Soccer Soccer Talk Thread

[Cash or Czech]

Yeah @Zuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuc I feel for you. It's not even Poch's fault. The entire team is quintessentially what money can buy with no sense of strategy or team cohesion whatsoever. You have some great pieces there. Cole Palmer has been phenomenal (and is my FPL captain some weeks), Mudryk is actually starting to show some promise, you have some good young defenders. But it truly is not a team. Just look at when Palmer took the penalty over the weekend.

 

Boehly is dreadful and needs to just be given Football Manager and tell him it's real.

[Zuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuc]

It's just a total mess and it doesn't come as a surprise at all. The new owners came in with the most arrogant attitude I've ever seen, fired basically everyone from the top (Marina, Cech) to physio's and scouts, while constantly throwing shots at the previous owner and regime - which was extremely successful and highly loved by the fans.

 

https://www.football.london/chelsea-fc/news/behdad-eghbali-chelsea-fans-potter-26305170 

This article from February last year was a real eye-opener for me. It made me realize how fucking screwed we are with this lot, and that there's probably no way out of this mess because of their arrogance.

 

Quote

"We thought Chelsea was a good beachhead, it was frankly an asset, a business that was not terribly well managed on the football side, sporting side or promotional side," he explained of why the Blues were a sought-after club to buy. What he then described in terms of progression for the club does reverberate now as they are urged by many to continue the hire-fire process at Stamford Bridge.

"You've got to win. Your content, your asset is that play and I think the opportunity to make it a platform is there. These things [football clubs] are generally not well-managed. They're not optimised, some of the US ownership, Fenway Group with Liverpool or Abu Dhabi model with Man City have done it well but for the most part, these things haven't been optimised.

This is a quote from Eghbali from back in December 2022. It's hilarious to think that Eghbali and Boehly has the audacity to question Roman's management of the club - especially the footballing and sporting side of it. Roman bought the Club in 2003 after we finished 4th - the next three seasons we finished 2nd, 1st, 1st. First two seasons under Boehly and co. we're looking at 12th and somewhere between 7th-11th.

 

Quote

"We looked at it and we think European sports are probably 20 years behind US sports in terms of sophistication on the commercial side, and sophistication on the data side. I had one super high-level sporting director at the world's biggest, top three club tell me when I asked about their approach to data and said the data is my eyes. He has six scouts, no data and using some of the data points we know of the good sports teams of any league, here there are 20-30 data analysts that we use for data."

Quote

"That is one analogy, one place we think there is a lot of runway in terms of European sports which, by the way, have a global audience, a global opportunity," Boehly's partner continued. "I think 90-95% depending on the team, of the top teams in England the fanbases are outside of the UK. These are global assets, global audiences which we think we can certainly help grow."

It is growth that is at the forefront of their minds over the coming years but ultimately Eghbali also accepts what fans will want. "We think winning and a good product on the pitch and commercial success go hand in hand. You have to have a good product to generate sponsors for the content to work.

 

All about the revenue/money in their pockets. If they make a profit every year while we finish 10th they would be happy, where as Roman didn't give a shit about losing money as long as we were winning. I know we got spoilt by Roman, but as owners you need to find that middle-ground. Success on the pitch has to be main goal, and it doesn't feel like that with these new owners.

 

And their way to improve on the pitch is by using data. It might work in some sports like baseball and American football - but it just doesn't work like that in football. Data driven recruiting is what got us this horrible squad of overpriced and overrated young "talents". Buying only 18-22 year olds in hope of re-selling them with profit later on is not a suitable way to build a successful football club. That's how you end up as a team like Brighton, which for some strange reason seems to be the goal of these owners. Their obsession with Brighton is so fucking weird.

 

Honestly it's just fascinating. They bought one of the most successful football clubs for the past 20 years and said "The previous owners had no idea what they were doing, we're so far ahead of everyone. We'll fix this" even though it didn't need fixing and now they managed to destroy the club in under 2 years.

[Zuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuc]

Great North-London Derby today. Congrats with the win! The title race is still on.

 

It looks like Tottenham might be your last hope tho, City has Wolves (H), Fulham (A), Tottenham (A) and West Ham (H) in their last 4.