americanscouser

you ever seen when Kobe Bryant met Lionel Messi? he's one of the 3 best basketball players in the world. everyone knows who he is, so it ain't like they are bowing to some no mark

it will all work out. but the key thing is that carroll hasn't been handed a place in the team, he has to earn it like everyone else. he'll either figure it out or he'll be replaced. we won't get 35 million for him, but we'd get something of value so it doesn't matter. he deserves a season in this team to prove himself. if at the end of the season he hasn't kicked on, then its worth a discussion

not to cause more worry, but if torres has a clause, my guess is pepe has a clause in his contract too. not good if true

if he is going to go anywhere, especially in the prem, i'm kind of happy its chelsea. they are on the downward slope.

i meant a direct parallel between baseball and football, but you are spot on about the mancs.

just a quick note. the red sox picking up gonzalez is in large part related to FSW's long spoken about desire/focus on youth development. gonzalez was acquired for 3 youth players and then signed to that massive contract. it is fairly common for top teams to sacrifice youth for established players but their scouting and youth development system goes a long ways towards financing these kinds of acquisitions. i don't think a direct parallel can be drawn but i can see us selling a lot of youngsters to fund transfer dealings in the future along with the ones that make it through.

He just finished writing his memoir.

i'm certainly not fawning either but to be fair the team has gotten better consistently over the past few years. they went in one direction, didn't succeed, they fired the coach and they've had crennel for a period of time and have been getting more successful as the team grew. the other part being left out is how, as you point out, you can get good quickly, but also how if you make a few wrong decisions you can be completely screwed for an extended period of time.

i'm not a lerner fan or anything, but you can't compare NFL football to proper football for the simple reasons of drafts, trades and a salary cap. they built the team from scratch through an expansion draft. imagine if liverpool were to start tomorrow as a club and they could only take the 18th best player from every team in the prem. how good would that team be? sports in the states in a salary cap environment is like sports nowhere else in the world. the salary cap structure for sport lends itself to parity in the league. money doesn't dictate the best team because each team has roughly the same amount.

its been reported here in the states that Villa have just signed American keeper Brad Guzan (the same fella they tried to sign in the january but who couldn't get a work permit). so that shuts the window that Carson could possibly go to villa.

because 10 million cash in hand right now is different from getting it over 3 years time. it still adds up to the same amount but if for example a club wanted more money up front for a player as opposed to it being in equal installments over a numbers years (to say pay off some debt or meet a creditors time limit?) then its a much different proposition to what you are suggesting. its certainly not the be all end all, but it can be an asset in certain situations.

don't think rafa is silly enough to spend all the money though. he'll leave a few quid lying around for the winter window just in case of injury etc. can't guarantee you can sell in january.

i think the value of the bid might be interesting. if they buy him for 16 million pounds, some would say that its a decent fee. but if the bid is for 12 million pounds, i'd be interested to know the structure of the payments. would rafa be willing to sell for less if it meant he got most of it up front with an eye towards putting that towards villa? i know nothing of course, but its an angle that bears looking at when it happens.

the day xabi goes will be a sad day for me as a fan of his. there are very few players i've seen in game today who can hit the types of longer passes that he does with the pace and accuracy he does it with. others have argued the merits of those qualities etc and i'm not here to argue them. i'm just speaking as an admirer of a very cultured footballer. and as someone who makes the most out of all the physical qualities (or lack thereof) that he has. in today's day an age of athlete "footballers", its refreshing to see someone who is slow, slightly unathletic etc able to play the game at such a high level because of the obvious quality of thought that he has but also the refined skill of being able to do pretty much whatever he wants with the ball at any given time. i just feel a tinge of sadness at seeing him go. all the above not withstanding, i go back to quotes by rafa, and most recently from torres, about how the premier league lacks tactics and is more about the physical attributes and lots of long balls. to me this seems like a transfer in 2 parts. barry for the league and xabi for the european games. i honestly think rafa would have kept both players. to me, if the villa rumours are true, i think rafa realized he had an opportunity to add a world class player to his team and the only way to do it was to sacrifice from the one area of strength in his squad to do it. in one sense rafa is being ruthless in that virtually no one is untouchable, but in the other i think if you had a quiet word with rafa and asked him if he wanted to sell, he'd probably say no. much like with momo, i'll now watch juve games on the tv with much more interest as i've always tended to follow our truly good ex players when they move on just to see how their games change or improve after they've left us. to date i think rafa has had a decent record of moving players out when he deems them surplus to requirements.

i think a formation with say masch, lucas and gerrard in the middle could easily be shaped more towards the chelsea version than the one we currently have been playing. we were surprisingly rigid in our formation with 2 holding players, though i think that was more to do with the fact that we pushed our one wing player very high up the pitch. if we played with stay at home fullbacks i could see the above formation being used, if we play with attacking ones, i could see us using 4-2-3-1 with kuyt tucking in and creating space out wide for an overlapping fullback. that fullback has been the thing missing from our team in our current system

i'll throw this out there, though its totally unsubstantiated. Zarate is an interesting option now that Birmingham have been relegated. it had be rumoured that Brum were looking to extend his loan a second year if they stayed up. if we could get him on loan for a season with an eye to a permanent transfer the next summer... just a thought.

