Whilst Real Madrid spending hundreds of millions on superstars Kaka and Ronaldo – with the prospect of more to come, has grabbed the headlines, one team that has really impressed me with their transfer strategy has been Man City – and I like the way Mark Hughes is slowly developing the squad into one that can compete in European competitions.
Yes, last seasons tenth placed finish was slightly disappointing, but given how Villa and Spurs treated the Uefa Cup, or the “Europa League” as it’s now branded, is it really a disaster that they missed out on that?
There was a huge imbalance to the squad last season, and even though Eriksson was adored by the City fans, there was still a lot of work to be done when he left – and people don’t give Hughes enough credit for doing that. Players like De Jong, Kompany, Bridge and Given have strengthened the team, and he is slowly developing a good squad. They now have a far greater spine to their team than they did before he joined, and that is down to him.
However what has impressed me most of all, is their transfer activity so far this summer. Ok, there’s time for things to change, but his policy of buying proven premier league players – like Barry and Santa Cruz, is one that I think will work for them. It would have been very easy for Hughes to splash out on anyone and everyone from abroad, but he’s got the best premiership players that have been available, and is making a very decent team.
Of course, they won’t make the top four next season, of that there can be no question. However, a few more additions to their squad, and Manchester City will most certainly be challenging Aston Villa, Everton and Tottenham for the 5th and 6th placed squads, and I would tip them to come 5th by some distance – before challenging more strongly for the top 4, the ultimate goal, in future seasons to come. They would need a completely new squad to do that right now – and you can spend all the money you like, but the quickest way to get there is to build a squad, which does take time.
Many in the media are suggesting Hughes hasn’t got long left as manager, and that it’s only a matter of time before the Abu Dhabi group bring their own man in – but how long does this time period last for? I mean many pundits were saying he “won’t last the rest of the season”, six months ago, and before that they were saying he wouldn’t last until Christmas. These guys are very rich, but they also seem like sensible football people, and I do hope they give Hughes time to continue build the squad, as the bigger picture is looking very bright indeed for them.
It may be the Robinho’s, and Kaka’s of this world that grabs the headlines, but all teams need a solid foundation, a base on which to build. The work that Hughes is doing is certainly not spectacular, but it’s been necessary, and I think they’ll push on next season.
Football is so unpredictable, and who knows Hughes may have been sacked by September with Man City bottom of the league, but if I was a City fans right now, I would be looking forward to next season with great anticipation, and in full support of what Hughes is doing.
Wednesday, 24 June 2009
Saturday, 13 June 2009
John Bostock - A Sad Case
As rumours on an unoffical Spurs site suggests that John Bostock now regrets his move from Palace – the team he had supported whilst growing up – I’ll have a look at the growing trend of people leaving the so called “smaller teams” very early on in their careers, in the hope that they can make it in the big divisions.
Don’t get me wrong, for some people this does work. Take Gareth Barry – who joined Villa aged just 16 from Brighton. Now i’m not even going to bother talking about the “packet of crisps”, teams recieve in compensation for players like Barry, and Bostock as that could be another essay entirely, but i still do think it’s remarkably unfair that we only get £700,000 upfront for Bostock, whilst Ronaldo is being sold for £80 million, it’s crazy. Back to Barry, and quite clearly it’s worked for him – he’s made it at the higher level, and has done extremely well for himself. However, the general trend is that the players who do move on to higher league clubs too quickly don’t fulfil their talent, and i’ll look at two very clear examples of that here.
Firstly, Bostock the boy who in November 2007 declared “It was my dream to play for Palace and to make my debut. I’ve always played for this club so if i’m playing here, I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. Yet in July 2008 he signed for Tottenham. Why? Well many people would say the money, but I don’t think that’s particularly accurate. Yes he’ll be on significantly higher wages, but I think often when this sort of situation occurs, people are far too quick to make judgements about money – when there are, in my opinion, two far more important reasons. Firstly, he saw it as a chance to get to a big club quickly – and he would have been extremely impressed with the training facilities, the coaching staff, and generally every aspect of the club – which is far far better in comparison to Palace. The 2nd reason is the ego he has – supposedly a “devout christian”, he does seem to think the world of himself, and having seen him play on a couple of occasions he certainly isn’t frightened of show boating. So he would have believed he can make it, and even if he is slightly regretting the move, he probably still believes he can do it. That’s where the real problem lies – not the money, as that would have been his father/agents reason more than his. Every young player things they’re going to be the exception – they are going to be the one that makes it. And yes this a good thing, in that everyone is motivated to try and succeed – but the law of averages state that not everyone can be an exception to the rule. Bostock might still make it, but the chances are if he had stayed at Palace he would have been a first team regular by now, and would have had a far better chance of getting into Spurs first team for next season had the transfer been this summer instead. He’s just one example of many young players who don’t realise that they have time on their side – he could have easily stayed another season at Palace – but he didn’t, because of this mentality that everything has to happen immediatley.
