I'll this in some context. The St. Louis Blues, ice hockey team in the NHL won the championship, the Stanley Cup, first time I believe in its 52 year history. I was a big ice hockey fan as a kid (Montreal). The city hates Stan.
an excerpt

https://www.stltoday.com/sports/columns ... e3fb5.html

BenFred: Sorry, Stan. This year has shown the world the truth about sports in St. Louis


A sign spotted during the Blues’ Stanley Cup championship parade made me smile.

“Stanley Cup > Stanley Kroenke!” A question that came days later made me pause.
I was asked when I would stop finding reasons to bring up Enos Stanley Kroenke.

Fair question. Perhaps I have been guilty of going to the Kroenke well too many times, of looking — hard — for reasons to write critically about the owner who ripped the Rams out of St. Louis and set his flamethrower to scorched-earth as he departed.

Some want to know why St. Louis is still mad, still suing the Rams and the NFL, still pursuing the personal seat license money that is owed, still connecting current events — like the Blues winning the Cup, for example — to the Rams returning to California.

Why don’t we just move on?

Sure, the relocation of the Rams was a long con greased by lies from the team and the league. But that is standard operating procedure from The Shield. St. Louis made its own mistakes by leaving open loopholes that could be exploited by an owner who wanted out. We went from becoming the Rams’ greener pasture to seeing them leave for one. Some see justice served, and there’s more truth to that than most like to admit.

The problem with this synopsis of the outcome is that it overlooks both the play-by-play and the parting blow. On their way out, Kroenke and the Rams painted an inaccurate and disparaging image of our sports scene. It was untrue and unnecessary. They told the world we were a declining sports market. Screamed it from the 29-page relocation application with lines that landed like repeated cheap shots after the bell:

• St. Louis is a market that will in all likelihood be unable to sustain three professional sports teams.

• The market lacks a robust regional area from which to draw individuals and corporations that are not already attending games and purchasing tickets.

• Compared to all other U.S. cities, St. Louis is struggling.

St. Louis has its problems. No disagreement there. But the suggestion that this region’s appetite for sports is anything other than ferocious is a farce.

That was the case in 2016, when the Rams tried to conjure up falsehoods to disguise a bad product that purposefully alienated fans. It is the case now, when the past year has debunked Kroenke’s false claims. That’s why I’m bringing up Enos today. Not to criticize him. To applaud the sports scene he criticized.

We are approaching the one-year anniversary of the 100th PGA Championship at Bellerive Country Club, a golf tournament that turned West County into a party. An estimated 550 million TV viewers across the world saw a course flooded with fans who were praised by players for their passion and enthusiasm. Before the event, golf experts questioned everything from the course to the climate. After it? A standing ovation, led by runner-up Tiger Woods.

I wonder if we could propose a cheeky Özil/bale loan swap, similar as we did with baptista/Reyes. Real can forget about a player Zidane doesn’t want and can try Özil for free. We get a packet wide man who would certainly contribute more than Özil

That story has the same credibility as many media reports and some of the stories online and in podcasts. Bernard, over to you. To disprove this you need to get Arsene on the forum to deny it. Tell us when he is coming on because I need to ask him about the Özil contract renewal, Mustafis purchase and a few other minor issues. No need to give him the heads up.

All I’d buy is the shirt. But with such a nice one I hope the shorts and socks look as stylish on the team.

Not the 'Brits', the English.

That's highly unlikely but still more likely than Özil to Palace.

The men’s side are defensive probably because they have no choice as the level of competition is far higher

There is some truth in that. But on balance, our best athletes that are suited to football don't play it. We talkeed about this many years ago and obviously it was not popular on here...lol...but if America committed to football, we'd be a top 5 power easily. We have 4 major sports professionally. Football, via the MLS is a blip. Ice Hockey, via the NHL, is more popular and that's a cold weather sport and seen as a Canadian sport by many but still is more popular from a fan point of view.

With America being estimated about 20 percent latin, one would think our football would be much better. We have a huge (350 million) and diverse population. Probably the most diverse globally, especially given our size.

The women's side offers some indication of what the men's side may be like if football was among the top 2 sports.

But our best athletes are going into American football, basketball, baseball and ice hockey. Even the athletes that would excel at football aren't going to pursue it as a professional. One big reason is money, the other is the other sports are more popular.

No Özil burnt his bridges with Real too,

I think we need to be pragmatic about some of these deadwood type players and just take peppercorn transfer fees to get them off our books.

Like accept 5-10 million for mhikitaryan or Mustafi

Just went to the bureau de change to get some Dollars for our holiday

Exchange rate was 1.22 to buy. I went to the US ten years ago and it was 2.05

*%^@ brexit, just *%^@ it. Anyone who thinks it’s a good idea is a moron of the highest order.

Matt Targett signing for Villa for £14m rising to £17m. No reason we couldn’t get more for Chambers. Let’s see

Sadly you may be right, the ridiculously high contracts these players are paid are crippling us.

