Barrettinator

Enrique won't last more than 1 season at Chelsea. 2 seasons at the absolute max. It's not hard to win La Liga or the CL when you're coaching Barca. Look at his time at Roma for a proper assessment of what his football is like.

FIFA are apparently trying to replace the current yearly CWC with a new 24 team CWC to be held every 4 years in which you're guaranteed to make at least 50m and the winner makes 100m. This would mean the current CWC would cease to exist and the Confedarations cup would go as well. Seems like they want to start out by inviting teams who've won the CL at least 3 times (so Barca, Madrid, Bayern, United, Liverpool, Milan, etc) - 12 of them. Plus 3 of Chelsea, Arsenal, Man City, PSG, Dortmund, Atletico, Porto & Benfica. The rest of the slots will be filled with none European clubs. First edition could be as soon as 2021 with China likely to be the first hosts. Any thoughts on this? Looks like it would have to be aimed for the year between the Euros and the World Cup. Personally, I'm fully in support of this. But UEFA and the Premier League are fighting against it apparently. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/manchester-united-and-liverpool-set-for-new-fifa-club-cup-worth-100m-6bz9gcxkq

I'd be f**king shocked.

Mourinho's cup final record. Conte's cup final record. Our absolute catastrophe of a season. The disgrace of a match that the Newcastle match was leading into this. I'd give us a 5% chance of winning this. I don't know if I'd be able to bear seeing us lose back to back FA Cup finals to Le'Arse and Mourinho. Conte has made me miserable this season. Whether we win or not, he needs to be binned in the stairway immediately after the match. I've had enough.

RAC 1 apparently reporting that Barcelona are shopping Dembele to clubs in Europe at Valverde's request. Sounds like BS even though RAC are very reliable for French football news. If true though, we should jump at that before they even think about changing their minds.

Think the fact that Southgate had coached most of these youngsters at U21 level for England plays a huge factor in him bringing them into the first team as he already largely knows what they're capable of. Regardless, he deserves a lot of credit for having the balls.

I think I'm just about done with hearing silly retorts like this. How about we go back to fighting relegations and struggling to stay up while we're at it. Since that's apparently the level we belong in. After all, our mid table runs in the 90s required huge investments as well. We're a bloody football club, how can you not want to be better? This idea that holding the club's feet to the fire to prevent complacency is somehow "entitlement" is so silly, it's almost offensive. If you never really reacclimatized to the status we've been at for about a decade and half, then that's on you. Stop trying to force everyone else to think the same way. Some of us would actually like to see this club reach Madrid/Barca status someday. If that's not you, then that's your problem.

Hyperbole. I don't actually hate him obviously. I don't have a single clue what he's like personally.

How can this be our manager???

I've really gone from being fond of this guy to hating him in a span of 6 months. His comments and his actions as well as his stubbornness are just mind boggling. I don't think he's a good fit for us at all and I'll be shocked if he's still here next season. Imo, it's a no brainer to get Jardim, even above Tuchel or anyone else. Jardim is exactly the kind of manager that will gel smoothly with this club from top to bottom. We're not changing the board anytime soon so we might as well find a manager that'll work well with them. Antonio Conte, unfortunately, is not that guy.

Of all the terrible ways this season has gone, this one hurts the most. Met him twice and he was always such a nice bloke. Loved listening to him as a pundit as well. Too young to have watched him play, unfortunately. Really sad news. RIP Ray.

And when you mention this on here or on social media while it's going on, certain fans accuse you of being spoilt and ungrateful (as you can tell, I'm still highly irritated by those accusations). There's a certain section of the fanbase that need a kick up the arse as well. This isn't 1983. You don't have to settle for mediocrity when our ceiling is clearly much, much higher these days.

Let's leave his playing and talk about his captaincy. Where has he been the past few weeks? He has left the talking to players like Courtois, Cesc and Azpi. And we gave him the f**king captain's arm band? One of Conte's worst decisions imo (if it was solely his decision). Retreats back into his shell when we're under. True captain, that!

