SirBalon

They haven’t got long to register those new players and tbh, I’m not seeing any of that happening unless they pull some more of those “levers” they keep on finding. I’ve started to look for some of those in my house too.

No prob mate. Glad to have been of help.

I think the Koeman part in all of this is the most telling imo. People can accuse him of all sorts, but one thing he does do, it’s give young talent the chance. That’s Koeman all over and the fact he spoke to Puig himself by allegedly telling him to go to the Premier League (there were interested PL clubs in him at the time) tells us quite a bit of what the Dutch coach was asking from him and telling him where he had to improve.

His technical ability is immense. But physically is where coaches consistently ask questions. I don’t know... Don’t understand why he didn’t go to Italy where Fiorentina approached Barcelona twice (allegedly) on signing him. But the reports say he didn’t want to play for any other European club. A weird thing for a young player to do.

Too many things to see in Bella Napoli mate. If you want to capture the genuine Napoli... the Naples of the movies, you need to start in the Quartieri Spagnoli. That’s in the centre with the old alleyways and the typical Neapolitan shouting at each other with the typical “Oooooo..” Take the metropolitano to the Toledo station (which is a sight to behold in itself) and walk from there down the Via Roma. https://it.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quartieri_Spagnoli From there you continue walking downwards until you’ll come to a square where to the left hand side you’ll see La Mergellina which is the beautiful walk along the Neapolitan coast where again so many movies have been made. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mergellina If you go to the top of the city, there is a park called Capodimonte. It’s a great walk inside and if you go towards the museum they have there (don’t go inside it, it’s boring), you’ll see a fountain. By that fountain, you can see the whole of Napoli. The sight is breathtaking! https://it.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parco_di_Capodimonte Then there’s the trendy part of the city at the top called Il Vomero. This is where wealthy young people live and there’s all sorts of trendy stuff and cafes there. A bit like Barcelona’s La Rambla. Infact a lot of the architecture of that area is like Barcelona for historic reasons. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vomero I could go on mate. There are some amazing places to visit particularly religious artefacts and art to see like the Shrouded Christ which is a unique sculpture that took decades to make back in the day. To see it is to stand in awe. There’s also the ancient tunnels under the city started by the Greeks and finished by the Spaniards (because Neapolis, Parthenope was always special to Europeans for all sorts of reasons) are incredible if you have time mate. It’s too complexed to go into what’s down there. Pompeii is amazing and close by the even more ancient Herculaneum is mind blowing. Although they’ve opened new areas to the public at the Pompeii site, so it’s a must see. As for food... Man! Pizza Napoletana is obvious. Then the fish there is great although keep away from the tourist areas to eat. It’s shit and expensive. For Pizza, visit Da Michele or Sorbillo. They’re the two most young Neapolitans use and they’re really good. http://www.damichele.net/ https://www.sorbillo.it/ My favourite dishes are Parmigiana or the obvious, Lasagna. But there are hundreds of traditional Neapolitan dishes and whichever one you choose, you won’t go wrong. Puglia is absolutely beautiful though! And the wine there... WOW! Beats the crap out of the over commercialised Chianti. Puglia red wine is my favourite Italian wine. The “Negroamaro” style of making wine is unique as they use 20% sun dried grapes (raisins) giving it a distinctive dark red. Where am I going with this Along the Neapolitan coast (commonly known as the Amalfi Coast) is also great to drive down. From the port of Naples you can also get the fast boat to the islands of Capri, Ischia and Procida... Procida is my favourite for the simple fact that there are less tourists there and it’s where the movie, Il Postino was made. A great restaurant run by an old couple at the small fishermen port at the back of the island is the place to go. They make everything themselves from the wine to the pasta. You get treated like a king by that family and the amount they give you is perverse lol. The restaurant is called Gorgonia although La Locanda is amazing too. The boat trip is literally 20 minutes so you can go and returns the city in a couple of hours including eating of course.

I have absolutely no idea why you feel that way but trust me, I’ll celebrate it here and now. Although I don’t have in absolute, the faith you seem to have acquired from a very questionable place. Have you subscribed to a cult somewhere?

