Taylor Swift

Joelinton’s become both Ben Arfa and Beckham. What a player.

How are we not up by at least 2

That was some good shit. Great drama.

Atkinson is always a cunt.

That is one of the most obvious pens ever. What the fuck.

LOL he's going to be gone already? YES!! Staveley means business.

Culturally the Saudis don't do embarrassment so if this looks like it's going to fail, I'm sure they'll just buy out the rest and go on a City-style spending spree. They won't tolerate the poorer Abu Dhabis and Qataris sweeping up titles while we're languishing in mid-table.

One thing it says is that they certainly have a price for everything. This doesn't sound like it's going to be some City-style 'money is no object' spending spree. But anyway, they seem like they have a plan, they've put time into this project. That's much better than anything Ashley ever did.

Feels like I just woke up from a really bad dream, man. Finally it's over.

Inter are fucked because their owners are fucked. Their owners own Suning who are fucked because Suning's cash is all tied up with Evergrande. Evergrande are fucked because it owes $300bn and has been running a semi-ponzi scheme, like other big real estate developers in China. There's no exit for Inter except a sale.

Let’s hope it’s City and not PSG.

Bartomeu has to end up in jail, no?

Hopefully they will have learnt that you can’t fuck everyone over at the beginning. Next time hopefully they decide to fuck over only small, low quality leagues and UEFA. Because UEFA suck.

Abramovich probably wants his visa back.

Chelsea and City the good guys. The enemy of your enemy is your friend.

Man, that ‘binding’ agreement they signed must be absolutely useless if they can quit two days later without any punishment.

That’s true, but UEFA can attempt to broaden its audience. It can, like I mentioned previous posts, schedule games differently. It can relegate the europa league to a new channel or market and cross subsidise it less, it can run the CL three times a week. It can fix the coefficients system to give more competitive leagues more places, so there’s more parity and more interest before the QFs. It can also try to schedule weekend matches by swapping international friendlies to weekdays. Blasphemy, I know. I hope you see the point that I’m trying to make that UEFA are conflicted. It subsidises the Europa League, it has other interests in the Euros and Nations League and international matches. It’s not as focused on growing the champions league as the premier league is on growing itself. That’s why it punches well below its weight in tv revenue and audience interest. But yes, yes, money is bad. American money is really bad. Asian money is the worst.

100% agree. UEFA also deserve a lot of blame if this goes ahead.

I said there’s 10 hours of premier league on every Saturday and Sunday. Been like this for years. What does that have to do with a pandemic? I’ve been watching English football on tv from 6pm (noon there) until 4am for a while already (until I had a kid). We get all 380 games here live. There’s five channels for your 3pm games here.

I’m not arguing in favour of the super league. I’m arguing in favour of aggressively reforming the champions league. I don’t agree or want to see the super league. It would kill the premier league. It would be bad for a club like ours.

What? UEFA have run the CL badly for years. This is not a single season issue. The premier league has also been well run for years, continually iterating and evolving, growing audiences worldwide.

Yes, the premier league is doing well. Foreign fans love it. The champions league isn’t, because UEFA are lazy. The champions league should be run more like the premier league. Yes, early and late night games inconvenience local fans. But without money, the league will be deprived of its best players. No one wants to see the league become like Serie A, where even the locals tune out because the best players no longer play there. Attendances there have trended down for a while, only perking up in the last few years. Small Italian teams and their fans will rarely if ever see the best players in the world play in their stadiums. That’s the other side of the coin to not being product-driven.

Bro do you want to be on everyone’s ignore list as well? I wouldn’t be in this thread if UEFA scheduled games spaced out and earlier. Wife and kid asleep, what’s a man supposed to do with no football on tv.

Appreciate that you’ve given time and effort to respond. The CL is a worldwide product, as the premier league is. The premier league gets £4bn/year from international tv rights, £4.5bn/year from domestic tv rights. In the next cycle, it’s likely that international rights will be worth more than domestic rights. Whenever this switch occurs, it’s likely to be permanent. In a typical weekend, the premier league is on tv for 20 hours. 12pm kickoffs are really for Asian audiences, 7.45pm Mondays are for domestic audiences. They put an effort in to generate worldwide interest. The champions league is supposed to be an even more marquee product, with greater prestige and tradition. It should earn much more than it is currently earning, to the detriment of every European football club (and economy). UEFA are just lazy, and they are not product-driven. Their incentives are not aligned with clubs and with the champions league.

We all live for the drama. Happy to provide, suck it to the haters.