QPR and Newcastle could not agree on a deal for Wayne Routledge. Newcastle now offering him to other teams around the Premiership and Championship.

Not good news for the R's. He and Adel had some good chemistry, and he brings the sort of pace on the wing and attacking ability that the team lacks.

Not only have we not signed anyone, but we lost a player that we were supposed to be going forward with in our starting XI. Frustrating.

That would be a typical Atletico Madrid signing right there (only it's kind of too cheap).

And yes, would definitely want him back at Juventus.

With Javier Pastore's price set at €50million, it seems laughable to me that they are wasting their time with ridiculous bids for Fabregas. Surely a dodgy hamstring and the fact that he wants to play for Barca can't reduce his value that much, the cheap ****s. CUoCO, as Arseblog would say.

RVP is our first choice penalty taker when both are healthy.

Oh yes, that magical 3 weeks of the season before a stiff breeze shatters Van Persie's ankle.

This will be the first off-season Cesc has had off in 3 years. I think that will be huge for him. It took RVP until January to recover from the long WC run, and Cesc never fully recovered from the injuries he had going into the WC then the strain of the WC. I think that is the main factor in him only making ~35 appearances per season in the last 3 seasons.

Giorgio "Stiff Breeze" Chiellini says hi

Seems I was wrong about Juventus. They have been struggling financially massively the last few years and the whole stadium ordeal is surely affecting them in that regard also. Where is this money coming from? Surely not just the Agnelli's as they have been there the whole time why would they suddenly plough money in out of nowhere?

Who knows. My best guess would be, that's how bad the situation is. It's desperately needed.

The goal for a number of years have been balancing the books (including cutting wages that I think was top in Europe which is a disaster) with some initial moderate success I think it's fair to say, but as the sporting results have gone worse and worse, and with this still very tied to the economic situation, that has dragged the finances down too.

The hope is that the modern new stadium will be a money maker. Well, hopefully a big difference maker since Juventus will be the only Italian club who actually own their stadium.

But yeah, Exor/Elkanns/Agnellis are incredibly rich and own many things (Fiat, Ferrari, Alfa Romeo, Maserati and a big real estate company).

I've seen a few theories on why they haven't invested more in recent years (if that's even a valid complain which doesn't stop fans from complaining of course), though it's hard to follow if you don't speak Italian, and that may be a good thing since it's all seems almost too typical dirty Italian power struggling and not least very confusing, but apparently there have been (or still is) various power struggles going on between and in between different fractions of the family, the Elkanns who has the real power (John is the young chairman of Fiat and Exor+ the heir to it all I think) and other Agnellis. Including possibly his cousin Andrea who serves as Juve president.

There are even conspiracies that Calciopoli was only allowed to happen (or have the impact it did), because new people (mainly the Elkanns) wanted control of the club. Moggi for starters pretty much believes this, and then one of the more notorious Elkanns, Lapo (who btw himself wants to become Juventus president but who is generally despised) then believes that a highly publicized overdose he suffered (and then his career suffered) in the apartment of a transsexual prostitute was setup by, none other than Moggi. As a revenge for ousting him I guess.

All in all, Italy FTW.

Edit:

To add some more since this conspiracy stuff does have its charm.

John Elkann golden boy of Italian business (chairman of Fiat and Exor) and Agnelli heir. Wanted control of the club inspired by Berlusconi and the large part that his successful football club Milan did for his career in Italian power. That really did pave the way for him in the late 80s early 90s.

His rival is his cousin Andrea Agnelli who Moggi and co. running the club, still highly successful at this point, wanted to bring in as president and succeed his father Umberto, from I guess the opposide side of the Agnelli clan from the Elkanns.

John Elkann head of the other, apparently feared that scenario since Andrea Agnelli would then be in a position to get all the glory and I guess establish himself at the expense of the Elkanns.

Well, whether the Elkanns had something to do with it or not, calciopoli, brought the old management down and the Elkanns could step in.

Of course since then things haven't been going very well at all. There have certainly been no glory to collect and the situations got so desperate that Andrea eventually ended up president anyway with Elkann either simply giving into pressure. Or if you follow the conspiracy maybe opened the door to see him fail.

I guess more likely than most of all that stuff, is that the new generation of Agnelli's, mainly the Elkann's, haven't really cared about football where as the older generation saw it as great prestige.

Juventus is such a small piece compared to their other businesses that bring in billions and billions. Apparently they also just bought the controlling share of Chrysler for $500 million from the U.S treasury. And along with Murdoch they've made a bid to take over Formula 1...

Well, I guess the new cash injection into the club isn't exactly a bad sign.

He specifically said he'd like to reunite with his old coach so that's probably not the case. Leverkuse already stated that they'd rather not deal Vidal to a BL club though so there's that.
Vidal wants out FWIW

My gut feeling has always been that English players are overvalued in the EPL, possibly even way overvalued.

10m seems like too much. I think you can get him for 5m.

inflation tho

BFS continues the purge!!! To be fair to Ilunga, he is pretty beastly for me on Playstation as part of a back 3

They should be overvalued a little bit because of the homegrown rule, but they are way overvalued imo.

Its not possible to argue they aren't overvalued. They are the most overvalued players in world football by far.

Latest rumor: neymar isnt leaving Santos.

Alvarez, Gervinho and Oxlaide-Chamberlain to sign at/around July 1.
Source: The Mirror
http://www.mirrorfootball.co.uk/tran...cle752234.html

iv been watching a relatively decent amount of soccer over the last 6 months but for the life of me i dont get how the clubs financial situations work and the bidding on the players and the actual salaries and how the fans actually have some sort of stock in the teams in all that

any links or input cuz its really confusing to me

perhaps thats why i subconsciously chose man city as my favorite team randomly, since they obviously dont care about money in any way shape or form

Craig Gardner rumoured to be going to Sunderland. The big Birmingham jumble sale starts here.

Quotes from Emilio Izaguirre of Celtic;

Notice the bolded and then what comes after. LOL

He must have a weird definition of silent.

Or he wants an extra few quid to boost his low wages.

UTD cannot be looking another fullback surely.

Wouldn't think we need another fullback, Evra's form has dipped alot in the last season but if he's replaced it'd be by fabio.

Just been reading those Izaguirre comments are from January, he saying SAF enquired about him but since Evra been resigned that is it done.

Lol newspapers, love how they ignore any truth and just print what they want.

I think the quotes are from yesterday. He is claiming we were interested in January and now a meeting has been set for July.

lol Izaguirre imo