its all fine and well to say that plessis wasn't very good today, but today was a massive difference to playing against arsenal. arsenal like to play football, it was almost a european type of match so it was easier for him to find a rhythm. today was his first game against a scrappy type of team. sure he wasn't great, but the lad has all of 2 first team games under his belt. how often has he trained with the first team? let's not write him off quite yet eh? with pennant, he's clearly capable of playing like today, you only need see games like the CL final. but he's not getting many regular games. worst case he's exactly the type of player we want in the squad. his mentality today was fantastic. rafa called out the players before the game and said if you want to stay, prove to me you are worth it. how many others on the pitch today can say that they answered the manager? skrtel, hyypia? i'd say the same with yossi. why sell? perfect squad player. the key is to buy first teamers and make players like pennant and yossi permanent squad players. good enough to do the job when called upon, even to start quite a few games in the case of injury but not necessarily your first choice if you are picking your first 11.

kroenke already owns approximately 10% of arsenal already.

and to take it a step further, all the debt for purchasing the club is actually on their KOP Holdings business. the only debt on the club right now is the money to start the stadium, working capital, and the money that was used to purchase torres, babel etc from the summer. think we all know its b******s and that the club will end up servicing that debt too etc, but that's how it played out.

supposedly bascombe just posted on TLW that he never meant to imply the protest was anti rafa and that its been changed in the online version of his report.

think this sums it up. carra always seems to overcompensate when he's played with a different partner than what he's used to. he still reads the game very well, but like yesterday, he seems to try and cover for everyone because he doesn't trust them at times. he should be fine once he's playing with agger. cohesion is important in a back 4

i don't think it says he's rolling his ownership in us under that umbrella, more that he's using that group to do some of the work for each of the clubs. if its a marketing agency it could well be that he's using it do sell the sponsorships for all those entities etc instead of hiring individual staffs to do it. just an example, but i do remember another article that said hicks was consolidating the ticketing and merchandising staffs of the stars and the rangers together because it made more economic sense to have them running everything with how the seasons ran timewise. plus its cheaper for him and makes him more on the bottom line. add in that the sports marketing portion of that business could easily be used to schedule our overseas trips during the summer etc and he's basically outsourcing parts of the clubs business to his other businesses.

i'm not on the defensive here, nationality or not. all of the past 2-3 days has been based on reading into comments made by all parties, most of which we've gotten from a press conference, a few newspaper articles and quotes from people that at times appear cryptic and others appear to be very clear. i've literaly pointed out that i think its dangerous what he's doing. Knox next time i'll make sure to type "winner" like so in quotations. rafa is clearly using the press to tell his side of the story. hicks, in a fit of petulance, decided to use the press to defend himself (regardless of whether it was right or wrong, although i think he's daft for doing what he did and the inaccuracy of some of what he said just made it worse). its been reported before that gillett and hicks were upset with the way rafa went off after athens. they all talked and things appeared sorted. now its happened again. they now appear upset about it again. all things reported about go betweens, lack of communication, parry in charge etc all point to the problems you rightly point out. but in the end G&H run the club. they may be stupid and not understand things, but that's not going to stop them from sacking him if they tire of it. in america the firing of managers/coaches happens quite often. its pretty rare here for coaches to go off about ownership in the press, and when they do most don't keep their jobs. since the owners are american, i'm not expecting their perspective on this to change just because the team is in England. if what is out there is true, then again its completely correct to characterize rafa as having his hands tied but it won't change the way he went about tellling them. i've mentioned this elsewhere but i'll mention it here, not only does there appear to be a communication issue going on, but i believe a sporting cultural issue as well.

why hasn't he yet then? he's obviously been extremely unhappy. so much so that he's now trying to win games for "his supporters", he just threw Rick Parry under a transit bus with his latest comments, and basically called the owners idiots for not understanding how the transfer market works. its not like its the first time either. Athens was a long time ago. so the undercurrent has been there for some time. if i read that all properly, it appears he's been lacking in support for quite some time. my point is simple, if any of us walk into work on monday and slag off our bosses multiple times in front of other employees, there is no question who is and isn't going to be there on tuesday, regardless of whether the beef is legitimate or not. rafa is playing a dangerous game with the ownership. if all this happened behind closed doors i don't think his job would be in jeopardy at any level. but the gamesmanship of using the press to air the laundry, and subsequently embarass the people he WORKS FOR, has seriously affected that relationship as well.

there will only be one winner in a war of words in the press. and no matter who you think is right or wrong in the matter, if rafa keeps yapping about it in the press, there is no doubt in my mind that he'll get the sack. and i think you'll find that NYR isn't being partonising at any level, more trying to "prevent" the above situation from happening by asking him to do it behind closed doors.