[Archived] Other Pl Happenings 2009/10

[thenodrog]

I would love to see ol saggy chops manage a club without moeny, I get sick of seeing transfer deadline day revolve around him like he is a master of free dealings or something.

Half way there beerwins. If they have money when he goes they haven't any when he leaves.

[G Somerset Rover]

I said it at the beginning of the season and il say it again. Arsenal need a top striker.

Chelsea & United have one but Arsenal dont.

Arsenal have one Hughesy. But he's called Van Persie and has been crocked for most of the season!

[Hughesy]

Arsenal have one Hughesy. But he's called Van Persie and has been crocked for most of the season!

Hes not in the same level as Drogba, Torres or Rooney....and he is more a midfielder playing upfront than an out and out striker

[Kelbo]

Hes not in the same level as Drogba, Torres or Rooney....and he is more a midfielder playing upfront than an out and out striker

Which is what Henry was, he played very wide for Arsenal!!

[Hughesy]

In my view they miss an out and out goalscorer - like Van Nistlerooy was, like Torres & Drogba are...

Newcastle have finally got shut of Geremi - big wages moved on for them there!

And Fulham have loaned Kamara to Celtic

[mellison24]

I think we should respect 'Arry. His motives are quite clear and are t'riffic! He ruined Bournemouth, West Ham, Southampton, Pompey......who's next? A club that damned well deserves it . Arrogant ****s

[LeftWinger]

Wasn’t sure where to post this – but did anyone see the end of Match of the Day 2 yesterday? They showed Jan Venegoor of Hesselink scoring in front of the Wolves fans, and one of them started jumping up and down behind the goal for a few seconds. It appears that he hadn’t realised it was Hull playing in gold and thought his own team had scored. Slightly embarrassing.

[they_think_its_all_rover]

Rumours over here that Cousin is off to Larissa and Phil Brown is in talks with SAF about taking Obertan on loan.

[den]

West Ham talking to Mido at Upton Park.

[Exiled_Rover]

Hes not in the same level as Drogba, Torres or Rooney....and he is more a midfielder playing upfront than an out and out striker

He's quality, just never fit.

[thenodrog]

Wasn’t sure where to post this – but did anyone see the end of Match of the Day 2 yesterday? They showed Jan Venegoor of Hesselink scoring in front of the Wolves fans, and one of them started jumping up and down behind the goal for a few seconds. It appears that he hadn’t realised it was Hull playing in gold and thought his own team had scored. Slightly embarrassing.

More like he just ended up with a ticket in the wrong end.

[Bobby G]

Man City so lucky to miss on Gago. Ive watched him at least 10 different times and he is one of the most over-rated and poorest midfielders I have ever seen. So out of his depth at Real. I wouldnt pay 2 million for him.

[The Rover of Finland]

Keane on loan to Celtic. Spurs has every chance to reach top4 and they out loan one their best players. Very surprising. I bet Defoe or Crouch gets injured next game.

[DE.]

The Sunderland/Stoke game was as bad as anything served up at Ewood this season. An awful match featuring two fairly awful teams. Draw was the best result for us, regardless.

[jim mk2]

From the FT.

Football showed signs that it might be entering a recession on Monday when the January transfer window closed – having generated barely a fifth of the level of spending achieved last year.

A smattering of final-day deals pushed total gross spending up to about £40m, well down on 2009's £190m. Several clubs opted for loan deals to inject fresh blood into their squads, although Manchester City, the Premier League big spenders owned by the Abu Dhabi royal family, paid around £7m for Adam Johnson, the Middlesbrough winger.

Geoff Mersher of KPMG, the accountants, said: "Whilst the UK has just recently exited recession, it appears that football may just be entering it."

[Guest Kamy100]

In the long run this is good for Rovers. Generally speaking Rovers are a very well run club with debt levels which are very manageable. There are many Premier League clubs who have extremely bad debt levels and are now starting to get into trouble, this should lead to well run clubs like Rovers being able to compete in the transfer market as transfer fees etc are all re-calabirated to reflect the market conditions.

[philipl]

I agree Kamy, there is a "football recession" coming and those clubs operating right at the edge and not maintaing wage controls are going to suffer enormously.

Neither Hull nor Pompey have shifted the players out they needed to and so have the double whammy of wage bills far in excess of anything their income can support and not enough transfer money in to keep them out of trouble.

Speaking to a senior football administrator (not at Rovers), he blamed the slowness of the transfer market this January on the following:

- clubs with money to spend had been burnt by the predatory antics of Chelsea and City in the past so they waited for those two clubs to do their business and apart from the Johnson move (which burnt a number of clubs who had wanted him), nothing happened.

- Chelsea and City had very noisily been doing a lot of scouting so a large number of players and their agents had Chelsea/City wage levels in their eyes when any PL club were in talks.

