Sheikh Mansour,Owner of Mancity is worth 15 billion pounds (this is him alone not including all his family worth)
Roman Abramovich worth 7.5 billion
Alisher Usmanov worth 11.5 billion
We should be able to play with the big spenders
Sheikh Mansour,Owner of Mancity is worth 15 billion pounds (this is him alone not including all his family worth)
Roman Abramovich worth 7.5 billion
Alisher Usmanov worth 11.5 billion
We should be able to play with the big spenders
Reality is that Spurs do not have Champions league football next season
I think we've got to stop sucking the hairy balls of United on this subject. Their successes do not equate to the millions they spent on players. If that was the case, Blackburn could have strengthened accordingly in 1995 and not gotten relegated in 1999 (yes, you can say it was a succession of managerial cock-ups at Ewood that led to their demise, but the very limited transfer accumen they had is what I'm trying to highlight)Originally Posted by jelgoon
Fact is, United were spending big BEFORE they every won their first EPL title. However, because this was 'before football began' and before the inception of Sky Sports, the breakaway FA Barclaycard Premiership and the like, it's never heard of. It's conveniently swept under the carpet. We're all made to believe Man Utd did it the 'natural' way, which is untrue.
Formerly TMOKJ
What really irks me is the fact that we always point to this mental fragility that we have. It's plain as day, it's clear for all to see. Why do we suffer from this? It's not like we're getting mugged (literally) or violated and struggle to leave the house. We're on a football pitch, FFS. We're meant to be spurred on by defeat.
Yesterday, Chelsea, after offering next to nothing all game, equalised in the 89th minute having gone behind in the 82nd minute. Remarkable. It got me thinking, we haven't done anything of the like since Sampdoria in 1995. Going 3-1 down with barely a minute left in extra time and staring into the wilderness. Schwarz steps up and scores a free-kick and we go on to win the tie on penalties. From despair to joy within the short space of 10 minutes.
Who were we playing under on this great night of European football? Stewart Houston as caretaker boss. Has a comeback like yesterday's, or at Sampdoria in '95 ever happened under Wenger? I honestly can't remember one. Meaningless EPL games come to mind (equalising at Sunderland in injury time a few years back having gone a goal down in the 89th min)
We seem to be incapable of anything 'special' now. We have our excuses at the ready. The last 3 times an English team has won the Champions League against foreign opposition, they've either scored a late winner/equaliser (or both!) or come back from a massive deficit in 90 minutes of play. I honestly don't think we can do that....
Formerly TMOKJ
I agree with what you are saying but the point needs to be tempered with the fact that finishing bottom of the table in the professional leagues won't see you relegated from the league. This is why you see teams like the Oilers deliberately tanking towards the end of the season to get a better draft pick. That sucks too, but is easily fixed.
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A huge oversight in this thread. Chelsea were looking terrible some months back under AVB. The players wouldn't play for him and he couldn't control his players or get a performance out of them. Roberto di Matteo came in and turned it around without spending a penny. The same crop of players but they play differently. If money was the key factor AVB would have been celebrating with the Chelsea players on the pitch tonight.
I agree with Tipsychubbs and Ernesto on this one. Money has always been used to win titles and this is nothing new. My opinion, the billionaire owners have only raised the profile of mid table teams and bought them Champions League/ Elite club status. They're new money teams and have come up fast. Paid for admission but it doesn't guarantee a great performance. As seen yesterday. Two different managers, same team, different performance. Of course, Matteo would never be able to pull this off with West Brom and he's not a better manager than Wenger all of a sudden, you need a good team to win.
We have no business complaining about success being bought. For starters, we've beaten Chelsea and Man City this season but if we somehow managed to make it to the CL final, we'd lose. We've been in the Champions League for 15 years running and even at our best with the Invincble team we had a chance to get to the final and only had to beat Chelsea, a team we had already beaten 3 teams in previous meetings that season but we choked. We also choked against Barca in the final but that's no disgrace and we also fluffed our lines for a semi when threw it all away against Liverpool when Theo had that amazing assist. 15 years of competing and Wenger can't win it. It's not money. We compete in that competition every year and have seen our best players compete year after year but they choke. We've seen our best players choke in the UEFA Cup final even. Furthermore, we've lost the Carlng Cup final against Birmigham.
People can't keep pointing to money as an excuse. It covers over Wenger's weakness as a manager. It's a factor in football but it's not our problem. We compete, lead the league with only a couple of months to go then go on terrible runs to blow all our progress. Teams that should be moaning are the teams that have no chance of seeing Champions League football without a sugar daddy. We compete every year and choke against big teams, small teams the lot.
Don't know really
That's chelsea team have been playing together for years, the core at least. AVB's mistake was in trying to change their formula. I doubt RDM did much other than to tell them to play how they know. A lot of money has gone into that team over the years, one could argue that they should have won it way before yesterday.
Maybe AW does build fragile teams, personally, I don't think there are enough 'winners' in our team, but maybe that is our own fault for wasting money on shit and not breaking the bank to keep and add to our core team.
You assume di Matteo manages the team. If he does he must be a Mourinho acolyte (to a tee) or else he's just a front man while Lumpard and Big Man get on with things now their nemesis (the non-placeholder) AVB is out of the way. Terry and Lampard exposed themselves as anti-professionals this year.
Für eure Sicherheit
And what about Wenger's title winning teams? One of his teams should have won a CL trophy after all these years.
Chelsea's starting lineup, and how much they cost:
Cech £7m (and that was quite a while back when that was a LOT for a 'keeper)
Cole £5m (+ Gallas, they bid £16m)
David Luiz £26m
Bosingwa £16.2m
Cahill £7m
Bertrand - bought young
Lampard £11m
Mikel £16m
Mata 23.5m
Drogba £24m
Kalou £8m
£143.7m - 4 players in their starting 11 cost more than Arsenal's record transfer fee.
And while we're at it, Chelsea's bench last night:
22 Turnbull - Free
19 Ferreira - 13.2m
05 Essien - £24.4m
06 Romeu - £4.3m
15 Malouda - £13.5m
09 Torres - £50m
23 Sturridge - £4m
£109m. Sat on the bench. 2 players on their bench cost more than Arsenal's record transfer fee.
Yes, yes,, you need a good manager to get all that talent to play well as a team, instil team spirit. Fine. Although top managers generally cost a lot of money too so ultimately it does all come back to that. I agree with a lot of your post but it comes down to this: would Chelsea have won the CL without Abramovic? Would they have won their titles without Abramovic? Would City be champions without their billionaire backers? Would they balls.
To an extent clubs have always bought success of course but never so overtly as in the modern era and never by spending such obscene amounts of money.
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