SirBalon

Manchester City have also gone onto officially state that it's all rubbish and that they're not about to break FFP rules for something that in their opinion they don't need. But then again they are another of the Arab clubs in Europe so maybe ISIS or Alqaeda can help them out so as to promote something untoward for the next 4 or 5 years? Or then again... Seeing as Messi's dad is "allegedly" involved in various dodgy circles and has the same "godly" fascination with cash, maybe he can make the same moves Neymar's daddy did.

Realistically.... Where do people think we could finish this season? Personally I think we have a team that can beat most in this league but at the same time I wouldn't be surprised if we lost against anyone in the division. It's not like it'd be a major shock. For me where we finish this season in the Premier League table has more to do with how the top teams do this year than what we do.

The Coutinho thing is a farce. They've been following him for nearly three years and every summer there's been speculation on whether or not Barça were going to go in for him. Even in the last winter transfer window there were a couple of weeks where some of the Spanish sports dailies were reporting that they may have made a bid for the player... Then it all died down and before this summer transfer window opened (way before the Neymar rumours leaving to PSG started) the speculation surrounding Philippe Coutinho went into motion. All of this fallacy surrounding Neymar leaving and Barça being desperate to sign Coutinho because of it shows how ridiculous some fans' heads seem to work. In all honesty I don't expect Liverpool fans to follow all the ins and outs of the rumourology surrounding FC Barcelona. They like every football fan have enough following what's going on at their own club without concerning themselves with every minuscule detail somewhere else. So enter the big situations that make the world's media being the most noticeable and people try and put 2+2 together and get 444. This is why I've been going on about this situation on the relevant thread concerning the news on Coutinho possibly moving to Barcelona. I've been there on my own defending certain situations where I feel lies have been formulated from normal transfer business where the buying club and the selling club haggle over worth and hesitance to sell. THE ONLY part on the Coutinho saga where anyone connected to Barcelona have made public and has actually come from the club and not newspaper speculation was the Pep Segura quotes! They were wrong and he's been reprimanded twice in a question of days surrounding that and an outspoken criticism surrounding Gerard Piqué's performance in the first leg of the Supercopa de España against Real Madrid. That came three days before Segura's comment on both Coutinho and Dembélé. Nothing else has come from inside the club and yet the club have been accused of using dirty tactics in the signing of both players. Like they've been coaxing the players so as to show dissent toward their present clubs. Coutinho is needed, but he's only needed as a rotation partner for Iniesta because everyone knows Iniesta is now at the stage of his career where his games need to be hand picked. He has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the Neymar departure... That would be Ousmane Dembélé. The problem Barça have obviously had is the receipt of €222m on top of whatever they had to spend before they got that money. Any club that owns a player where FC Barcelona are interested in buying are no justifiably looking to get as much as possible financially from a club they know has a burning hole in their pocket with a substantial sum of cash to sign players with. This isn't the first time this has happened to Barça as it also happened when Real Madrid activated Luis Figo's buy-out clause many years ago for what was then a record breaking transfer fee and the then Barcelona president Joan Gaspart went and spent all the money stupidly on players that didn't fit in or were substandard and expensive because the selling club knew Barça had money to burn. Gaspart himself came out last week on a football television show saying that he hoped that the present board didn't make the same mistake he made and that if the players that aren't needed aren't on the market or very difficult to sign if they are, then it's best to keep the money and ride out the season by observing what occurs. The market had already gone crazy before Neymar went for €222m and after that it's just perverse which is why even Florentino Pérez hasn't dipped into the market recently by his own admission on a radio show last weekend. Coutinho isn't worth that amount of money, but Liverpool have a situation on their hands that's personal in terms of it being late on in the transfer window and the fact Klopp doesn't want to lose him and never planned on a situation where this could occur. The Jean Seri rumour is a serious one and it was all born on when Xavi in an interview for the New York Times a month back mentioned him and said he was surprised nobody in Europe was talking about him as a potential target for big clubs. I don't follow the French league so I don't know how good he really is and I'd be lying there. I knew of him because they'd had a decent season last campaign, but nothing more than that.

