The Football News Thread 2017/18 - everything not Wolves

[Paddingtonwolf]

The loser standing small...

 

[Wombat del combate]

Later, in the manager's office: "I was defeated, you won the war"

 

[Johnny75]

The former CEO of Disney and ABC and his company have bought Portsmouth.

 

[wanderer89]

It's a shame they've become a Mickey Mouse club.

 

[Johnny75]

 

[Alan]

Credit where it's due, Johnny, that might be the best gif I've yet seen in this site.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2017/aug/03/aston-villa-steve-bruce-financial-fair-play

I like the way he mentions the "awful lot of money" they spent last summer and the summer before, but ignores the millions he wanked away in January on players he has no idea how to use. And how exactly is signing John Terry going to help if you're struggling financially? When you already have tons of centre halves? Bellend.

 

[Alan]

The EFL have sold on rights to two Championship, one League 1, and one League 2 matches weekly to ESPN in the States.

Bit odd as it lessens the incentive for Americans to buy into the iFollow (or whatever the fuck they're calling it) streaming platform.

 

[The Bear]

The FA have announced their new diving review panel for the upcoming season.

A three person panel will be chosen each week from a pool of 13 former players, managers and match officials and will review footage of a Monday to look for match effecting incidents of diving or feigning injury where the clear aim was to gain an advantage through an act of deception.

Players unanimously found guilty will be banned in future, but this will only occur in cases where the offending player's team were awarded a penalty or saw the opponent sent off.

Yellow cards or red cards will be automatically rescinded in such circumstances.

The exact wording from the FA is 'successful deception of a match official' and applies to the following cases.

...the offending player`s team has been:-
awarded a penalty; and/or
an opposing player has been sent-off where the act of simulation and/or feigning injury led to a straight red card or caused one of the two cautions that led to the dismissal.

The panel pool are:

Former Players/Managers:

Nigel Adkins
Rachel Brown-Finnis
Terry Butcher
Lee Dixon
Alex McLeish
Danny Murphy
Chris Powell
Trevor Sinclair

Former match officials:

Keren Barratt
Steve Dunn
Mike Mullarkey
Alan Wiley
Eddie Wolstenhome

They will only review footage where there is an obvious case to answer and given any conflicts of interests, clubs played for or managed will be factored into which pool member gets the call.

 

[Alan]

Found this interesting in light of the Neymar sale.

http://www.espnfc.us/blog/espn-fc-u...-outraged-football-gareth-bale-diego-maradona

 

[Lord Knows]

Financial Fair Play at the Villa, interesting read.

http://heartoftheholte.com/blog/one...-of-the-efl-s-financial-fair-play-regulations

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

Villa's problem is that they have very few assets on the playing side. They've invested in tired old shite at massive cost.

Kodjia would fetch a good price, not many others though.

 

[Tredman]

The state of these prediction by the BBC football 'experts':

Man Utd have barely improved from last season, yet they're going to work the league?

 

[PuntsWolf]

Not sure how they haven't improved. Best GK in the league. Bailly is very good and I assume Lindelof is handy given his price tag. Valencia is one of best RBs in the league for me. Add to the fact they have a manger who has his teams solid.

Matic is a good signing and alongside Herrera is a solid base. Lukaku "should" score goals. Mata, Mhkitaryan, Pogba, Rashford, Martial are all going to have better seasons and are solid choices behind striker.

If Man City can get the Fernandinho plus 4 #10s and Aguero system working then they'll be very strong also.

 

[Tredman]

Not sure how they haven't improved. Best GK in the league. Bailly is very good and I assume Lindelof is handy given his price tag. Valencia is one of best RBs in the league for me. Add to the fact they have a manger who has his teams solid.

Matic is a good signing and alongside Herrera is a solid base. Lukaku "should" score goals. Mata, Mhkitaryan, Pogba, Rashford, Martial are all going to have better seasons and are solid choices behind striker.

If Man City can get the Fernandinho plus 4 #10s and Aguero system working then they'll be very strong also.

Improved compared to last season = (according to above) added Lidelhof (meh), Matic (good, but not great) & Lukaku (good, but not Ibra good). Plus Carrick is a year older and everything else is the same. Not much of an improvement as far as I can see.

Chelsea & City look comfortably better teams. If Arsenal get a settled team and formation they should be good with Lacazette (and if Xhaka plays as he did in the Shield, big IF there though)

 

[PuntsWolf]

Ibra was good but at times I thought he was more of a hindrance which was only apparent when he got injured (plus all those games they drew out home, he missed a fuckload). They started to look much more threatening with pace up top, even though rashford was doing his best Frankowski impression.

With a genuine pace options up front who can finish, they will turn those home draws into wins for a start which gives them an extra 10 points already.

 

[Johnny75]

Chelsea, Citeh, Spurs and Arsenal all comfortably better than Utd for me. Liverpool if they add VVD too.

 

[thehistorymakers]

I didn't know where to put this question, but here goes. Why do Aston Villa and Newport play in the Northern section of the League cup and Wolves play in the southern section? Surely Wolves are much further north than Newport and Villa.

 

[Kenny]

I didn't know where to put this question, but here goes. Why do Aston Villa and Newport play in the Northern section of the League cup and Wolves play in the southern section? Surely Wolves are much further north than Newport and Villa.

The cup was split into Seeded teams and unseeded teams.

Due to where we finished in the League last season and how many teams above us are in the 2nd round we went into the unseeded pot. So the teams on each side are split to give an even balance to North and South. As we are Midlands based we were used to balance the Southern part of the draw. Thats the reasoning behind it but you would think Newport would get South and we would be North but the draw was a confused cluster fuck anyway.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

I think Chelsea have issues. The squad is too small to be competing at the top of the league and attempting to go far in Europe, while Morata is a significant downgrade on Costa for me and Hazard is out for a while yet.