Burnley stuck with Dyche through many years of promotion and relegation between the Championship and Premier League. I am amazed that anyone is thinking that Kompany’s position is on the line. Burnley are not the type of club to fire a manager after a poor start to the season.
The Premier League has been the dominant league financially for the last 10 years. In that time there have been 3 Premier League winners of the Champions League (City, Liverpool, Chelsea). 2 La Liga teams have won it 6 times between them (Barca once, Real Madrid 5 times), and Bayern Munich have won it twice.
In that time, there have been two English winners of the Europa League (Man Utd and Chelsea twice), three seperate winners from La Liga who have won it 7 times between them (Sevilla 5 times, Atlético Madrid and Villereal once each), and Eintracht Frankfurt won it once.
In the two Europa Conference League Finals that have taken place, one was won by Roma, and the other by West Ham.
The problem is not the dominance of the Premier League. It is the dominance of the 4 biggest leagues in Europe (Premier League, La Liga, Bundesliga, and Serie A) over everyone else. The last winner of any European trophy from outside of these leagues was Porto winning the Europa League in 2010/11. Porto were also the last winners of the Champions League from outside of the Big 4 Leagues, and that was when Jose Mourinho was in charge of them in 2003/04.
The Super League does nothing to solve these problems - unless you count potentially destroying European competition as solving the problem. It doesn’t solve the problems of the dominance of Champions League qualifying in the various domestic leagues either. It only makes clubs who are already insanely rich even richer, and diminishes competition even further.
And this is the problem club owners are really talking about - they aren’t getting all of the money. And when they have it all, their problem is that they still want more. They don’t care about competition or the spirit of the game. If they did, they would introduce radical reforms to the game like a drafting system similar to that in many American sports, or truly levelling up prize money within competitions.
But no, that means them getting a few million less, and not hoarding all the gold like a dragon under the mountain.
Depends what you mean?
Manchester United are basically the 3rd love in my life along with friends and family. If I lost them it would be devastating.
At the same time, I go to the matches of some of my local teams regularly. But if they ceased to be it wouldn’t mean as much.
There is a core of players who seem to have the motivation to do things better. Onana, Fernandes, Rashford, Wan Bissaka, Maguire, Shaw, Martinez, Casemiro seem to care enough to realize that things will turn around if the manager is given time to actually work with the team and get proper support from the management at the club. Even if their levels of talent are highly variable.
Compare that to the likes of Sancho who seem happy enough to rot in the reserves rather than actually prove that they are worthy of a place in the team.
There is a lot of deadweight in the squad which is proving hard to shift due to our stupid recruitment policy. Which seems to be emergency loans, overpaying for unproven talent, and giving huge wages and big contracts to players so we cannot sell them when needed.
There was a video earlier showing how gutted Fernandes was after last nights match. I’m glad I saw it because it shows there is fight there. But turning this around will take a lot more than fight.
Man United here.
2003/04 season - Paul Scholes had a perfectly good goal disallowed in the second leg against Porto. If that had stood and we had won that, arguably Monaco were the only other team to fear. As it happens, Porto won, and basically thrust Mourinho on the world.
2012/13 season - Nani should never have been sent off when we were leading at home to Real Madrid. Completely changed the match in an instant. We had a real shot at that UCL that season.
Not a bad player in the slightest. A decent, solid centre back who, while prone to the odd gaffe, could be relied on.
I do get frustrated when people say that he should have got more England caps. He was fighting for one of two spots with Rio Ferdinand, John Terry, and Sol Campbell. I’m amazed he got 38 caps.
Ravel Morrison.
Sir Alex Ferguson said he was the best teenage footballer he had ever seen. Even told Rooney, Ferdinand, and Giggs that he was better than them at that age.
Currently on his 14th club in 12 years, and has had a lot of trouble with the law.