How can that kid end up like that? I know how it sounds and as much as I will shout out loud that I mean no disrespect to the MLS, this just smells of Insigne. What was he waiting for then?

My earliest memories are with Bertie Mee as Arsenal manager but Terry Neill was the coach when I was a full on very young Gooner.

He needs to be suspended. The moment the police investigation became a thing he should be put to a side for a myriad of reasons.

@Spike Curious (if true) that Xavi may be looking to implement something Ernesto Valverde was so criticised for attempting.

Yeah, Memphis is doing the same thing and he’s not even on special wages. Infact he took on a very reasonable salary when he signed so as to be able to capture the registration with the federation. Only this morning he made this statement; ”They can sign as many forwards as they like, I’m not leaving!”

The Frenkie de Jong situation is an odd one. He is top quality but he has only shown that fleetingly since he joined Barça. Some say he’s been played out of position and others say he joined at the wrong moment and that players feed off of confidence. I suppose they’re decent enough arguments considering what’s been evident there. The reason why Barça want to sell him is because out of the players they’re willing to let go, he’s the most valuable in the market. He’s young, talented and multi-faceted in midfield. Plus he “earns” a huge amount in wages which makes him a bit of a liability for Barcelona right now considering the amount of young talent they have in midfield atm. All the same, the club are treating him like shit. They owe him a ton of money in back payments (wages) and have told him blatantly to his face that they wanted him out when he made it publicly clear he wanted to remain. Now certain directors have leaked that he’s been given an ultimatum... reduce your wages massively or leave. Sorry guys... The kid has a contract which has been signed by both player and club. That’s in vigour and that’s law! As far as I’m concerned this is extortion.

Totally with you bro. Just redacting the dumb decisions made and you’ve just amplified it by showing how they have invested in a questionable area of the pitch and never managed to sort it until Araujo appeared out of nowhere. What’s for sure is that they’re looking to replace Piqué. They’re apparently sick of his character.

Lenglet was quality whilst he was being played and then he got injured and Araujo came along who has been absolutely awesome to say the least. Lenglet then lost his form from not being a first team player which meant when he would come on as a sub he was party to some real howling errors.

And for everyone reading here, Barça have announced the signing of Sevilla’s highly rated centre-back Koundé. You couldn’t write this shit. What a mess! They either win it all this season or we could be seeing the end of the club as we know it. It’ll definitely be owned and bought by an individual who wants it and is ready to sort out the humongous mess they’re in. But it would be a very tasty acquisition where football trade marks are concerned.

There are sone signings on that list which are really difficult to analyse due to the fact they were bought when they were merely kids. But yeah, it’s mental and actual proof of how they moved away from bumping La Masia products as it had been historically on the main.

The rules on who could enter their name for club presidency were changed some years back and curiously he board that changed those rules were Joan Laporta’s board in his first tenure in charge You have to be able to back up your candidacy with a deposit of €60m which if you win, you only get back when your tenure is over and the books are balanced. Obviously Bartomeu hasn’t been handed his deposit back. There are other changes but that’s one of the main ones that stopped regular socios from entering the race as could be done historically. Real Madrid also implemented such a rule in Florentino Pérez’ first tenure many years ago. On the other hand any socio (member) can put their name forward to be on any board and the socios will vote on this, over 150,000 of them around the world. As for all your other questions mate, it’s very complexed and I don’t know how to answer most of that since I stopped being so invested in the ins and outs for a couple of years. I’ve kind of fallen out of love with the sport by comparison to how I felt about it during the period I was away from this forum. I still follow it all, but not to every small detail. All (or most) of the signings they’ve made as you, Spike and ScoRoss have pointed out have indeed been very questionable and mainly at fault for the current situation the club finds itself in financially. The remaining percentage are the wages which are absolutely off the scale but many clubs have found themselves in a similar situation (although not to this extent) in recent years like my own club, Arsenal. The reason Joan Laporta won the previous elections to oust Bartomeu was because there were practically no candidates. The ones there were weren’t really committed and hardly campaigned due to the fact every socio knew the financial situation was chaotic... Had Laporta known the full details, I’m sure he would’ve withdrawn his candidacy. But you only know reality once you’re in there. I was reading a great article by British journalist Graham Hunter on this very issue only two days ago and he breaks it all down immaculately. He knows what’s going down at that club because he knows them all from years back.

