I feel clubs like Liverpool, Chelsea or City would have gotten more than 'up to €1m' fee.

 

51 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

I haven't seen this reported anywhere.

Coz they don't. The co-founders own 80%  -they sold 20% a few years ago to fund the purchase of a credit unit.

Edited June 20, 2023 by Consigliere

[Spockydog]

17 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

I haven't seen this reported anywhere. Clearlake owns 60% of Chelsea and it's a firm that does have Saudi money that they manage. 

Sorry, scratch the 60% figure. Was getting my wires crossed. Nobody actually knows how much PIF have invested. 

Having said that, it seems that PIF most definitely is a major investor in Clearlake. And we know that 60% of the Chelsea buy cash came from private equity. Clearlake did not have to declare the source of their cash to the PL. So while nobody knows exactly how much the Saudis put into Clearlake, it was certainly a lot. 

Anyway, here's a piece from a year ago... 

REVEALED: Newcastle's Saudi owners Public Investment Fund are major investors in Chelsea's new majority shareholder Clearlake Capital... as the Blues insist the group had no involvement in their £4.25bn takeover

[Tywin et al.]

27 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

Sorry, scratch the 60% figure. Was getting my wires crossed. Nobody actually knows how much PIF have invested. 

Get use to seeing that more. 

Quote

Having said that, it seems that PIF most definitely is a major investor in Clearlake. And we know that 60% of the Chelsea buy cash came from private equity. Clearlake did not have to declare the source of their cash to the PL. So while nobody knows exactly how much the Saudis put into Clearlake, it was certainly a lot. 

I'm sure this is true. I've seen reporting from a number of recent team sales across several leagues that more and more foreign money is pouring in. The NBA is welcoming it which is disappointing (nothing against foreign based ownership groups, but it sounds like they're fine with the worst actors investing and likely taking over). 

Quote

Anyway, here's a piece from a year ago... 

REVEALED: Newcastle's Saudi owners Public Investment Fund are major investors in Chelsea's new majority shareholder Clearlake Capital... as the Blues insist the group had no involvement in their £4.25bn takeover

 Gotta love lawyers and accountants. 

But anyways, like I said the other day, the Saudis and Qataris can both buy every sports league in the world. Other countries can too, but they're not going to. Amazon and Apple can as well and are more likely to do so. 

FIFA is going to get even more corrupt, not cleaned up. 

[Mexal]

3 hours ago, Mark Antony said:

Arsenal buying Havertz for 60+ is more of a bail out for Chelsea than what the Saudis are doing 

Still less than they paid! And I’m sure it’s a lower fee with escalators. I’m excited by Havertz… Fat Frank ain’t going to get the best out of anyone and this guy is only 24 and was one of the top talents in the world. I think Arteta can turn him around like he did Odegaard. I am shocked how much we are going to pay though but I trust at this point.

Edited June 20, 2023 by Mexal

[polishgenius]

I do strongly suspect Havertz is only bad at Chelsea coz he's at Chelsea, but it's still a big gamble coz he's been fucking wank. 
 

[Tywin et al.]

22 minutes ago, polishgenius said:

I do strongly suspect Havertz is only bad at Chelsea coz he's at Chelsea, but it's still a big gamble coz he's been fucking wank. 
 

The team has been mismanaged since winning the CL and honestly I think they kind of lucked into that anyways.

Noob question, are there two European tournaments going on at the same time? 

[Daemon the Leaner]

Didn't realize that E. Mendy, Ziyech and Koulibaly were all past 30. You'd expect all three of them to have still a few good seasons to spend in Europe, though ?

[Teng Ai Hui]

3 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Noob question, are there two European tournaments going on at the same time? 

The UEFA Nations League just ended with the final being decided by a PK shootout between Spain and Croatia.  The other European international matches are qualifiers for Euro 2024.

[Tywin et al.]

16 minutes ago, Teng Ai Hui said:

The UEFA Nations League just ended with the final being decided by a PK shootout between Spain and Croatia.  The other European international matches are qualifiers for Euro 2024.

Thanks! I missed it because ESPN made it seem like it was all one thing. Honestly the hardest part about the sport is that there's just so many matches and I'm not even considering the lesser leagues or lower levels. Makes NCAA football seem relatively simple by comparison. 

[AncalagonTheBlack]

FYI, Euro under-21 tournament starts today. 

