Men's Soccer (Football) Thread [ARCHIVED] Soccer • Page 1731

Arsenal about to get gazumped

 

that's a blast from the past

 

Hard to tell cause you have someone else saying “He wants Arsenal and only Arsenal” so who knows.

I’m hopeful considering how desperate he seems to sign for us, plus if you have the choice of the two clubs right now, you 100% choose us.

 

Darijo Srna, that's a name I haven't read in a long time!

Sol Campbell will always be Judas and unfortunately will never be respected due to his opinions and off the field behavior.

My take on Conte is that he is not going to accept being a strawman for Levy and ENIC. If you hire a manager who is a mercenary, known for only staying 3-4 years or less, but known for winning trophies with a proven track record; you need to follow what they say. Conte was not brought to develop youth or find diamonds in the rough. Conte was hired to be backed to win a trophy. The guy has not been backed by Levy and ENIC. Rodrigo and Deki were lucky signings at the end of a January window. We over negotiated for Djed Spence and then did nothing about glaring weaknesses at RWB, CB, or Attack.

 

Absolutely. I think the fear is that Chelsea seem to have forgotten the value of money and are throwing insane fees all over the place. Could see Arsenals bid getting blown out of the water and Chelsea putting a wage package together which makes it hard to turn down despite sporting preference.

 

I do wonder what happens when Chelsea calm down a bit. Boehly committed 1.75 billion to improving the club when he bought it. That can't all be for transfers. Looking at what they spent in the summer, this Jan and committed for next summer they're up to 500 million spent. Will all of that money just go on transfers?

Also for all the talk of them setting up a recruitment team, their approach still seems completely scattergun.

 

Chelsea need a new stadium more than anything else. They have on the field issues at the moment, sure, but they need a new stadium and off-field roles sorting more than anything I think.

 

I had forgotten all about him what with us making top 4 with legendary striker *checks notes* Chris Wood

 

Delaney is a joker but wtf is that price

 

I think this is a bit of revisionist history.

We’ve had two windows since Conte was hired. In January we bought two players that Paratici was very familiar with, I wouldn’t say they were lucky signings. They both became starters almost instantly and are still hugely important players for us now. The fact that they weren’t expensive doesn’t make it lucky. And either way, getting two starters in a January window is a great window regardless.

The summer window, we did our business early, just like Conte wanted. And Conte praised the work the club had done and said multiple times he was happy with the window. And you say we didn’t address CB, attack, or RWB. Well, with CB, our top two targets were Bastoni and Gvardiol. Neither player moved despite multiple clubs trying for each. It wasn’t just us. So we moved on to plan C which was a low-risk loan for Lenglet who has actually been pretty good. Next summer, we can try for one of our top targets again.

For an attacker, we signed Richarlison. A great player. An expensive player. And if you want to talk about attacking midfielder specifically, we were linked to Maddison, but reports indicated Conte did not want him.

For RWB, yeah, we probably should’ve done better. But I don’t get the criticism for the Spence deal now. Fans complain that we don’t pay the little extra to get deals done, we finally do it to get Spence, now it’s an overpay we shouldn’t have done. If we would’ve let another club get him the fans would be singing a different tune about that. I get the concern that he’s maybe too young, but he honestly hasn’t even been given a chance. There are several examples of players his age making an impact for teams near the top of the table. He deserves a chance. Also, in order to bring in another RWB, we needed to sell one of Doherty or Emerson. One was injured and the other no one wanted.

My gripe with Conte is that when the season started he was happy. We had a summer transfer window that was universally praised, and praised by him as well. We started out in good form. All was well. But as soon as we go on a bad run, he runs to the media and complains. He spews out contradicting statements. He tells the club to show commitment towards his plans while refusing to ever fully commit to the club. He preaches that it’ll take multiple windows to build the team he wants. Well, it’s only been two windows and the club has invested in both. So what’s the problem?

 

Both are at fault honestly.

Conte’s system is too rigid. there’s no flexibility. If his one strategy doesn’t work, we’re shit. There’s no changing it, the only time we score is when we’re down and our players decide they have to scramble and get a fire under their ass.

we could’ve done better bringing players in as well. It’s just a bad marriage at this point. Spurs don’t want to spend too much on players that only fit Conte’s system. Conte doesn’t want to commit because they aren’t getting exact pieces to fit his system.

 

For 88m they can have him lol.

No transfer over £70m has ever been worth it.

 

Yeah, I honestly would be happier if we were able to get in another CM to rotate with Partey if needed, and another CF to challenge with that money.

I'm happy for Chelsea to bleed out hundreds of millions in this scatter gun approach to come sixth lol.

 

Also how the fuck are Chelsea spending £250m in the summer and £250m in January.

Absolutely crazy numbers that cannot be financially legal.

 

Richarlison is not worthy of starting at spurs. He's a rotation option at best unless we play a different system. He's not better than Kane, Deki, or Son for how we play. He carried Everton but that was a very different situation.

If Levy and ENIC were willing to break the wage structure, 1 of Bastoni, Josko, or De Vrij would be in a spurs shirt. No different than willian, eden hazard, etc in the past.

When you hire someone like Conte you are at their mercy. He is never going to come off as the loser here. At best he was/is going to be our manager for ~4 years and leave after winning 1+ trophies. That is if he was supported financially. It is clear he has not gotten the players he wanted. His track record is too good if he gets his players.

It's low risk for Levy, easy to place blame on "hot headed" mercenary manager Conte. Same deal with Mourinho. Going from Mourinho to Nuno to Conte says it all.

 

Rafael Leao is so insanely good.

 

He’s struggling to beat teams we should be beating regardless if we’re spending huge amounts of money on “his players”. Yeah, the club isn’t blameless, but neither is he. All I want is for him to take an ounce of responsibility and stop putting the club in a bad spot every time we lose a match.

 

United are apparently looking to sign Jack Butland as third keeper. Now there's a name I've not heard in a long time

 

This was in part the ref pissing around a hell of a lot. The first half was just ridiculous with pointless stoppages for nothing yellow cards. Given the number of cards, you'd think both teams had spent the whole game kicking the shit out of each other. It only really got fiery at the end and that was mostly Arteta and (weirdly) Lascelles, who wasn't even on the field.

 

Honestly, i don’t blame Newcastle for playing how they did, especially when they realised the referee was out of his depth. But it does make me think the World Cup stoppage time rule should be brought in.

 

Fucking hell(sea)

 

I fucking hate Chelsea. I almost forgot how much because it was hilarious watching them almost get dissolved, but they ruined football before and they’re going to do it again. First it was Russian blood money and now it’s American ultra-capitalsm.

That said, I do wonder if they might be the club UEFA actually make an example of due to how aggressively they pissing other clubs off. Besides, how can you be prepared to spend like 3/4 of a billion pounds in SIX MONTHS.