ponsaelius

Yeah exactly The 20 million euros Spurs paid for Bentancur wasn't massively undervalued at the time, to be honest. He had been shite for Juve for a while and had definitely depreciated in value up to that point. Probably slightly under value but not hugely. I would definitely say Kulusevski being the more expensive of the two was reasonable.

Tbh as dodgy as that is, and annoying for any previous club, it's basically completely impossible to mitigate against or challenge legally. Unless it's extremely obvious like giving one away for free/nominal cost.

Delighted he got the goal. Still not convinced by him and agree with the above that he might end up like a flexible jack of all trades.

Hope Sheff Wed go up after all the shit Darren Moore got.

There's a very decent Messi World Cup documentary on iPlayer. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001mp3x

It's felt like Bazunu let everything in for most of the season too. All of the bottom on three can blame poor goalkeeping for a lot of their problems IMO.

Basically unless we sign a home grown goalkeeper we will almost certainly be naming a 23 man CL squad (With Longstaff and Dummett as the CG players). 22 if Dummett goes. Anderson will be on the B list until the following season so doesn't get named.

As said, you don't actually need to name 4 CG players. You can just leave the spots empty and have a smaller A list squad. Napoli had 3 at the start of the season (Husiak, Gaetano and Zanoli) so named a 24 man squad. Zanoli went out on loan in January in a swap for a more experienced player (Berezynski) and so they named a 23 man squad for the second half of the season. The CG player requirements really are less of an issue when you can call up as many U21s as you like. Especially as you start building a quality youth/reserve set up.

But you don't need to register him anyway for CL. He would be on the B list until he's 21 along with Anderson (you can have as many of them as you want). If you don't have the 4 CG players you just name fewer players. For example Napoli only named 23 players in their January squad as they only had two home grown players. But you can still call up any U21 player you like as long as you name them on the limitless B list.

Pot one is the Champions of the 7 best ranked leagues + Europa winner. 2-4 are ranked on the club's coefficient scores

Yeah obviously he's HG as he was at Carlisle. But we're fine on that (and will likely remain as such) - it's the club grown players we're short on.

He was but left at 16. UEFA's HG rules are based around being at a club for at least three years between 15 and 21.

Gillespie isn't HG.

Love the lad and he's fine as a squad player going forward next year, but he's defo one you'd consider selling if a club came in with a decent offer. He will be next to useless once his pace starts to go.

Humming and barring about switching over to the relegation games like. Kinda annoyed we're still playing for something here tbh

Sue perb

Iwobi up top for Everton?

That's the strongest, most competent looking Chelsea team I've seen all season. Every time I usually look at their line-up I'm left scratching my head where all the money went (and still the case tbf) but that actually looks decent.

I'd absolutely love to live in London like, for a while, if I earned at least double what I do currently and was gifted a house. It's an absolutely superb city if you're comfortable financially. That said I would question the sum motivation of any footballer who would put location ahead of their footballing career. As long as you're a serious club being in the north should be no barrier to attracting serious professionals. Liverpool and Manchester clubs are the case in point there. Plus to top level footballers their geographical base becomes almost irrelevant these days, tbh. You have family life and work - and then you have the financial means to do and go as you please in your time off anyway.

I know it's easy to say this is as a neutral observer but I just can't see Everton going down from today's fixtures.

A lot of Ultras in Europe just don't massively care about the actual football being played on the pitch. Or certainly try to give the impression that is the case to highten their own importance. This is particularly true in Italy. The ultra movement was historically always just a vehicle to be subversive, for social outsiders to get away with things you can't normally do in society, to cause mayhem and mischief. Inspired in part by English hooliganism but forming an entirely new subculture. So much of what they do separates themselves from the actual football. The vast tifos and displays will be fundamentally in support of the team, but also aggrandise and celebrate the ultras themselves, distract from the field of play, slapping themselves on the back. They will regularly sing songs about not giving a fuck about the football or the players. This is always quite alien to the way English support is. But it's not always a bad thing, tbh. Italian ultras will regularly sack off a game they think is too expensive, usually choosing instead to do something more productive. Like the Milan ultras boycotting the last game of the season because Juve are charging 80 euros and instead donating their time and money to help with the flood victims in Emilia Romagna. It shows the clubs can't rely on their support unequivocally - which IMO is no bad thing. The power dynamic between the fans, the clubs and the players remains more clearly balanced. It can also have a negative influence for sure though. We can see with our own club how powerful unity between all sides can be and sometimes the motives of ultra groups undermines this. Equally Mike Ashley wouldn't have survived as long as he did if our fans had more backbone. German football I struggle with a bit more to understand the fan culture, and find it more manufactured, but I know less about it admittedly. However I think the power dynamic is still there to some degree where the clubs know they can't take the custom of the fans for granted.

Yeah I don't disagree. Personally I'd have an open knockout draw with very limited seeding but that's not what the 'product' wants. And I'd have the revenue split exactly equally amongst all participating clubs. There's obviously the question of how that impacts smaller leagues with the champion hoovering up huge revenue and winning every year - but that could be dealt with by distributing revenue to the leagues themselves perhaps.

I have no issue with us being in pot 4. That's absolutely fair enough as we have not been in Europe for a decade. Indeed the fact we get straight into the group stages and get given a load of coefficient points based purely on the league we are in (which puts us ahead of Celtic) is unfair in itself. It represents the way European football has already been skewed against smaller leagues, mirroring the way the finances are shared out. Really if we finish fourth we should be playing a qualifier and starting with zero points. If we get dumped out by Partizan Belgrade then that's fair enough - we have enough of a financial advantage that we should have to deal with that. Instead clubs from the big leagues don't even have that risk anymore. The distribution of financial revenue based on previous performance is scandalous when you accompany it with a coefficient system, though. It basically rigs the entire thing in favour of clubs who are already there.

Martin Samuel is a slug who does talk a lot of shite but he has been writing these pieces on FFP and the protectionist nature of football finance for years tbf. Very consistent with his opinion.

Greasy, slow, archetypal Portuguese national team player, and bitterly called us a long ball team. No thanks. My bet is he's still stuck in Wolverhampton come August.