The Official 2013-2014 Football (Soccer) Thread.
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Manchester City: Financial District — Money. So, so much money. But nobody goes there for the culture.
True, City does have a lot of money. We may not have the culture as ManU, Arsenal, and Liverpool do, but we are building it. It's about the journey not the destination. -
Young_Chitlin wrote: »My new kit for the upcoming indoor football season starting later today-
Dr.Pepper -
northside7 wrote: »Now I'm reading that its all BS smdh
??? -
lmao at Rodgers saying Suarez has to apologize before he can rejoin team... Does Suarez seem the type to do that?
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northside7 wrote: »Now I'm reading that its all BS smdh
???
At first it was thought it was all just some twatter rumor but apparently Wenger mentioned that we're indeed in for Gustavo, so that's good to hear. -
yea we r in for him and good journalist saying we r quietly confident... I think player also confirmed we r in for him... It's jus a matter if us not ? this upnorthside7 wrote: »northside7 wrote: »Now I'm reading that its all BS smdh
???
At first it was thought it was all just some twatter rumor but apparently Wenger mentioned that we're indeed in for Gustavo, so that's good to hear.
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? game.
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schalke vs hamburg is a great game 2-2 at the half
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I gave you a wack because they dissed Cardiff. @dontdiedontkillanyon
Ok.lmao at Rodgers saying Suarez has to apologize before he can rejoin team... Does Suarez seem the type to do that?
Rodgers, John Henry and Liverpool really have no class whatsoever. Liverpool love to bang on about history yet they look totally small fry in comparison to every other team out there. Trying to air out Suarez and Arsenal in the press instead of keeping all this behind closed doors... Suarez should tell the geezer to ? off and put a transfer request in.
Let's see if we get that Gustavo deal wrapped up before the Villa match. -
Question for you lot on here - anyone genuinely interested in La Liga this season? Fair enough you have players like Messi and Ronaldo, and then you have the likes of Neymar making their debut so the league obviously a good showcase for individual talent, but as a league on a whole it's pretty ? . TV deals have pretty much ruined it as well. When you have the likes of Sky only showing Barca and Real in their adverts to sell the league it pretty much sums it up. Answers on a postcard.
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Coventry City head for Northampton: just how did it come to this?
Relegated to League One, penniless and now homeless, the Sky Blues are preparing for their first 'home' game at Sixfields
A group of Coventry City fans make their feelings clear about the club's owners, Sisu. Photograph: Adam Fradgley/Action Images
Coventry City will play their first home match of the season on Sunday in Northampton, 34 miles away from the Ricoh Arena, which was built only eight years ago. Supporters who have seen their club torn apart by bitter and petty disputes in recent years use epithets such as embarrassing, laughable and shambolic to describe their current plight. They are right: Rome is burning and plenty of people are fiddling.
The Sky Blues' sorry demise is a depressing tale of hedge funds, stadium revenue and complex company law. Some would argue it is the epitome of everything wrong with the modern game, where the fan is an afterthought behind profit, assets and stakeholders. Either way, it is perhaps the most disheartening of all downfalls in recent times because personal vendettas and rancorous relationships rather than overspending have left the situation at an alarming impasse, with a modern, state-of-the-art stadium facing the possibility of not staging a professional match for at least three years.
When contacted by the Guardian this week, the Coventry City ticket office claimed their phone lines had been "extremely busy" with requests for Sunday's game against Bristol City at Northampton Town's Sixfields Stadium. However, the figures paint a different picture. As of Friday morning the Sky Blues had sold only 491 season tickets for the current campaign, with a "guaranteed attendance" of just 1,200 for their opening home match in League One this season, of which 400 are for Bristol City fans.
The Sky Blue Trust has been vociferous in its protests against the groundshare. It organised a 5,000-strong march through the city, while blue ribbons have been put up around Coventry and will only be taken down when the club returns.
"Going to Northampton is just one nail in the coffin of this club," said the trust spokesman, Jan Mokrzycki. "Once fans stop going it is very hard to get them back and I think the club has been shocked by the vehemence of the opposition to the move."
Arena Coventry Limited, made up by Coventry city council and the Higgs Charity, is the company that owns the Ricoh Arena, which the club moved to in 2006 after leaving Highfield Road where they played in the Premier League up until 2001. The club were £50m in debt during the botched move to the Ricoh and could not afford a stake in the stadium, signing a deal as tenants that committed them to paying £1.3m in annual rent.
