leffe186

Essex, innit. They're doing very well.

I'd guess Bet 365, a huge global operation which makes a lot out of football and is prepared to reinvest back into the game, principally through Stoke City. There can't be any other reason for their enduring strong situation. Just generally better management: http://swissramble.blogspot.com/2016/11/stoke-city-but-im-different-now.html Stoke consistently breaking even. http://swissramble.blogspot.com/2016/05/sunderland-all-cats-are-grey.html Sunderland consistently losing money. As the SwissRamble guy suggests, it's all about player recruitment and "quick fixes". Stoke are better at recouping money through player sales, and Sunderland have far higher amortization costs. Wages and turnover are comparable, and Sunderland's gate receipts and commercial activities actually generate more money that Stoke. Sunderland have not managed their squad well, and have also underperformed vs Stoke in the league which gives them less TV money.

We've actually made 40M on full backs in that time - about 31M spent but recouped about 71M. We doubled our money on Yedlin. Doesn't include buying Rose (1M in 2007) or selling Bale *cough*.

They'd only spent £7m on full-backs since 2011 when they bought Clichy up until their splurge this summer tbf, so £130m or whatever for an elite club on full-backs in 6 years isn't 'that' bad. I'm tempted to go work out what our net spend on full-backs is over the same period .

Yeah, although NFL FF has started which blows this out of the water. Thing is, it's flawed, but it's still far better than the one where everyone has Lukaku or Kane. The main danger is that one team runs away with it and everyone else gets bored. Which might be happening in our division.

Well there's the argument that in selling Walker and getting in Aurier we've made money without getting all that much worse at RB, but let's leave that aside for now. Why spend that much on a back-up RB? Because full-backs are crucial to the way we play and because we are in four serious competitions. And because the money is there. Our reserve LB played more than half last season after Rose got injured and may end up playing more than half this season as well. At this level, if you don't have strong competition in every position then you are simply not going to be good enough.

Y'all dodged one hell of a bullet. I don't think the Spurs bid was ever serious. I think it was just them trying to get their local council to support it and to push them into pursueing a CPO for an industrial unit that stood in the way. Even if it was serious their bid involved in a total demolition and rebuilding of the Olympics stadium. that'd make sense. No, I think it was serious at first. Levy's no fool, he knows what a great opportunity it could have been. We have been consistently held back by infrastructure issues when looking to increase the size of White Hart Lane, and Stratford had the transport links etc in place. We just recognized that trying to shoehorn a football club into that stadium wouldn't work. The offer was to revamp Crystal Palace as the premier athletics venue and build a proper football stadium at Stratford. When Coe et al decided that they'd much rather make some money themselves from Crystal Palace (https://insidecroydon.com/2014/10/15/lord-coes-company-behind-plans-to-bulldoze-athletics-stadium/) and West Ham's "plan" was preferred, Levy just wanted to make sure that the structure of the deal was such that West Ham wouldn't be quietly given the Olympic Stadium some time down the line - the "athletics legacy clause". I think his original bid was serious.

I'm really surprised to hear that about Owen. Kane has only had three full seasons, and all of them were over 20 goals.

Quite a nice take on West Ham at the end of the transfer window: http://thehlist.blogspot.co.uk/2017/09/west-ham-and-year-of-long-knives.html?m=1 Bit long, but well-written.

http://www.kumb.com/story.php?id=131616 Just hearsay...for now.

That was such a lovely goal.

But even if you win it hurts your ranking.... We failed to beat Scotland at Wembley, which would have had a negative impact on our ranking. We shouldn't be able to make up those points by arranging a friendly with San Marino. But that's part of the point of the article. Winning friendlies doesn't make up points - it leaves you worse off.

They'll do it all season long, which is why they put the window in in the first place.

When are people going to stop posting Balague's bollocks?

I've not really been watching closely. Haven't West Brom spent a fortune already?

I picked the wrong keeper for the second week running. If Spurs don't keep a clean sheet then Kasper's guaranteed the win.

I'd take him here for sure "We should be all over that"

Kills two birds with one stone I presume. They can tick off a game for both Stoke and West Brom.

They will always have cameras. It'll be no live UK TV.

Aaaah bollocks, Kasper has Jesus.

There will be loads of us .

That letter.

Players someone has released this gameweek. They won't be available until next week for others. Or someone who has just been added to the game. They'll also be available next week for waivers. Took Rose from the waivers to sit on the bench until he's fit. And still hanging on to Coutinho until that s***s solved. It was the new players that were vexing me. I guess it avoids feeding those people who try to grab new players the second they are put on the system.

Anyone know what the deal is with locked players?

To an extent I suppose that's usually meant to be Lallana.