The parachute payments annoy me more than anything else in football. They're a joke, they've killed the chances of the likes of us, Donny, Millwall & co ever living the dream & having a run at promotion, I can't see another Blackpool happening anytime soon. Deals like Rhodes for £8m are wrong but what's even worse for me is that a club with average gates of around 12,000 can offer higher wages & take someone like Shackell from a club like Derby who average twice that. Same scenario with Leeds losing Varney to Blackburn. Football would be a lot better if they introduced a clause for all premiership players that they have to take a 50% wage cut if there team is relegated. This would be a much better system than parachute payments
There isn't any team in any league that will fine it easy Whitey. The parachute payments are the parachute payments and thats it but other clubs aren't going to be able to lose so much money now and that will get tighter to 3/5 million.
I like to see all English clubs do well in Europe Whitey, and all English or British sports people or teams do well on other groups.
Ye we got 3 in the semi's in either 08 or 09, that's what I'm getting at. United, Liverpool & Chelsea were all superb for that 5 or 6 year period & Arsenal had a couple of decent runs too. They might of got close but realistically Real under performed & Bayern took their foot off the gas in the 2nd leg IMO. Barring the Chelsea fluke we've not competed as well over the last few years, the main reason for this is poor defending. City in particular have been ripped apart.
How many of our fantastic teams, who are packed to the brim with foreigners, have actually won it Phil? And close to beating means jack-**** in a game of football.
http://www.transferleague.co.uk/premiership-transfers/chelsea-transfers.html You may find this interesting. Assuming the numbers quoted are correct, since the start of the Prem the stats for net transfer spending of the "big 3" are these: £295M - Man Utd £571M - Man City £633M - Chelsea So, Chelsea are twice as bad at killing English football as Man Utd.
Man Utd squad at the present time has cost them well over £300 million, I think with Mata it takes them to £340 million.
Sorry mate , I know you love him and all that , but he was not correct and he never will be about the Barnsley fans.
If only you were right (which you sometimes are!) but not this time For those who can't be bothered following the link these are the total (gross) spend figures over the same time period: Man Utd - £618M Man City - £806M Chelsea - £939M Chelsea coming close to spending £1 billion!!!!
You know football in England is seriously screwed when you see the Premier League teams spending millions in wages, while clubs like Darlington, Rushden & Diamonds and many others are folding because of small tax bills.
I like City upsetting those that thought they were creating the premier league in order for an elite few to be perched at the top for good. Fantastic fan base even before the money, to boot.
I think I know what you are getting at, but I find it abhorrent for a team to "buy" trophies to massage the egos of foreign investors (City / Chelsea) as opposed to Man United who have done it through organic growth (the right way, IMO). If anything they have been seriously hampered by the interest payments due to their foreign investors. Seriously, I don't get why so many people are so opposed to the Man Utd way of growing their business. If we could go back in time, and Barnsley had brought Ferguson in in the early 1980s, you never know, we could have been the team that people around the world envy/admire....and despise in equal measure.