[sumitrocks]

Originally Posted by Varun Khullar

sumit the point i was trying to make is that manchester united cried about chelsea buying players and making them play..................

Varun, Sir Alex is a wily old fox....mind games, my friend, mind games...

liverpool ...plays with the spainish midset u never win the league in england with 70 points .. the quality of the lower team is too poor..
while in spain u can.. even the lowest rung team attacks u like its doomsday..

I'm rather hazy about what the 'Spanish mindset' is. :huh: I thought Spain play pretty attacking football.

and barca is not about money... read about barca if u wanna know more .. what ideals it has... it never even had a shirt sponsorship deal before unicef asked them to...barcelona is to be catalan .. and against the fascists ...of madrid..

Hmmm....interesting point. Barca are not about money at all. I wonder why they have a stadium that seats 98000+ fans, and will soon seat 106,000. And of course, the deals with Nike, Coke, Audi, Vueling, bwin, Acer, and numerous other sponsors, aren't for money at all, right?

P.S. I admire the gesture of Barca donating money to UNICEF each year, but please, it certainly doesn't mean that you're into charitable activities.

Originally Posted by deepu

also from the last few posts on this thread i get a feeling that people think arsenal is more interested in maintaining a good bank balance than winning trophies. It is totally misguided.

Arsenal last season were phenomenal in the first half of the league. But thanks to injuries to key players, their challenge fizzled out by the end. Yes, their game was good to watch, with livewires (and now ex-livewires ) like Fabregas, Walcott, Diaby, Flamini, and Hleb. The reason why I dislike Arsenal is because Arsene Wenger, in trying to protect his players after defeats almost invariably ends up cribbing/complaining. Had he been more gracious in accepting defeats, I'd have respected him as an individual too, and not just as a manager.

But anyone who feels that a club is more interested in money than in winning has to be wrong simply because your money supply is just a function of your winning capacity.

[coolroy]

Originally Posted by Varun Khullar

sumit the point i was trying to make is that manchester united cried about chelsea buying players and making them play...

You are missing the whole point. It wasnt Chelsea Vs United. It was Chelsea Vs the rest. There is a significant difference in the pre and post Roman era. The advent of Roman Abromovich into English club football has given a a whole new dimension to the English game. There used to be high end purchases in the pre Roman era(Rio for example), but not on this scale. His advent has just highered the stakes. Craig Gordon to Sunderland was the costliest goalkeeper buy ever in English history. 4 years back, could you have imagined that ?

Originally Posted by Varun Khullar

if u look the players playing for manchester united how many home grown players are less.. except the oldies (scholes giggs)
owen hargreaves with his german education ,anderson nani ronaldo with their pourtugese .. vander sar with his dutch italian , vidic is from serbia.. ferdinand from leeds ..jung for korea tevez from argentina rooney from everton ......where are guys from manchester...
last year they bought .. 24 million hargreaves , 18 million anderson 18 million nani.. 32 million tevez .. ...they followed chelsea in doing the same thing...

Oldies ? They will be evergreen. Can you please address people with respect who deserve enought of it ? I am sure even the most orthodox rival fans would have enough respect for these two players. As for players being from foreign origin and not brought up from club academies, times have changed and so have the patience thresholds. Have a look at the list of prospects who could not make the final cut all because of time running out and you will understand the point about era being different that I am trying to make (Bentley for example) . Youngsters are given lesser time now to prove themselves. Add to that the advent of foreign blood in the club academies and that raises the stakes even more.

As for 4 players being brought in last season, the difference is United do not do it every season while Chelsea, with all due respect, tend to do it every season. We havnt even made one big buy this season as yet while the season before, only Carrick was bought.

One more point ! 'Home grown' points to the paucity of English talent and not the inefficiency of the club academies. Arsenal seldom have English players in their playing eleven, but dont they have a good academy ?

