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Europa League - Round of 32: Fiorentina (ITA)

Re: The Race for Europe/6th Place

I dont see an issue with playing EL, surely playing thursday / sunday is the same as playing wed / sat if we were in the CL, that never seems to get a mention
 
Re: The Race for Europe/6th Place

willian was outstanding in this game. one can imagine if avb had the players he wanted - willian, moutinho. conceicao, hulk...


Willian - £30m
Moutinho - £30m
Coentrão - £20m+
Hulk - £30m+
Soldado - £28m



In other words, give AVB 5 of the most expensive players in the world, and he'll knock it out of the park. Go AVB!
 
Re: The Race for Europe/6th Place

Willian - £30m
Moutinho - £30m
Coentrão - £20m+
Hulk - £30m+
Soldado - £28m



In other words, give AVB 5 of the most expensive players in the world, and he'll knock it out of the park. Go AVB!

Drop one player off that list and you are looking at the total we spent on players last summer that allegedly he did not want. So go spunk it on ****e instead.
 
Re: The Race for Europe/6th Place

Chelsea and Emirates Marketing Project are now guaranteed CL entry. Liverpool were already certain of a CL group place. The final CL place will go to Arsenal, Everton or Tottenham.

Man Utd's win yesterday ended the theoretical possibility of Southampton qualifying for EL. The EL qualifying summary is:
If Arsenal qualify for CL then it will be Hull plus 2 from Everton, Tottenham & Man Utd.
If Arsenal don't qualify for CL then it's Arsenal plus Hull (but ONLY if they win the cup final) with the remaining place (or 2 places if Hull don't qualify) coming from Everton, Tottenham or Man Utd.
 
Re: The Race for Europe/6th Place

Can you really believe that, despite the season we have had, that here on April 27th we still have a mathematical chance of a CL spot..at least until tomorrow.
Crazy
 
Re: The Race for Europe/6th Place

Drop one player off that list and you are looking at the total we spent on players last summer that allegedly he did not want. So go spunk it on ****e instead.


That's not really as true as it seems on the face of it:

1. Capoue was cheap and probably retains most of that value.
2. Chadli and Vlad were relatively cheap, and their value has probably gone up a smidge.
3. Paulinho was expensive, but probably retains his value, and in fact we'd probably make a few quid on him.
4. Soldado's fee was closer to £13m + add-ons than the oft quoted £26m, so if we sell him this summer we probably don't lose much.
5. Lamela's fee probably also has that kind of structuring, so again we're probably not down much on what we could get for him in Italy, and he might yet turn out to be a very valuable asset for us.
6. Eriksen we got for relative peanuts and has soared in value

In contrast with those other guys:

1. Surely to GHod £30m for Willian is a ceiling on his price - will he really go for more than that at some point in future? He's an asset repaying his value for sure, but it's borderline whether he'd represent value to us. Plus, we did almost sign him.
2. Moutinho at £30m was £13m more than his replacement, Paulinho, and he is 3 years older than Pauli. Moutinho probably won't be sold on for that money again.
3. Coentrão - £20m+...would have been worth it on the fee, but truly astronomical on wages. Also, he didn't want to come. Nothing to be done about that.
4. Hulk - Not only is there the £30m+ fee, but also I think literally the 2nd or 3rd highest wages of any player in the world. Outrageously, prohibitively expensive. Total, total non-runner.
5. Soldado was AVB's pick, and the point above stands.


Really, AVB wanted gold-plated, established star players with modest sell-on prices, huge wages and borderline age profiles. We ended up with a younger roster of players who all, on average across all 7, retain their value and at least 5 of whom (Eriksen, Vlad, Chadli, Pauli and Lamela) are young enough to be a spine for a long time.
 
Re: The Race for Europe/6th Place

Drop one player off that list and you are looking at the total we spent on players last summer that allegedly he did not want. So go spunk it on ****e instead.

Was about to say this.

Chancer, on one hand you use Soldado as an example of big expenditure required but on another say his fee was only £13+ with add ons.

Given that there was the new TV deal this summer we could have actually afforded those players. It's great and all to have a squad full of potential but AVB wanted to make us title challengers. Out of the players we have now, some of them may come good in time to give us a nice run at 4th again before they inevitably get sold and have the cycle repeat itself.
 
Re: The Race for Europe/6th Place

Drop one player off that list and you are looking at the total we spent on players last summer that allegedly he did not want. So go spunk it on ****e instead.

You can triple the amount the players on AVB's list would have demanded in wages, to the players we signed, however!
 
Re: The Race for Europe/6th Place

Its pathetic that people go on about AVB not getting these ridiculous targets as though it some kind of defence!

You know, any manager has missed out on targets. Moyes wanted Herrera, Baines and Bale last summer, didn't get any of them. Hazard chose Chelsea instead of City, maybe Mancini could have brought that up when he got sacked? AVB didn't get Modric, Hulk, Moutinho or Falcao when he was at Chelsea. He had to work with what Abramovich wanted to give him when he was there as well!