Holiday in England instead. Clacton is not all that bad...

Looking forward to next week, to see what deals Emery finally made.

With Kroenke’s financial restrictions I think you should try and keep your expectations realistic.

The good thing about Emery is that he has experience building a competitive side with limited funds. I don't think Seville was awash with euros when he built those trophy winning sides. I'm guessing he has more money available than then, just a guess. It's not PSG by any stretch but the club has experience identifying good young talent, with the occasional misses. Which will invariably happen.

I am already wearied by all the media speculation about transfers, and it's not even July yet.

Yup, not hoping to hear fantastic news. Just hope he focuses on buying defensive strength, and give youth a chance next season. The report about a discouraged Beliek looking elsewhere is bad news.

Bayern Munich’s fans voted to make Serge Gnabry the club’s player of the season for 2018/19.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/fcbayern.c ... rge-gnabry

So we were waiting for good news and you give us this. Look Bernard if you’re not part of the solution...

That transfer was proper shady by Bayern and it’s just been roses all round for them. Arschlöcher...

Same here, i just see the headlines and don't bother reading the article

That is my hope with Emery. Season 1 is over. He had a full season to assess his players. He needs to build strongly now. Bring on the youth!

There is a story going round that Celtic have gone to Austria to play a few friendlies against local teams and Tierney has left their training camp to return to the UK.

Juve looking likely to get Rabiot on a free to go with Ramsey on a free.....and this list of past free transfers Fabio Cannavaro, Andrea Pirlo, Paul Pogba, Kingsley Coman, Sami Khedira and Dani Alves

Seen some reports saying we’re signing Yacine Brahimi from Porto on a free transfer. 29 year old Algerian winger

“Brahimi’s best attributes are his dribbling, his through balls and his passing, though he doesn’t provide anything much in the way of defensive contribution. His finishing is also a bit inconsistent, even if he’s on a great goalscoring run at the moment, with four goals in six games.”

lol @ new kit - pictures of Elneny in it (?!) and Mustafi looking miserable.

Is anyone really buying this?, seriously?, tell the club to f*ck off if you have any sense!.

One thing is for sure - our next kit deal wont be anywhere near as lucrative if we continue down the path KSE have set us on.

The excellent Swiss ramble has been doing some financial work and put it on Twitter.

I found the following chart of most interest. Just shows how few of our recent transfers work out

Hey guys, I saw this 15% off discount code for all Adidas gear at the Adidas online shop, including all new Arsenal gear.

https://discountcode.dailymail.co.uk/adidas

Might be worth it if any of you are buying shirts etc.

Cheers soc

Just ordered my new Zaha shirt

You've not gone for a Neymar one then?

No or Yacine Brahimi either. He’s the guy to transform our future

9 of those have left for a combined fee of £15m. It’s not just the buying we’re doing badly. For 3-5 years we were pretty much the perfect storm of a club doing literally everything wrong, from owner to boardroom, manager, tactics, players, transfers, contracts etc etc

That chart is what Americans call baloney. He has Čech down as maybe. As well as Sokratis. More inbuilt pessimism I fear. Debuchy was actually a very good signing until he got injured. Toreira is a maybe. !!!!!

I think sokratis and Torreira are decent signings.

Čech never really blew me away and was a big fee and wages for someone at the end of his career.

We paid 12 million for debuchy. No matter what happened in his first season he wasn’t a good financial signing

Your right

Basically we made 12 years of excuses for Gazidis and Wenger and now people want Emery booted after 12 months.

Were *%^@**, it’s so Brexit

Look at our board, vinai a numbers man

Sanelhi some exec clearly here for the money. We used to moan about hill wood but now we have zero custodians and we are all over the place.

We had an opportunity to appoint Overmars but chose Edu (probably because he was cheaper) . Fans are getting excited because he’s an ex player but he was hardly a senior

We are just going nowhere rapidly. Nobody is running the club anymore

Sky sports saying we’ve made a £40m bid for Zaha. No doubt it’ll be rejected and no doubt we’ll be criticised for coming in well under Palace’s value (which is absurdly high). I wouldn’t want us to go much higher than £40m for Zaha and certainly not at the expense of getting a top quality CB

Do you really want an ex-player on the board though? I've never really seen the sense in that. I get that an ex player might have some affection for the club but that really doesn't count for much. It's a multi-million pound industry. Players are very talented when it comes to kicking a ball and it stands to reason that some of them would excel at coaching the game. But being adept at the financial aspects of running a football club? There's no corelation there.

That isn't to say that the odd ex-player would not be good at it but not because of being an ex-player.

Wilfried Zaha's brother: "Given all Wilfried has given to Palace I hope they'll be able to see their way to agreeing a deal with Arsenal that allows Wilfried to realise his dream of playing European Football for the club he’s supported since childhood." (Source: SkySports)