One final pointer...

http://www.orkut.co.in/AlbumZoom.aspx?uid=10796747464868021539&pid=121006 6156603&aid=1201483719#pid=1210066156603

Originally Posted by Varun Khullar

and barca is not about money... read about barca if u wanna know more .. what ideals it has... it never even had a shirt sponsorship deal before unicef asked them to...barcelona is to be catalan .. and against the fascists ...of madrid..

With all the due respect, do you really think clubs are benovolent enough to do something like that ? Ever heard of PR ? Sumit has already listed the sponsership deals that are in place. Bottomline is very club is a business entity now. Its not only about football anymore.

Regards.

[deepu]

Originally Posted by coolroy

You are missing the whole point. It wasnt Chelsea Vs United. It was Chelsea Vs the rest. There is a significant difference in the pre and post Roman era. The advent of Roman Abromovich into English club football has given a a whole new dimension to the English game. There used to be high end purchases in the pre Roman era(Rio for example), but not on this scale. His advent has just highered the stakes. Craig Gordon to Sunderland was the costliest goalkeeper buy ever in English history. 4 years back, could you have imagined that ?


Regards.

Another point coolroy missed is :-

Chelsea takes huge debt(officially all the money roman is giving is debt) to buy players instead of fixed assets like stadium. This is a very very lousy business decision because no one knows how much are players valued after a season and player valuations are never standard.

see buying players with your revenue is not a problem at all. If your club is so famous that your fans generate loads of revenues then by all means you can go and spend that on players. that's how it used to be and clubs used to take debt for buying fixed assets like stadium etc. Leeds tried to go the other way round and everyone know where it is now. Chelsea is going similar way. Roman doesn't care about losses while other clubs do. so effectively Roman is using his wealth(earned by whatever means) as a
differentiator and trying to play without all those(business) constraints which makes football a beautiful game to follow. winning without any constraints doesn't gain you respect. battling with all the constraints and still winning is what the game is about. Man Utd and Liverpool did it(played within the constraints and won big) much earlier arsenal did it in the past decade and clubs like Spurs,City,Everton and Astonvilla are trying to do now.

my opinion though.

Cheers,
Deepu.

[PSL]

Originally Posted by polpot

I have no problems with what I said. Its nothing personal against him, but it summed up what i thought about the post and the poster while reading.

why would you have any problems with what you said?

They only time I see you posting these days is :-
a) To reiterate your supposed superiority as a United supporter.
or/and
b) To attempt (quite unsucessfully, that it) to demean anybody who doesnt align themselves with United

Just because you woke up one fine morning and decided to support the club that appeared to be winning, it doesn't give you the air of superiority that you seem to have taken for granted.

Now, I know i have no authority to say this but your value addition here is - quite frankly - zero.

Again, I have absolutely no problems with what I said. Its nothing personal against anyone, but it summed up what I think about the posts and the poster while reading.

cheers..

[sir roy keane]

I will reserve my analysis of the coming season for some other time.

First things first , as a moderator , i would prefer going through posts that are in regards to the upcoming season ; rather than anything else.

There were lots of instances in the last three pages where i was really tempted to make changes in some of the posts.

it really doesn't help anyone if people start using words which might cause friction between fellow users.

yes , regards football , there would be many cases where disagreements would be there ,but , its best settled with the help of constructive discussion.

using words like twat only does more harm than good , and its only bound to evoke 'not so nice' responses from other users.

The last thing I would like to see out here is any sort of friction between the regulars.

lets do what we do best ; what say?

[Varun Khullar]

Originally Posted by sumitrocks

Varun, Sir Alex is a wily old fox....mind games, my friend, mind games...



I'm rather hazy about what the 'Spanish mindset' is. :huh: I thought Spain play pretty attacking football.



Hmmm....interesting point. Barca are not about money at all. I wonder why they have a stadium that seats 98000+ fans, and will soon seat 106,000. And of course, the deals with Nike, Coke, Audi, Vueling, bwin, Acer, and numerous other sponsors, aren't for money at all, right?

P.S. I admire the gesture of Barca donating money to UNICEF each year, but please, it certainly doesn't mean that you're into charitable activities.