Sisu took control of the club in 2007 and relations with ACL have deteriorated since then, with the Mayfair-based hedge fund refusing to pay the high rent in April last year. There have been offers from ACL to reduce the rent – down to £400,000 per annum and even to £150,000 – in an attempt to salvage the situation, but the club has rejected them and claims that it deserves access to the matchday revenue at the stadium as a matter of urgency due to new financial fair play rules, which as a tenant it is not currently entitled to.
However, Mr Justice Males ruled in the high court this week – when an application from Sisu, that accused the council of acting unlawfully when buying out ACL's £14m mortgage debt in January, was thrown out – that the club "had caused rent to be withheld as a means of exerting pressure in their commercial negotiations", calling into question Sisu's intentions when refusing to pay for use of the Ricoh.
Last week part of the club, Coventry City Football Club Limited, was facing liquidation after it entered administration last season. A company voluntary arrangement was rejected by ACL, a creditor, meaning the club was docked 10 points by the Football League for a second successive season.
The administrator, Paul Appleton, appointed by Sisu when CCFC Ltd entered administration in March, selected Otium Entertainment Limited as the preferred bidder to take over the club during the process, although there was also a bid from the American multi-millionaire businessman Preston Haskell IV, introduced to the club by the former vice-chairman Gary Hoffman, a lifelong Sky Blues fan. Otium was founded by three former Coventry City directors who all have connections to Sisu, which is headed by Joy Seppala, meaning the club is effectively being run by the same personnel.
The chief executive, Tim Fisher, a banker specialising in financially distressed companies who was appointed in December 2011, agreed a deal with Northampton to stage Coventry's home matches at Sixfields for three years, potentially five, during which time the club claims it will build a new stadium in the Coventry area.
The club has agreed a £1m bond with the Football League with assurances that it will return to Coventry and says it is assessing a site at the Brandon speedway stadium and another in the south west of the city. However, the League chairman, Greg Clarke, admits he "does not know" if they will really build a new ground.
Asked whether he believed the club would build a new stadium, Clarke said: "I don't know, they haven't told me whether they will or not. Everybody is posturing to get a deal, people say things to create impressions. Unreasonable things are happening. We have no power over the stadium owners or the club to tell them how to run their businesses. At some point there will have to be a compromise.
"I can understand why the Coventry fans are outraged. If I was a fan I would be incandescent. But what would have happened if we had refused them permission to share grounds and they could not afford to play?" -
The League has been criticised for its role in the saga. The Sky Blue Trust has labelled the organisation "toothless" while Hoffman, head of the Football Foundation charity that works alongside the Football Association, the Premier League and the government, implored it to do more.
Hoffman said: "I think the FA should ask whether the Football League is acting within its rules, because I'm not sure that it is. I'm not happy about the way the football authorities have dealt with this. If there was simply no other option on the table then I could understand it, but there clearly is – to play at the Ricoh at a reduced price."
Mokrzycki, who revealed that early discussions about the emergence of a phoenix club have taken place, said: "The Football League has just sat on the sidelines and said 'it's not up to us'. It's sad for Coventry but it's sad for football that the League has shown itself to be so toothless."
Coventry's latest manager, Steven Pressley, was appointed in March but was only able to sign his first player this week due to a transfer embargo imposed on the club. The Sky Blues previously signed promising players and sold them on at a profit, with Scott Dann, Keiren Westwood, Aron Gunarsson and Ben Turner all departing the club and going on to play at a higher level in recent seasons.
That successful policy was abandoned by Sisu, which admits that mistakes were made during its early tenure, when it ploughed significant funds into the club but could not prevent relegation from the Championship.
However, the decision to relocate to Northampton appears to be the nadir in the club's steady decline. Described by Fisher as "a commercial risk" and by Hoffman as "commercial suicide", the club believes that building a new stadium will provide financial benefits in the long term.
Yet the short-term damage could be catastrophic. The attendance for Coventry's first home game last season was 12,621. On Sunday that figure will be cut by approximately 10,000 and the majority of fans instead plan to attend a charity match at the Ricoh, where former players including Darren Huckerby and Noel Whelan will feature alongside local celebrities.
The club insists that it needs matchday revenue to comply with financial fair play, yet the shortfall in gate income given the decrease in ticket sales will be significant, while it has been estimated that the police costs for Coventry's home matches will cost Northampton taxpayers £70,000 per season.
