I went a travellin' yesterday on the trains which inevitably resulted in me picking up a copy of The Evening Standard. Actually, I picked up 3 as I've got some paint spraying to do tomorrow but I digress. I read the sport pages and they reported the "Chelsea Bid For Kyle Walker" story. However, Conte's love for Harry Kane didn't make the paper. Not a single word of it. Nothin'. Could it be that The Standard don't see this as news, whereas it made the lead story in a number of national papers?...........or could it be that Pravda don't want you to see it?
Given the fact the Standard is edited by Chelsea fan George Osborne, I'm surprised they didn't pick up on it. Then again, they do need to cram five or six pages of cricket into their back pages at this time of year...
So Conte gets a "managerial mark" of 9/10 and Poch gets 7/10 (same as Klopp... and Koeman and Howe and Shakespeare and Allardice and Clement and Dyche). http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/39991517 Does nobody in the media give us credit for achieving so much based on things like income, spend and pre-expectation? For the difference of 7 to 9 out of 10 you would think Chelski won the league by 20 points. Edit: sorry I just realised this is quite an old article (just before the UEFA cup final I think) but its the first time I've seen it. There was also comments about the JT "match fixing" when he went off in the 26th minute which I'd almost forgotten about, considering bets to that effect were placed. Nobody did anything of course - even though non-league keeper ate a pie and pretty much lost his job as a result.
I was listening to 5 Live last night and thought a similar thing. Everyone on there was talking about how much had been spent by everyone apart from us, but nobody mentioned that really, who has been bought that is better than what we already have? I'd argue that the Walker buy from City is the only one that comes close to a rival improving on us in a specific position, and even that is debatable. We already have at very worst the second best team in the country and even then its a fairly close run thing. And our squad is largely young, improving and settled. Yes we need to add depth and some players to challenge for one or two positions, but we were never going to splash the cash this window primarily because we simply do not need to. We are currently the team that others are playing catch up to. Poch deserves better than a 7/10 for his contribution to this state of affairs.
If Neymar leaves, Barcelona will choose from a trio of Premier League attacking midfielders - Liverpool's Philippe Coutinho, 25, Chelsea's Eden Hazard, 26, and 21-year-old Tottenham player Dele Alli - to replace him. (Mirror) But Barcelona fear Liverpool will price them out of a deal for Coutinho. (AS) Barcelona are worried that 'Pool might "price" Coutinho out of their reach, yet they think Levy will Alli go for peanuts!
I suspect that Coutinho would be the easiest of the three to sign, honestly. Chelsea don't really care about money and Hazard is linked with Real quite a lot. Alli's not a lot like Neymar, Levy would put a ridiculous price tag on him and the deal would be a nightmare. I'd expect Barca to do something a little different, if this does go through. Griezmann's been suggested and has a €100m release clause, so that would be fairly straightforward. They'll have to do some damage control though, so I'd expect at least one other big name, too.
Hang on, I'll just set up a fake ITK account and see how long before a "De Bruyne to Barca" story I made up can gain traction...
Start by denying various unlikely stories first. Gives you more credibility when you've predicted that horseshit is horseshit.
Somebody might notice something's up when every single rumour I predict to have fallen out of the back end of a horse involves Spurs players. Then again, a few years ago I posted something I blatantly made up about us signing Alen Dzagoev on here...and within two weeks it was on the BBC Gossip page.
The phrase "North London Power-Shift" is something that I invented on the Prem board to wind up the Gooners (well, Pixie, mainly, if I am being honest). Two years later, it appears as a headline on the back pages of The Evening Standard.
There's reasons why people believe Americans aren't very bright... http://www.espn.co.uk/football/club...t-man-city-spending-guardiola-has-a-job-to-do
Interesting quote from that article "Nobody will care how much City's squad cost next May, providing the club have lifted the title and played entertaining football for the 10 months leading up to it." Really? I think if City don't win the title having spent that much they have failed and they deserve any and all criticism. Not that there will be much of that. It will probably be put down to a "transition year" if they somehow don't win, and then they'll spend again next year. And if they do win I'll just put it down to them having bought the title. And the pundits will say that people with that opinion are simply bitter. Doesn't stop it being true though.
The express has an interesting story about Alli going to Barcelona under the headline of: North London immigrant fleas country - Did he kill Princess Di? (I may have paraphrased the headline a little) Speaking of **** papers, the sun has Dier going to Bayern Munich with the headline - Spurs Dier Blitzkrieg From Filthy Foriegn Hun Interstingly enough, both papers have the same front page of - ****y Corbyn killed Bambi
People have been saying teams have bought titles for a long time: people were saying it about Blackburn over twenty years ago, people were saying it when Fulham bought their way up the leagues to get into the Premier League, and the only reason people didn't say it about Newcastle was less because of that "everyone's second club" bollocks and more because they bottled the title in spectacular fashion.
City spending £370m in 13 months (so far) has made chelsea from the early 2000s look like they slowly built a winning team on a shoe string budget!
"The Daily Express are spreading false rumours by starting a fake news story that Barcelona are making a move for Tottenham 21-year-old (22 next April) England midfielder Dele Alli. The Daily Express call it an EXCLUSIVE, it's an exclusive because it is made up! When it comes to news stories from Spain, the man to turn to is Spanish-based journalist and Spurs fan Andrew Gaffney. His response to the Dele Alli exclusive? please log in to view this image Andrew Gaffney @GaffneyVLC 11h11 hours ago Andrew Gaffney Retweeted Neil Henderson But they haven't though." Hmm ...
The Independent's Miguel Delaney and Jack Pitt-Brooke have collaborated to produce this load of old bollocks........ http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/...eth-bale-ivan-perisic-tottenham-a7881526.html United probably are interested. However a week after reporting that "Eric Dier's not for sale at any price" to the same United, trolling out that "every player has a price under Daniel Levy", is just not going to wash now, is it boys?
Rare footage of the moment where yet another journalist decides our entire squad shuld be playing for Man Utd...
Interesting words from Ian Wright ... <quote> If I’m Daniel Levy, I’m doing every single thing I can to see if I can get him back to Spurs,” Wright told BBC Radio 5 live. “You say it’s not going to happen, but they have not signed anyone, suppose they just went bang [and got Bale]. “You can speak to Gareth Bale and say to him, ‘Listen, you have got three Champions Leagues, what are you going to do at Man United, win another Champions League? Why don’t you come here, take us to the next level?’” </quote> Of course get Real Madrid won't let Bale go cheaply, and a big drop in his wages would be necessary, but the sales pitch is correct.