FA Cup

congrats hiddink on the FA cup win.
=)
terrific header by drogba.

Drogba didn't score did he? Or was it 3-1?

My bad, I thought they said Anelka had scored the first.

Congrats Chelsea.

There were a few upset Everton fans in the pub yesterday, s I had a good chuckle at them ha ha

Dirty toffee bastards

I was hoping Everton won it... They played well this season. Well done!

They don't play well, they play efficient, boring, un-attractive football.

cmon matty, you got to give credit where credit is due.

as much as you love liverpool and hate manU, they do have one thing in common. both spend loads of money on their players. and compare that to everton who prb spend 1/10th of liverpool and still manage to stay competitive and even get to the FA cup finals.

this is why there needs to be a salary cap, draft or something to regulate the current sys. otherwise, chelsea, manU, man city, arsenal, AND liverpool just spend everyone out of the water. or newcastle even has a higher salary base than everton and those fools got relegated LOL

everton are a very well run club, but nobody can claim they play good football. HOOOOF it up the pitch and get old broken legs Saha running after it. they're a terrible advert for the so-called beautiful game.

lol, i give you that.
its not art in motion =)

but i like that they get the most out of their ragged roster. and still am worried about the big 5 drowning out everyone else with their huge pockets.

btw, how much you wager ronaldo bolts?

BlueJackeL wrote:

lol, i give you that.
its not art in motion =)

but i like that they get the most out of their ragged roster. and still am worried about the big 5 drowning out everyone else with their huge pockets.

btw, how much you wager ronaldo bolts?

You saw Aston Villa so close to beating us, you saw Fulham beating us. I have never seen a more open premiership. The small teams are coming up in the ranks. There was a time when Villa had a CL spot and had it for more than a week. The English League would be shite with such caps. It is the money that attracts class to this League. The English League is the best in the world, and i think caps would change that.

vish, doesnt look like you understand how a salary cap works.

it doesnt limit how much an team can spend perse. your manU can continue to dole out millions and millions to indivisual players. what it does do is tax each team for every pound they spend over the cap. that money is pooled and distributed to all the teams in the league. lets say the cap is 100 GBP and there are 10 teams. manU in typical fashion spends 200GBP. since they are 100GBP over the limit, they pay a pound for pound fine. 100GBP is distrubuted amongst all 10 team (including manU) so each team now has 10GBP in pocket to spend for the next year.

so now the smaller teams have some means to compete for the next great free agent player. as it is, yes there are the rare occasions a fullham beat manU or an everton rises above expectations to challenge for the FA cup. however the majority situation is that teams in the lower leagues, and even lower teams in the premiership are basically feeder clubs for the big 5 (now that man city has a rich arab owner) to buy up anything and anyone that shows potential to be a star.

salary cap is just one means, its worked well for the most part in the american football system NFL. the draft is another means, however thats a pretty radical change to the current system of young kids, signing to a local club when they are 10 and then traded around to eventually the rich clubs like manU if they show any promise. all smaller clubs can do is hope to have them for 1-2 years in between or assemble leftovers like everton and hope to exceed expectations.

for you, obviously no change is needed, since you adopted a winning team when you were young, and a team that has some of the deepest pockets. now say you rooted for the local team, bolton was it? then im sure youd be wishing that someone other than manU was buying up all the talent. rooney is a case and point. blue forever? hell no. manU just showed him the money, which everton could never match. and he was gone in a second.
cheers.

lol @ rooney. One thing I will say for Everton to their credit is their fans now hate Wayne Rooney for that.

Good point Blue... I didn't know you meant it like that.

LOL, not meaning to be harsh on you Vish.
Unlike matty, i do not fault you for being a manU fan.
clearly you picked them up at a young age and faithfully argue for them to this day so i can appreciate that.


and of course im new to the whole premier league. just coming in with fresh eyes tho, i can already see some of the major issues pertaining to balance in the league and hopeing that something can be done.

i dont want to complain and not offer a solution, although im sure there are several complicated details relating to a imposing a salary cap. just.... something needs to be done IMO.
cheers m8

BlueJackeL wrote:

Unlike matty, i do not fault you for being a manU fan.