Yerry Mina signed according to Mundo Deportivo and Sport The speculation surrounding the Colombian centre-back Yerry Mina has been an ongoing situation for a number of months now and according to both Barcelona based sports dailies, Mundo Deportivo and Sport, the Palmeiras defender looks to have been signed by FC Barcelona. They came to an agreement with Palmeiras three months ago when they purchased a preferential option to sign the defender. According to both sports dailies Mina wouldn't be arriving until at least January and could even be left out on loan at Palmeiras or have a European club take the player on loan until next summer so as to bed into European football. Yerry Mina is a signing totally from the technical team in the boardroom because if a centre-back was to be an option to sign Ernesto Valverde wanted Real Sociedad's Iñigo Martínez as he's been after him for a number of years now and has also been connected as a possible signing for Barça for a while. But the Barça board seem to have a curious attraction to anything occurring in the Brazilian league these days... Very iffy indeed.

They actually thought that buy-out clause was already unreachable mate. Remember the taxes involved which aren't in the actually pay-out clause fee! PSG have actually paid almost €400m for Neymar! They've broken FFP laws and everyone knows this but by law UEFA can't do anything about it right now because they have to wait until this year's figures are out at the end of the new campaign. Keep an eye on this... They've broken the FFP rules un one two ways... One, PSG paid it themselves which would be breaking the FFP rules as you can't go over €30m on your takings and PSG aren't anywhere near the €300m range and never have been. The second one which is the one they've used... The state of Qatar via QSI (Qatar Sports Investments) have paid for it by putting make-up on the deal where they say they've paid him a three year lump sum wage for being an ambassador for the Qatar World Cup. It is illegal for a sponsor or a foreign entity to buy a player for a club. For sure... Barça didn't sell Neymar! Neymar negotiated behind the club's back to have his buy-out clause met. He's history and the club must move on because no player is bigger than any club and less Neymar.

On the face of it, it looks like a very good signing. But Villarreal could've done better in my opinion by searching out a gem which is what they've always done to be honest. I hope Bacca isn't damaged goods with such a poor spell at Milan.

What does whatever personal influence on the man who made him debut have on what you said about the comparisons between Rijkaard's Barcelona and Pep's?

Frank Rijkaard went the final two years without being close to winning anything and the team was in a massive depression. The first thing Pep done when taking the job was to sell insignia names like Ronaldinho and Deco. The team by the end of his first season was over 70% different to that of Rijkaard and the style of play was also different. Nobody has ever taken any merit from Rijakaard's successful years. But that fallacy about his team and Pep's is just a tool used by those that want to take merit away from what turned into possibly the greatest club side ever. Definitely in its height, the best football ever seen.

Nah. I'll give that one a miss I think.

That post above is verging on one of the most ridiculous I've ever read. Total social media monger!

You're right... When those results occurred I was rather entertained by all the comments and opinions all over the place via the media and football fans. For me it actually gave of a sense of even more superiority because you felt that there were people WISHING for Barcelona's time to end and that their dominance was almost perverse. But from inside Barcelona fandom, they knew they were shock results, freak moments. But now you can plainly see and even the most innocent fan new to this will observe that something serious has to be put in place. A new plan that hopefully isn't based on throwing money at it in terms of looking for the answer in the overly expensive transfer market. Too many mistakes have been made over the past 5 to 6 years with the youth setups (La Masia) with a lack of care and attention being paid to the heart and soul of the club. I've said it before, but more money and more time has been put into the women's football team over the past two years than the football structure at the club. More time and effort has been put into expanding Barcelona's brandname all over the world by employing marketing gurus and even gong so far as to buy one of the biggest business spaces in the world right in the heart of New York's Manhattan. There's the arrogance! Not anything else in the use of that word over the years because that was just envy from others at what the club had always mollycoddled which was their eternal belief on how the game should be played and how the heart and soul of every successful or nearly successful Barça side was always populated by players from La Masia. I've got a long day ahead of me today which is why I didn't watch the whole of the game last night (Supercopa de España), but the writing was on the wall. Hopefully part of what has been observed over these past two games has a lot to do with confidence although that's just scraping for hope. The pre-season looked great and it was actually Real Madrid who looked to have a lack of ideas and various cohesion problems. But enter competition because in Spain the Supercopa isn't England's Community Shield... The Supercopa de España actually means something! Even though it is right at the start of the season and three years ago Athletic Bilbao wiped the floor with Barça both home and away which hasn't been seen to the same extent in this particular tie... The club must remember that before anything resembling a panic mode enters into the system and money is thrown all over the place. None of this is Ernesto Valverde's fault though! He is a fantastic coach and actually... He's the best man I can think of for a moment like this if he's permitted to work no matter what happens results wise this coming season if it's negative in that aspect. If given time, he will work to re-establish what's needed... The problem is that he's working for a board of directors that have no confidence from the socios, the fans, the owners of the club. FC Barcelona is fundamentally a Republic and not a football feudal system... The board work for the fans and as soon as that particular issue is resolved and the right people manage to acquire everything that the club constitution asks from them so as to be able to stand for election. This board SHOULD NOT BE PERMITTED to use the club's resources to take FCB into a new era! Infact, this board should do the right thing by standing aside and calling elections for a new refreshing beginning to occur... They should do this is if they really DO love the club.

hahaha... I think most people could've said that. Infact what you've said has made both SPORT and MUNDO DEPORTIVO today questioning the board. I don't know what's going on but every Culé is asking the same questions.

