Village Idiot

Still remember Lovenkrands' goal against WBA right after his father's death. One of my favorite NUFC moments since I started following you.

Any reference to his failed Jan transfer? I'm curious as to how they address that PR-wise.

Nosa was a bit part player for them last season, but with Beñat gone he has a chance to start more games this year. He's always looked extremely dynamic whenever I've seen him, certainly.

Betis paid 1,21€ for Cedric He bossed Liga Adelante with his pace. Wonder how he'll do in the top flight but so far he's impressed in preseason.

Changes in YD take years to display results, it took us a decade to begin to regularly produce good players since Cruyff reformed the whole thing mirroring the Ajax systems. You're possibly paying the neglect of 10 years ago (assuming there was one, I wasn't around). Whatever positive changes you'd be making now will take years to root and permeate. I too agree that nothing beats the feeling of a local lad turning out for your team and being key to its success.

Capel is the epitome of the headless chicken. Nothing to see. If you want your own pacy Andalusian winger, Vadillo's the new black. Betis would want a big sum though.

The salary and DP caps are there for that though. No need to fudge transfer policy. The single entity stuff is a bit maddening, even though I understand it was needed to procure the league's stability.

What's next? "Loïc Remy rejects a cup of tea while signing his NUFC contract?"

Given past performance I'm holding back on congratulating you until I see a pitch and shirt photo of him, but otherwise he'd be a great addition, particularly if there's an option to buy (although going by past performance again it looks like he'd try to angle for a big money move if he has a particularly good season).

The new Henry The new Ginola The new Cruyff.

Slutty bimpy scares me.

Anyway, Adebayor-Soldado are excellent on paper. Even if expensive, this is great business for Spurs.

Damn game forces me to pick at least 3 of them.

Yay, my Spanish-only FF team has a starting striker at last

Does she weigh the same as a duck?

Cronaldo and Mou's feud is raging on ahead of Summerslam their friendly match this week. http://www.london24.com/sport/chelsea/ronaldo_responds_to_mourinho_jibes_and_insists_chelsea_clash_another_game_1_2317423

Pretty good writeup from an Italian journo about the Pozzo footballing empire: (transfermarkt warning though) http://labottegadelcalciofilo.com/2013/07/26/pozzos-italian-job/

The interview and the Zubi quotes are real at least. We were never going to sell Cesc in the same transfer window as Thiago.

We've got *two* of them in ours, but then again we're a rich club. Best/worst part of it is when they replay some vintage games and they pretend to comment them live.

Football games in a baseball pitch

Thing is that even with their comparatively s*** TV revenues, TV income is actually a *bigger* part of those clubs' budgets than it is for Barça and Madrid. For example Espanyol's current TV contract is 23 million, their non-TV revenue rises up to 27m. Barça's TV contract is 140 million and non-TV revenue in excess of 300 million (just going off google). I'm fine with us going towards a more equitable distribution, but it is often used as a smokescreen to hide that most of La Liga clubs are awfully run.

any tables on how much tv money gets paid to each club ? and how much they'd get if it were evenly distributed ? Awful quality, but the best I've found: http://img854.imageshack.us/img854/9403/j1i.jpg It averages to €30m with equal distribution. As I said, Barça and Madrid would be brought down two or three notches, but those extra €18m per year would make very little difference to Racing's €150m+ debt for example. And Atlético and Valencia would be even worse off.

Ignore the club I am a fan of in this issue. Thing is that if we equalized the TV receipts, it would only be an average windfall of around €10m for each club, even less if Liga Adelante clubs get part of that money too (they are part of La Liga and would need to approve any deal). Atlético and Valencia would lose money, actually, as their own contracts are over the average. Overarching issue is awful revenue generation across the board. Spanish clubs outside Barça and Madrid are extremely insular and barely have any following outside their natural catchment areas. They are still trapped in the 1980s in many areas.

Going towards a TV collective agreement would solve very few problems of Spanish football. It would cut down both Real Madrid and Barcelona to size (they'd still far above the other clubs in revenue, though), but the actual difference in other clubs' bottom lines would be pretty small.

Well, I was just pointing out that talking about Spurs possibly buying 4 class players at €25m piecemeal is justified Adebayor-Soldado is a class forward setup on paper, if Adebayor is arsed. Dunno about their backups though, that looks far more suspect.