PL shit that doesn't need it's own thread.

[Bilo]

We've only signed Lindelöf but supposedly laid the groundwork in deals for Morata, Matić and Perišić. I think Jose's frustration is over the fact that we haven't pushed these deals over the line yet when they have been seemingly so close for a while. Perhaps a matter of throwing a few more million at them to complete things (that few million would mean nothing to Mourinho, different story for Woodward).

He wants everything wrapped up and ready to go for the pre-season tour which I think we fly out to in a week or so.

How about this:

Having overseen 200 million matches the preceding 10 months (United's numbers not mine) Mourinho needed a break. After the heroic (or magical, can't decide) performance beating a team assembled for less than a quarter of Pogba in Stockholm, United were back at their all time peak and Mourinho especially, having proven again he has what it takes to tell anyone that they're not above man-marking a 19 year old neglecting all attacking duties. Woodward, being grateful for the HUGE success, tells Mourinho it's fine, with United being back at their peak they're getting Griezmann, Fabinho and a Swedish defender with concentration lapses.

He comes back (pre-season started today for most English teams) and finds he got the Swedish guy but the "groundwork" is laid on Ivan fucking Perisic. I'd resign tbh.

 

[Stevencc]

How about this:

Shut up.

 

[Benji]

Aaron Lennon is back in training, so that's some nice news.

 

[Pagnell]

c*nt

*boat dwelling

 

[G.B]

Former Southampton coach charged with 65 counts of child sexual abuse.

https://www.theguardian.com/footbal...-charged-child-sexual-abuse-southampton-coach

 

[Stevencc]

Liverpool's marketing and sales department managed to reach a new nadir this week as it began to stock LFC-branded Harold Shipman keyrings.

What's next, Ian Rush inserting dildos emblazoned with YNWA into his anus on LFCTV?

"Come on lads, they are selling like hotcakes".

 

[Stevencc]

This season's Premier League clubs and the three words most used in discussions about them on Reddit last season.

 

[SALTIRE]

City passionate?

 

[AFCB_Mark]

Some of those are brilliant

 

[Bilo]

Stoke: cold, wet and dirty. Yap.

 

[JoshBCFC]

So reddit thinks Brighton and Hove Albion are gay apparently

 

[Stevencc]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/football...ool-accused-falsifying-document-heart-tapped/

The Liverpool tapping-up scandal was dramatically reignited on Tuesday after they were accused of submitting a “falsified” document to the Premier League when trying to lure a 12-year-old schoolboy from Stoke City.

The Anfield club are facing imminent legal action from the unnamed boy, now 13, and his family, having failed to make amends for leaving both him unable to play academy football and his parents in thousands of pounds of debt more than three months after Telegraph Sport first revealed their plight.

Compounding the litany of transgressions over which Liverpool became the first club to be punished under strict new Premier League rules - and the lengths to which they were allegedly prepared to go to conceal them - they have now been publicly accused of altering the date of a signature on his academy player registration application.

Father and son completed the document on September 2 last year, three days before the latter began the new school year at his private school, the fees for which Liverpool had agreed to pay until he was 16.

The club directed the pair not to date their signatures, an instruction the father ignored to ensure the moment was accurately recorded.


The next time the family saw the document - after it had been submitted to the Premier League - all the signatures on it were dated September 21, including the father’s, beneath which a ‘1’ had been inserted after his initial ‘2’.

Damning stuff - G.B - do you agree mate?

 

[G.B]

I'm not sure tbh mate. While it does seem I was once again spot on in my assessment of all things Liverpool, Bilo has assured me this is another case of fake news and my opinions on anything regarding the club are clouded by an inexplicable hatred for the red men.

 

[Bilo]

I'm not sure tbh mate. While it does seem I was once again spot on in my assessment of all things Liverpool, Bilo has assured me this is another case of fake news and my opinions on anything regarding the club are clouded by an inexplicable hatred for the red men.

Not that I'd ever accuse you of making things up but I haven't commented on the case in hand. What I have commented on, was van Dijk saying that no action would be taken. I stand by it.

 

[Stevencc]

Comment on the case in hand.

 

[Bilo]

Fantastic post on our goalkeeping troubles found on RAWK (it only took four hours to find it):

I think fans judge keepers by two things 1. What they deem as mistakes. 2. Punditry.