There will never be a salary cap in football, never, ever, ever, ever, ever.

Ever.

I don't really think it would bridge the gap that much anyway. Big players go to the big teams because they're in the big competitions. Big competitions reward the big teams by giving them big prizes. Big prizes pay to keep the big players at the big clubs.

I don't know that fining the bigger spending clubs and divvi-ing it up between everyone else gives them that much spending power to bring in players that are going to change their fortunes, especially considering the lure of Champions League football is what alot of big players cite when moving clubs.

Big players are still going to move to Man Utd and Liverpool and Chelsea because they're in the Champions League. If teams like Everton and Fulham could afford to buy players like Torres or Kaka or whoever, i'd still be suprised it they didn't move to the team playing Champions League football.

As for Man City, I'm not really of the school of thought that they make up a 'Big 5' just because they have loads of money. Nobody in their right mind would move there for footballing reasons and, despite common conception, I don't think that most modern day footballers are motivated purely by how much green they take home. Case at hand is Kaka who fucked Man City off for £500k a week because, basically... they're shite!

Man City have a long road to travel which involves

1) An entirely new team (excludin, maybe, Robinho)
2) A new manager. And not just any idiot like Mark 'I dont know the difference between a fair challenge and a penalty' Hughes. They need someone who actually knows how to lead a succesful team.

The one hope the so-called smaller teams have is the decline of Arsenal. They are a team who are slipping further and further from the top 3 and haven't really got the spending power to do much about it. When Adebayor leaves they have precisely zero strikers. Walcott is a winger, RVP is always injured, Bendtner is just not good enough. Wenger has a hard season ahead of him if he doesn't get money to burn in the summer.

thats the endless loop tho matty.

basically, at some point, a team gets funding and invests in the team, ie. the players and coach. they start winning. then they win tropheys. then they get recoginition and get invited to more tournaments and things like the champions league. then they get richer. and then millions of fans who like winners, become fans of those teams.

its starts somewhere. and only goes further. the rich get richer. and you dont think something needs to be done?

so it does starts when the teams can invest in the players. ie they have the money to do so. if the gap keeps widening, how will there ever be parity, or are you fine with manU, pool, arse, and chelsea just dividing the tropheys every year? yes man city has a long way to go, but if the owner keeps pouring in money, they will have a good squad. they will win. they will get tropheys, invites, etc.

now imagine if every team had at least some funds to make a run. in american sports, the cap PLUS the draft is what gives a fairly good system of parity. yes, teams go on a run. others like the yankees and the lakers always stay competitive becuase of their pockets and popularity of the city and history. but very often, a small team or a mid size team wins. baseball, we have the twins, angels, devil rays, etc. small teams that won in the last 20 years. basketball, the heat (only started in the 90s) and spurs have won it, both smaller market teams. football, seems like every year its a new team.

of course many clubs stay competitive every year, the big cities teams usually. but smaller teams at least have a chance. and thats exciting to me. that pretty much everyone has a chance.

I'm not saying something doesn't need to be done, I just don't think a salary cap is the answer. Wouldn't the big clubs just slash the contracts of their superstars and still have the same team that is better than the rest?

Personally, I hate everything you just described about American sports. To me, it de-values the sport. One year, my team has 3 great players, the next year we lose them because the shit teams get to pick first and my team has to start from scratch.

The way American sports are marketed and franchised and teams move from city to city to get a bigger fanbase or whatever, I wouldn't ever wanna see that in football to the extent of American sports. Next thing, each goal will be worth 3 points and we'll have ad-breaks every 3 minutes ha ha

I'm not saying it's not dull that the same teams compete for the trophies every year, but it's the same in every country you could ever travel to, and yet the fans keep pouring in through a loyalty to their local club.

I do believe it is a fact that a salary cap will NEVER be enforced, certainly not in my lifetime. So it's futile debating it really. Every now and then some radical like Platini comes out and says 'Lets have only 3 foreign players in each team, lets ensure English club teams have as little domination in European football as possible and lets change the name of the UEFA cup for no reason whatsoever in a vein attempt to secure a bigger slice of the advertising cherry'. Europa League - who gives a fuck what it's called, it's still a second-rate tournament for losers!

