verlaine1979

How many clubs in major leagues these days are funded by commercial debt, rather than owner equity and loans? Man United obviously carry a lot of market debt, but are there any others where owners borrowed heavily to make the purchase?

Scrabbling around to raise funds just to complete the purchase doesn't exactly sound like a recipe for stable ownership. Especially as 'raise funds' is probably just another way of saying 'take on debt'.

Only Davis would be described as 'very good' in a half of football where we were pretty much battered across the pitch from start to finish. I might have given you 'decent' or 'did well', but 'very good' is absurd, especially when he got caught in possession more than once (incidentally, why is it that dawdling and having the ball nicked off you is never regarded as as big a sin as misplacing a pass?).

So few people see Davis having a bad game, it's a miracle his team mates can pick him out on the pitch as his shirt must contain some kind of cloaking device. That said, he wasn't any worse that Hoj or JWP against City, he just wasn't any better either.

Long's chance conversion just isn't good enough to warrant playing like that on a regular basis. Surrendering possession and then relying on a player who has averaged only a goal every five games throughout his entire premier league career would be a recipe for relegation.

Well, football these days is a game for billionaire owners. If, as seems likely, she's only got a few hundred million squirrelled away at most, then it would explain why she's not pumping in multiple tens of millions every transfer window.

How do you correctly use a striker who can't finish? Do you mean that he's a good athlete?

Clasie was excellent - fancy that, a shot on target from one of our diminutive central midfielders... In addition to that, he moved into space, passed crisply and looked a step up from the lethargic Davis of the past season or two. Hoj did okay, but much less assured in possession and in the tackle. Long was pretty much abject apart his participation in the goal, which felt more like a lucky bounce than anything deliberate on his part. Had Gabbiadini been up front in that game we'd have gone in at half time three up, having played some of our best football of the season. Tadic and Redmond both continued their good decent form, and in retrospect the substitutions of JWP and NR probably contributed to the pressure we were under. With that many lumbering forward on for WB, Redmond and JWP would probably have made more of the space and played us out of pressure more than Sims and McQueen seemed capable of doing. That said, at least it gave FF a chance to be the saviour for once this season.

I tend to agree, and he's probably right as he's just missed an absolute sitter with his head. Shame, this is some of the best football we've played all year.

Clasie is so important to the way we play... heh.

Uh huh, it's almost as if this opinion is also just the result of my rational assessment of the player, rather than having any more sinister motive (ffs some moron still insists years later that I must be related to Jack Cork). There are quite a few players in our squad I don't rate especially highly, but mostly there's a consensus about those, so what would be the point in talking about them?

Funny, I read this a lot, but when he plays I usually see him make at least one or two lung-busting runs to try and win back possession, and that's just in the 10-15 minutes he's given at the end of the game. At the moment he's frustrating because he tries too much, not because he tries too little.

Why not? Last season was Davis's most productive for the club, with 5 goals and 3 assists in 2600 minutes of football. Ward-Prowse has already got 4 goals and 4 assists in only 1300 minutes this season. The idea that we play better when Davis is on the pitch is a myth - he just gives the mouth-breathers someone to cheer when they see him running around.

Romeu was outstanding I thought. Probably our most creative midfielder as well as our best DM.

Well, that was a vastly better move than pretty much anything we've put together all season.

Is that three or four times Tadic has gotten to the byline inside the box for a pullback or cross, and each time we've failed to even fashion a chance from it?

Heh, Davis.

Tadic, Boufal & Redmond on the pitch at the same time - is that a first?

It's because it excuses him for being largely ineffective.

Right, but based on the most recent Forbes list, the Leibherr family, who are the sole share holders of the Liebherr Group, a huge multi-national covering everything from cranes to trains to hotels, are worth about $4.5bn. Mali Group on the other hand don't appear to have had anything like the footprint of Liebherr Group, so while I suppose it's possible that Markus managed to both hand back his shareholding in the family company (which if he'd kept, would presumably be worth the couple of billion all the newspapers seem to think he had) and build up an entirely separate entity that happened to be worth almost as much, but without having anything like the same profile (despite also being in the heavy equipment manufacturing space), I tend to think that in reality, the estimates of his wealth are just the result of lazy reporting and poor initial information. All that would be needed for this situation to arise is for one newspaper article to be written early enough in his life that estimated his wealth in ignorance of the fact that he handed back his shareholding, and every subsequent article would end up perpetuating the error.

Ake, Zouma and a pile of cash, and I might be tempted.

Quite. If the story about him handing back his share of the Liebherr business was true, it always seemed unlikely that he'd sauntered off and built up another billion pound business in the meantime.

Yup, there's a strong hint in the article that her reported wealth has been wildly overstated. Selling the club to diversify makes sense if it was one of the most valuable things you inherited, but less so if it was just one element of a multi-billion estate.

Right, because we let Lallana, Lovren, Lambert, Clyne, Wanyama, Mane & Schneiderlin go, but Davis was so vital to our squad that we drew the line when the big boys came calling. Yes, that does seem like an equally likely scenario to no one else wanting him.

Nope, that wasn't the point I was making. Simply that if your argument devolves to 'well, we've been picking him for x seasons' then pointing out that no one else wants him is a legitimate rejoinder.