Arsenal last season were phenomenal in the first half of the league. But thanks to injuries to key players, their challenge fizzled out by the end. Yes, their game was good to watch, with livewires (and now ex-livewires ) like Fabregas, Walcott, Diaby, Flamini, and Hleb. The reason why I dislike Arsenal is because Arsene Wenger, in trying to protect his players after defeats almost invariably ends up cribbing/complaining. Had he been more gracious in accepting defeats, I'd have respected him as an individual too, and not just as a manager.

But anyone who feels that a club is more interested in money than in winning has to be wrong simply because your money supply is just a function of your winning capacity.

....totally agree about the ferguson...calling madrid stuff while doing the same stuff to berbatov..
valencia won back to back seasoon's in spain with their defensive record.. they conceded less ,took the away draw...in spain u can lose to osasuna getafe..real zaragoza went down that season and it had aimar diego milito and olivera striker awesome trike force i would say....they attack but in spain 70 points is enough so u can draw with other team which liverpool does quite often, in epl u need 88 point to win. u can't afford draws...
........
about the stadium don't u remember the barcelona olympics we got the stadium for free .....about increasing the size.. of the stadium .. its cause of the membership increases.. everyone wants to see LEO MESSI play rest of the stuff is a part of normal life in any club..
unicef is not charity what else is..
Arsenal.. should have won last year only if they bought a player in january .. rather than making profits on players like diarra.. (they had no one to bring on when flamini got injured in the match against liverpool...)
last year arsenal lost it rather than man utd winning it in my opinion .. chelsea was never in it due to start jose mourinho gave them...

[PSL]

Not a bad start at the Grove..

Wenger played a very young side.. even by our standards

We took the lead early on with Ade, Clichy, Denilson and Nasri combining beautifully givig Nasri his first Premiership goal in the 4th min. Looked all set to havea field day, but it wasnt to be.. 1-0 it stayed till the end.

Walcott looked sharp, Nasri was brilliant.. even Ade and Eboue were ok.. Defense still needs a lot of tweeking, especially against the long ball

Originally Posted by sumitrocks

The reason why I dislike Arsenal is because Arsene Wenger, in trying to protect his players after defeats almost invariably ends up cribbing/complaining. Had he been more gracious in accepting defeats, I'd have respected him as an individual too, and not just as a manager.

Now, I'm not the sort who blindly eulogizes everything related to his respective club. Wenger is not a man without faults, but making excuses is not not one of his faults.

Ill say it again - He has never tried to overlook losses with the 'beautiful football' excuse. I don't know where heard it?? Was it Goal.com, TribalFootball? or even worse INDIA TV

Originally Posted by Varun Khullar

Arsenal.. should have won last year only if they bought a player in january .. rather than making profits on players like diarra.. (they had no one to bring on when flamini got injured in the match against liverpool...)
last year arsenal lost it rather than man utd winning it in my opinion .. chelsea was never in it due to start jose mourinho gave them...

uhh, Diarra was not sold to make a profit. He was sold because he wouldnt stop whining about the lack of first team matches and wanted out. Atleast google it up before posting here

cheers..

[benchman]

Originally Posted by sumitrocks

Anyone who says that Liverpool don't seem to have the hunger for the EPL is wrong on two counts. Firstly, the CL is a much more tactical scenario, and Liverpool are somewhat better at handling that than many other teams.

Actually it is not a question of hunger on the other hand Liverpool and Benitez doesn`t know how to sustain a winning run over a period of 9 months! When the result is decided over 2 games Benitez is somehow able to get the better of teams having better players or for that matter he is able to get his players playing at a level greater than their normal standards! Put it simply he is able to charge them up!
But week in week out their normal standard of play has been found wanting over the last3-4 seasons!! You can`t expect a team to be charged up for each and every game throughout a season and yes lack of sufficient class players plays a part in the same!

JJ

[fire_kris]

Hmmm Yeh kya ho raha bhai logon... (@ PSL & Polpot :argue

As Shankar (SRK) said I am also disappointed seeing so much friction between the regulars, hope all of us agree on this one whole heartedly.

