leffe186

Even worse for all the money we've spent. #taxpayers #brokenrecordleffe

It looks like somebody's put a shirt through the wrong wash cycle.

Burn the heretic!

Aye, these might just be premier league stats looking at it. Moncur got 10 and Irving Nattrass 16. Didn't Nattrass play in midfield?

*sigh* Totally forgot the game .

One of my favourite claims to fame is that as a kid I swam in the pool where Ian Dury caught polio.

Essex, innit. They're doing very well. No surprise with the money invested into the club. If just one person out there gets my obscure muso reference I'll be happy. My money's on Bimpy.

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.