Thankfully, football has 150 years of tradition and that's worth more to me than any of the bullshit fly-by-night way other sports are run.

One year Torres plays for Liverpool. Next season for West Ham. Then for AS Roma. Then he moves to Auxerre. Then to Leeds in League Two. No thanks

ADDITIONAL: Do you ever watch the Spanish league? However that league is run works well, because, yes there's always Barcelona and Real Madrid, but five years ago it was Villareal, Valencia, Deportivo challenging for the top spots with the big two. Benitez I believe won consecutive titles at Valencia. Last few seasons, it's Atletico and Sevilla. Someone different pops up and finishes 3rd every season, it's exciting stuff. How different can their league be to ours?

LOL
i hear ya.
im not sure that the salary cap works in the futball system. and i would like to see how the spanish system works and differs from the premiership.

with regards to american sports systems. rosters are not reset each year. contracts are contracts. players get traded yes. the salary cap just lets teams compete a bit more evenly when it comes to free agents (players whos last contract has expired). the draft is for new players entering the league. and gives first priority to the worst teams buecause a single player can turn a club around (ala lebron, peyton manning, etc).

the end arguement, is that the EPL is not the spanish league. we have 20 teams, and only 4 at this point for the last 20 years really compete. sure there is a blackburn anomaly in there. but really we all know its 4 teams pretty much and the rest. and now maybe mancity with money can make it 5. so i think something needs to be done.

=)

hey matt, i would not be to sure that this salary cap does not "happen in your life time". lets face it football is about one thing and only; MONEY! the fifa and the uefa love pounds and euros. any rule changes in the last 2 decades these organisations have made to the game are based on this simple fact. for example; why do players who take of their shirt after scoring a goal get a yellow card? according to fifa it is because it holds up play. research has shown that their is a hardly any difference in delay with or without the old rule. so why do we have a rule in football that punishes the most important and best players on the pitch; the strikers? why do we see yellow cards that lead to suspensions, because the best of the best can not contain themselves after scoring glorious and important goals? why does fifa enforce a rule that influences the outcome of competitions and games, a rule that keeps the fans favorite and most exciting players of the pitch, while it doesn't help to improve the flow of the game?

BECAUSE A LOBBY GROUP OF SHIRT SPONSORS PRESSURED THE FIFA INTO DOING SO!

that's right. the people who pay to have their name on the shirts want that name visible in goal celebrations. and on some level that makes sense of course; it is the moment that will always be repeated on tv and that will be printed in the papers. and rather than seeing an athletes well toned abs toned we need to see the name of a financial company that private individuals can not even buy products from......

what is even strangers is that it means that somebody from carlsberg told fifa that, yes we love it when gerard scores, but hey if he takes of his shirt, BOOK 'M, even if that would be his third yellow and mean an automatic suspension.

and nobody in football blinked!

now you may wonder what that has to do with the salary cap...

well here is what;

3 years ago the dutch broadcaster NOS paid 30,000,000 euros for the champions league rights on a 3 year contract. this year they negotiated a new deal with uefa for 3 more years. the number of viewers in holland had dropped so dramatically how ever, that they now only pay 10,000,000! the reason the numbers had dropped (after the first round) is because dutch teams never make it through the group stages and it is always the same foreign teams that do go through. so a product that should have gone up in price..... bombed...

i can hear you think matt;"well that is just holland! itv and sky pay way more for those rights" but it isn't just holland. it is most european countries with the exceptions of england, italy and spain! and lets not forget that the rest of europe is way bigger and richer than just these 3 countries. it may very soon not just be platini within that organisation who pushes for a salary cap

oh and matt, your idea of players being willing to give up income for succes is of course slightly naive; one kaka does not a summer make. torres could have achieved great succes at Atlético Madrid, but he chose to come second every year with liverpool for more money! and once you tell these kids at liverpool that the budget will be halved because of a salary cap, i think a lot of them will be on the phone with their agents before you can sing "you'll never..."

I still don't see it happening.

Although our club is officially pennyless, so you lot might see a shift in the big 4 domination very soon anyway when we go under lol