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Ppt, it’s absolute nonsense to compare City’s spending and alleged cheating to what Utd did under Ferguson.
Ferguson took over a club who had a net spend of minus £1.5mil in the 5 years preceding his appointment and £14mil total in the 5 years post his appointment (both Spurs and Liverpool spent more during this period). Newcastle, Liverpool, Chelsea, Everton, Spurs and even Man City outspent Utd massively during the period 92-98. It wasn’t until the oil clubs came in that Utd started to spend big.
You say nobody could compete with Utd financially but we hardly spent before Ferguson came in then only once before the treble season were we the league’s biggest spenders. Over the course of the 30 years since the PL began, we’ve been the biggest spenders in 5 seasons, which is fewer times than City despite City’s lengthy absence from the league.
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It is like someone has found a cheat code on football manager and are making the most of it. To win the league last season and then go out and buy the best striker in the world to add to that side is financial power we’ve not seen before in this league. There have been big spenders but never before has a PL team had the financial muscle to go and get the very best in the world. That was a luxury always reserved for the Italian or Spanish teams under previous spells of PL dominance.
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Have to agree re City Sean. I don’t particularly enjoy their games. It’s not end to end, exciting football. To me it’s more like that image when you have a smaller person trying to punch a taller person but the taller person is just holding the smaller person at arm’s length without breaking a sweat. It’s like watching an adult team play a kid’s team. I understand why City fans enjoy it but it’s not particularly entertaining for the neutrals imo but we’re all different.
That’s spot on from Miguel Delaney.
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Yeah always good to look back at these threads. I was way off about Lingard doing well Sean 😁. I thought we’d see the West Ham Lingard bit he’s been rubbish. Scamacca another one I got badly wrong. Whilst I didn’t actually predict Leicester would go down,I did have them as my surprise team to struggle this season and potentially get pulled into the relegation scrap.
It seems Arsenal, Utd and Newcastle were the overachievers and Liverpool and Chelsea the ones to underdeliver based on our expectations. As you say Sean, Chelsea have been an absolute shambles. Poor decision after poor decision. I read somewhere that someone suggested they couldn’t decide who was the worst team of the season between Lampard’s Everton or Lampard’s Chelsea 😄.
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Adlab, Barca haven’t won the league since 18/19. Not sure if you’ve got things mixed up there. In fact, there have been 3 different winners in the last 3 season. As for Bayern and Psg, literally everyone says their leagues are boring for the fact they have the same winners every year. It’s incredibly boring and it’s now starting to happen here where the only chance of any competition is when the other state owned club catch up.
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Normal people 😄. Pep has been accused of racism before by the likes of Yaya Toure.
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No, fair point Mikus. I think it’s even a stretch to call it a top 2. It’s City then then rest. Arsenal slightly better than the teams directly below them, Utd and Newcastle slightly better than the teams below them and so on. The gap between City and even Arsenal, though, is huge.
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Bit harsh that IMO Mikus on the likes of Newcastle and Brighton who have been very good vs what was expected of them.
I’m delighted we’ve got back in the CL anyway. Decent enough 1st season from Ten Hag. Definitely something to build on but it’s clear there is still a lot of rubbish to clear out.
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I think it’s safe to say we won’t be seeing Lampard managing in the PL again
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Agree Threeps. Utd look like they’ve already checked out for the season which is worrying with a cup final to come. We shouldn’t be struggling against this poor Chelsea side. Eriksen looking his age today. I don’t know why we persist with Eriksen and Bruno in the same side. It’s asking for trouble.
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Pepe Reina too. Absolutely clueless. The Italians and Spanish general attitude to racism against footballers stinks
🗣 Pepe Reina: "Vinícius? The less you provoke the rival fans and the less you protest to the referee, the more respect you will have from everyone. He's becoming one of the best in the world but I think he must mature in behavior and have more respect for his rivals." @marca pic.twitter.com/3xn2uyxPrq
— Madrid Xtra (@MadridXtra) May 25, 2023
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He seems a real piece of work Adlab, that’s for sure. Still, I think there are reasons to dislike the whole principle around state ownership that extend beyond merely skin colour. I mean, I haven’t heard him criticize the Everton ownership, for example, and they’re not white.
