"We've momentum and we can't afford to lose it tbh"- The '13-'14 summer transfer window thread for PL and beyond

58 English football league clubs have had their current manager in post for less than a year.

It would be interesting to see what a Martinez type would do with a club like Stoke but I can't help feeling there's one more job for Martin O'Neill and this is it

I'm hearing rumours of Phil Neville in to replace him.

Phil Neville is third favourite at the moment, behind Di Matteo and Hughes.

fter three years of discussions and negotiations, Major League Soccer Commissioner Don Garber announced on Tuesday that English Premier League powerhouse Manchester City FC and Major League Baseball's legendary New York Yankees have teamed up to acquire MLS's 20th expansion club.

The new team will be named New York City Football Club (NYCFC) and is expected to begin play in 2015.

smh

I mean NYC already has one horrendous corporate branded team that can't fill its 200 million dollar stadium... I know! Let's bring in oil $ and the fucking Yankees.

Man City are a shell of a club now, I see no comic potential in this whatsoever. Even the name is somehow boring.

rip guy who ran on the field during the derby, you were your last gasp

marcelo bielsa to stoke 100/1 on betvictor, lump on lads

Those odds are way better than the actual chance of it happening tbh

hughes and stoke is nearly too evil to comprehend

seems rude not to go for di matteo though

poyet would have so much work to do he'd be crazy to take it

hm steve bould's an interesting one. well ok not rly at all but ykwim

Frank de Boer just signed a new contract at Ajax till 2017. Clearly doing this just to fuck with Stoke's head

I know they ran it a bit close on survival this year but I kind of feel finishing 11th-14th every year since entering the league should keep you in a Stoke job.

― The Parvenu Fucktard (onimo), Tuesday, 21 May 2013 15:08 (1 hour ago) Bookmark

ya ordinarily i'd rail against patronising any club fan who hopes for something better than pragmatism but stoke might be the exception. who do they think they are

Health & Safety nixes Dortmund tifo - how can this be? What's the worst that can happen?

Admit it, it's just to get back at the Krauts, oder?

I like to think Stoke fans would be cool with relegation, they just want an end to the tedium. But I don't know whether that works in the real world - maybe ask NV whether he'd trade places with them?

as pointed out, Pulis has spent a fair bit of money just to make Stoke the punchline to a joke about donkeys, maybe this season's flirtation with the drop was the final straw

Not sure it is, LBI, the English football fan today is a highly-regulated beast. At the Emirates all the timid little banners are regulation-sized and not blocking any branding.

i guess the bottom line is: most fans take the results as they find them, even when they're paying Premier League ticket prices to watch dour as fuck success. personally i'd have an eppy if the likes of Pulis managed the Wolves but i know plenty of people who wouldn't give a fuck if it got us back in the Prem

has any brit team ever choreographed anything beyond the odd sole person daubing grammatically dubious calumny on the back of a cereal box with the blood of a household pet

dean saunders a mere 10/1 at ladbrokes for the stoke gig btw noodles

pretty sure one does not sack Reggie Kray to replace him with Sideshow Bob

it's a question of perceived limits wrt pulis types, from league 1 up to idk his second prem season he was getting the most out of the rubbish he had (probably about as much as any freeflowing side with stoke's means could have achieved) but once the stakes were raised viable progress was flatly ignored

The Kop's the only display worth the name I've ever seen. Utd had a big flag being passed over heads when I was at OT, but a fan jumped in it and got stuck.

yeah i think every side has to set itself goals. 14th in the Prem is a fine aspiration if you're in the Championship or if you've just got yourself promoted, but once you've finished there for a couple of years you have to at least try to improve in some way, otherwise you just end up looking into some existential black hole where you begin to question what the point is of playing the game or supporting the club at all. by all means you have to be realistic but if you don't start a season looking to win something or to play better football or to gain a few memorable results then what the fuck is the point of just making up the numbers?

Not sure it is, LBI, the English football fan today is a highly-regulated beast. At the Emirates all the timid little banners are regulation-sized and not blocking any branding.

― Ismael Klata, dinsdag 21 mei 2013 18:10 (17 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

As with a lot of things in the UK nowadays no? Regulation to the extreme I mean.

I am surprised this seems to be Wembley's call. If it were UEFA's call I'd understand, since they are insane, but disappointed in this tbh

xp idk tho by the sounds of it imago would have been happy to sit in 12th or thereabouts with curbs til his dying day

'tis about the journey, not the destination

i kind of agree but to make the journey you've got to aim to go somewhere

yeah exactly people don't say that journey pish just circling legoland roundabout

14th in the Prem is a fine aspiration if you're in the Championship or if you've just got yourself promoted, but once you've finished there for a couple of years you have to at least try to improve in some way, otherwise you just end up looking into some existential black hole where you begin to question what the point is of playing the game or supporting the club at all.