The second example is Wayne Routledge, who again left Palace for Tottenham – joining them as a 20 year old in 2005. Now he’s playing for QPR in the championship, despite having been labelled “the next big thing”, and tipped for an England call up during his time with Palace. But why did he move? In short, probably this time it is the money – at 20, he would have been getting far more money than say Bostock at 15, so that was almost certainly a motivation. But again it’s this burning desire to try and test yourself against the best – he could have stayed at Palace, and really improved, as it was quite clear when he was with us that he was still a raw talent even though he had reached 20. If he had stayed with us for even a year longer, he would have done far more than he has done in his career to date , and at 24 you have to wonder if he’s ever going to reach his full potential.
Of course when a big club comes calling, it’s very hard to say no for any player whatever age. But surely it’s more sensible to fully prove yourself at the smaller clubs first rather than moving on before you’ve done anything. Consdier Theo Walcott, he signed a contract with Southampton and played a few games for them – it wasn’t a long spell he had in the first team, but it still give him experience, and meant he was more likely to get into the first team.
Another fairly general reason why people are happy to move on so quickly is because of the ridiculous loan transfer system. A club like Man United or Tottenham can easily have 10 – 20 players out on loan at any one time, and players know that if they can’t get in the first team, they can simply go out on loan – thus meaning it’s far less of a risk to their careers. Of course it ruins their careers in many cases, but they still view it as less risky. However, once more, this is an essay for a different time.
I’ll finish with a quote from Simon Jordan, who was giving John Bostock a reason as to why he shouldn’t leave Palace for Tottenham. “when Spurs came knocking I told Wayne to stay and learn his trade at Palace. But he went, he grabbed the money and now he’s at Villa not getting in the first team, just like he didn’t get in the Spurs team, just like he didn’t get in the Portsmouth team and just like he didn’t get in the Fulham team.
Thursday, 11 June 2009
Cristiano Ronaldo: a Sensible Signing?
My last blog was on “the recession and ticket prices”, but when you see the news today that Real Madrid have launched an £80M bid for Cristiano Ronaldo, this following a £56M transfer was confirmed just a matter of days ago for former Man City target kaka, you have to wonder if there is an economic crisis at all.
Well of course there is - Palace can barely spend 80 quid on a player right now, and indeed even to Man United, 80 million is an awful lot of money – and it will allow them to more than likely sign Tevez permanently, a well as getting in several other players – Ribery and Benzema seem quite likely – although given the prices some of the paper have been quoting this morning for the duo, perhaps even £80 million won’t cover the cost of buying the two.
It’s never wise to have players that don’t want to play for you – and I think Sir Alex has got this one right. Ronaldo quite clearly wants to leave, and for that sort of price it would have been stupid to say no.
But does the deal suit Madrid? A silly question you might ask – he is after all one of the best players in the world, but are more and more attacking players what they really need right now? In his last reign, Perez introduced the “Galactico” idea – bringing in players such as Beckham, Figo, Zidane and Owen. The similarity between these players? They are all extremely attack minded. Indeed the only really defensive “Galactico” of sorts was Roberto Carlos, which says an awful lot about his transfer policy. Any team that has been successful in recent season have based their squad on a solid defence. Man united would have gotten nowhere without the Vidic/Ferdinand combination, and although the defence is Barcelona’s weakness, it’s still very good. As an example, Man United won 9 Premiership games last season 1 – 0, and remarkably kept 25 clean sheets, and indeed even though they did end up conceding the same amount of goals as Chelsea, a lot of those were in games towards the end of the season where the title was virtually won anyway.
Ok they’ll get a huge increase of revenue in terms of shirt sales, but £80M is still an awful lot of money to pay for player who may well have already reached his peak or at least will it very soon. He bases his entire game on quick skills and pace – will he be able to adapt, as someone like Ryan Giggs has, when he gets older? I do think it’s a bit of a risk.