I think I’ll leave this here Total legend!

Totally agree. This is upto the LFP to sort out and they’ve taken clubs to task on it many times before (Valencia, Elche, Osasuna, Racing Santander, Getafe and Sevilla in recent memory). But HE has to take it to them and they’ll act with all the arms of the law which is only just as his wages were a signed contract. But Barça have been reducing wages (with wages owed) over the past two years with notable mentions for Piqué and Busquets. It may be funny, but Messi offered to play for free for two years (I know how that one goes @Fusion ) and they decided against the liability that it contained. I don’t claim to know all the ins and outs on all of this and am just a curious observer. But I do have an opinion for what it’s worth... Barça deserve to learn their lesson. Their (socios) electorate or fans (whatever you want to call the system) are ultimately to blame and what’s gone on over the past 7 to 8 years NEEDS to be punished for the good of the game. You can’t get away with shit like that.

Answer me this mate... How many seasons has Lewandowski got remaining in his legs? That’s the bet as far as I can see unless one of the kids does the business.

Their only solution is to win tournaments and particularly the Champions League because forget the prize money itself (which is substantial), it’s everything else that comes with that. You can win leagues and domestic cups all you like but these types of clubs run on an unrealistic level and to maintain that level they have two choices... either run it efficiently and effectively like Bayern or make sure you win that tournament a few times every decade and then do what you want. But the moment you hit a barren patch, make sure you’re run like Bayern at that particular level. Look at it this way. Barça have a €500m+ wage expenditure on the male football team per season. Bayern have half of that and Real Madrid who are serial winners of that tournament were spending €400m per season before this summer (they’ve substantially reduced that since). That gives you a basic quick example of the task at hand for them. What have they chosen to do? They’ve selected to borrow from their future takings by selling 25% of their tv rights for the next 25 years, sold 10% of the stadium rights which brings them immense money from football tourists annually and the CVC which they exhausted almost immediately to pay back wages owed. I could go on, but they’re good examples to more or less give people an idea of the task at hand. Will they go under? Well they’ve been very lucky that a new golden generation has suddenly appeared and they’ve signed players that can compete (they need to register them though, and that’s not foregone). But who guarantees winning the Champions League in a serial manner? They didn’t even manage to retain it with probably the best club team in the history of the game whilst Real managed it in (apparent) dire straits how many times in recent years? I can see this happening to other clubs in Europe too. Particularly in the Premier League if clubs don’t take heed. If Barcelona survive, it’ll be a miracle.

Barça aren’t gonna be able to register the signings unless a miracle occurs. They’ve apparently asked De Jong to reduce his wages by €4,000,000. That beggars the question on how much are they paying him and others. He is supposedly owed €28,000,000 in back payments. Now, it doesn’t matter if that’s exaggerated or not. Vary it by even €5m here or there for a huge error in assumptions. There are real issues at that club. I can see something major happening very soon.

Yeah, I was just DMing Sid Lowe on Twitter about it. Better said, hounding him until he answers me. There were already rumours yesterday that an agreement had been reached. It is indeed great news because he really is a genuine centre back with no messing around. Now it’s time to get Gavi to sign his extension next.

I lost my powers quite some time back. Now you’re the master.

Really interesting stuff and the most important part of it all are the scattered points within what you’ve written which are “Patriotism”, “Truth” and “Vilify”. What’s Incredible is how then the press and media are used to condition people by manipulating those three points above by turning “Nationalism” into “Patriotism”, “Opinion” into “Truth” and “Real Heroes” into “Villains”. All of that has always existed but since the 1940s all the way through to the early 2000s there was a directive to combat these things at least within society itself (we’ve always been fed lies and been deceived)... But it’s all returned and more powerful than ever before.