Football 2010-2011

[Kowalski]

what co-commentators are loved? burley is probably the next best thing and he's just trying to be a carbon copy. lawrenson? smith? walker? booth? all rubbish!

[ampersand]

Charlie Adam has handed in a transfer request, no doubt to force his move to Liverpool just like Darren Bent.

[Steve P]

Charlie Adam has handed in a transfer request, no doubt to force his move to Liverpool just like Darren Bent.

[ampersand]

Just lost a lot of respect for him now. Don't see the need, he was always likely to be sold, it now just means that Blackpool won't get as much as he's worth.

[jump]

Just lost a lot of respect for him now. Don't see the need, he was always likely to be sold, it now just means that Blackpool won't get as much as he's worth.

[Steve P]

Not sure how it works but wouldn't they get more money as when a club sells a player they have to pay him off unless he's handed in a transfer request?

[ampersand]

blackpool have turned him down anyway, says bbc.

i think adam's a big enough twat to let this get messy...

[Steve P]

You'd never guess that Paul Parker is an ex-united player would you - Liverpool should sell Torres

[TheGayTent]

A decision on the future use of the Olympic Stadium has been postponed.

[spwan-of-the-devil]

Kenny Miller is so overated anyways!

[eFestivals]

You'd never guess that Paul Parker is an ex-united player would you - Liverpool should sell Torres

The angle that Parker has in that story about Torres' petulance is a fair angle to take.

And to be fair, Liverpool probably won't have a choice about whether he's sold or not. Just about every story I've read for the last few months has said that he's told his agent to find him another club, and while Kenny's appointment might have had him re-consider if that's what he wants to do, I doubt his conclusion is any different (particularly if the stories about the Liverpool medical staff lying about his fitness to Rafa are true).

[eFestivals]

> A decision on the future use of the Olympic Stadium has been postponed.

I can't see how that would be anything but a bad thing for WHU fan like you who's against the move.

The only reason I can think of why it would be delayed would be for a decision by govt over whether the running track has to stay or not - and I can't see them going for anything but the running track if that's what's happened.

Which means that WHU will win with their bid.

[beLIEveR]

You'd never guess that Paul Parker is an ex-united player would you - Liverpool should sell Torres

[eFestivals]

Not really, the player tends to get a cut of the transfer fee so it's costing Adam too, plus any loyalty bonus's he'd have got. He's obviously been told that Liverpool aren't willing to pay his true value, so he's put in a transfer request to help him go on the cheap. Shitty behaviour on both sides.

What's any player's "true value" tho?

The only way a value is established is by a club making an offer, and it being accepted or not. There's no proper working market for football players as there is for the more normal commodities.

And while from many angles £4M is far too low, Van Der Vaart for £8M says that it's not.

Ultimately, they have to argue it out until an agreement is reached, with Blackpool having the upper hand from one angle - but they know as well as everyone else that if they hold out for too much they end up with getting nothing at all when the player leaves on a free when he can.

[eFestivals]

Didn't think it would take until the afternoon for the retard to demonstrate his retardness.

FFS, let it go.

While you clearly love STB and think him the best thing since sliced bread, others of us can see his faults - such as the contradictary stuff he's spouted to newspapers in recent months. He's no less fallible than any other human, you included.

Apparently, in your world, it's not retarded to think he's the world's only perfect person.

[Steve P]

What's any player's "true value" tho?

The only way a value is established is by a club making an offer, and it being accepted or not. There's no proper working market for football players as there is for the more normal commodities.

And while from many angles £4M is far too low, Van Der Vaart for £8M says that it's not.

Ultimately, they have to argue it out until an agreement is reached, with Blackpool having the upper hand from one angle - but they know as well as everyone else that if they hold out for too much they end up with getting nothing at all when the player leaves on a free when he can.

[jump]

Which I'm sure they're prepared to do if needs be. Blackpool have a good chance of staying up if they can keep Adam, so even if they do lose him for not much in the summer, the risk is worth taking for the financial incentive of staying in the premiership. It smacks to me of Adam not really backing his own talent. If he continues to play well then he'll go to a much bigger club come summer whatever happens, but he obviously thinks that it's now or never for Liverpool.

As for the valuation thing, you can't possibly use the Van Der Vaart figure as your benchmark as it was freakishly low. Adam has shown he can more than hold his own in the premiership, and that's without much support around him. To me he's certainly worth at least £10m.

[eFestivals]

As for the valuation thing, you can't possibly use the Van Der Vaart figure as your benchmark as it was freakishly low.

I can and I have.

I agree, it's freakishly low, but the value of any player can only be looked at in the terms of what other players are going for - so it's wrong to use (say) Bent's transfer figure but ignore VDV's. Both need to be in the mix for any consideration.

I'm not trying to suggest that £4M is a fair price to Blackpool for Adam, but at the same time it's no less unrealistic than Olly saying "at least stick a one in front of it" as he did.

Olly's £14M is no less of a number that's been plucked from the air than Liverpool's £4M bid - and these things get to prove what I'd posted to say: that there's no proper market for players, and ultimately any agreement is made from a number plucked from the air.

[ampersand]

can you see adam having this sort of season, every season?

must say, i never saw much of him in the championship but if he can do this every season, then it's one hell of a transformation since his days in scotland.

i just can't get my head round charlie adam and 10 million quid! though it could easily be a case of the rino gatusso. hope so for scotlands sake.

[worm]

What's any player's "true value" tho?

The only way a value is established is by a club making an offer, and it being accepted or not. There's no proper working market for football players as there is for the more normal commodities.

And while from many angles £4M is far too low, Van Der Vaart for £8M says that it's not.

