Reflections on central defenders. Wol, I’d pair Terry with Ferdinand, and “rest” Campbell. I’ve always rated Silvestre very highly (as a left-footer complements Ferdinand, and is less prone to carelessness than he was). His head butt was out of character. I can only imagine Llungberg said something to wind him up.
Shibb, the “Swede” playing for Everton was the Dane Thomas Gravesen, although you might not notice his absence (to join Madrid) as his doppelganger Lee Carsley is still at Goodison.
My picks for relegation: Crystal Palace, Norwich City, West Brom. Southampton’s home form will see them to safety.
Sort of. After watching Chelsa at Blackburn tonight I realised I was also probably conflating him with Chelsea’s Gudjohanssen (sp?). That Scandinavian guy is everywhere!
D’oh - I meant Brian McBride who, along with Bocanegra, plays with Fulham. Your correct regarding O’Brien & Ajax.
Casey Keller is now with Munchengladbach (formally of Tottenham); Landon Donovan is with another Bundesliga team (I think Leverkusen). Plus, I now there’s several American players in the Championship (can’t think of their names at present).
It’s actually a bit of an urban myth. Pini Zahavi was tasked with finding a team, ideally one with a solid asset base off the pitch and as such sniffed around quite a few teams. He is friend of Levy (through the North London Jewish mafia), and asked Levy for advice - Levy pointed him at Chelsea. There was never any interest in THFC. (Levy would sell in a heartbeat)
Whilst Spurs are a marvellous institution, it wouldn’t be too hard to make an investement decision when faced with the choice of Tottenham High Rd and Fulham Broadway, given that you’re looking to move a lot of hottish cash.
Well I’d say contact was minimal but I thought it was a good call. The attacker took advantage of it but I felt it was deserved. It was totally unnecessary by the defender though, who was nowhere near the ball.
I feel many defenders who don’t have a chance of getting to the ball rely on some gentle touches to put the attacker off balance. It serves them right that occasionaly they get a penalty out if it.
He’s small and very fast and apparently has been in England for quite some time. I thought the Spector loan to Blackburn wasn’t going to happen… now I have to go check my other sources.
I thought that Savage was somewhat lucky to draw the penalty yesterday, and Dickov did a fairly poor job of trying to convert it. It’s amazing to me the difference in quality between Blackburn /Chelsea and Arsenal /ManU. Blackburn’s play was plucky, but they just made so many dumb little mistakes and couldn’t put any real pressure on Cech. Who seems a damned good keeper.
Friedel did okay in goal for Blackburn, and Nelson (sp?) who is sort of an honorary Yank (he’s a Kiwi, but moved to EPL from MLS) played very solid in central defense.
It’s so that a player can get playing time. Spector is promising, but he’s not going to crack the starting line up, at least not this year. So ManU sends him to another team on loan, which means that they still own his contract but he’s going to a club where he’s more likely to see game time (and hence develop as a player).
Bayer Leverkusen has held the rights to Landon Donovan since he was 16 years old. However Donovan got frustrated at the lack of playing time (which isn’t surprising when you’re 16-17 years old) and a bit homesick, so Bayer loaned him to MLS which sent him to San Jose (MLS controls all player rights, to some extent, instead of individual clubs). Now that LD has shown his worth at an international level and has been MLS MVP, and US player of the year a couple/three times, Bayer Leverkusen asked that he come back and give the Bundesliga another chance. He’s in Leverkusen right now, but is again having trouble getting field time since BL are winning and Ponte is not keen to relenquish his spot. He’s currently seeing late minutes as a sub.
Cash: The club taking the player on loan are responsible for his wages - there’s no fee. In some cases the club doing the loaning may help out . For example Nick Barmby is currently at Hull - his wages are something like £20,000 a week - leeds will be paying something like £15,000 of that.
Term: THis is agreed. A straight loan can be cancelled at any time, but an agreement around time can be included. For example Spurs have loaned Callum Davenport to Saints for a season and can’t recall him.
FWIW everything I can find indicates that Spector did not get loaned to Blackburn but instead the deal was squashed, according to SAF because of injuries in the United defense.
Roger Thornhill, do you have something to the contrary or are you just going off of old data?
I’m not quite following the opposition part, however. What exactly do you mean by negotiable?
For example, Club A loans Johnny Striker to Club B. Club A and Club B meet in the final game of the season, the loser gets relegated. Johnny Striker has really come on late in the season, and is averaging almost a goal a game. Can Club A revoke the loan at that point, so they don’t have to play against Johnny Striker? If not, what kind of “negotiations” take place? Are talking about under the table stuff?
Psst, here take this cash and make sure Johnny Striker sents out this game, ok.
At it’s most basic a loan is just that. The player goes to another club who pay his wages for the period, and the loaning club retain the registration (and thus the entitlement to any fee).
However any number of conditions can be agreed - eg the loan player won’t play against the loaning club. He will only play 1st team games, He won’t play in the cup (thereby getting cup-tied etc).
You’re right (I think). It seems that Ferguson blocked the deal on the last day of the transfer window, as you say due to injuries in his team.
Blackburn shouldn’t need him though; their defense looked pretty solid against Chelsea, for a team close to the relegation zone that is. Nelsen and Mokoena looked tight for two players who’ve only just joined the club. What they really need is a decent striker.
Wigan does have a big support base (across Wigan anyway), it’s just that the stadium is now miles away from anywhere in a derelict part of Wigan (New Town). If they got into the Premiership, the support would increase, anyway.
Yeah, there’s a lot of chatter on this at BigSoccer that suggests that once they made those acquistion what’s the point of the transfer? He wouldn’t see the field anyway, and better to train with the ManU first team or getting playing time with the reserve side. Of course Chelsea were stymied mostly after Robben went off early with an injury, and the annoucers mentioned that Chelsea looked similar early in the season before Robben got back (from another injury?).