- everybody knew Pompey and Hull have serious troubles (and West Ham did have) so they were waiting for the bargain basement floodgates to open up. In reality, those clubs have chosen to flirt with insolvency rather than give players away but the agents of players at those clubs saw a chance to move transfer fees not being paid into their players' pockets and so screwed the deals. He is of the opinion that one or two players whose wages are not being paid deserve to lose the lot.

- with many clubs being financed by debt, there was a total refusal on the part of lenders to up their exposure to football clubs and in fact the pressure now is to get football debt dramatically reduced. All financiers have read about the Fair Trading pressure on Sky to open up their packages and they know that is going to feed through to lower Sky money for the PL in the future.

- but the crunch is that players and particularly agents' expectations are suddenly totally misaligned with what is possible. Players are screwing up by listening to wide boys who promise they know how to negotiate the "right package" with the result that deals cannot be done quickly any more. With everybody waiting until the last moment to see how the window was going, the complications of multiple agents just strangled the whole thing and in many ways prevented the message about the new reality of life in the PL reaching their clients; the players.

- the final reason he gave is a funny- Harry Redknapp was too busy preparing for his Court case!

[thenodrog]

I agree Kamy, there is a "football recession" coming and those clubs operating right at the edge and not maintaing wage controls are going to suffer enormously.

Neither Hull nor Pompey have shifted the players out they needed to and so have the double whammy of wage bills far in excess of anything their income can support and not enough transfer money in to keep them out of trouble.

Speaking to a senior football administrator (not at Rovers), he blamed the slowness of the transfer market this January on the following:

- clubs with money to spend had been burnt by the predatory antics of Chelsea and City in the past so they waited for those two clubs to do their business and apart from the Johnson move (which burnt a number of clubs who had wanted him), nothing happened.

- Chelsea and City had very noisily been doing a lot of scouting so a large number of players and their agents had Chelsea/City wage levels in their eyes when any PL club were in talks.

- everybody knew Pompey and Hull have serious troubles (and West Ham did have) so they were waiting for the bargain basement floodgates to open up. In reality, those clubs have chosen to flirt with insolvency rather than give players away but the agents of players at those clubs saw a chance to move transfer fees not being paid into their players' pockets and so screwed the deals. He is of the opinion that one or two players whose wages are not being paid deserve to lose the lot.

- with many clubs being financed by debt, there was a total refusal on the part of lenders to up their exposure to football clubs and in fact the pressure now is to get football debt dramatically reduced. All financiers have read about the Fair Trading pressure on Sky to open up their packages and they know that is going to feed through to lower Sky money for the PL in the future.

- but the crunch is that players and particularly agents' expectations are suddenly totally misaligned with what is possible. Players are screwing up by listening to wide boys who promise they know how to negotiate the "right package" with the result that deals cannot be done quickly any more. With everybody waiting until the last moment to see how the window was going, the complications of multiple agents just strangled the whole thing and in many ways prevented the message about the new reality of life in the PL reaching their clients; the players.

- the final reason he gave is a funny- Harry Redknapp was too busy preparing for his Court case!

I'd concur with most of that. There is a cold wind blowing through football. It will result in casualties in bothe clubs and players. The Rooneys and Drogba's will still earn fabulous amounts but the majority of 'ordinary' Prem players might just struggle to maintain their current income in the future creating a wide salary gap within every club.

But for the Yeung money coming into Brum who wouild be willing and able to pay 32 year old Benny Mac close to £10m over the next 3 years?

[they_think_its_all_rover]

Steve Bruce does my head in!

Forever tapping players up and now he's trying to break the rules in an innocent manner. From the BBC:

Sunderland manager Steve Bruce is hoping to complete the signing of Benjani from Manchester City despite missing the transfer deadline.

Bruce blamed technical problems for the required paperwork not being processed before Monday's 1700 GMT cut-off.

"We had huge, huge difficulties with email and faxes so we hope a little commonsense prevails," said Bruce.

What a load of bs! I hope another manager jokingly comes along and states; "Oh, Yeah, we had fax and Email problems too"

difficulties with Emails? how??? either everyone in Sunderland is computer illiterate or they still only have dial-up

[they_think_its_all_rover]

I agree Kamy, there is a "football recession" coming and those clubs operating right at the edge and not maintaing wage controls are going to suffer enormously.

Neither Hull nor Pompey have shifted the players out they needed to and so have the double whammy of wage bills far in excess of anything their income can support and not enough transfer money in to keep them out of trouble.

Speaking to a senior football administrator (not at Rovers), he blamed the slowness of the transfer market this January on the following:

- clubs with money to spend had been burnt by the predatory antics of Chelsea and City in the past so they waited for those two clubs to do their business and apart from the Johnson move (which burnt a number of clubs who had wanted him), nothing happened.

