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Is it not just fans of the top 6 that hate international football because of the potential injuries? Do fans of teams lower down and on lower divisions hate it too?
As for the absolute grief the Nations Cup has got, has it not actually worked by making these matches more competitive with something to play for – i.e. Sunday’s England vs Croatia game??
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No one is unbeatable. City are undoubtedly an extremely polished and professional footballing side but I thought Brian put his finger on a notable weakness in a previous post when he said City had no natural leader on the pitch – that was a big reason for them not winning the CL last year in my opinion. It really is up to the rest of the clubs to put pressure on City and test them out. The bar is only as high as the other clubs make it look and success is built on more than money.
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The top 6 is continuing to pull away from the other 14 teams. There is undoubtedly this mentality in the league now that from the TV marketing point of view, it’s all about the top 6 clashes. Any non top 6 clash will usually involve a top 6 club and the mentality is then to provide a cannon fodder club to allow the best players in the world to show their stuff and entertain the cameras, and also the corporate guests. Man Utd are supposedly the worst of the current top 6 yet recently despatched the best of the rest in Everton and Bournemouth.
As for this idea that at least there are more teams competing for the league, well thats fine if you happen to be a supporter of a top 6 club, but what if you aren’t? Teams may have dominated in previous decades but that didn’t mean that spending an absolute fortune was the only way to beat dominating teams. The reason why nobody could knock Man Utd off the top for a long time was due to poor strategies and discipline from the other clubs. But instead many seem to have bought this idea that money was the only way that such teams could be beaten and by following this path, ironically, it has created an environment where money is pretty much now the only way to beat teams at the top.
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Nine, not so much defending City, just observing the inevitably of such things. Surely City had to sign up to FFP or else they’d be chucked out of competitions? So they were never not going to sign up to it. And if you have an emerging power, and the rules of play don’t suit them, they’re going to bend them as much as possible, it’s just the nature of power. UEFA are contradicting themselves in any case. They want to control the money in football and stop big debts being racked up but at the same time have effectively encouraged clubs to spend big because big money means big salaries means big players which means big TV interest and revenues – which is in their interest.
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This whole thing is ultimately a power battle. The newly taken over clubs may have had to sign up to FFP but they were always going to perceive it as a way to limit their power.
In history, whenever you have an emerging power spreading into an established power, you are bound to have conflict and rules will be challenged in the power battle to better suit either one of the sides.
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It would have been more pragmatic (and honest) if UEFA had said to any newly taken over clubs like City – “Look, we’ll turn a blind eye towards your business model for your first decade to let you get up to speed and established. But after that, these rules will apply, and very strict ones at that.” Rather that then pretending to crackdown on clubs like City when they knew damn well, that was never going to happen.
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Agree Banjo, which is why I think it’s just a few people behind the scenes exploring some options. As I say, if you read towards the end of the guardian article above for what is more likely to happen (in the interim anyway), i.e.:
“The change has been agreed at a time of more generally advancing financial ambitions of the major European clubs. Andrea Agnelli, the chairman of Juventus and the European Club Association, told the Guardian in a recent interview that he wanted to “reshape” European football by having more lucrative matches played in the Champions League from 2024. The Fifa president, Gianni Infantino, also recently proposed a new 24-team format for the Club World Cup which would deliver $3bn for each four-yearly tournament.”
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Banjo, ideally we need first team competition for those front 3. Several teams have now learnt to somewhat nullify them, so we need something different up there. Probably not much to spend though after the summer outlay as you say.
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Liverpool are ‘paying’ for not freshening up the attack, so an attacker would be good. Whether the Fekir deal will be resurrected I don’t know? But there has to be some pragmatism as January is a difficult window. Off the top of my head as to who else might be realistically available, he might be getting on a bit now, but I’ve always rated Dzeko. Not sure he’s a Klopp player though. But he always came up with a goal in the big moments and his scoring stats are very impressive. Could be a great relatively cheap impact player.
