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?
