https://soccer.nbcsports.com/2019/05/13 ... n-city/amp

The recommendation is for a ban on Man City in the Champions League. It would be some kick in the teeth. The cynic in me says it wouldn't happen.

Unless the new signing is another Beckenbauer, by 'temporarily' do you mean about five minutes? Because I don't think Sokratis or Holding are any better than second tier level, and these days Koscielny is quite some way below that.

My wife hates noisy football commentaries so much that she hid that opener at the back of one of our kitchen drawers! It was only rediscovered during a spring clean.

Agreed. We need a Maguire type and a ball-playing type.

I think it needs to be tempered with our other requirements. We desperately need a left back good enough to play a full season in a back four. We only play wing backs because Monreal is past it and Kolasinac can’t defend.

Desperately need a winger too as we just don’t create enough chances when we aren’t playing well. We need 3 players across the Side desperately so I’m alright with sokratis and Holding alongside a new player.

We also have Reiss Nelson. Martinelli I assume would be for the academy... I'd be happy with Nelson and Nketiah understudying Lacazette and Aubameyang.

Subotic would be a free agent as well if not mistaken. Reunite him with Sokratis?

What about one of the better defenders in the lower leagues?

Tom Bonner has yet to commit to Dartford for next season. He is better than Mustafi. One who played at the back for Arsenal as a youth was Isaac Hayden, who wants to leave Newcastle. I was always impressed with his game.

Ben Godfrey at Norwich is one to watch. Highly rated and a few clubs eyeing him.

Arsenal and Chelsea can name 12 substitutes for the Europa league final. So arsenal have requested Saka and Ameachi are pulled out of the England youth squads they are in. Neither likely to get on but if there are 12 subs then they could get a place on the bench - great experience to go to a European final as well

You're better than Mustafi omoh. But this Norwich guy then or I'm sure there are a few others. Even when we are playing clubs lower down the table its hard to see someone worse than Mustafi. Truly.

Tim Conway, star of the 'Carol Burnett Show,' dies at 85

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/05/14/ente ... index.html

Liked Tim Conway. So that's 3 celebrities now in less than a week. Peggy Lipton from Mod Squad passed away from cancer 11, May. Next Doris Day yesterday, now Tim Conway.
Peggy Lipton here with Paul McCartney before he married Linda and in Mid Sqad. RIP all 3.

Mate I suggest you search the internet for east European brides. They will allow you to play noisy football commentary. Just like the players at the club everyone is replaceable, it is just the cost that is the worry.

dear me Decaf ... Clinton who bombed the sh*&%*t out of Yugoslavia , was flying in tons of cocaine when governor of Arkansas , got blow jobs had sex with his staffer and lied before Congress about it

Bush Snr ... head of the CIA an organisation which has cost millions of lives worldwide , bombed the hell out of Iraq

They are better than a ...... Oooooh how awful ...... " a vicious narcistist " ...?


Peace prizes ... ? Kissinger who backed the Khymer Rouge , overthrew Allende creating a bloodbath in Chile .... got one .

Obama wiped Libya off the map , committed more troops to Afghanistan , destroyed Syria , armed ISIS , unseated a democratically elected govt in Ukraine ..... also got one

Why not Donald ... ?

Trump's major crime .... was beating the candidate the main stream media , their pundits , thought would win by an avalanche .

Trump isn't ideal by a long chalk but to bang on about him for forever and a day ; shows a lack of understanding of how sleazy , corrupt and underhand American politics really is .

Enough of the world affairs

Imagine if Liverpool lose the Euro to Spurs ...what would have been a fabulous season by any clubs standards , will be viewed as failure .

David Ornstein has said Arsenal’s budget without CL is £40m, 3 positions being targeted are CB, box to box CM and Lacey winger. Budget goes up with CL and I would assume with player sales.
Ornstein said next level of targets are LB, RB, striker

We must be freeing up close to £500k per week in wages with Czech, Ramsey, Welbeck, Lichtsteiner all leaving, that is the equivalent of purchasing Sokratis and his wages (£20m fee plus £5m wages per year)

40m is peanuts in today's market.

Djene Dakonam and Nkunku... maybe got enough for a left back. Hope so.

It is embarassing, less than many newly promoted clubs. It is basically one relatively top class finished article player but more a defensive one than anything attacking.

What I do not understand is whether it is purely down to Kroenke's parsimony or if wages and FFP are impacting us and hindering us whilst other clubs seem to be able to circumvent the rules.

There was some talk that January's inability to spend was linked to FFP and the PL's rule on wages etc rather than Kroenke tightening the purse strings.

I strongly suspect that FFP and the self-sustaining strategy are being used by the Kroenke ownership regime to not only avoid spending money on new players to improve the team, but to dampen fans' expectations that this might happen.

Hernandez, same club, left wing, mustard.

This may be the case but We pay Özil and Mhikitaryan 500k per week to stroll around the pitch pretending to be busy. We pay Čech 100k to sit on the bench until now. You’d have to assume that at some point these contracts would hit us at some point.

