I hate following up Theo’s great tactical breakdown so shortly after with something like this. That conversation should keep going. And plus, he promised us more installments anyway…
But, if you haven’t read it, this is a really good article from sports illustrated (?!?!?) on the state of la liga. Troubling for sure. Well worth the read. And some mention of Sevilla as one of the “pretenders” (it hurts to read, but we can’t really argue…).
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2010/writers/sid_lowe/08/26/la.liga.preview/
On the imbalance of the league:
“Last season, second-place Madrid finished 25 points ahead of Valencia in third and 33 points ahead of Sevilla in fourth. In terms of points, those two sides, supposed challengers, were closer to relegation zone than the title.”
On Sevilla’s economic prospects:
“Of Spain’s 20 first-division clubs, only six have spent more than $6 million. And two of them are Valencia and Sevilla, third and fourth last season, respectively. Worse, while they have spent $33.4 million and $13.7 million, respectively, they have recovered $99.6 million and $18.4 million. In other words, their net spend is zero; they have sold more than they have signed. If Luis Fabiano departs from Sevilla — and with the club having been eliminated from the Champions League this week, someone is probably going to have to go — that figure will be even starker. And before you say, “Well, they’ve got cash, at least. Valencia did brilliantly, as now it has $66 million burning a hole in its pocket,” it hasn’t. That money is burning a hole in the bank’s pocket.”
Will be interesting to see what falls out over the next week or two. If the team decides it needs to get better, or if it needs to cut its losses and hope we can scrape by this season and find our way back into the Champs League.
If we had to sell some players, who would you nominate?
Sadly the players we nominate are not the players that are gonna go because the ones we don’t mind leaving won’t give us the money that we’ll want. But if LuFa goes will we be able to afford Bryan Ruiz (which is my favourite combination of two names in the world btw, which sort of makes him a must). It also says on wikipedia that he can play as a second striker which would be perfect if we’re looking for a new formation. That is, if he still wants to come since we no longer have CL Football.
Game tomorrow-who remembered?
not me. i forgot….
i guess i was asking mostly about value. like who we would be willing to sell and what would be a reasonable/acceptable price.
obviously anyone can be had for the right price, and we dont really have the information to know what’s being offered though.
the thought of a more versatile forward giving us some better tactical options is quite enticing though. just read another article saying that monchi stated he wants 30m pounds for fabiano. thats a bluff obviously, but hopefully if he pulls the trigger he gets us good value. all we can really hope for at this point.
we better f-ing win la liga this year… so pissed about champs league. maybe it will open the door for us to hang with the big 2 a little longer than last year…
would anyone be interested in a disgruntled adebayor? would we want him? he can be a pain in the ass but is a hell of a striker when playing well…
Of course! THE MAN CITY FIRE-SALE! disgruntled players desperate for playing time with a club desperate to get rid of them. sort of bargain buys we need…who do they have?
I just read the SI column…pretty well argued throughout, I thought. I fear we are going to have a lot of trouble staying in the 3 or 4 spots this year (since it was so easy last year, right?)
If La Liga doesn’t go to some sort of communal TV contract soon it will be in real trouble. Sooner or later Barca and RM will realize that a 2 team ‘league’ is not viable, even if it does cost them the odd title or two occasionally.
I hope you’re right, mike, but I have a hard time imagining a president of either of those clubs willfully making a decision that hurts their bottom line in the short-term for the betterment of the league (and some other future president’s financial situation). But I definitely agree that that’s the only way for La Liga to remain (become?) a competitive league.
I think eventually they will have to. The parallel I see is MLB…there are still teams (Yankees/Red Sox) that spend millions more than all the others, but they also pay into a pot that gets distributed to smaller market teams. Both the Yankees and the Sox remain (very) profitable despite these annual payouts. The problem with the baseball model is that there is no promotion/ relegation, so there are a handful of teams (Florida, chiefly) being run solely as a financial investment for the owners of those teams with no fear of being removed from the league. It becomes perilously close to a rigged game when Barca can’t afford payments to current players and yet can splash 50 million for Villa, chase Cesc all summer long and (today) acquire Mascherano as well.
One of the reasons that the Barca/RM matches are so compelling is because there are only 2 of them each La Liga season…no one wants to watch those 2 play each other every weekend. I look at it this way: Barca makes a lot more money from their tv contract for a Barca/Sevilla game than Sevilla does, but they can’t play the match without both teams…eventually, the non-Barca/RM teams are going to have to leverage that situation and force some concessions from the big 2.
Sorry for the baseball talk…
Sorry again…one more baseball reference. The Florida Marlins were outed today for basically hiding money and extorting Miami-Dade County to get a new stadium funded mostly by the county.
http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news?slug=jp-marlinsfinancials082410
The La Liga connection is that the Florida team collects $75 million annually in revenue sharing, for doing nothing more than playing games and selling out their fans. I have no idea what La Liga tv rights bring or even could bring, but seriously, eventually La Liga must adopt some sort of revenue sharing in some way. Barca and RM became internationally recognized teams, nay brands, playing each other and other teams. It didn’t happen in a vacuum.
[climbs down from soapbox.]
haha, don’t get down from the soapbox! PREACH ON!!!
seriously though, you make some really good points, and the basic point that the league is only going to get more uneven as this continues is completely true. i don’t really know what kind of money we’re talking about, but i think the biggest change would be felt amongst smaller teams having more money than RM and Barca having LESS money–those guys are going to splash cash to make big signings every year regardless, but for the little guys it could be a huge difference, both in buying new players and holding on to current players.
The thing that makes these thing easier to do in american sports is that it is an american game with basically no international leagues or tournaments. This makes it easier to implement changes because there is no risk of hurting the league’s continental prospects. While this sort of evening out process would give lesser teams a chance to develop tampa bay style and really challenge.
I completely agree, theo. And I was imagining this becoming a Liga dispute that led to a strike…unlike in American sports freeze-outs or strikes, all the players would just go to Italy or England or Germany or…
There are so many forces keeping the status quo here…like I said before, it’s hard to imagine what would have to happen to shift that elsewhere, but I’d sure like to see it happen if it could.