When we got 95 points or so in 2005, it didn't mean Arsenal fans had to feel good about their season because "we were just that good". What's stopping us from giving City a real run for their money? I'll tell you; terrible business. How much have we spent on left backs since Ashley Cole left? A lot more money than Juve were asking for Sandro last summer. That's exactly what I'm talking about. Look at Zappacosta, what exactly was the point of wasting 23m on him when we have a really exciting young player in Dujon Sterling that could have done as good a job, if not better? That's 23m that could have been add to a few elsewhere to acquire a world class player. Conte is complicit in this too btw, imagine if he hadn't been forced to give Christensen a chance and we'd gone out to waste money on yet another CB. And if my daughter comes home with an 85% score on her maths exam, I'd tell her she did a good job but push her to get a 95% next time. Because the student who got a 95% isn't superhuman. Man City aren't superhuman robots. They're just much better run than us, have a clear plan and clear vision for how they want to play and they back their manager on his targets big time.

How can you care about the business of how the club is run when you seem to be okay with the rubbish business that has been conducted so far? Why spend 40m a piece on two average players when you can get a world class one for 70m and have him backed up by an exciting youth prospect from the academy? We've spent a lot of money on bang average players. Guess what that gives us? Bang average results. This fear of spending big money on real quality is puzzling because we still end up spending a lot of money anyway, just on poorer players. We'll end up looking to sell some of these players in the next few years to find better ones. We spent heavily in the early Roman years but then we didn't have to spend like that for the 5-6 years after that because we were already stacked up with world class young players or players just entering their prime. I think you get the point I'm trying to make.

We sold Cech to them. I think they need to shut the f**k up.

No disrespect but that's a really silly conclusion to make an overly simplistic. If we were a mid table club I'd want us to aspire for a top 6 spot, especially if we had the potential to do that. If we were always fighting relegation, I'd want us to aspire to be a mid table club, especially if we had the potential. If we were a top championship club but only remained that, I'd want us to aspire to be promoted to the Premier League, especially if we had the potential to. You don't see Madrid fans content with sitting on 9 CLs. They wanted the 10th. And after the 10th, they wanted the 11th. Now that they have 12, they still want a 13th. That's what top clubs do, and quite frankly, that's what every supporters mindset should be. Aspiring for your club to always reach that next level. I'm not sorry that I'm not content with our current predicament. Deal with it.

Yet we're getting to that phase of seemingly going for cheap, average players in order to save money for a new stadium. Sound familiar to you?

The market requires big spending these days. I get your point but it leaves a bad taste knowing we were up there with the very best and could beat the Barcas and Bayerns of football when we had the old guard in their prime but now we seem to be a team overly reliant on Hazard and not much world class quality elsewhere apart from Courtois. We've had Hazard for 6 years now and I can't help but think we really could and should have won more with him. I'm actually worried about playing Barca next month. If Conte can consistently get his arse handed to him by Le Voyeur, then I don't have much hope that we can knock Barca out, especially in the form they're in at the moment. We may end the season trophyless. Hopefully not.

My point is and has always been that it would be a massive shame for us to regress to the point Arsenal have been in for years now. Top club but not really doing much of note.

She's REALLY good with numbers. Maybe too good for football. If this was a hedge fund or something like that, she'd be the shining star of the firm. But this is football. Clubs will tell you to f**k off if you lowball too much.

That would be too much for Marina. She's letting City have him.

It's one thing to be a good negotiator, it's another thing to be a bloody cheap bastard. There's a fine line between both and she has been waayyy on the side of "cheap" for some time now, regardless of the Morata transfer.

Marina can't even cough up a mere £20m for Giroud. She STILL wants to drive the price down. You could tell her a player costs £2m and she'd lowball you for £500k. What a f**king frustrating human being!

I remember complaining in here and on this forum in general about the board back in the summer and having a lot of fans on here attack me and accuse me of a lot of things, implying I wasn't a "real" fan and we were the reigning champions, etc etc. I wonder what those same fans think right now. I hate to have been proven right but we're right where I knew we'd be unfortunately. Maybe learn to be a bit more objective in your thinking next time? Unless of course you still think we have the "best executives in football" and everything's still nice and dandy upstairs.