- Chelsea and City had very noisily been doing a lot of scouting so a large number of players and their agents had Chelsea/City wage levels in their eyes when any PL club were in talks.

- everybody knew Pompey and Hull have serious troubles (and West Ham did have) so they were waiting for the bargain basement floodgates to open up. In reality, those clubs have chosen to flirt with insolvency rather than give players away but the agents of players at those clubs saw a chance to move transfer fees not being paid into their players' pockets and so screwed the deals. He is of the opinion that one or two players whose wages are not being paid deserve to lose the lot.

- with many clubs being financed by debt, there was a total refusal on the part of lenders to up their exposure to football clubs and in fact the pressure now is to get football debt dramatically reduced. All financiers have read about the Fair Trading pressure on Sky to open up their packages and they know that is going to feed through to lower Sky money for the PL in the future.

- but the crunch is that players and particularly agents' expectations are suddenly totally misaligned with what is possible. Players are screwing up by listening to wide boys who promise they know how to negotiate the "right package" with the result that deals cannot be done quickly any more. With everybody waiting until the last moment to see how the window was going, the complications of multiple agents just strangled the whole thing and in many ways prevented the message about the new reality of life in the PL reaching their clients; the players.

- the final reason he gave is a funny- Harry Redknapp was too busy preparing for his Court case!

From what I can gather locally, the media have gone OTT on Hull City's financial state. It'll be a rough ride if relegated, but the finances aren't THAT bad, otherwise Zaki wouldn't have been brought in for a £500k loan fee, nor would the club have turned down a £5million offer for Hunt.

It seems all the TV money e.t.c. has been spent, but the owner is putting in his own cash now to keep the books balanced til the summer when approx 8 players are out of contract and more TV money comes in. But as I said, all that depends on Prem survival. In the CCC, it's sell all the best players to make up for lost TV money.

[ffan]

Transfer Window 2010 (in my opinion):

Biggest Winners:

Bolton - Two outstanding attacking young players in on loan for nominal fees.

Fulham - 12 million for Smalling, outlay of less than a million for loan signings. Hopefully started the journey to becoming self sufficient.

Blackburn - A healthy profit of over 1.5 million with the sale of McCharty. Basturk and Lingazini will be interesting signings.

Aston Villa - No incomings but got over 3 million in transfer fees fr players out.

Biggest Losers:

Hull - Bought a disruptive player in Zaki. Have taken a risk by not accepting 5 million for Hunt. If they go down they will be lucky to get three million.

Sunderland - So many deals lined up by Bruce fell through.

Tottenham - Secured Gudjohnson and let go of Keane. Poor business in my opinion. Resigned Kaboul, not a great player by any means. Missed out on Begovic and James.

Man City - Failed in their last minute bid for McDonald Mariga due to work permit problems. Failed in their bids for Cordoba, Cassano and Gago. Signed Vieira despite him failing a medical. Barely got the Adam Johnson deal done.

[Grabbi Graeme]

Steve Bruce does my head in!

Forever tapping players up and now he's trying to break the rules in an innocent manner. From the BBC:

Sunderland manager Steve Bruce is hoping to complete the signing of Benjani from Manchester City despite missing the transfer deadline.

Bruce blamed technical problems for the required paperwork not being processed before Monday's 1700 GMT cut-off.

"We had huge, huge difficulties with email and faxes so we hope a little commonsense prevails," said Bruce.

What a load of bs! I hope another manager jokingly comes along and states; "Oh, Yeah, we had fax and Email problems too"

difficulties with Emails? how??? either everyone in Sunderland is computer illiterate or they still only have dial-up

Premier League have confirmed Bejani's move on loan from Man City to Sunderland

[thenodrog]

Steve Bruce does my head in!

Forever tapping players up and now he's trying to break the rules in an innocent manner. From the BBC:

Sunderland manager Steve Bruce is hoping to complete the signing of Benjani from Manchester City despite missing the transfer deadline.

Bruce blamed technical problems for the required paperwork not being processed before Monday's 1700 GMT cut-off.

"We had huge, huge difficulties with email and faxes so we hope a little commonsense prevails," said Bruce.

What a load of bs! I hope another manager jokingly comes along and states; "Oh, Yeah, we had fax and Email problems too"

difficulties with Emails? how??? either everyone in Sunderland is computer illiterate or they still only have dial-up

Bruce is looking like an increasingly haunted man at present. Without Bent and to a lesser extent Jones Sunderland would be right down at the bottom with Portsmouth and Burnley.

[Grabbi Graeme]

More bad news for Portsmouth, the Premier League are to hold back £2 million of Portsmouths January transfer revenue to cover club debts, which include money owed to Chelsea and Watford.

[thenodrog]

More bad news for Portsmouth, the Premier League are to hold back £2 million of Portsmouths January transfer revenue to cover club debts, which include money owed to Chelsea and Watford.

How does that work?