How’s a Saudi move a jail-free card for him, besides it just being a massive pay cheque?
Such is the problem with golden handcuffs. There are probably a dozen clubs where Sancho would be a good fit and see him recapture his Dortmund form, none of them can afford the financial package it would take to find out.
In fact they might even sign Dane Rashford now!
Nice to see Douglas Luiz get a nomination, he’s been brilliant for Villa for basically all of 2023 and he’s playing in a position that doesn’t really get recognition in highlight reel driven awards. Salah will win of course.
TV broadcasters apologise for swearing at boxing matches which are broadcast after the watershed. Repeated dropping of the F bomb during primetime is not something that they will want on the games they pay a lot of money to acquire the rights for.
They won’t broadcast it live any time soon. Mind you, players might stop swearing at referees so much if they realise everybody hearing them scream “fucking blind cunt” at Stuart Attwell at half four on a Sunday afternoon might mean the endorsement deals from Gucci and Bose start drying up.
You’re just saying that because you can’t handle the fact that Milan have never won the Copa Eva Duarte.
Emery masterclass, can see them winning the Conference league comfortably as well, only competitor I can think off will be Fenerbahce and the teams that might come from EL.
We got a rude awakening in the Conference League when we went to Poland, at the moment the group we are in has basically been reset with all four teams in it having the same number of points and the same goal difference (3 points and +/-0 GD) after two games. We go to AZ on Thursday which is a really big game for us, it’s a “must not lose” fixture as far as I can tell, but at their place and in the form they are in it’s going to be a tricky task.
Definitely last season. Unai was picking up about 2 points per game with Gerrard’s squad.
He’s got a licence to zkill!
Yeah, he pops up on TV duties over here more often than you might think. Seems like an interesting guy, he’s definitely charismatic.
Who was the “star” in that Euro 88 team? It was probably the first tournament I watched with any interest, I remember the 86 World Cup but was more interested in riding my bike and trying to climb trees at that age but by the time 88 came around I was fully on board. I’m not sure if I was aware at the time or it’s just a lifetime of memories being cloudy now but from England it always seemed like the Dutch produced incredible players (this continued throughout the 90s and 00s) but to my eyes in 1988 Ruud Gullit was the man. I was so excited when he came to play in the Premier League and he rocked up at Villa Park, even if it was when he was trying to be a sweeper but spending most of his time as a No. 6.
I wish I’d seen more of Van Basten. I’m old enough to have watched Euro 88, but his club career was played in leagues that weren’t on TV where I grew up. Even by the time Serie A was getting shown regularly in the UK (1992/93 onwards) it was just as the injuries were starting to bite. It’s sad really because as I understand it there wasn’t really a decline with Marco, he was on top of the world then it was just over. In some ways it means his legacy was secure because people didn’t have to watch him hobble around the pitch trying and failing to recapture former glories, but the sad truth is he was finished as a footballer at 27. If only he’d been 20 years younger as who knows how great he could have been with modern sports science and rules which protected forwards from being kicked as much as they were in the 80s.
The golden handcuffs can’t be dismissed easily. Even if we lowball his wages and say he’s on £12m a year (250k a week) then Manchester United are obliged pay him somewhere north of £30 million before his contract expires in 2026.
Who is going to pick that kind of salary up? Most clubs couldn’t even afford half that and of those who could afford him they’ll either i) have amazing players in his position anyway ii) be really worried about his disciplinary issues or iii) be based in the Middle East.
Sending him out on loan and having Manchester United pick up 50%+ of his salary is a possibility, but are Manchester United willing to take such a financial hit on a guy they have no chance of recouping anywhere near the £75m they paid for him. It’s crazy when you think that just two years ago Sancho was seen as the future of the England national team and now he’s nowhere near the squad.
It was the mid 1960s for London and the mid 70s for Birmingham. I think the rest of the country was also mid 70s.
Leamington. Warwickshire is one of those counties that lost a lot of its population to boundary changes, historically it would include Aston Villa, Birmingham City and Coventry City. Warwickshire’s cricket stadium (Edgbaston) is very much in Birmingham.
If you are into video games, the windmill on the badge of Leamington FC is the same one as you jump through in a car in Forza Horizon 4, which was made by a studio based in Leamington Spa. Sadly it’s had no sails on for at least 18 months, I think the owner got pissed off with people going up there to do social media shit and leaving looking like a tip on a daily basis.
Reminds me of watching Uruguay play somebody (probably Portugal) in the World Cup with one of my friends who is a lapsed football fan, the sort of guy who will watch the Champions League final and England in tournaments but takes little interest in the day to day events of the game.
Him - “Who does that Valverde play for? He looks incredible, I think we (meaning Aston Villa) should sign him.”
Me - “Real Madrid.”
Him - “Oh. Ok. Maybe not then.”
He’s got three years left at Bayern. They don’t need to lock him down any further yet.
Hey! He scored yesterday!