ACL optimistically claims that the Ricoh will not be turned into a white elephant without the football club. The Higgs Charity wants to sell its stake in the stadium and the head of Coventry city council, Ann Lucas, would not rule out a sale of its stake when asked by the Guardian.
In reality, the club needs the stadium and the Ricoh Arena needs a football team. Both sides appear to have long forgotten this, as the Sky Blues edge closer towards the blackest of black holes.
Other clubs who have moved out of home
Manchester United 1945-49
The Manchester Blitz in the Second World War left Old Trafford needing significant repairs. City welcomed rivals United to play at Maine Road and in return United paid City £5,000 a season for rent
Charlton Athletic 1985-92
The Addicks were forced to play at rivals Crystal Palace's Selhurst Park because of safety concerns at The Valley. When Wimbledon moved in with Palace in 1991 Charlton had to relocate again, this time to West Ham's Upton Park, and returned to the Valley in December 1992 after a seven-year absence
Brighton & Hove Albion 1997-99
Brighton left the Goldstone Ground after selling to property developers and, after a move to Portsmouth's Fratton Park fell through, made the 150-mile round trip to north Kent to share the Priestfield Stadium with Gillingham. A dispute between the two clubs over the rent charges levied by the Gills was settled out of court two years later
Wimbledon 1991-2002
One of the longest ground-shares of all was Wimbledon's 12-year stay at Selhurst Park. A temporary move was set up after the Dons decided Plough Lane could not economically cope with upgrades required by the Taylor Report but their tenancy at Palace was not as short-lived as first expected.
http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2013/aug/09/coventry-city-northampton-league-one?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487 -
Nope...pretty much all the other "challengers" have lost star players...im really only watching bundesliga n premier league religiously this year...only hope for La Liga is for sugar daddies to buy like 4 of those teams coz there is no competing w Barca n Real when they get like 50% of tv moneydontdiedontkillanyon wrote: »Question for you lot on here - anyone genuinely interested in the La Liga this season? Fair enough you have players like Messi and Ronaldo, and then you have the likes of Neymar making their debut so the league obviously a good showcase for individual talent, but as a league on a whole it's pretty ? . TV deals have pretty much ruined it as well. When you have the likes of Sky only showing Barca and Real in their adverts to sell the league it pretty much sums it up. Answers on a postcard.
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Nope...pretty much all the other "challengers" have lost star players...im really only watching bundesliga n premier league religiously this year...only hope for La Liga is for sugar daddies to buy like 4 of those teams coz there is no competing w Barca n Real when they get like 50% of tv moneydontdiedontkillanyon wrote: »Question for you lot on here - anyone genuinely interested in the La Liga this season? Fair enough you have players like Messi and Ronaldo, and then you have the likes of Neymar making their debut so the league obviously a good showcase for individual talent, but as a league on a whole it's pretty ? . TV deals have pretty much ruined it as well. When you have the likes of Sky only showing Barca and Real in their adverts to sell the league it pretty much sums it up. Answers on a postcard.
But look what it did for Malaga!!! -
dontdiedontkillanyon wrote: »Question for you lot on here - anyone genuinely interested in the La Liga this season? Fair enough you have players like Messi and Ronaldo, and then you have the likes of Neymar making their debut so the league obviously a good showcase for individual talent, but as a league on a whole it's pretty ? . TV deals have pretty much ruined it as well. When you have the likes of Sky only showing Barca and Real in their adverts to sell the league it pretty much sums it up. Answers on a postcard.
It really hard to watch now. There was a time when you had teams like Deportivo and Valencia winning La Liga, now its either Barca or Real Madrid winning. And if you have a player from another team that is playing lights out one of those two teams will buy him. -
dontdiedontkillanyon wrote: »Question for you lot on here - anyone genuinely interested in the La Liga this season? Fair enough you have players like Messi and Ronaldo, and then you have the likes of Neymar making their debut so the league obviously a good showcase for individual talent, but as a league on a whole it's pretty ? . TV deals have pretty much ruined it as well. When you have the likes of Sky only showing Barca and Real in their adverts to sell the league it pretty much sums it up. Answers on a postcard.
It really hard to watch now. There was a time when you had teams like Deportivo and Valencia winning La Liga, now its either Barca or Real Madrid winning. And if you have a player from another team that is playing lights out one of those two teams will buy him.
You can't really say Barca cause most of their players are from their own academy!!! -
dontdiedontkillanyon wrote: »I gave you a wack because they dissed Cardiff. @dontdiedontkillanyon
Ok.lmao at Rodgers saying Suarez has to apologize before he can rejoin team... Does Suarez seem the type to do that?
