Brand new modern fitba 2018-19 thread!! SEE YOU!!

And I've only watched a couple of England games and bits of USA-France. Not gonna bother watching the final.

 

Ayoze Perez to Lester for £30m. Benitez obviously smelled it coming.

 

Holland will get mullered. They are clueless.

 

We all know you're a Benitez fan but it doesn't take a special nose to smell foul odors emitting from there.

 

Oh for sure, but the minute he wasn't signing a new contract you could have opened odds on Newcastles best players going to other clubs. It was just that obvious.

It's not like Rafa left and FCB said "Fuck it I'll sell some players".

Total inverse in fact.

Also.......Perez for £5m less than Salah. OK.

FCB is a cunt but he isn't half good at making money.

€3m EURO. 5 years ago. Turned down interest from big clubs. Top clubs.Sold for £30m STG

That's literally a 1500% return on the initial sum. Try getting that rate of interest off any bank.

 

He'll gut them now. He'll make another £100m on player sales and still try to sell it for £300m.

Or, they will go down, he'll nab the parachute payments, bring a Benitez-Saviour type, and try to bounce back in a Season and then sell them as "Championship Winners" full of mad new players going places.

Pump and Dump and Pump and........if he was a laywer he'd be barred for champerty .

 

I wonder if Celtic might've wooed Benitez if hed left n'cassle a month or two earlier, there was talk of it

 

He went to China so I think he's looking to cash in before he bows out.

 

Fairplay

 

Yeah I think it's about $$$ for him and let's face it, Celtic would be another case of "Oh you signed him for X let's sell him for 10X, a haba haba"

Rapacity runs deep.

Speaking of RapaCITY .........broke their own transfer record again.

 

At least Celtic has the excuse of having a forced hand ... they play in Scotland and have to operate (as in win every year domestically and fill a massive ground) on 1/50 the payroll of even a shite EPL club so they have no choice but to be a selling club in today's fucked world

Newcastle? Absolutely no excuse... EPL money, huge resources, big ground, huge support... they aren't Huddersfield... they have the means and the infrastructure to be a major club in today's market ... the ownership simply chooses not to be

 

Think that's an excellent signing. He will suit Leicester's style of play.

 

Oh I am not saying it is bad merely alluding to the incredible markup FCB got on it.

 

I agree but Newcastle is an exceptionally badly run club and well run business.

For me, when you study it, Celtic have had the makings of an ATG side in the past few years but external forces and internal greed have withered it away. There's a relationship between the two of course.

If the external forces weren't so strong, the need to cash in would probably be resistible.

 

Celtic would need to win the SPL like 35 times to make the same revenue Huddersfield pulled in this year ...

 

There's "Celtics" all over Europe ... clubs with huge histories that are strictly minor league now... Anderlecht, obviously Rangers (though certainly many of their wounds were self inflicted), Dynamo Kyiv, Rapid, Feyenoord, Club Brugge, etc.

There's historically big clubs in big money leagues that are permanently stuck in also-ran status like Monchengladbach for example because they were in a weak competitive position when the Bosman ruling exploded football and have never really caught up

Then there are the clubs like the big three in Portugal... one of them is strong enough to occasionally upset the apple cart a little... the other two are just prestigious names that no longer actually represent elite quality, their colors simply recall it

Celtic looks like a big club on match days, especially higher profile ones... the kit is still iconic, the crowd vast and passionate... but the balance sheet tells a much different story

 

Yes but Huddersfield NEVER had the players Celtic had. Celtic could have won the European Cup with those players.

Obviously, it was never on the cards, external forces too strong. But Celtic must have a better scouting system than the big boys, cos they paid fuck all for guys like Dembele, Wanyama and VVD.

How Celtic could have lined up if they hadn't sold their best players

 

They would've needed to hold on to those players for years ... how? With what money?

 

They weren't ever going to keep them. I was just making the point, I can't think of a club- apart from Lyon or Valencia, through whose doors such talent has passed in recent years.

Whoever is scouting knows their stuff.

 

Exfufuckingactly.

We've been making the same points over and over again. Good management, scouting, development etc. don't matter a whole lot when your direct competitors can outright buy your best talent. It simultaneously strengthens their side and weaken the opponent.

 

Yeah but I never said otherwise. The point I am making is that Celtic seem inordinately good at spotting these guys.

It's not like Norwich signed 40 All-Stars in the past 10 years or anything.

Seems Celtic are just very very good at getting these guys.

 

We were good at it under lennon, rodgers scout was utter shite.

 

England 1-2 Sweden so far.

Entertaining but shocking defending.

Stuck £2 on England at 2-0 down. I have such good instincts but never trust myself.

2-2!!!

My £2 is paying dividends!!!

 

Here we go. VAR.

 

Ah FFS.......if that's hand ball then we might as well all pack it in.

 

FACKING ROBREE GAVNAH!

 

Celtic very recently entered the 'enterprise value' Top 30 of European football clubs (€255m)

 

But even that means little... look at that number... compare it with the top 5, hell the top 20... no real comparison at all

 

Exactly true.
It just illustrates and mirrors what you said earlier - value-wise, Celtic are there with your classic 'names' - SL Benfica, AFC Ajax, SS Lazio, etc.

I'd actually expecter Celtic to be in the Top 20.

 

Not even top 30 by renenue. In fact we've fallen to pulling in little more than half the revenue of the 20th club