I agree but I don't see what separates the Stoke experience from so many others in the same bracket other than their reputation for no nonsense Shawxing. Is it enough to be just as mediocre (results wise) all season if you occasionally see Berbatov scoring a beauty?

I know they should be looking to improve year on year but so is everyone else. You have to improve to stand still.

Not if the travel itself is pleasant

yeah but to occasionally see a Berbatov score a beauty you have to bring in a Berbatov

I don't think it's about 'looking to improve' so much as 'having a bit of fun'. Stoke have been in the epl six years, and for what? One Crouch goal, one Cup semi, a trip to Valencia (which they threw), and some Jonathan Walters lols. And Pulis was probably telling them to cut it out every time.

xp

yes, that. of course nobody can say "we will definitely finish 2 places higher this season/win a knockout cup/do the double over United" but there still have to be measurable goals in place, it's easy to see how Pulis mightn't've met those goals this season - there's no real sign of progress in his transfer strategy or tactics

so if jol does this pleasantly shit stuff for another four years at fulham that's fine is it

(shame on u btw darragh)

Why always me

15m for carroll not too bad I suppose

Eh what, to whom?

Confirmed? Good deal for lfc if so, he's no 1/4 bale

Liverpool have accepted, no comment from Carroll as yet

Read an article somewhere about how Chelsea couldn't afford to sell Torres because of FFP and what his worth still was, that what they could realistically get for him would put them close to breaching the £25M loss in 3 years condition. The sums from there reckon Carroll is still valued at £21M (£35M contract over 7 years, 4 1/2 remaining, straight depreciation) so a £6M loss on top of the £8M announced for last year doesn't make good FFP reading. Maybe that explains Kolo Toure?

£15m's good, we can use £15m - so long as its not on Ashley Williams, Kolo Toure's wages, or rescuing Deuce from his WHL hell

Thing about Charlton under Curbishley is that they were very rarely genuinely relegation threatened, they tended to go storming away at the start of the season and then slip into midtable in the spring. That's very different from what Pulis did with Stoke - although actually Stoke were virtually impossible to beat for the first third of the season and then completely useless after that.

It's all very well sacking the manager after successive midtable seasons but you've got to have a clue what you're going to do afterwards. Pretty obvious that Pulis didn't have a clue how to take Stoke to the next level - even Mark Hughes managed better at gradually finessing a team of lumpen thugs when he was at Blackburn.

Pulis did pretty well at keeping Stoke up but every time a club like Stoke is overhauled by a Swansea or even a West Brom that achievement looks less impressive.

to west ham, ik (in case you hadn't heard!)

me thinks it's a job for rafa

you know how with food (and prob many other things) they say: cheap, healthy or delicious, you can only have two out of three. For Stoke, I bet Pulis would have been ok if he had two out of three out of: thrifty, attractive or effective, but this year he was 0 for 3, so pretty abominable.

rtc, you're not looking at this the right way. A succession of midtable finishes it may have been, but it was punctuated with glorious defeats of apparently superior teams and some fairly decent football along the way. Only a tiny minority wanted to 'push for Europe' - most of us were very happy just being there, trying to mix it with the big boys, taking our small share of glory. Football support is not something best served terminal - you shouldn't follow a team aiming for continual success and domination - that way madness lies (and heaven knows there are enough mad cunts with a sense of entitlement following football). You support a team because it represents you or your area, and you cheer it on regardless, hoping to win each game, hoping for incremental stylistic developments, but accepting that sometimes their village will defeat yours. In that context, a sustained run of unthreatened Premiership seasons was heaven for us, and I'm sure a sustained run in a grotesquely-inflated Championship (English football IS where the money is) will make us just as happy. Well, until the minority of cunts begin their moaning about how we're not getting promoted. The ones who forget that literally every single Championship club other than the three promoted from League One has extensive Premiership experience, or at least a chance at raising the funds or the team to get there.

every time a club like Stoke is overhauled by a Swansea or even a West Brom that achievement looks less impressive

West Brom picked up only two more points than Stoke in the second half of the season, and one of those was in a lol 5-5 draw. Stoke are 4-6 points from being as "successful" as West Brom or Swansea. Middle to bottom of the league is ridiculously tight and it's been a poor season for them but I think his record since taking over (currently 20 league positions above their 2006 finish) should have been enough to earn another season.

Not everyone can go to whatever the next level is. Stoke may well get in a manager who takes then from 11th-14th up to 8th-11th but I don't think there's any realistic chance of them joining Everton or Spurs and threatening European places - they're just as likely to fuck up the appointment and end up fighting relegation again.