OFFICIAL: Villarreal CF sign Carlos Bacca from AC Milan

Uli Hoeneß managed it at Bayern!

Laporta? NO WAY! He embezzled Barcelona money in Kazakhstan. He started well but he ended up almost ruining the club! There are people that can do a good job and those people care about the club. The problem with those people is financing their bid to be elected as the constitution of the club (same happened with Florentino Pérez at Real Madrid where practically nobody can stand now and it showed in their last elections where he was the only candidate) was changed when Rosell took over and having the capital to show you can cover anything that goes wrong due to your mismanagement is difficult. But there are at least two that seem to have managed this and in the next two to three months we should be in the position to see the movement.

Starting to look dodgy already that signing. Enter those waiting in the dark to pounce and set off the elections. The sooner this happens before things go too far the better.

All defenders get caught in that fashion when a team is either running at them with no barrier in between or when they're having to cover part of the space the full-backs leave behind. We can go quite a bit further back to see situations such as these occurring in the Barcelona defence! As the midfield (that traditional one) has died, the others just aren't up to scratch and the defence has begun to suffer more and more. Barça have a MASSIVE problem with their full-backs, but especially their right-back. Aleix Vidal went back into his old self in that game the other night... He done exactly what Luis Enrique would rip into him about and subsequently drop him from either first teams or the squad altogether. ALL THREE Real Madrid goals are on a counter and all three are down to an initial positional or defensive error by the right-back. The midfield because it isn't confident does one thing... Push high up the field trying to suffocate the rival and becoming as narrow as possible! Watch replays of three games like the Juve first half in Turin, the PSG second half in Paris and the second half against Real Madrid the other night in the Camp Nou. I've been saying it for a long time that the problems at Barcelona lie in midfield because the midfield was and should be the pace-maker at Barça and right now it isn't. As for the right-back situation... It's only normal that this should be happening. It will be a long long time before another of the quality of Dani Alves comes along... They don't grow on trees.

As far as I know they want someone to help out Busquets so as to release him from so much responsibility protecting the defence. It leaves the back line open to full on attacks and no back four in the world can take that no matter how good they are. You'd think Mascherano would be that option, but it seems he is fully consecrated as a centre-back at Barça now. From what I've heard speak of the technical team in the boardroom, they rate Paulinho's passing abilities extremely highly and his technical ability. I can't really comment other than what he done for Spurs which never looked like bedding in. Maybe they think La Liga and Barcelona's way of playing next to someone like Busquets will work.

Milan did want to keep him but it was Barça who took their final year option to take him back to the Camp Nou which was totally based on his form at AC Milan last season. He was never an option before than... He does have tremendous talent but in my opinion he'll never be what he can be. He's not as selfish with the ball as he used to be but for some reason he doesn't provide what he shows at times on a consistent level. Take for example the U21 Euros this summer... He was brilliant! But it just occurs in spits and spurts.

I agree... it's one of the stupidest things in the world although at the same time I get it. I don't like hearing it or reading it unless it's said in jest.

I don't know how it was reported but the journalist that asks him the question asks; "Does Seri have Barça DNA?" To be honest, that Barça DNA stuff isn't half boring now. I can't believe it still gets banded about.

It's an interview and he was asked which players he thought would be good for Barcelona! He doesn't even play for the club anymore!! What's he meant to do? Not answer the question because only Barcelona get accused of this? Ian Wright was asked the same thing a few weeks ago and he reeled off some names... Is that considered tapping?

Definitely... That's how they won both La Liga and the Champions League last season which is all down to how Zinedine Zidane used the squad when it was all about to go pear shaped. Two dodgy results and things could've been so different... He rotated really intelligently and it paid off.

What happened to Kroos and Modrić in the 5 out of 6 leagues they lost?

That's childish! I'm not even going to delve into that remark...