Calderon's Super Duper League + Transfer Snooze

Good lord… I think I might have drank a bit too much last night celebrating my independence from something or another.

You know it’s a bad night when you wake up on the living room floor in the middle of the night with a pair of traffic cones and a Scooby Doo comic book. Fortunately, it’s a Sunday and that almost always means little or no news. I guess I get off light today! I need it.

First up, Real Madrid president Florentino Perez has expressed his interest in revisiting the “Super League” idea: wherein basically the G-18 would play each other in a special, extra competition. I think of it as sort of a “39th game on steroids.”

I’d like to think that something like this would never happen but when it comes to money and big clubs you just never know so, lets take a second and see just how stupid this idea is.

First, the best clubs in the world already play each other in the Champions League. I know he says that they don’t, but it’s not true. Last year Arsenal played Porto, Fener, Roma, Villareal and Man U in the Champions League. Now, I’m not sure who Perez would include in his little circle jerk of “top clubs” but those are top clubs in their respective divisions. In fact, if you look at the history of the Champions League Finals, it’s almost always 2 clubs from the G-18. So, it’s a lie that the world’s top clubs don’t play each other. What’s really going on is that Real Madrid have been dumped out of the Champions League in the first knockout round 5 years in a row now and haven’t gotten past the second round since they won all the way back in 2001. They are just sore losers.

Second, we don’t need more games because more games means deeper squads. Thus, only clubs that are engaged in financial doping would be able to afford the squad needed to engage in such a system. So basically it would be a “super league” of Chelsea, Man U, Real Madrid, and Manchester City. That would be a lot of fun, wouldn’t it?

Speaking of Man City and buying trophies, Martin Petrov figgers that City could be “as good as” Arsenal. Here’s the thing about that… no chance. I’m not saying they won’t be able to buy a few big names and gather a team of some of the world’s most expensive talent and hell, they might even be able to parley that into a top 4 finish or even a few trophies. But they need about 20 years of challenging for the top of the league to be “as good as” Arsenal. Besides which, it’s temporary, this spending, just look at Chelsea — biggest paychecks in the league, biggest transfers in the league, a BILLION U.S. dollars spent, and all they won was two Premier Leagues and two FA Cups.

And now, as the sun’s setting on Chelsea and the glimmer of gold is shining at Real Madrid and Man Citeh, Chelsea’s having a devil of a time holding on to their current squad of mercenaries, much less attracting top talent like Ribery.  That seems to be the cycle at these clubs; throwing tons of money around gets temporary success, followed by years of mediocrity.

Enjoy it while you can, City supporters.

Transfer Snooze

Evidently, the Alsacian army is storming across Belgium picking up want away players left and right. After signing Tommy Vermaelen, Arsenal are now being begged to snap up Eden Hazard, by none other than Eden Hazard himself. We’re pretty full of attacking options on this team, and he’s a bit young and raw, so I’m not sure we really need him. Which means he’s almost certainly going to be unveiled as the newest Arsenal signing on Monday, right?

Right… Arsene will unveil him right after we send Adebayor to AC Milan for £20m plus Flamini. Wait, £20m PLUS a player for Adebayor? Something doesn’t add up. See, I put Adebayor’s value at around £15m and rumor has it that Flamini has a huge annual salary, one that we didn’t want to pay and that now AC Milan doesn’t really want to pay either. So, if you take Adebayor’s £20m and SUBTRACT the inflation on Flamini’s contract I bet this drags Adebayor’s value down to the £15m range!

Perfect! So this too is a done deal, right?

0 comments

  1. I agree about Citeh and Chelsea Tim, but for different reasons and that’s due to their management. Chelsea had their most successful spell when Mourinho was manager for more than a season. Aside form being very intelligent about the theory of football, he also brought stability because the players at the time knew he was there to stay for a bit. However, every season at Chelsea is a new manager who just cannot settle a team built by Mourinho. The new managers have no time to build their own team and with times as they are financially, cannot buy players they want in the droves like Jose did upon his arrival. Ranieri built the spine of the team, Mourinho made it better. In regards to Citeh – Mark Hughes just isn’t the manager to make their dreams come true. He has very little experience and just isn’t tactically astute if you ask me. He won most of his home games but when you cannot buy an away win then you just have no idea how to work outside of your comfort zone as a manager, which is a mark of a good manager.

    As for Ade, your evalution doesn’t equal Arsenal’s evaluation. As I’ve said before, a player is worth whatever someone is willing to pay for them and Milan and Chelsea were considering 25M, so Ade is worth 25M.

    1. @WC, I agree about the stability in management being key. Look at Man U and Arsenal, they’ve been up and down but they just keep plugging away with the same manager and results eventually come.

      As for Adebayor’s valuation, I would go a step further and say his valuation is only what someone has actually paid for him. Your 25m number is just something some “reporter” made up or some official from Milan told the press that they offered, we don’t know how much was actually offered or even if there was a firm offer. If they can make shiat up so can I.