The real problem is that Gazidis and Wenger invested 100 million in 3 duff players (perez,Mustafi, Xhaka) and mishandled the Sanchez and Ramsey contracts so we wasted essentially 200 million in assets.

Imagine if you gave emery 200 million to spend? That’s 4 world class players and we wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place.

Liverpool have recruited really well from with the PL and lower leagues. I think we should do the same.

I think if there is truth to the Edu rumours then we may have a good inroad to the S.American market, hence the rumours of Martellli.

It’s our transfer dealings really. It’s the stuff zippy and bungle not a top tier football club. Scream at Kroenke all you want (he is a *%^@ I agree)

You could just go on and on

Letting Gnabry and Chesney go for peanuts and now at munich and Juve

So so many duff signings, Gabriel, el Nenny, Mustafi, Xhaka, Kolasinac

It’s the sort of stuff we used to laugh at Tottenham for doing

Kiwi, neither you or I is a saint. That does not make us morally equivalent to Hitler or Pol Pot. Similarly, just because the US has had some stinkers (Clinton was exceptionally sleazy, yes) that does not make Trump ok. He's worse. Its like having a chimp or an 8 year old kid with ADD in the oval office ... ... And a little tip. It doesn't help your argument when you try to throw in the kitchen sink: you need quality not quantity to win your case. Bush snr bombing Iraq? I thought that was a UN mandate because dear old Saddam had tried to pinch Kuwait. CIA some sort of axis of evil? Gaddaffi as a martyred saint? You are starting to sound like Chocolate Gooner.

Any, yes, time to move on .

Does all this become self defeating. If we let players go and not replace them or bring in cheaper players (wages) are we then hamstrung for the future.

What I mean is a bit difficult to explain. If we save 500K per week in wages but only get 3 players who earn 180K per week I am not sure what happens next year. I thought you were not allowed to increase wages more than 10% or some such figure the following year. So we could save 320K in wages this year because we can't bring anyone else in but then next year not be able to spend more than 198K on wages. Maybe I have got it all arseabout.

But then we would be heading for Everton territory

Now that Gazidis and Law are gone (Wenger too), let's hope the new team will do a better job in transfer dealings and contract negotiations.

I wonder if a cut-price Jean Michael Seri could be a worthy addition. We were very interested in him last year. Surely still a very good player despite struggling at Fulham?

I was just speaking to a Fulham fan actually who said that Chambers was their player of the year.

Started off badly at centre half but when he moved into midfield played very well.

I think Chambers deserve a chance to prove himself to Emery next season. We need to fill up the homegrown quota with Ramsey and Welbeck gone. Unless Chambers doesn't fancy being a squaddie and prefer to move...

I'm a fan of Holding. Ever since he bossed that cup final a few years ago, I always thought he had pretty good upside potential.

Just got an email from the Club offering me Final tickets on my standard Gold memberships. Doesn't look as though demand is that strong.

I'm not surprised. Everyone was moaning about how ridiculous a poxy 6,000 allocation was, but after a bit of delving for my own purposes, and a better understanding of the ridiculously high cost and no-accommodation cattle-class travel arrangements, I thought they'd struggle.

I'm watching Sky Sports and I can't believe this didn't make the short list for goal of the season.

It’s now offering tickets to red members for a cup final, unreal

I’ve never understood the % wage increase rule, I mean I understand the rule but don’t understand why it always gets mentioned with Arsenal when there is no way that Fulham for instance didn’t increase their yearly wages by more than 7% when they signed £100m worth of players last year. The same is true of Everton when they signed Rooney, siggurdson, Walcott, tosun, Mina, digne, no way are those players on less than 7% increase of the wages of the players they replaced.
What about clubs they may have a wage increase across the board for winning the league, staying up etc?
It must be nonsense and everyone is breaking it.
We always hear of bumper new contracts for players mid season, some of these alone may tip the overall 7%.
If you had 25 first team players on an average of £100k per week each, you only have to add £175k per week to topple over the 7%. That’s 2 players.....or it’s 1 player and 2 new contracts. Only 2 new contracts every year in a squad of 25. I just don’t get how it works.

Does it include bonuses ? I mean surely using bonuses rather than salary gets around the 7% thing effortlessly.

It smacks as an excuse of us simply committing too much money for too average players and trying to stop it

That's the impression I got from my Fulham supporting relatives. Terrible in defence (not fit to wear the shirt was their comment, and that was a Fulham shirt not an Arsenal one) but way better in midfield. Wasn't it you who put a dampener on the idea of Chambers in midfield from an away game somewhere, was it Southampton? I'm sure someone did.

Yeah I attended the game at st marys on New Year’s Day when he played in Holding midfield and was anonymous and abysmal

I don’t think he’s our level but hopefully we should get a decent fee for him

Nice thought but my Mrs. is on a long contract - over 43 years so far.

I did see a few of the extended highlights games (over 20 mins) for Fulham and I cannot recall him ever looking anywhere near EPL quality even when he was in the midfield. It would be another very risky move to try him in that position with our club. The lack of creativity and goal scoring from our midfield has not been solved for years and I think he is not the solution.