leffe186

Congrats on the win, and probably the title. Yup, won twelve in a row now. Hopefully they get their act together next year, as this still has real potential. Was due to lose, finally, to absentee Shak, who had Perez and Shelvey due to come on as subs for Alexis and Valencia with 11pts and beat me by 1pt. Now Alexis Sanchez and Valencia are playing, and need to get 11pts themselves. I presume the suspense is killing you all.

He is aswell lol Great use of C . He’s not one of those guys who starts a new team every week, is he?

Man U still to come, but how much have you scored so far? Just 57 from all that lot. Ouch. I still have De Gea, Smalling and Lingard (woop-de-doo), but at least I've managed 61 so far without bench boost or triple captain. My Man City guys (Laporte, Sterling, Jesus) only managed 9 points in total .

Man U still to come, but how much have you scored so far?

I had a wildcarded front seven of Kane ©, Jesus, J. Ayew, Sterling, Eriksen, Tadic, Lingard. 17 points.

Of course I took Otamendi out for Laporte. This week has been total pissballs.

The referee in our game today is an absolute fucking joke. Edit: Mike Jones. Checks out.

Harsh.

Hoping they win to save Barnet.

This is just like every Spurs-West Brom game in the last decade.

Fantastic save by Foster from Kane. Edit: With his head .

Aye, they’ve totally got our number for some reason. They were decent against us. Thoughtful manager, some good players, no real stars - solid mid-table tbh.

Just watching the Spurs match and hadn't realized West Brom had brought back "The Liquidator": https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/west-brom-to-bring-back-6885818 Love that track.

I think they'll do similar to us. They're sound financially and they'll get big money for the likes of Butland & Shaqiri. Maybe even for Allen. Someone like Dwight Gayle up front next season, some solid signings like we made and they'll be fine. They made a loss of £10M last year, relegation will hurt them. While they will bring in some money from transfers out they will only do what we do if the Chairman puts in some money to keep the wage bill high enough. It might be a really tough league next season. West Brom will not be mugs, whoever gets that coveted third relegation place will be relatively strong, and there are some proper teams who will either miss out on promotion this year or improve from mid-table. I think the Championship will be fascinating. Unless Huddersfield slip, there's a lot of Premier League experience dropping. WBA have been here 8 years, Stoke 10, Southampton 5/6 seasons, Swansea about 7 years. ...I really hope you just put the mockers on West Ham

I think Klopp has a case. What Pep has done in the league has been amazing, but he could essentially buy whoever he wanted over the last couple of years, and when it really mattered he lost the head-to-head with Klopp. The Coutinho transfer distorts the finances somewhat, but Klopp has still managed to build his team without spending ludicrous money. I do think it's between those four, and in the direct comparisons I have Dyche slightly ahead of Rafa in the "working with what you've got" stakes and Klopp slightly ahead of Pep in the "FM 2018" stakes.

I think they'll do similar to us. They're sound financially and they'll get big money for the likes of Butland & Shaqiri. Maybe even for Allen. Someone like Dwight Gayle up front next season, some solid signings like we made and they'll be fine. They made a loss of £10M last year, relegation will hurt them. While they will bring in some money from transfers out they will only do what we do if the Chairman puts in some money to keep the wage bill high enough. It might be a really tough league next season. West Brom will not be mugs, whoever gets that coveted third relegation place will be relatively strong, and there are some proper teams who will either miss out on promotion this year or improve from mid-table. I think the Championship will be fascinating.

I think you're under-selling it. West Ham going down in that stadium with those owners would be amazing.

You'll probably get a game from Davies, but Vertonghen was always the best bet.

Oh well. West Ham relegation still on though. Come on Swansea and Southampton.

Glad he mixed up our team today going 3-4-3. Probably a few out there who have Davies and Son playing though.

De Gea, Smalling, and Lingard for me. Not the most auspicious start.

Wenger had the final say for years, but the rumours were that he had less control over the last couple.

The problem is that the comparison is then with Dyche, whose team just stayed up in 16th place last season and then promptly lost two of their best players. Now they may be in Europe. They spent less on transfers in (35M versus your 36M), had a net transfer spend of -9M versus your +10M, and spend less on wages. I think Dyche just shades it over Rafa. I'd be tempted to vote for Klopp, but I agree that it's hard to vote for managers who have so many financial advantages. I still think that Klopp would deserve it if they win the CL (although their draw has a great deal to do with it too).

7th - 10th is dropping down, like. Aye but it will be a one off! Just like Man Utd under Moyes. Unless they change their transfer policy, as James said, it wouldn’t be a one off. Man Utd spent a fuckload of money to get out of that situation, will Arsenal? Chelsea finished 10th in 2015-16. They won the league in 2016-17. In between they spent 119M and recouped 68M for a balance of 51M - compared to Arsenal who in the same season spent 93M and recouped 7M for a balance of 86M. What else was different? They changed their manager. Arsenal spend a ton of money every year: Transfer spend (players in) - This season 111M, last season 93M, 15M, 96M, 43M, 52M. Total 410M, Net spend overall 197M. Compare Spurs - 88M, 69M, 54M, 28M, 104M, 62M. Total 405M, net spend overall, 0.7M Compare Everton - 168M, 77M, 36M, 38M, 24M, 17M - 362M - 124M Compare Burnley - 35M, 28M, 13M, 10M, 1M, 2M - 89M - 21M Last season wages - Man City 264M, Man U 264m, Chelsea 220M, Liverpool 208M, Arsenal 199M.........Spurs 127M, Leicester 113M etc. They paid enough wages to compete for the same players as the other top clubs (and for more players than we could - we'd not have been able to afford Ozil or Sanchez), and weren't exactly stingy in transfer fees. If they were selling better players and getting in worse ones then it's at least in part down to the manager. The interesting part is that we have talked about an Arsenal decline when on the face of it they have been doing fine. In Wenger's first season they were third, then they finished top two in the next eight seasons. At the end of that run, Abramovich bought Chelsea. Then Arsenal finished fourth or third for the next ten seasons. Towards the end of that run, Man City were given infinite money. Now Arsenal have finished fifth and, probably, sixth. Arguably, all Wenger has done is achieve consistent finishes in line with their resources. The question is - what is their target? They could keep things exactly as they are and probably continue to finish fifth or sixth with the occasional foray into the Champions League. I can't see them accepting that, club or fans. That's why Wenger needs to go. They don't need to change their transfer policy. They just need to get a new manager in. There are plenty of funds available for wages and transfers, and a new manager should freshen up the players already there with the ability to bring in new blood. There are suggestions that there are problems in the youth set-up, which again a new manager will be in the position to influence. There is the perennial problem that there are two clubs with silly money, one club with more money for now although the future is a bit cloudier (Chelsea), another club with comparable money that is improving all the time (Liverpool), and Spurs, the wild cards, with less money but a new stadium coming which might bring us closer to the big boys. It's not going to get any easier for them.

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