Another argument is the fact that the £60M spent on Ronaldo could have been spent on much younger players, such as Luc Castaignos, a 16 year old player who Arsenal are reportedly after for £4M. Yes he could turn out to be rubbish, but he could be the news Henry – and with Wenger’s eye for spotting a talent, you’d be a fool to doubt him. A further example of this is Kaka himself who cost just 8.5M when joining Milan in the first palace – I know it’s not Madrid, or Perez’s policy, but surely it would be more sensible for them to spend at least some of their money on highly rated cheaper players (e.g. at a higher risk), rather than spending ridiculous amounts on players like Ronaldo. How many players like Ronaldo or Kaka can they afford anyway? And they certainly need a lot of strengthening, if they’re to be competitive both in their own league, and perhaps more importantly, in the Champions league.
Of course he’s a great player, but great payers don’t necessarily make a good team. Perez made two mistakes during his last reign as president- buying individual players thus not forming a team, and focusing solely on attack minded players. Yes it’s great to watch, and yes it’ll get them a hell of a lot of revenue thought the added interest they will get from the media/fans etc, but attacking football, unless it’s built on a solid defensive foundation, is very rarely winning football – and I don’t think Perez has learnt that yet, even after his previous spell in charge.
Well of course there is - Palace can barely spend 80 quid on a player right now, and indeed even to Man United, 80 million is an awful lot of money – and it will allow them to more than likely sign Tevez permanently, a well as getting in several other players – Ribery and Benzema seem quite likely – although given the prices some of the paper have been quoting this morning for the duo, perhaps even £80 million won’t cover the cost of buying the two.
It’s never wise to have players that don’t want to play for you – and I think Sir Alex has got this one right. Ronaldo quite clearly wants to leave, and for that sort of price it would have been stupid to say no.
But does the deal suit Madrid? A silly question you might ask – he is after all one of the best players in the world, but are more and more attacking players what they really need right now? In his last reign, Perez introduced the “Galactico” idea – bringing in players such as Beckham, Figo, Zidane and Owen. The similarity between these players? They are all extremely attack minded. Indeed the only really defensive “Galactico” of sorts was Roberto Carlos, which says an awful lot about his transfer policy. Any team that has been successful in recent season have based their squad on a solid defence. Man united would have gotten nowhere without the Vidic/Ferdinand combination, and although the defence is Barcelona’s weakness, it’s still very good. As an example, Man United won 9 Premiership games last season 1 – 0, and remarkably kept 25 clean sheets, and indeed even though they did end up conceding the same amount of goals as Chelsea, a lot of those were in games towards the end of the season where the title was virtually won anyway.
Ok they’ll get a huge increase of revenue in terms of shirt sales, but £80M is still an awful lot of money to pay for player who may well have already reached his peak or at least will it very soon. He bases his entire game on quick skills and pace – will he be able to adapt, as someone like Ryan Giggs has, when he gets older? I do think it’s a bit of a risk.
Another argument is the fact that the £60M spent on Ronaldo could have been spent on much younger players, such as Luc Castaignos, a 16 year old player who Arsenal are reportedly after for £4M. Yes he could turn out to be rubbish, but he could be the news Henry – and with Wenger’s eye for spotting a talent, you’d be a fool to doubt him. A further example of this is Kaka himself who cost just 8.5M when joining Milan in the first palace – I know it’s not Madrid, or Perez’s policy, but surely it would be more sensible for them to spend at least some of their money on highly rated cheaper players (e.g. at a higher risk), rather than spending ridiculous amounts on players like Ronaldo. How many players like Ronaldo or Kaka can they afford anyway? And they certainly need a lot of strengthening, if they’re to be competitive both in their own league, and perhaps more importantly, in the Champions league.
Of course he’s a great player, but great payers don’t necessarily make a good team. Perez made two mistakes during his last reign as president- buying individual players thus not forming a team, and focusing solely on attack minded players. Yes it’s great to watch, and yes it’ll get them a hell of a lot of revenue thought the added interest they will get from the media/fans etc, but attacking football, unless it’s built on a solid defensive foundation, is very rarely winning football – and I don’t think Perez has learnt that yet, even after his previous spell in charge.