People won´t like or agree with that second one, but it´s loud, constant and seeps into your psyche. I think it´s simply because goalkeeping is such a hard thing to judge. We can tell what shots goalkeepers should save. We can tell what shots they probably have no chance with. Everything else is a huge grey area.

I saw some good analysis from Neville on how when goalkeeper bounce up and down they can often be off the ground when shots are taken. The old "take the keeper by surprise by hitting it early " thing was finally analysed from the keepers point of view. That´s never deemed a mistake, it´s just good forward play. Imagine though, some keepers do that very often. Others don´t do it, or very rarely. Imagine when it happens, it costs your team goals.

Likewise positioning, we have no way to value it at all at the moment. I remember Walter Zenga once talking about a young keeper who made 4 great, full length saves and was being lauded by all the pundits when against the grain and said if his positioning was right, he probably could have just stood there and caught the ball and saved the 2 that the other pundits said he had "no chance with". His positioning gave him no chance with the goals and turned routine saves into world class ones according to Walter Zenga.

While we have a lot of numbers and analytics for most positions, we are still short for goalkeepers. There is no way to quantify just how good Pickford is. Yet we can look at someone like Naby Keita, Dembele or Mbappe in his breakout season in a top 5 league and put our fingers precisely on what makes him special.

I like looking at the expected goals against metric for goalkeepers. Expected Goals is basically how many goals you should expect to score or concede based on all the shots you face. It stands to reason that if the shots your goalkeeper faces would on average result in 30 goals, if he conceded 25 it means he did a good job. 35 means he should do better. It means all those moments in those grey areas finally have a measurement. It means a keepers 1 high profile mistake, a moment that we do know enough to judge them on, can be cancelled out by their overall quality as a goalkeeper. But how do it test out for the perceived best in the world.

IMO the two best in England are De Gea and Lloris. They outperform their XGA metric every year by 3-8 goals. Neuer in Germany does the same. Oblak & Navas comes out on top in La Liga. This is exactly what you expected to happen. The top goalkeepers shine through. Another I really rate, Tom Heaton, come out near the top in the Premier League this season. Cech also faired pretty well. Courtois on the other hand pretty much breaks even. As in, if the shots he faces predicts he will concede 30 goals, he will concede 29.

Mignolet however, every single year, massively under performs. 8 goals above in 2014/15. 10 in 2015/16. 10 goals above in 2016/17.

Now I am not saying this is entirely reliable or without fault, but it does tell us enough to suggest that for the shots we are giving up Mignolet is letting in too many goals. And it´s nothing to do with how we play either as the top goalkeepers above range in styles from Spurs, United, Bayern, Real Madrid, Atletico Madrid and Burnley. There are defensive teams, counter attacking teams, pressing teams with a high line all in that sample.

Spurs is perhaps the best comparision. Like Liverpool, Spurs give up very few shots on goal (Liverpool are lowest in the whole league). However, due to the system, those shots they do give up tend to be of a high quality for both teams. Their shots conceded, expected goals per shot and total expected goals against are all almost identical to Liverpool. Spurs however, concedes 9 goals less than expected. Liverpool 10 goals more than expected. Could that just be a one off, I mean we are talking about a sample size of 30ish goals per season. Sure. Then we look at 2015/16 and it´s the same thing. Spurs conceded 5.5 less than expected, Liverpool 10.5 more than expected. 2014/15? Spurs conceded 7 less than expected, Liverpool 9 more than expected.

Only Newcastle United (Krul), Villa (Guzan), Bournemouth (Boruc), Watford (Gomes) and Palace (Hennessey) have had worse individual seasons that that. And Liverpool is the only side in the bottom 3 for that metric every year.

If you doubt the reliability of this to measure goalkeeping - the fact that Neuer, Oblak, De Gea, Navas, Lloris are the goalkeepers it highlights every year as being "good" and Krul, Guzan, Boruc, Gomes & Hennessey are the goalkeepers it highlights every year to be "bad" should indicate something.

Now for the Man City test. Hart´s Man City were around par conceding 2.8 goals less than expected. Last season, Man City conceded 7.1 goals more than expected. They weakened their goalkeeping position and saw a swing of conceding almost 10 goals more than expected.

So I think if your goalkeeper consistently shows up as "bad" in this metric then it is a huge cause for concern. The one saving grace for Mignolet is that in the last 10 games of the season, he performed wonders against this metric. If that continues, all good. But that is very much a small sample size.

