Blackpool’s addition to the TACTICS! library: the diagonal longball [Up The 'Pool]
Jermaine Pennant: so rich he forgot about his 100,000-pound car [Pies]
Say adios to FC Saturn in Russia. They went kaput in an odd, uniquely Russian, way [WSC]
Also say adios to AC St Louis, who went kaput in a rather American way [StL Business Journal]
Maradona v. Valderrama (and some others on each side) in 5-a-side [Off the Post]
Spain’s World Cup winning XI gets Simpsonized [The Spoiler]
Are cup replays worthwhile? [Avoiding The Drop]
Finally:
There’s a new entry on the “Worst Named Club of All-Time” list [The Offside Rules]
That Blackpool blogger might want to look at Gareth Barry’s passing for Aston Villa (or even James Collins for that matter)– The “long diagonal” is what Wenger was referring to when he pissed off O’Neill by saying that “Villa play a lot of long passes.”
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But I forgot, we’re a “half-assed, mickey mouse club.” Or so says the manager of a team with a 10k/week wage cap.
How many bids for Charlie Adam have Villa made now?
@Ryan: About as many as City made for Milner. Your point?
quick! throw Freidel to the poor house!
That’s precisely my point. Wasn’t Lerner complaining about “big bad City”?
I find it odd that Villa would make the £6 million swing between £18 and £24 million for Bent with no problem, but can’t seem to find the extra million to get to Blackpool’s asking price of £5 million for Adam.
That’s what’s really amusing about this, Mags, and what makes Villa utterly feckless: how can you willfully keep lowballing one team when you just paid around 20m for someone from another team? It defies belief! Houllier’s a moron!
Can’t tell if that’s tongue in cheek or not, but maybe the players are worth *gasp* different amounts?
@ Ryan, @ Keith: Villa’s splash for Bent baffles me. Did Lerner find some extra money stashed under a bed or something? Or, did the stay in the relegation zone wake him up?
Well, duh, Ryan, but still: they’re lowballing because they’re not willing to pay, but spending 20m-ish on another player shows that some amount of money is there, but they’d rather try and get a bargain out of Blackpool because they think they can pick on the little guy. Would be like going to Peter Luger, buying a big steak, and then arguing over the price of the mashed potatoes.
@OM: The issue with O’Neill wasn’t in the fee outlay; it was in the signing of squad players like Steve Sidwell and Habib Beye on upper-tier pay packets and then not playing them. When, surprise-surprise, O’Neill couldn’t then sell any of those players because interested teams wouldn’t pay what MON was paying them, his position became untenable. And So Lerner wouldn’t let MON use the Milner money for Aiden McGeady and Robbie Fucking Keane, and MON fecked off. Lerner and his officials always said that “if the manager wants to buy a 30 million-pound player, we will back him.” Houllier decided to take them up on that.
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The difference, Ryan, is that Mancini was also publicly courting Milner in the press. Villa have put in two bids for Charlie Adam (and have not been the only team bidding on the player, as well, mind), through the proper channels, that Blackpool could have rejected. And Holloway could have said “the player’s not for sale.” But to single out the Villa bid, and not the Birmingham or Liverpool bids, as “pulling on [his] plonker?” Come right the fuck on, Ollie.
@Mags, JT: The big difference in Bent/Adam is that Bent was the type of player that Villa absolutely needed (and has since before he joined Sunderland)- a fucking goalscorer.
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Adam, by contrast, is a central midfielder with nice passing ability. Houllier just signed one of those from a Champions League side for slightly more than he was willing to bid for Adam, and he’s got one that Holloway had no problem loaning in last season (or this). In other words, Adam would be a luxury. Someone nice to have, but not vital to Villa achieving its goals over the next 18 months.
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Also, JT, didn’t Liverpool bid the same amount for Adam? And didn’t your team spend over 20 million for a striker of your own? Also, if Liverpool paid 4 million for Useless Konchesky, surely you could stump up 10 mill for Adam.
@Keith
Honestly, didn’t know we put a bid in. I’ve been sick all week and thus not constantly refreshing Caught Offside for transfer dreck.
@JT: Fair enough. Now keep your team’s hands off of our wingers! (I will, though, pay for Stephen Warnock’s plane, train or automobile to Merseyside)
Eh, we’ll do as we please, Keith. We all know Villa is a selling club (ducks)
Right JT, but who gets to be the arbiter of what constitutes a “lowball offer”. Charlie Adam, good as he’s been, has 1/2 of one good season in the Premiership under his belt. 4m seems a very fair offer to me, and Blackpool of course has the right to reject it if they choose. I don’t think either party really has much right to feel aggrieved here.
Why not try to get a bargain out of Blackpool?
I guess if Blackpool think the offer is insultingly low, then we’re ok to judge Villa’s offer as a lowball.
@JT: But we don’t know that all of Blackpool FC think it’s “insultingly” low. Holloway obviously does. However, the way Houllier handled the Bent transfer sheds some light on this; Houllier is identifying players, and having Paul Faulkner contact the teams’ chairmen to place the bids- hence Jay Leno Steve Bruce’s reaction to the Bent transfer. So it’s plausible that the Blackpool chairman has said “you’re not too far off” to the first or even second bid, without directly telling Ollie every word said in those conversations. And Ian Holloway, font of entertainment that he is, is going to pick and choose which bid “insults” him. Even if they’re all of the same value.
Dammit, that was supposed to be
Jay LenoSteve Bruce-
/stoopidHTML
That car appears to have the 4 best English managers in it.
@JT: I don’t think it can work that way though. Let’s say SWP is generally valued at 5m pounds. (Use your imagination). What then if Newcastle offer that sum, and City deem it insultingly low because they want 10m?
By the standards you’ve just set, Newcastle are guilty of lowballing.
@WSR: Holloway for England!
@Ryan
Why does everything have to work? Can’t we agree to disagree anymore? And yes, NUFC would be guilty of lowballing City’s price. We can spin it off to perceive it however we want, because we all think we know what players are worth, etc etc. That’s what this is about, right? We think Bent’s too expensive, Adam too cheap, when no-one has a clue. These guys are worth what someone’s willing to pay, I guess.
Ryan: What’s the word on seeing Milner in the side to once again get tearful at Villa Park?
@Keith: I believe Milner will be given a chance to feel the warm embrace of the Villa Park substitute bench, but that’s about it.
Though I suppose I should caveat that with the possibility that Silva isn’t deemed quite ready yet, if so, we may just get to see Scrappy Jimmy.
Houllier’s sussed out the real problem though.