Saturday, 6 June 2009
Ticketing structure in the Economic Crisis
Since late 2007, the country has been in the middle of an economic crisis, no thanks to the incompetence’s of the very man who promised to abolish the economic cycle of “boom and bust”, but in this time where consumers have very little disposable income, the approach of football clubs have been very interesting. Some have placed its fans first, and have reduced prices. An example of this would be Bradford City, who I believe offered season tickets for £99 for the 08/09 season – meaning they got in excess of 10,000 season tickets sold. There are further examples of this, with clubs such as Mansfield this season offering reductions “if 3,000 people sign up”, and even Simon Jordan has come up with a remarkably good ticket offer, which equates to 12 games for just over £50 for a student like me. However, this is a difficult time for the clubs too – and several teams are suffering extreme financial problems, Palace are just about avoiding that category right now, but who knows what might happen if Jordan fails to find a buyer. So they can’t just completely slash prices, it simply wouldn’t make sense. Season tickets, and tickets in general, are the biggest form of income for virtually all clubs below the very big teams which command huge transfer fee’s/sell the most merchandise ala Man United. Indeed, as a half way house if you like, many clubs are “freezing” season ticket prices, meaning this season’s prices are the same as last time out. They get praised for doing this – but should they be? People, on general have less money now than they did a year, so you could say freezing prices is actually a negative move. Furthermore, I would agree it would be a positive, helpful move if any of the “big” teams – aka those who would sell all their season tickets with ease – froze prices, but when teams that are midtable championship/league 1 standard freeze prices, it’s not as though they would get an economical advantage from raising prices anyway and thus it’s not that “generous a gesture”, as some sections of the media portray it.Obviously season tickets are the main source of revenue for a club like Palace – and at the moment we sell about 10,000 in the championship. I have no doubt that we would be able to sell at least 15,000 given a more reasonable price, and so I don’t think we are at our equilibrium price if you see what I mean. For example, an “early bird” ticket in the Holmesdale lower, where most of the noisier supporters sit, costs £315. If that was reduced to say £250, I think we would see an increase in tickets bought that would excel the cost for the club of reducing the prices.Furthermore, for me, the “on the door”, prices at most teams in championship level at least are absolutely barmy. Apparently Palace were making fans pay £15 for a friendly recently – surely that should have been free, for ST holders at least. But anyway, you would have thought that if the current prices were dropped to say £20 for an adult and £10 for a child, it would not only get more people into the ground, but it would also contribute to a better atmosphere and most importantly, it would get more fans to come back to games and sign up for season tickets in the future.Of course there are some people that aren’t going to be interested in watching championship football, but I think the current ticketing structure we have at the Palace means that we don’t get as many fans to games as we could do, which is a shame. However, this isn’t something that’s just affecting Palace – teams like Millwall, albeit in league 1, are getting average attendances of around 10,000 which is terrible for a club like that – and generally attendances are down in recent seasons.But is it all about the money? I think it’s a cliché to say this, but the crowd often can be the “12th man” – and would Stoke have got as many points at home this season, had they been playing at a half empty ground, with very little atmosphere? I personally doubt it. Yes the aim of a football chairman is to progress a club as far as possible, but they also need to make money for themselves. However often they can’t see that by dropping prices, they are actually increasing revenue in the long term, which is a shame. Indeed for many chairman, they are operating in a far shorter time frame than in is ideally needed.Consider my local team Stevenage Borough. At the moment they get an average attendance of around 2,000 – of which I believe 500ish are season ticket holders. If Phil Wallace was to sell season tickets for £100, there is a huge amount of “occasional fans” that go to teams like Borough, and I reckon they could easily sell 3,000 + season tickets if prices were really exceptional. This would get more and more people associated with the club, and it would provide long term benefits with it.In conclusion, obviously chairman need to keep ticket prices reasonable, and it’s impossible to reduce them to ridiculous prices – as that wouldn’t keep the clubs financially secure. However, I think there are several teams, at this time at least, that could benefit from following the lead of teams like Bradford and Mansfield, by reducing season ticket prices – or providing incentives for signing up. A team like Palace could easily be getting far more than 14,000 to games in this division and lower prices would help achieve this. In a time where people have little or no money to spend on entertainment – e.g. football, door to door prices of £30 for a championship matches are crazy – and I hope that Jordan has realised, and continues to realise, that he needs to something about the prices, or our average attendances will continue to fall – especially given our poor end to last season
Thursday, 4 June 2009
Football Rivalries, a Personal View
Football rivalries, an interesting concept – but how important are they, and who are Palace’s rivals? Of course a derby like Everton – Liverpool is always going to hold huge significance, but they have played each other constantly over a long period in history. In comparison, so called rivals such as Palace and Brighton haven’t played each other much at all in recent seasons which makes me question whether we can call them our rivals? An even clearer example of this would be Watford, who call Luton Town their main rivals – but can they, when they’re 3 leagues apart? The longer the gap stays as it is, the more and more chance there is of finding newer rivals shown by the way we are now apparently rivals with Charlton. This is clearly a new development, as only 1,500 Charlton fans travelled to Selhurst when we hosted them in the 04/05 season – and indeed the overall attendance of 20,705 was our lowest of the campaign, something you wouldn’t find in a proper derby match.