How about Karius? He is actually top 3 in europe for goalkeepers aged under 25 in terms of this and also top 5 in distribution metrics. Now I understand you don´t trust metrics because you saw with your own eyes Karius is shite. And that Neville said so. And Klopp dropped him etc. But just trust for a second that all the big teams now use these metrics for a reason. The success story from last season - RB Leipzig - is in large part down to using things like this.

I understand that the likes of Robbie Savage shouting loudly about something and then showing a replay of it is memorable and means more to you than some numbers. You trust that because you are seeing it with your own eyes. But what you are being shown is one instance of something occuring. Maybe the only instance. Maybe somethign that happens with all goalkeepers in all those matches that happen that you don´t see. Or maybe that odd clanger is offset by the ability to reduce the number of goals your team concedes in a season.

This is Lloris just 90 minutes of football ago. Lloris has that in him too on a fairly regular basis. We even seen something similar against Liverpool too. You can point to that and say "he´s shite, he just cost France that game in the last minute". He also isn´t very flash for a goalkeeper because I believe his positioning is probably the best in the world. He will save you 10 goals every single season but probably cost you 1 or 2 with his moments of madness like that. Is he worse than a goalkeeper who makes no high profile mistakes but consistently concedes about 10 more goals than the numbers suggest he should? I guess that just depends on how much value you place in those numbers to begin with. I personally would take Lloris - or anybody who the numbers suggest is similar - ahead of Brad Guzan - or anybody the numbers suggest is similar.

I summon Pagnell and SALTIRE

 

[Stevencc]

Saltire won't even entertain that post considering it (rightly) rates Lloris highly.

If you were to ask him he'd probably rather have Mignolet than Lloris.

In fact, I'll summon him too.

SALTIRE

 

[G.B]

they say if you utter his name 3 times in quick succession he will appear before you sporting a tartan dressing gown and clutching a wee dram in either hand

SALTIRE

 

[Bilo]

Imagine when he comes on and finds three mentions he's gonna be so excited! Shame we're summoning him to argue against pretty much the best non-paid Liverpool scribe there is. But he always comes out swinging Salts, you have to say.

 

[Stevencc]

Dutch courage, I think they call it.

 

[SALTIRE]

Saltire won't even entertain that post considering it (rightly) rates Lloris highly.

If you were to ask him he'd probably rather have Mignolet than Lloris.

In fact, I'll summon him too.

SALTIRE

Lloris made eight, eight errors leading to goals last year whilst Mignolet made one. I think De Gea had two. Now I'm not saying Migs is anywhere near De Gea's level when you look at their careers, but I do think Lloris is vastly overrated, and I remember him at Lyon in the CL games before he came to Spurs. That's a good post by that RAWK member, I've only read half of it as Watson is on at the doubles in tennis currently, and Mignolet probably isn't a league-winning keeper; but on his performances last year, I genuinely think he's improved over the iffy flappable keeper that he was with us previously.

 

[Pagnell]

Fantastic post on our goalkeeping troubles found on RAWK (it only took four hours to find it):


I summon Pagnell and SALTIRE

For Renegade's sake I'm done arguing about our keeper issues and have made my views on Mignolet abundantly clear.

 

[AFCB_Mark]

So last night AFCB and Bournemouth Council made a joint statement confirming a rumour....That an agreement in principle is in place to build a new stadium - not on the outskirts of the town as previously thought, but next door to our current home! On Kings Park, a stones throw away from Dean Court as is! Further into the park away from the housing that currently hems us in. No capacity number officially given, but the same rumour (partly peddled by the local paper) is 25k. 25k and in our historical home, would be amazing.

At one point we looked set to move outside the town onto land adjacent to the dual carriageway in, where Bmouth council are beginning a development shortly. It's not clear what has prompted the turnaround from the Council to allow us to build here. It would seem the Council weighed up putting AFCB on that new development, or allowing us to build within Kings Park, and decided they'd rather keep the club in the park and away from the dual carriageway development.

Sitting on the identified land currently is our first team training ground, and Bournemouth Athletics Club, both land currently owned by and leased from the Council:

It would seem a landswap will occur, the council taking on the Dean Court land owned by a mixture AFCB's landlord and AFCB itself, and eventually demolishing the current ground, perhaps for housing or perhaps to recover some parkland. The council will be selling or long term leasing AFCB the highlighted land to build the new ground. It's not clear how this will play with the private landlord firm. It could be a price has been agreed, or it could be compulsory purchased.

