Village Idiot

We played a friendly today. It was unremarkable besides the fact Messi scored twice and seemed to care, and the fact we wore the worst shirt-shorts combo I have ever seen on a Barça player in 40 years I've been alive.

Reguilón is a great prospect but Spurs got taken to the cleaners by Real Madrid here. That's essentially a 2 year loan. And that's without taking into account that €30m in post-Covid football are probably more valuable than €40m in 2022.

Financial reasons, they received the money upfront from Juventus. Lots of partying too. I'd still have kept him, mind.

Out of the €40m paid by Wolves to Porto for Fabio Silva, agents get a cut of €10m (Mendes company gets €7m). The owner of Wolves is also a shareholder on Mendes' company. Ashley should learn from the masters.

Only about 14 years. Might as well cash in the nonvoluntary gloryhunting.

Morata linked to Juve too. It really looks like Juve is trying to win the 2016 Champions League.

"Haaland growing up" was like yesterday, though.

How long have you been getting shit for being a Liverpool fan, Mike?

I hope the hallways in that mansion are long, since he loves running into blind alleys so much.

James is your prototypical genius lazy #10, but he has doubled down on the "lazy" part on the past years. Hopefully Ancelotti can bring back his early Real Madrid form. He was sacked from Bayern before James could really recover from injury.

Fati was magnificent yesterday. Hope we don't screw him up.

Still can't get used to Mourinho and Ancelotti managing Spurs and Everton.

The environment around the club is poisonous at the moment. If Koeman somehow manages to turn that around (and he isn't precisely known for his man-management skills...) then maybe.

Well, there's a motion of no confidence in the works, but with Covid-19 is going to be hard to get enough backing for it to proceed (needs 15% of membership in order to get put to a vote).

It's hard to sell a player nobody's bidding for. It looks like the whole thing was dependant on him coming on a free. It's a bad situation to be in, mind. Going to be a pretty nasty season.

Goal.com exclusive. Man, fucking goal.com

Messi to announce his decision at 6pm Spanish time. He's now expected to stay.

Yeah, people cheering for a collapse of TV deals are nuts. TV money is a higher % of revenue for small clubs than it is for big clubs.

Source is highly questionable, mind. I'll wait until it's not just reported by the Spanish equivalent of the Daily Mail.

I think that's a bad situation for Barcelona, they really should try to get a substantial fee. A year is a long time. If he stays for the year I think there's a pretty small chance he leaves at all. Presidential elections next year too right? He can sign a deal with anybody in just 4 months. I don't think he'd stay past next season. Anyway, if this is his last season I hope they stick a filmmaking crew on him and release a documentary in 20 years. Last time a GOAT did it it worked a charm.

I think that's a bad situation for Barcelona, they really should try to get a substantial fee. There's no bids though. All news being reported is that nobody can afford him ffp-wise unless he goes on a free or there's some kind of swap involved.

Messi's dad admits that his son is now considering staying put this year and leaving on a free next season.

And we'll be going to the Championship. I don't like Everton but I can't knock their ambition. ambition is all well and good but they've married that to ridiculously stupid recruitment the amount of money they've spent on transfers and no doubt wages in the last few years for 0 actual benefit in finishing position is ludicrous They didn't have Ancelotti over those years. They'd shite managers, now they've addressed that. I hope it fails but they won't end up in the same catastrophic position that we're in which is probably relegation. Honestly, I remain skeptical that Ancelotti is a good fit for Everton.

You’re right. So he might well be the first (Kluivert did the reverse). Can’t say I’m too excited, but he started for the English champion so he’d sure be of help to us right now. But I foresee Liverpool taking us to the cleaners for another middling signing that will end up in our bench.

It would be the first former NUFC we employ since... Robson? I can't really think of an Ex-NUFC footballer then going to play for us.