People say they don’t “care” about Charlton, but anyone who went to Selhurst in the latter part of the season will say that’s not true. Granted, their wasn’t a lot to sing about as our season was over around February, but the “who the fuck is laughing now”, chants from the Holmesdale show that we do at least slightly care about them.
But then again, do we think of them as rivals, or as more just counterparts that we’ve had run-in’s with in the last couple of seasons? In short, I don’t think they are rivals to us. Not really anyway. We hate them in the same way that other clubs hate Man United, but whose to say if they hadn’t got relegated it wouldn’t have turned into a proper derby match – as, given time, more and more of the younger fans would grow up believing Charlton are our main rivals.
You have to ask, do rivalries really mean much these days? Hearing stories from my dad about several thousand Palace fans cramming into Brighton’s stadium you can immediately tell that they were full of passion, and that they really meant something. Now, when we do play the weeds, we can only bring 900 there – and the atmosphere at Selhurst is never exactly “electric”. And of course, we’ll sell out Charlton but given the way their stewards are like, is there any real chance of a Derby atmosphere?
All three teams – Charlton, Millwall and Brighton are below palace in the football league now, which begs the question: will another “rivalry” be established, against the likes of Watford or Qpr for example, or are those three enough for us? I doubt there will be another one, until one of those three – probably Millwall – makes it up. Who would we go for anyway?
I was hoping Millwall would go up – I’ve never had a chance to go the den, and yes you could call it a rough club full of thugs, but in a more positive light I think it means more to them than a lot of fans. For example, they show ten times the passion that fans of teams like Watford and QPR show, which is why we would never really be able to "hate" either of those clubs. It’s a good rivalry the Palace-Millwall one. With us and Charlton, their just isn’t enough history and although we do care, we probably don’t care as much as Charlton do. However, with Millwall, we know they have West Ham and they know we have Brighton, so we’re each other’s “2nd most hated” if you like, which does work well - although I suppose they do have Leeds aswell.
But do rivalries have a future in the game? Well of course they do, but times change. Football isn’t how it used to be – and, I’m only telling this from what I’ve heard, the rivalries just aren’t as good as they used to be. I’ll always hate Brighton, but I don’t think it’s possible to hate them as much as my dad and other supporters of his generation do – due to the history they have in prior matches between Palace and Brighton, and the huge amount of passion associated with them - something that just isn't possible nowadays
People say they don’t “care” about Charlton, but anyone who went to Selhurst in the latter part of the season will say that’s not true. Granted, their wasn’t a lot to sing about as our season was over around February, but the “who the fuck is laughing now”, chants from the Holmesdale show that we do at least slightly care about them.
But then again, do we think of them as rivals, or as more just counterparts that we’ve had run-in’s with in the last couple of seasons? In short, I don’t think they are rivals to us. Not really anyway. We hate them in the same way that other clubs hate Man United, but whose to say if they hadn’t got relegated it wouldn’t have turned into a proper derby match – as, given time, more and more of the younger fans would grow up believing Charlton are our main rivals.
You have to ask, do rivalries really mean much these days? Hearing stories from my dad about several thousand Palace fans cramming into Brighton’s stadium you can immediately tell that they were full of passion, and that they really meant something. Now, when we do play the weeds, we can only bring 900 there – and the atmosphere at Selhurst is never exactly “electric”. And of course, we’ll sell out Charlton but given the way their stewards are like, is there any real chance of a Derby atmosphere?
All three teams – Charlton, Millwall and Brighton are below palace in the football league now, which begs the question: will another “rivalry” be established, against the likes of Watford or Qpr for example, or are those three enough for us? I doubt there will be another one, until one of those three – probably Millwall – makes it up. Who would we go for anyway?
I was hoping Millwall would go up – I’ve never had a chance to go the den, and yes you could call it a rough club full of thugs, but in a more positive light I think it means more to them than a lot of fans. For example, they show ten times the passion that fans of teams like Watford and QPR show, which is why we would never really be able to "hate" either of those clubs. It’s a good rivalry the Palace-Millwall one. With us and Charlton, their just isn’t enough history and although we do care, we probably don’t care as much as Charlton do. However, with Millwall, we know they have West Ham and they know we have Brighton, so we’re each other’s “2nd most hated” if you like, which does work well - although I suppose they do have Leeds aswell.
But do rivalries have a future in the game? Well of course they do, but times change. Football isn’t how it used to be – and, I’m only telling this from what I’ve heard, the rivalries just aren’t as good as they used to be. I’ll always hate Brighton, but I don’t think it’s possible to hate them as much as my dad and other supporters of his generation do – due to the history they have in prior matches between Palace and Brighton, and the huge amount of passion associated with them - something that just isn't possible nowadays
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