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Utd don’t need a state ownership to be able to compete. In fact, looking at the Qataris chaotic running of PSG, I’m not sure it would get us any closer. Utd simply need an owner who can put the right people in place to make footballing decisions. They need investment into the infrastructure, stadium etc. They need to stop paying out a billion in debt repayments to the likes of the Glazers. Money which should have been invested into the club, preventing Utd from falling way behind in terms of facilities which has a massive effect on the ability to attract players.
I’d absolutely hate it if it turned out that Utd became state owned. As you say Sean, it’s embarrassing to see both some Liverpool and Utd fans calling for that kind of ownership. Sadly, the size of the fanbases means you’ll always see a big difference in opinion amongst the fans. I want to say I’d stop supporting the club if that happened but I’m not sure I could. I don’t feel they deserve that power over me. My support would change. I wouldn’t be financially supporting the club in any way, that’s for sure. I just feel way took invested in the club now to let my continued support be decided by who owns the club. Utd fans already hate their owners so we’re very used to being able to separate the club and its history from the people who own it.
It really is a sad state of affairs when fans see state ownership as the only way their clubs can compete with Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi going forwards.
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Totally understand your feelings Chucky. I think we’re 3-4 years away from this league becoming a battle of the States with Newcastle and City battling to have the shiniest toys to show off and the rest of us left to fight it out for everything else. We’ve got to the point where younger fans are just clamouring for oil states to buy their clubs because that’s the only way they can compete for trophies. Quite sad in a way.
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Congrats to the City fans on here. Hope you’re still reading somewhere Brian 🙏
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Again, it’s not the fact City have caught them IMO which makes them bottlers. You simply can’t afford to slip up against City and I get that. This wasn’t a normal loss of form though. It’s the manner of the defeats that defines it as an implosion rather than simply bad form or not having the legs. Yesterday they were absolutely torn to shreds by Brighton. That’s not bad form. That’s a capitulation. Not having the legs is playing every 3 days and running out of steam. They’ve been playing no more than once a week for the best part of 2 months. Besides, Arteta is an incredibly irritating individual on the sideline so I’m much more content calling them bottlers whatever anyone else says 😂
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It’s usually a lot earlier and if it was the first 7 games of the season that they dropped points but then they got to this stage on this level of points we couldn’t possibly describe it as bottling a title, we would just praise the improvement. Seems rather unfair that the point at which you experience bad form determines how the 38 games as a whole should be judged.
I totally understand your point here Lucky but that’s just the nature of sport and performance measurement in general. Say, for example, Arsenal had lost these games at the beginning of the season and rallied around to get up to where they now are and finish a few points behind City. The end result would be the same but they are completely different situations. Failing at the vital moments when the pressure is on is when character and mentality is put to the test. There is no pressure on Arsenal at the beginning of the season. Lots of decent sides win when the pressure is off. Performing when the pressure is at its peak is a sign of where you’re at, not doing so when it doesn’t really mean anything. Spurs were the masters of it under Poch. They lost a league to Leicester when everyone else was faltering. They didn’t turn up in a CL final. The choked in both cases. That’s not to say they didn’t do well getting there, too.
It’s not “unfair” imo to compare losing games you shouldn’t when not under pressure to losing games you shouldn’t when the pressure is at its highest.
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As I said, it’s on a lesser scale but nobody had us finishing top 4 but we’ll have bottled it massively if we now lose it simply because we put ourselves in such a great position for that to not be a risk. Expectations change throughout the season.
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Spot on Steve. It’s entirely possible for both to be true. You did overachieve and you did choke when it really mattered at a time when you dropped points you shouldn’t be doing. That you had that run in recent weeks dropping all those silly points is nothing to do with City being better. You didn’t lose 0-3 at home to Brighton because City are better than you.
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Mental exhaustion?! 😆. They’ve only been playing PL games for a while now. All the other teams around them have been competing on multiple fronts. They’ve had a massive advantage on that front.
I don’t for a minute demand they be good enough to win the league. That run of results I mentioned was nothing to do with them being tired or not good enough. Their performances until that point are evidence of that. As I said, I can praise them for getting that far while also having a go at their collapse. Safe to say we’ll not agree on this one Lucky 🙂
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