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Before this story came out about the super league, I noted this story about the resource gap widening between the premier league’s top six and the rest.
Also, a story that went under the radar (as many of these stories do), was that last summer, the Big Six pressured the Premier League for more of the international TV money which will now pay more for a higher position rather than be equally shared. The big six will rightly argue that they are the biggest draw for the global audiences so deserve it and you can’t really argue with that. But it means the Big Six continue to drift away from the other 14 clubs.
So you can see where all this is going, though I can’t see a super league happening just yet. I think in the short term, there will be a revision of the CL (indeed read the end of the Guardian article above). I think we’ll also see “Game 39s” played abroad. The Club World Championship may also become bigger. As these things develop, and people get used to more games abroad in different competitions, the next logical step would be a superleague. That wouldn’t mean I would welcome such a thing, but the ingredients that set all this in motion happened decades ago with the formation of the PL & CL and there is little to prevent it now.
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This is all the legacy of the decision in the 90s to change the first division to the premier league and European Cup to the Champions League. It inevitably turned clubs into greedy businesses with the advent of lucrative pay per view TV deals which led to lucrative commercial deals. (They knew fans would pay because they had what they wanted, they had them over a barrel). And now the premier league and UEFA are losing control of the ‘monsters’ they created. Surprise, surprise.
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Apologies Sean, I did see you already made my latter point. One positive way at looking at it is certainly that no side currently has an edge, though City I accept do seem to, we have been matching their points total up until recently. So my main frustration is that I actually think there’s an opportunity there, no matter how good City may look.
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I thought we might have had a chance Sean, but I think less so now – unless in the second half of the season, Klopp unleashes the pressing and intensity, Keita comes good & we strengthen in January. Thing is, as I’ve pointed out to Banjo, as good a start as we’ve made, so has everybody else, Arsenal just being 4 pts behind now. So in that context, how good a start is it? Or put another way, how strong is the premier league as a whole vs the top 6?
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Sean, we still need to winning those games against the top sides though, not drawing them. Thought Arsenal looked more like the Klopp side yesterday. Our team simply isn’t designed for this more conservative approach.
Banjo, bar the top 6, the rest of the premier league is actually rather weak. As I said above, Bournemouth & Everton are supposedly the best of the rest. Yet a supposedly poor Man Utd team has despatched both teams in recent weeks.
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Regrettably Sean, we’re not as good as I thought. We’ve drawn most of our clashes with the top sides. Milners goal yesterday was the first goal we’ve scored from
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Bournemouth & Everton are supposedly the best of the rest in the premier league, yet a Man Utd team supposedly in crisis has despatched both teams in recent weeks and are now back in the top 6 (on points).
The premier bar the top 6 is weak. And the gap between them and the rest ain’t getting smaller.
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Cheers for the clarification Banjo. Net spend does sound a better way, though turkeys don’t vote for Christmas as they say. The big clubs are always going to have a huge influence.
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“FFP 2 would be much more transparent and it wouldn’t matter where sponsorship monies were coming from because they would be of little to no benefit.”
Could you just expand on that please Nine. Why would they be of little to no benefit in that situation?
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Ed, I certainly don’t subscribe to this idea that Mourinho’s philosophy is out of date. As has been discussed at length, I think there is a disparity between the board’s idealistic strategy and Mourinho’s strategy. I think the board, under Woodward, have bought some marquee signings like Sanchez and Pogba, instructed the manager to also play and develop the youth, and seemed to think that Mourinho would be the silver bullet to bring it all together because of his previous records.
But in many ways Man Utd are a victim of their stature, what with Ed Woodward saying in the summer that “Playing performance doesn’t really have a meaningful impact on what we can do on the commercial side of the business.” There’s a big problem right there. Why spend more money whilst you’re making a very healthy profit?
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A few of the favourites are ruling themselves out. Might be worth a punt on some of the names further down the list. Guti certainly worth a punt at 28/1.
*Edit – indeed Guti’s odds already halved to 14/1. Still worth a punt.
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