enthusiast

has always been a byword for shite in my mind after he scored an own goal with the last touch of the first game i went to: https://toon1892.com/detail_match.php?ul=gb&id=4418 i was a kid at the time and this was the only time i saw him play, so i'd occasionally wonder if my memory was being unfair, so in that regard it's nice to have someone confirm he was shite haha

Correct. Even within a "systematic" team, a semi-sensible coach would indulge a player like HBA, build the system around them and use the grafters to mitigate any deficiency that comes of it. Was it Beresford who complained about Ginola not tracking back and essentially got told "tough shit, you'll just have to work harder"?

Seedorf did a couple of years at Botafogo - presumably cos he was married to a Brazilian at the time, possibly also cos he's got family in Suriname which ain't close but is at least on the same continent.

seperate and earlier shifting of gear, to me - i remember how grotesque it was at the time, but looking back it just looks quaint 16m for makélélé? 17m for crespo? 15m for veron? eeeeh! game's gone..

in my mind the spiralling upward of transfer fees kicked off with a huge lurch in 2015 - i always associate it with being surprised at how much man utd paid for antony martial, a transfer fee that seemed completely mundane within about 18 months

And the teams we didn't play? Zero wins. Disgrace.

an exciting modern remake of the usual "we ran football manager in holiday mode" summer lull stories, themselves an update on some shite about what football will be like in the far-off future days of the year 2000, as predicted by a supercomputer (a reel-to-reel tape machine on top of a cardboard box with some phony boffin stood next to it with white coat and clipboard).

Zero qualms about this, probably a good bloke to have about the training pitch and a wealth of experience allowing him to be a coach in spirit if not in name, but it did make me think it's odd that we don't have any other early-20s futureless slab of flesh keepers in the academy that could at least serve as a target for Isak and pals to ping balls at on the training pitch.

Absoltuely, tho my opinion is somewhere in the middle - it certainly is the league's business how clubs spend their money, and some regulation is needed both to maintain competitive balance and prevent a future of Man City steamrollering their way to 20 titles in a row, and to prevent clubs going pop because some mad cunt owner has racked up huge debts and got bored and fucked off.l or died and willed their money to their shitty offspring who don't give a shite about running a football club or whatever. Unfortunately because it's England and it's the 21st century, there's nobody in charge who is able/willing to come up with a solution that doesn't have a shitload of unintended consequences and ends up making everything worse.

Those fees were high because football club owners are daft cunts with no sense, as opposed to a bald-faced attempt to game the system like this shite with £19m academy players with zero games to their name, that's just straight out book-cooking that the legendary Serie A chairmen of the 90s would've been proud of.

Guy's a cunt, if he wanted to do something for the future of the North-East he could start by going back in time and not giving thousands upon thousands of pounds to Thatcher's Tories when they were ripping the heart out of the region. Prick.

have you ever considered... telling your kids to fuck off?

No farewell post for wor Rodrigo, world's oldest U-21? Just think, couple more years turning out for the younguns and he could've been the Haris Vuckic of our times..

Speaking of agent mams, was racking me brain trying to remember this one the other day: who was that German lad we were linked with in the Ashley years whose agent-mam was the image of a German heavy metal tart? Double barrelled name, I think?

Half the Leazes will be turning up looking like