Rodgers, John Henry and Liverpool really have no class whatsoever. Liverpool love to bang on about history yet they look totally small fry in comparison to every other team out there. Trying to air out Suarez and Arsenal in the press instead of keeping all this behind closed doors... Suarez should tell the geezer to ? off and put a transfer request in.
Let's see if we get that Gustavo deal wrapped up before the Villa match.
Do you really believe the bolded? We are TOTALLY a small fry compared to EVERY other EPL team, really? When was the last time your team won The UEFA Championship League? Small fry my ass!!! Do better than that. Better yet - when was the last your team won any trophy.
Fall back Gunners, its 50 mil or no deal and Suarez knows this. We are not settling for anything less.
@north, got it, thx -
dontdiedontkillanyon wrote: »Question for you lot on here - anyone genuinely interested in the La Liga this season? Fair enough you have players like Messi and Ronaldo, and then you have the likes of Neymar making their debut so the league obviously a good showcase for individual talent, but as a league on a whole it's pretty ? . TV deals have pretty much ruined it as well. When you have the likes of Sky only showing Barca and Real in their adverts to sell the league it pretty much sums it up. Answers on a postcard.
It really hard to watch now. There was a time when you had teams like Deportivo and Valencia winning La Liga, now its either Barca or Real Madrid winning. And if you have a player from another team that is playing lights out one of those two teams will buy him.
You can't really say Barca cause most of their players are from their own academy!!!
That's true. Only a couple they would buy from other Spanish teams, the rest was from their academy or from other leagues. -
No question La Liga's going to be ? this season...with the loss of Soldado, Falcao, Isco, Negredo and Navas from the other teams...it really is going to be less competitive than usual.
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infamous114 wrote: »No question La Liga's going to be ? this season...with the loss of Soldado, Falcao, Isco, Negredo and Navas from the other teams...it really is going to be less competitive than usual.
Unless F.F.P. comes into play even if that was the case it would still pretty much be a one team league again because of Barca's youth academy!!!
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your best player is in the papers begging to be sold to us... you're a mid table side deal with it...and yes uve won all those european trophies we get it...no premier league titles tho...a league u actually compete in yr in yr out
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liverpool one of the biggest clubs ever no doubt abt it...but ? their fans, owner and coach are doing a great job of ruining their rep
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dontdiedontkillanyon wrote: »I gave you a wack because they dissed Cardiff. @dontdiedontkillanyon
Ok.lmao at Rodgers saying Suarez has to apologize before he can rejoin team... Does Suarez seem the type to do that?
Rodgers, John Henry and Liverpool really have no class whatsoever. Liverpool love to bang on about history yet they look totally small fry in comparison to every other team out there. Trying to air out Suarez and Arsenal in the press instead of keeping all this behind closed doors... Suarez should tell the geezer to ? off and put a transfer request in.
Let's see if we get that Gustavo deal wrapped up before the Villa match.
Do you really believe the bolded? We are TOTALLY a small fry compared to EVERY other EPL team, really? When was the last time your team won The UEFA Championship League? Small fry my ass!!! Do better than that. Better yet - when was the last your team won any trophy.
Fall back Gunners, its 50 mil or no deal and Suarez knows this. We are not settling for anything less.
@north, got it, thx
Your last trophy still couldn't stop your manager from getting sacked. Suarez going to a rival team (aka Arsenal) would see them strengthening their chances at winning the league whereas you're only hanging on to him in the hope of challenging for fourth place at best. You're not even a direct rival to us any more. Instead of keeping all the Suarez/Arsenal drama private you only went to the press whingeing about it creating even more ill feeling between the club, the fans and Suarez, hence why you're looking small fry at the moment. If Suarez bothers to apologise then he'll just continue to have ill feelings for the club, whereas if he doesn't apologise then Rodgers will probably try to save face, stay stubborn and not play him. Suarez has played his card and you lot have backed yourselves in a corner with this whole saga. Why keep an unhappy player? Sell him to someone and use that cash to improve your average team.
Like I said, your team talks about class yet you just seem to be dragging the Liverpool name through the dirt at the moment with this issue. ? Arsenal off all you want but the only moment we have spoken about Liverpool and Suarez in the press is when asked. -
liverpool one of the biggest clubs ever no doubt abt it...but ? their fans, owner and coach are doing a great job of ruining their rep
Exactly. -
No lie, that gif did make me LOL though.