No manager gets a perfect dream team XI set of players to work with. Not even Emirates Marketing Project, Chelsea etc. The only club that comes close to being able to sign whoever they like every summer is Real Madrid, but even then its not the manager that choses the players, and they chose the players more for marketing reasons than what happens on the pitch!
 
Re: The Race for Europe/6th Place

You can triple the amount the players on AVB's list would have demanded in wages, to the players we signed, however!

Agreed, and letting your wage budget snowball out of control seems like a sure-fire way to get into trouble long term to me.

Its pathetic that people go on about AVB not getting these ridiculous targets as though it some kind of defence!

You know, any manager has missed out on targets. Moyes wanted Herrera, Baines and Bale last summer, didn't get any of them. Hazard chose Chelsea instead of City, maybe Mancini could have brought that up when he got sacked? AVB didn't get Modric, Hulk, Moutinho or Falcao when he was at Chelsea. He had to work with what Abramovich wanted to give him when he was there as well!

No manager gets a perfect dream team XI set of players to work with. Not even Emirates Marketing Project, Chelsea etc. The only club that comes close to being able to sign whoever they like every summer is Real Madrid, but even then its not the manager that choses the players, and they chose the players more for marketing reasons than what happens on the pitch!

Agreed again. We did try with Willian at least, and probably Moutinho. But there has to be a "next option" after our first choice transfer target.
 
Re: The Race for Europe/6th Place

Was about to say this.

Chancer, on one hand you use Soldado as an example of big expenditure required but on another say his fee was only £13+ with add ons.

Given that there was the new TV deal this summer we could have actually afforded those players. It's great and all to have a squad full of potential but AVB wanted to make us title challengers. Out of the players we have now, some of them may come good in time to give us a nice run at 4th again before they inevitably get sold and have the cycle repeat itself.


No, I said the point I made about him in the first list stands for the second list. He appears in the second list simply because he was AVB's pick...after that the points I made in list 1 stand.
 
Re: The Race for Europe/6th Place

Chelsea and Emirates Marketing Project are now guaranteed CL entry. Liverpool were already certain of a CL group place. The final CL place will go to Arsenal, Everton or Tottenham.

Man Utd's win yesterday ended the theoretical possibility of Southampton qualifying for EL. The EL qualifying summary is:
If Arsenal qualify for CL then it will be Hull plus 2 from Everton, Tottenham & Man Utd.
If Arsenal don't qualify for CL then it's Arsenal plus Hull (but ONLY if they win the cup final) with the remaining place (or 2 places if Hull don't qualify) coming from Everton, Tottenham or Man Utd.

and one of them qualifying for the CL.
 
Re: The Race for Europe/6th Place

I dont see an issue with playing EL, surely playing thursday / sunday is the same as playing wed / sat if we were in the CL, that never seems to get a mention

Read my previous posting we had to do it 14 times and it would have got worse if we had stayed in it.
 
Re: The Race for Europe/6th Place

Not only is it easier to win, with the Champions League deadbeats excluded from joining the party in the knockouts, the additional reward for doing so has made it a great deal more appealing. Not just some of grandma’s best silver to put in the cupboard for the winner; a place in the following season’s European Cup, too.

http://www.whoframedruelfox.com/?p=5556

Is the bit about no CL dropouts true?!?! If so, it def puts an added incentive and one less round although I can't see UEFA giving the winners a CL spot and deny CL group stages failures an extra chance at the same time.
 
Re: The Race for Europe/6th Place

On the one hand, no Champions League drop outs makes the competition fairer and actually means less cash for those that get knocked out of the Champions League drop outs. More money for the clubs already in it I guess and less fixtures?? On the other hand I'd miss seeing us playing those bigger names, they lend the tournament some much needed gravitas. Making it to the semis etc after beating the likes of Benfica or Inter etc is way better than saying we beat Tromso and Dnipro.
 
Re: The Race for Europe/6th Place

Trim the squad of dead wood and screw the Europa Cup for a season.

See how we do in the league without Thursday night football.

Haven't we lost something like 7 games out of 9 following Europa games midweek?
 
Re: The Race for Europe/6th Place

The space between my brain cells tells me Chelsea, Arsenal, Man Utd played on Saturday after Wednesday 3 times and City 2 where as we played 14 times after the shorter break, which in my humble opinion does have an effect on the players.

If you played on the Tuesday, you had to play the Saturday prior, so players only got Sunday and Monday off. If we played a league game on a Sunday, the players got Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday off. It's all relative and it all has equal bearing on the games that follow European fixtures.

And CL clubs played against a generally superior level of opponent who often played in superior stadiums with more intimidating support to possibly affect ref's decision. We got the likes of Tromso and Tbilisi and so many fearsome fans at those games that AVB was able to have a match-long, very personal, slightly acrimonious, discussion with one.
 
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