      Adebayor’s worth £15m to me. Hell, if we were buying him I’s be surprised if we paid more than £10m. Is he worth more than Arshavin?

      Nope.

  2. I like the idea of flamini for Ade with offset money I like how he played with cesc and is versatile

    1. @Travis The Septopus, Only thing is that (as Tim already said) Milan pays him about 4 times what we were willing to pay him. Milan most likely want to dump him because he isn’t worth the ridiculous money that they pay him. Now if he were willing to renegotiate his contract, that might be another matter.

      1. @Alex, I agree but i was just speaking in talent terms I dont think Arsene would pay the same player he let transfer out more than he made before especially after a good but not stellar season at AC

  3. If perez gets his way. its only because Real Madrid pal’s with the FIFA P-Guy, “Blaster” and his sidekick the UEFA “Pantalon”. Both of them drool whenever Real Madrid’s name is mentioned. Super League, eh? Bullocks!

    Petrov seem to have caught a bout of “Blaster-ia”. In your dreams, Petrov.

    To reassure that ‘Fla-moni’ cunt, Arsene allowed Las-Diarra, the oblong head, to go to ‘Pots-mouth’. Flamini publicly stated that he was staying at Arsenal. Few weeks later, he strolls of to AC for free; Not even a return on all the money we spent on him to bring him up to par. His departure created a serious friction between the Board, Wenger and our former MD, Keith Edelman. It is part of the reason for which Keith was “sacked” (blamed for bungling Hleb & Flamini contract negotiations). The guy is “FLaming After MoNey”; no Arsenal loyalty. Arsene would never take him back, not after the circumstance of his departure; unless of course someone forces his hand. I wouldn’t take him back if he were the only midfielder left in the world. Let’s stop and ask ourselves for a minute… If he is so damn good as we Arsenal fans seem to swear he is, why does AC Milan want to shove him off after just one season?

    Anyway, I do not believe the Ade/Flamini rumour.

    1. Agreed, Flamoney is just not that good. He was a big reason for our flame out in the latter part of the season because he became too attacking and forced Cesc to play in a more defensive role, which is not Cesc’s forte.

      He probably did so to pad his stats so he could get the big money from Milan. I don’t see him as a true team player and he was not better than either Gilberto or Diarra.

      1. @CaribKid69, Agreed. Flamini won’t be back – especially not when we are linked with players like Melo and Cana who are, in my opinion anyway, better players. I still wonder why we haven’t given Veloso a look.

  4. I really find it laughable that City are thinking that they can join the pantheon of us, United, Chelsea, and Liverpool. Why? Because they have very little pulling power. They only reason why anyone would want to play for City is purely money, not ambition (as Barry puts it). You ask anyone whether they’d rather play for City or a big club like Barca, Arsenal, Man Utd, Chelsea, Real Madrid, etc. and unless they’re a born City supporter (and even then, it’s not a sure thing) and you’d never get City.

    It’s obviously been proven that huge injections of funds does not equal success and hence, pulling power.

    Also, does anyone think that the likes of Ronaldo, Kaka, Benzema, and Albiol are going to ruin their careers at Madrid? I highly doubt that a second Galacticos project would work. I mean, when Zidane, Figo, et al arrived at Madrid, they were already seasoned pros, whereas the likes of Benzema, Albiol, and to a lesser exent, Ronaldo are all young, hungry players. Kaka is really the only player I’d include in the previous Galacticos level.

  5. Josh, Arsenal have little pulling power beside Arsene Wenger and the Champions League. Most of the squad (the good half) joined us because of Wenger. If we lost Wenger and dropped to 5th, would any truly talented player want to play for us? I doubt it. Anyway, the Real Madrid project will work, mostly because Pellegrini is a bloody good manager, and Real Madrid already have a solid base to work from. Casillas, Ramos, Pepe, Lassie Diarra are all good players. In La Liga they were a decent side without having anyone able to do the spectacular. They’ve got the spectacular in spadefuls now. They won’t be well-knit enough to beat Barca next year, but they’ll give it a shake the year after.

    Tim, I think the most obvious defect of a super league is that you lose the rarity factor. The reason Champions League ties are compelling is because there’s that bit of the unknown about them. You don’t play Inter, Barca, Real Madrid every year, so when you’re drawn against them, you don’t know for certain what’s going to happen. And you do get a bit of culture clash, especially Barca vs any English side. You’d lose all that if you have a standard 18 team league

    Anyway, the Champions League is already a source of financial doping. It took Chelsea 200 million in players (I think) to get from 4th/5th to 1st in England. It took them 100 million to cement their place in the top 4. Last year, Aston Villa had a team that could get 4th, but ran out of steam because they didn’t have the funds for a deeper squad. Once a Top 4 is locked in, the other teams in the league don’t have the funds to compete unless they have a rich benefactor.

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