@ Polpot: Dude, I know you like to speak your mind, but when you cool down, you would also admit that twat part was uncalled for. Come on admit it (take it on the chin as they say) and never repeat it in future. Why do you need expletives you brilliantly explained your point but gave it all away at the end. You dont need words like twat when you back it up your reasoning with strong and valid points

You need to Tone Down

@ PSL:Man again it's not I am siding with Polpot why do you have to type things that his contribution is zero when it is actually not, because I know he is explosive in his posts more often than not which he surely has to rectify, but with you I expected a good reply not a slinging direct attack.

Anyhow I think now you have got your point through.

So it's time for truce between you two. No war of words.

@ Varun Khullar: Man again as coolroy, sumit everyone has pointed out, whats the issue with you, do you want to get me started on barca,

We still have 5 players who are from our academy: Fletcher, O Shea, Brown, Giggs and Scholes. How many spanish players from the academy does your team have. might be 6 ( I am not counting) but we still have a respectable number. Again and again we are in debt because of glazers, otherwise we are a high profit churning club and we can afford those transfers.

Doesnt Barca spend heavily on players. I dont get your point what you were trying to make by demeaning every club, remember in footballing world no body is saint.

And you have the luxury that a stadium was gifted to you as is the case with madrid, because the kind of money you two clubs spend on the transfers, you would have been bankrupt if you would have had to build a minimum 500 million pound stadium in today's world. (I think now it would have been much costlier than that), getting monstorous gate receipts as a gift as well.

Again on Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool. What is the point you are trying to make. Barca with all it's millions didnt even get automatic qualification for the champions league. You can be gifted half a billion by spanish govt. in form of a stadium and you curse another club, difference a Billionaire owns club and pumps money on it, What's the difference.

What is the solution to last year problems

Sign players Daniel Alves, Alexander Hleb, Victor Sanchez, Gerard Pique, Keita, Caceres and Busquets. and still have the luxury to offload only Ronaldinho (Alves cost twice ). And still have the luxury to maintain high profile club with already players like Henry, Messi, Etoo, Gudjohnsen and Krcic already has forwards. Wow 5 forwards isnt that an luxury. I dont see you pointing it out.

Arent you relying on money. Why dont you do onething. go to the academy and develop home grown players.

I know also a little bit about soccer, so dont preach barca to me (the reason is you are making less point with each of your post and trying to deerogatory to every club) , try and get some ethics of running the club like another basque club athletic bilbao then, they are very few club in the worlds that only recruits club from the Pro-Basque region.

Who is the biggest player in Barca history to play for the club:

1. Johan Cryuff (My favourite player ever)
2. Maradona
3. Ronaldo (Former one)

I would also like to add Luis Enrique but he is not a highly known figure but I absolutely adored that man.

None of them seem to be home grown.

It's not an attack on the barcelona ( I always have high regards for them ) and feel they were really not treated well in the M***N General Franco Regime. But I didnt like they way you are trying to cause friction with each of your posts and I can have a mass consensus against you.

You are welcome on the thread but please try and honor each individual and club here.

Ciao..
Kris

[polpot]

Originally Posted by PSL

why would you have any problems with what you said?

They only time I see you posting these days is :-
a) To reiterate your supposed superiority as a United supporter.
or/and
b) To attempt (quite unsucessfully, that it) to demean anybody who doesnt align themselves with United

Just because you woke up one fine morning and decided to support the club that appeared to be winning, it doesn't give you the air of superiority that you seem to have taken for granted.

Now, I know i have no authority to say this but your value addition here is - quite frankly - zero.

Again, I have absolutely no problems with what I said. Its nothing personal against anyone, but it summed up what I think about the posts and the poster while reading.

cheers..

Yup, Caught me out 100%. I think i'll sit in the corner and cry now. And i'd rather my value addition be zero than justifying myself to you.



To Others: I apologise. The personal attack was uncalled for.