Ultimately, they have to argue it out until an agreement is reached, with Blackpool having the upper hand from one angle - but they know as well as everyone else that if they hold out for too much they end up with getting nothing at all when the player leaves on a free when he can.

Edited January 24, 2011 by worm

[Steve P]

I can and I have.

I agree, it's freakishly low, but the value of any player can only be looked at in the terms of what other players are going for - so it's wrong to use (say) Bent's transfer figure but ignore VDV's. Both need to be in the mix for any consideration.

I'm not trying to suggest that £4M is a fair price to Blackpool for Adam, but at the same time it's no less unrealistic than Olly saying "at least stick a one in front of it" as he did.

Olly's £14M is no less of a number that's been plucked from the air than Liverpool's £4M bid - and these things get to prove what I'd posted to say: that there's no proper market for players, and ultimately any agreement is made from a number plucked from the air.

[Kowalski]

Decent Guardian article:

I don't think anyone in football was surprised to hear the comments made by Richard Keys and Andy Gray about the lineswoman Sian Massey on Saturday. Any woman working in the game will have heard it all before, and probably worse – although I must say it was surprising just how serious they sounded on the audio clip.

How could anyone in this day and age honestly believe that a woman who is FA qualified to officiate a game might be unable to understand the offside law? Hearing the audio – rather than just reading the transcript – convinced me that the conversation wasn't just banter, because if it was just a bit of a laugh, then where was the laughter?

It will never happen of course, but if we take the Ron Atkinson incident as a precedent and apply the same principles to what Keys and Gray said about Massey's ability to run the line, it is quite clear that Sky's premier football figures should lose their jobs. Don't agree? Then try explaining the difference between an expletive filled rant concerning the colour of a player's skin affecting his ability to do a job, and an expletive filled rant about a person's gender affecting her ability to do a job? Both situations are about prejudice – not facts – informing a judgment.

Indeed both Keys and Gray admitted they had never heard of Massey before the match, despite it being her second Premier League game on the line, and embarrassingly for them – and brilliantly for Massey – the 25-year-old went on to give a superb performance, nailing a difficult decision which most of us watching in our sitting rooms needed TV replays to be sure of.

Many will question the fairness of leaking a so-called "private" conversation to the press. Let's be clear here, this was not a private conversation. As anyone in television or radio knows, the very definition of "private" is stretched to its limits when you are on the job speaking into a microphone shortly before a live broadcast. Even a first-year journalism student could tell you the first rule in broadcasting is to treat a microphone with respect and always, always behave as if you are being broadcast live to the nation.

Let's not forget, too, the number of people who would have been able to hear that feed – women included – as everyone in the Sky gallery would have been able to listen to their comments.

Refreshingly, the football world has largely come out in support of Massey, a number of current and former high profile figures in the game – from Rio Ferdinand and Graham Poll to Sir Alan Sugar – ridiculing Keys and Grays' comments. For women in the game their support – and, frankly, commonsense - is encouraging. Not because we fear anyone saying we can't do our jobs because we are women, we've all heard that a thousand times, but because we know there are far more serious cases of discrimination and abuse taking place at all levels of the game from boardrooms to broadcast centres, club corridors to backroom staff.

These are incidents that are rarely made public precisely because women are so good at shouldering the burden, keeping quiet and just getting on with their jobs. Should Keys and Gray be disciplined – and they have been stood down from covering tonight's Premier League match between Bolton Wanderers and Chelsea – it would surely send a clear message to everyone in the football pyramid that discrimination in any form is not acceptable.

One thing is for sure, we should be grateful to have talent like Massey coming through at a time when the FA is struggling to recruit match officials because even the men feel they get too much abuse in the job. Let's hope this incident moves things on a bit and creates a path for a brighter future without bigots like Keys and Gray.

[eFestivals]

It's just the standard big club bully tactics. I think Olly is right with his valuation. Look at how much players like Meireles and Ramires cost, and they've shown nowhere near the impact that he's made. Factoring in that he's only got 18 months on his contract i'd say £10m is more than fair.

I disagree.

Because there's no way of being able to properly value any player, then there's room for a difference of opinion, with that difference of opinion based in how much that player is worth to either club.

From Liverpool's point of view, it might be the case that £4M is the max they're prepared to pay for that player, because they see other options elsewhere which they believe will improve their team to the same amount for a similar price (or one of the various variations on that).

It should be remembered that Olly picked up Adam for just £500k, and even Olly isn't claiming to have made him into the player he is today. If Olly can pick up a player like that at £500k, then it's the case that others can too.

And when Olly bought him, did he think he was buying just a £500k player, or did he see something extra in him which accounts for Olly's valuation of £14M now? Was Olly thinking to him himself "I'll bid £500k, because I'm a disrespectful c**t", or did he bid £500k because that's all he was prepared to pay? Etc, etc, etc.

Utd got £80M for skippy not because he was worth £80M, but because that's what they said they'd want to sell him, and Real were prepared to pay it.

There's endless angles to all of this, but the only certainty from all of those angles is that there's no certain way of valuing any player, because there is no proper market in players. The only 'value' any player has is what a person is prepared to pay: if no one would pay more than £1M for skippy, that's his value, no matter that Walcott cost £10M when an untried kid.

[TheGayTent]

FFS, let it go.

While you clearly love STB and think him the best thing since sliced bread, others of us can see his faults - such as the contradictary stuff he's spouted to newspapers in recent months. He's no less fallible than any other human, you included.

Apparently, in your world, it's not retarded to think he's the world's only perfect person.

[eFestivals]

The only person who needs to let anything go, is the retard.

yes, you do. So shut the f**k up.

You - the RETARD - do not have unchallengeable opinions about football.

If you were half as smart as you like to dream you are, you'd be manager at West Ham and they'd be top of the table.