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Northern Ireland27236 Posts
On June 14 2025 03:17 Bacillus wrote:
The thing I like about Wirtz' transfer is that he actually seemed to consider options, listen to the teams and the role they were planning for him and then picked the one with the most convincing plan. It could be just PR talk or whatever, but I still like the idea and it seems pretty level headed to me.
Not a single touch of football has taken place, but I like how lukewarm and drama-free this has been so far. Surely Bayern got snubbed a bit, but even that part has seemed pretty mild and reasonable given the stakes.
It’s quite refreshing from the semi-common ‘it was my dream to play for Real Madrid Barcelona’ that turns into a disaster.
Not singling those clubs out, but you know what I mean. Of course an elite player is gonna have supreme self-confidence and back themselves, but it seems Wirtz has also factored in personnel, systems and where he best fits in, which is quite refreshing.
When’s the last time Liverpool, or indeed a Prem club signed a player who’s a real elite, elite player who could have their pick of any club, at close to their peak years? That has the profile to match. Not that often an occurrence, makes this pretty exciting indeed.
I don’t hate Bayern but I’m not a big fan of their ‘buy the best player from their domestic rivals’ thing, so I’m ok him not going there. City, I’m more excited by their current business, that isn’t crazy excessive than if they’d have bought Wirtz. It’ll be interesting to see how Pep rebuilds without insane big money buys, Marmoush had a promising half season. Rayan Cherki [sic] is crazy talented and a fucking snip at 30 million if he’s a Messi/De Bruyne under Pep and not a Grealish.
Least for the Prem, if Arsenal can find that missing piece of the jigsaw, if Maresca can get Chelsea back on track, maybe there’s a dark horse somewhere. Could be a hell of a fucking season
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United States10530 Posts
On June 14 2025 05:23 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On June 14 2025 03:17 Bacillus wrote:
The thing I like about Wirtz' transfer is that he actually seemed to consider options, listen to the teams and the role they were planning for him and then picked the one with the most convincing plan. It could be just PR talk or whatever, but I still like the idea and it seems pretty level headed to me.
Not a single touch of football has taken place, but I like how lukewarm and drama-free this has been so far. Surely Bayern got snubbed a bit, but even that part has seemed pretty mild and reasonable given the stakes. It’s quite refreshing from the semi-common ‘it was my dream to play for Real Madrid Barcelona’ that turns into a disaster. Not singling those clubs out, but you know what I mean. Of course an elite player is gonna have supreme self-confidence and back themselves, but it seems Wirtz has also factored in personnel, systems and where he best fits in, which is quite refreshing. When’s the last time Liverpool, or indeed a Prem club signed a player who’s a real elite, elite player who could have their pick of any club, at close to their peak years? That has the profile to match. Not that often an occurrence, makes this pretty exciting indeed. I don’t hate Bayern but I’m not a big fan of their ‘buy the best player from their domestic rivals’ thing, so I’m ok him not going there. City, I’m more excited by their current business, that isn’t crazy excessive than if they’d have bought Wirtz. It’ll be interesting to see how Pep rebuilds without insane big money buys, Marmoush had a promising half season. Rayan Cherki [sic] is crazy talented and a fucking snip at 30 million if he’s a Messi/De Bruyne under Pep and not a Grealish. Least for the Prem, if Arsenal can find that missing piece of the jigsaw, if Maresca can get Chelsea back on track, maybe there’s a dark horse somewhere. Could be a hell of a fucking season
I agree. I don't feel like just because we won the prem this season that even adding Wirtz and Frimpong and Kerkez is going to be a smooth ride back to the title. City will be back with Rodri and their new players, Arsenal are continuing to upgrade, it'll be another dogfight this season.
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I think City will be the curious one. Arsenal will be Arsenal and that's good enough to have some early claim for the title race. Meanwhile City has loads of questions left to be answered with the investigation still going on, Rodri coming back, the new additions being a bit underwhelming and all that.
As far as I can tell, Marmoush is good at what he does, but also has a pretty limited set of weapons and maybe isn't the long term solution City wants. De Bruyne isn't easy to replace and Ederson looks shaky. It's definitely a dangerous team and can for example make deep UCL run, but I'm not sure if it's a team that can grind out PL week after week while making deep runs in UCL and domestic cups. We'll see how this summer goes, but I think they may need more than one window to fix things properly.
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Rodry will boss every midfield in the world. Don't need world class quality in front of him
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United States10530 Posts
Question is if Rodri will be the same player quality wise after such a devastating injury. It can definitely mess with your mental and confidence.
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I only now figured out how massive the Club World Cup thingy is. I thought it was one of those quick knockout comps with maybe 4 or 8 teams at max and you'll get to go home for the weekend. But no, this is massive month-long thing on top of the strain of the regular season.
I'm kind of happy that most of my favorites are resting at home. A bit shame about Dortmund and Atletico though.
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Yeah we will see if this tournament will have an effect on city's title challenge.
But almost every club that have spoken about it say its great (because possible income is huge) and Bayern even said they are paying their players more than enough money so there is no pity about too many games
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Spain18399 Posts
On June 15 2025 18:01 sharkie wrote:
Yeah we will see if this tournament will have an effect on city's title challenge.
But almost every club that have spoken about it say its great (because possible income is huge) and Bayern even said they are paying their players more than enough money so there is no pity about too many games
It's bonkers. It's also even more sportswashy than hosting the WC, even if the tournament isn't actually in Saudi Arabia. I'm not bothering watching this cynical sham of a tournament.