I know plenty of Athletics Club members and I use the facilities there myself now and again. It's a bit old and crumbling, but it is their home. I hope they don't get made homeless, and that if (for example) they need a few quid to beef up one of the local school facilities for their new home, that AFCB write out a cheque.

It's also not clear where the first team would train, possibly extend the youth team's training facilities which is outside the town, that can go anywhere after all.

There's a lot details and costings that are yet to be nailed down. And planning permission won't be officially submitted until early 2018, with building penciled in to start early - mid 2019 all being well. Project Management and Architectural firms are on the club's payroll working on the plans currently.

There will be some local opposition undoubtedly, despite a football ground existing here for over 107 years since Mr Cooper Dean gifted the land to the local football club. So it's still early stages. as such we're trying not to get too excited. But this quite frankly is the best possible solution and something we never dared think was possible. Stay in our current home AND have plenty of capacity? Amazing.

 

[Stevencc]

 

[Abertawe]

Scum

 

[JimJams]

Swansea are also suggesting Sigur Ros has been tapped up.

Not AutoCorrect.

 

[Bilo]

snip

Thanks for taking the time to write this out, very informative and a good glimpse into a part of the Premier League carousel many of us rarely take the time to read about. I remember when my local club got their new stadium back in 2015, it just adds a moving forward feel towards the whole club.*

* Then we got relegated and we're now bottom of the second division but that's because dumb fucks wanted "entertaining football" with a budget I could cover with a year of my salary.

 

[AnkleBiter]

So last night AFCB and Bournemouth Council made a joint statement confirming a rumour....That an agreement in principle is in place to build a new stadium - not on the outskirts of the town as previously thought, but next door to our current home! On Kings Park, a stones throw away from Dean Court as is! Further into the park away from the housing that currently hems us in. No capacity number officially given, but the same rumour (partly peddled by the local paper) is 25k. 25k and in our historical home, would be amazing.

At one point we looked set to move outside the town onto land adjacent to the dual carriageway in, where Bmouth council are beginning a development shortly. It's not clear what has prompted the turnaround from the Council to allow us to build here. It would seem the Council weighed up putting AFCB on that new development, or allowing us to build within Kings Park, and decided they'd rather keep the club in the park and away from the dual carriageway development.

Sitting on the identified land currently is our first team training ground, and Bournemouth Athletics Club, both land currently owned by and leased from the Council:

View attachment 6736

It would seem a landswap will occur, the council taking on the Dean Court land owned by a mixture AFCB's landlord and AFCB itself, and eventually demolishing the current ground, perhaps for housing or perhaps to recover some parkland. The council will be selling or long term leasing AFCB the highlighted land to build the new ground. It's not clear how this will play with the private landlord firm. It could be a price has been agreed, or it could be compulsory purchased.

I know plenty of Athletics Club members and I use the facilities there myself now and again. It's a bit old and crumbling, but it is their home. I hope they don't get made homeless, and that if (for example) they need a few quid to beef up one of the local school facilities for their new home, that AFCB write out a cheque.

It's also not clear where the first team would train, possibly extend the youth team's training facilities which is outside the town, that can go anywhere after all.

There's a lot details and costings that are yet to be nailed down. And planning permission won't be officially submitted until early 2018, with building penciled in to start early - mid 2019 all being well. Project Management and Architectural firms are on the club's payroll working on the plans currently.

There will be some local opposition undoubtedly, despite a football ground existing here for over 107 years since Mr Cooper Dean gifted the land to the local football club. So it's still early stages. as such we're trying not to get too excited. But this quite frankly is the best possible solution and something we never dared think was possible. Stay in our current home AND have plenty of capacity? Amazing.

Great stuff, long overdue. That's quite a capacity increase, would it be needed if you went down in the next 2 or 3 years? Or am I underestimating you?

Few of our fans are calling for a stadium expansion, which is possible for our ground, but it's easy to say that during the good times. We averaged 13k only 2 years ago!

 

[JoshBCFC]

Michu has retired at the age of 31. His career spectacularly imploded, going from starring in the Premier League to the Austrian third division in less than 3 years.

 

[Stevencc]

Shame, he was fantastic during that one season for Swansea.