sphincter wrote: I think it's good for English football to dominate in Europe, it sends a message to the Italian and Spanish teams that our teams can beat anyone- our league gets ripped on by other countries for being inferior to them, well this tears that apart.
I don't think it's killing the game at all, teams like Liverpool (before the buy-out), Everton, Portsmouth (I know they got cash but they certainly don't have an all-star team) etc are better than they've been in a long time, Arsenal are about to blow up, perhaps next year, who can call the Premierships winner next year?
I understand your comment about money, but I don't understand your comment about Alex Ferguson?
He's done exactly what you've described.
He's a canny manager who's made a few good buys(recently)- Rooney and Ronaldo etc and encouraged the academy to bring up some great players. May I add that Ronaldo has become ten times better since he joined United, they've transformed him from a show-boating tit to one of the best players on the planet. Look at the squad- a lot of them weren't big names at all when they joined United, Scholes and Giggs got their names at United, players like O'Shea, Richardson and Fletcher aren't big names.
You compare the United squad man for man to Chelsea and it's shocking. Teams like United and Arsenal buy some big names of course, but they search high and low for young talent to develop players and develop squads to propell the future of Football. Chelsea, although a brilliant team in most senses are generally buying the biggest names in their positions, established players, many of whom spend half the seaon on the bench. Their sub-squad are probably worth the same as Uniteds first team, bar Ronaldo who's probably worth something stupid like 60mil...and Rooney.
Sorry for bumming United, I'm not a supporter, I just understand that they're an amazing team and deserve to be and Alex Ferguson is probably the best manager of all time, whinger or not.
The more strong teams in the Premiership the better for me. Liverpool, United, Chelsea and Arsenal could beat any team on the planet.
Fair points, well made!
I wasn't having a go at United, or at Ferguson (bar calling him a whinger, which wasn't really central to my argment) and for me, as City fan, that's quite an achievement. I just think it's crushing for football that nowadays teams can only compete in the table if they can compete in financing (most of which looks completely precarious and unsustainable in even the short term). I know that there has always been a strong element of this - it would be naive to think otherwise - but in the last couple of years it has been truly impossible for smaller clubs to make it into the top three over a season, let alone win. No matter how good the manager is.
I agree that Ferguson is probably one of the best managers of all time - if not the best. But he is undeniably a whinger who frequently seems to make out that it's really difficult being Man Utd. I'm sure it's stressful, and it was genuinely very difficult early on his tenure, but come on. Don't forget, this is the man who once accused MOTD - at a time when everyone who wasn't a Utd fan was sick of seing them every week - of "following Utd around the country, waiting for them to fail".
But you can't really divorce what he's achieved as a manager from what Edwards, Kenyon et al achieved in branding and financing the club in the 90's - "branding" was a hilarous notion when they first started bandying it about, while now it's considered as a given. Sure Chelsea have spent more in the last three/four years, but don't forget Veron, Ferdinand etc. United's spending dwarfed that of any other English club for season after season. Why did Kenyon go to Chelsea? Because Abramovich saw what he'd done at United, and because Kenyon saw that his work was pretty much done at United - there wasn't anywhere higher to take the club.
I'm not blaming Utd for it. But you can't ignore it.
As far as ending out a message to Italian and Spanish sides - if you look at the last 15 years, there's been a surge of cash working its way around European football, attracting financiers and overseas players and managers alike. Italian football was the best for a bit, then la liga and now, supposedly us. It hasn't done our national side a great deal of good, it's syphoning off our most promising young players to rot on the bench for a kings ransom in the massive squads of the uber-clubs, and it's killing interest in the game at club level, with attendances plummeting, and from watching Italy and Spain, it's a safe bet the money will move on. That's what money does.