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Pandemona
Charlie Sheens House51493 Posts
The club world cup is both good and bad. It now takes place every 4 years, on the off season between Euros/World Cup which is good and also means the club world cup is not breaking up domestic leagues in Europe during the winter and its way more of a spectacle. The downside is it is another summer where players wouldn't get a rest but also there is more games because both FIFA and UEFA are milking as much as they can from there competitions.
This whole idea of the revamped club world cup is great, way more teams, more exciting games hopefully and the knockout bracket is going to be stacked! However its also in America, in the summer at peak crazy heat after the end of a long season, with games all over the country....there is going to be injuries.
In England, from my point of view, they need to scrap the premier league teams in the league cup and make it between championship, league one and league 2 (division 1/2/3) so that it still has value but only for the clubs not in europe. At least then the premier league teams would have more schedule time for a proper winter break again where every team was suposed to get a two week break. This also might help attract more premier league clubs to try in the FA Cup to inflate that competiton's competitiveness as well.
Bayern vs Auckland kicks off in a couple of hours, followed by Atletico vs PSG after that.
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On June 15 2025 18:01 sharkie wrote:
Yeah we will see if this tournament will have an effect on city's title challenge.
Considering how many top clubs there are involved, I think there's a pretty legit chance that some important player is going to have a season-threatening injury sooner or later and people are going to be blaming the club world cup.
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51665 Posts
Eri - do you think Kjetil Knutsen will ever leave Bodo/Glimt? Feels like the perfect Brentford manager but it seems like he's even rebuffed Ajax in the past so it sounds like he'll never leave.
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Norway28874 Posts
I think he really really wants to experience champions league football in bodø-glimt. If they qualify this year, I think he might be willing to leave once that campaign is over. Otherwise I think he'll want to give it another shot.
What points towards him leaving, is that last year, they hired one of the biggest coaching talents in Norway to be his assistant manager, and I had the feeling they did this to ensure they have someone who can take over the reins once Knutsen leaves while maintaining continuity, and I don't think the guy who joined is actually that interested in staying assistant manager forever.
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Norway28874 Posts
Also - looks like Sverre Nypan ends up in Manchester City, for the highest sum any Norwegian player has ever been sold for by a Norwegian team.
By Norwegian standards he's a massive talent, he's 18 years old and he already has 70 senior matches played for Rosenborg. At the same time, I'm not convinced he's like a 'starter for a top 5 clubs in the world-talent'. Seems like City is planning on loaning him to one of the clubs they're cooperating with (maybe Girona), and while I expect him to become a regular in one of the top leagues, I think City might be a bit of a stretch.
Granted, his professionalism might be his top quality, and consequently, I could picture him exceeding his 'natural talent' for that reason. What I mean is - Ødegaard was dominating the Norwegian league when he was 15. Nypan has been a 'very good player' in the same league. If Nypan is to end up in a similar position to Ødegaard, I'll be kinda surprised, while Ødegaard as a 15 year old looked like he was bound to become one of the best players in the world.
To be fair to Nypan, the Norwegian league is considerably better now than it was 10 years ago, so it might not be a fair comparison, and maybe I'm underselling him a little. As far as Rosenborg players go, Per Ciljan Skjelbred was a bigger talent than Nypan was, and he ended up spending most his career abroad playing for Hertha Berlin - and I'm thinking 'mid-tier PL/high tier Bundesliga (Now, Skjelbred broke his leg when he was 17, and never became the same player after) is probably a better fit. But I hope he proves me wrong!
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51665 Posts
nypan would have been perfect for a lower half premier league club like manchester united.
can't believe our board fumbled the bag hard on this - talented players that are life long fans of the club and absolutely no signs of at least some dialogue between the agent and the club. absolutely awful.
that being said, i think in amorim's system he'd only work as a 10 behind the striker and with cunha coming in from wolves he'd probably be a bench warmer/cup starter at best.
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I dont know about you guys but I am much more interested in the U21 Euro than in the club world cup
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On June 17 2025 15:46 sharkie wrote:
I dont know about you guys but I am much more interested in the U21 Euro than in the club world cup
To me it feels like this is the offseason from football. Sure there's some PR-related friendlies going on, but otherwise it's just speculating transfers and having some time off from the actual matches.
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Botafogo making the CWC worth it.
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Pandemona
Charlie Sheens House51493 Posts
Chelsea embarssing themselves vs Flamengo too, we were so poor was wild, then maresca doesn't help it with silly tactics and lineups. Then Jackson comes on and gets another red card, 2nd in 3 games, clown needs to go.
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On June 21 2025 05:47 Pandemona wrote:
Chelsea embarssing themselves vs Flamengo too, we were so poor was wild, then maresca doesn't help it with silly tactics and lineups. Then Jackson comes on and gets another red card, 2nd in 3 games, clown needs to go.
Is the Jackson timeline so far something like this?
Initially finds a lot of chances, but keeps missing.
Then starts hitting the target, is pretty good for the latter half of the season or so.
Then for some reason starts getting reds for really unnecessary and stupid challenges
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Pandemona
Charlie Sheens House51493 Posts
Kind of but the line between the red is, get injured, lose all momentum and come back and miss a lot of chances, then gets red card all time, so very frustrating
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EPT