We will get to see some of our targets like Thuram, Kone etc in action.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

9 hours ago, Daemon the Leaner said:

Didn't realize that E. Mendy, Ziyech and Koulibaly were all past 30. You'd expect all three of them to have still a few good seasons to spend in Europe, though ?

Not on the wages they are earning at Chelsea. Koulibaly I could've seen being given another chance at Chelsea next season after a bad first season in England. As for Ziyech, why would he want to continue his career in Europe? He has been inconsistent/disappointing ever since he joined CFC. 

He can continue his international career for Morocco while not playing in the strongest league in the world (mildly put) while collecting a very big paycheck by any standards. Same goes for Mendy and his goalkeeping career for Senegal. Any move to another European league would have meant a sizeable paycut. 

Lukaku still needs top level football, if he wants to continue to play for Belgium and his rep is still solid enough to play CL. He wants to stay at Inter. Note, that he took a paycut to get that loan deal. This is gonna be somewhat of a headache for Chelsea, him wanting to stay at Inter, and Chelsea wanting him off the books, and how much of his salary they'd have to retain. His salaries make it kinda unlikely they find another taker for him. Terminating his contract is kinda prohibitive if you think how expensive he was/is.

Pulisic is way too young to go silently into the Arab night. Ideally Chelsea would pobably want to sell him, too. But I fail to see the market for him, unless he takes a sizeable paycut and is willing to go to a midtable club to try to revive his career.

Mount, Odoi, Cheek and Gallagher would be great sales from a bookkeeping perspective. Like I said, them being academy products, means that the transfer fees they generate will be a pure profits on the books. So United spending 60m on Mount would be more helpful than Arsenal spending 60m on Havertz in that respect.

[Raja]

Thought the progressive passes & carries stuff was quite impressive in this video - he's 24, so there's time to get better with goals and assists. And all his off the ball work, which Arteta wil undoubtedly be a fan of.

I think I'd have no complaints if we were getting him for a bit less money, but I also think there is room for improvement given that he likely has his best years ahead of him

[Raja]

https://twitter.com/FabrizioRomano/status/1671449786099040256

[ljkeane]

18 minutes ago, Raja said:

https://twitter.com/FabrizioRomano/status/1671449786099040256

Yeah, I don't like that. He'll be good for City. On the plus side presumably that means Gundogan's leaving though.

[Consigliere]

2 minutes ago, ljkeane said:

Yeah, I don't like that. He'll be good for City. On the plus side presumably that means Gundogan's leaving though.

Laporte is also likely leaving but City are reportedly lining up Gvardiol to replace him.

[Raja]

Looks like this will happen. Hope he's good for us

[Consigliere]

2 hours ago, Soylent Brown said:

£60m for a guy with 1 year left on his contract, and who's been riding the bench all season, would be madness.

In fairness to United, it does look like they're not keen at that price though. Mount wants to sign for them, so they should just call Chelsea's bluff and get him on a free next year.

Chelsea were demanding £70-80m. I think United will probably settle for £60m though. It's still too much for a player with 1 year left on his contract and no intention of renewing especially when you also take his wages into consideration which will likely be £200k/week at a minimum. But EtH appears to be insisting on Mount so we will end up overpaying like we did with Antony.

[baxus]

10 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Thanks! I missed it because ESPN made it seem like it was all one thing. Honestly the hardest part about the sport is that there's just so many matches and I'm not even considering the lesser leagues or lower levels. Makes NCAA football seem relatively simple by comparison. 

You are aware that we're in the offseason at this point?

Or were you talking in general?

[baxus]

3 minutes ago, Consigliere said:

Chelsea were demanding £70-80m. I think United will probably settle for £60m though. It's still too much for a player with 1 year left on his contract and no intention of renewing especially when you also take his wages into consideration which will likely be £200k/week at a minimum. But EtH appears to be insisting on Mount so we will end up overpaying like we did with Antony.

Now that he had the whole season, what are your thoughts on Antony? From what I've seen of United this season he didn't impress, with his foolish "dribbling" turning around in circle and all that, but I'd like to hear from people who watched him enough to form an educated opinion.

 

Edited June 21, 2023 by baxus

[Raja]

1 minute ago, Soylent Brown said:

So, is he going to ride the bench for you guys, or is Jebus?

He could play both, with Havertz taking Xhaka's position and moving higher up with Jesus. In posession, you can form a box midfield with Zinchenko - Partey - Havertz & Odegaard, with Havertz playing on the inside left position.