The Swamp

Shirley wrote: ↑Mon Aug 27, 2018 11:15 am Eh, it's game 3. Nothing is won or lost tonight, especially with City already dropping 2 points.

DaveInSeattle wrote: ↑Sat Sep 15, 2018 12:21 pmAnd what the hell is the deal with MU's washed out pink kit? It looks like someone put a red shirt in with the white jerseys.

govmentchedda wrote: ↑Sat Sep 29, 2018 8:01 am Do not let Mourinho on the bus to Manchester.

govmentchedda wrote: ↑Sat Sep 29, 2018 11:51 am I also have no idea why Pogba is getting ANY blame at all in this. I can't get over how even the Guardian seems to be giving him shit.

Pruitt wrote: ↑Sat Sep 29, 2018 1:32 pm That Liverpool-Chelsea game was excellent from start to finish.

And after watching Spurs-Huddersfield, I'll go waay out on a limb and say that the Terriers are a terrible team.

mister d wrote: ↑Tue Oct 02, 2018 12:26 pm Every match or two I move Laporte up the list of most irreplaceable City player.

mister d wrote: ↑Tue Oct 02, 2018 12:35 pm Right on cue.

A dismal Laporte backpass allows Belfodil in down the right. He enters the area and slams a shot straight at Ederson, who parries.

“Wembley has come a long way from 1970 when domesticated equines tore up the pitch before the FA Cup final with the Horse of the Year Show,” notes Justin Kavanagh. “These days its Jaguars from Jacksonville and Philadelphian Eagles ruining the footie! Mind you, the Jaguars seemed to be only interested in prowling London’s nightclubs (running up a bar bill of $64,000, according to a Philly news report) and the droppings of eagles don’t seem too big a problem at Selhurst Park.”

“Faded American football stripes on a torn-up Wembley turf for a Premier League match?” observes Peter Oh. “Oh the irony! Or should I say, the gridirony?”

Perhaps, too, it would be evidence of a skewed morality to condemn City’s owners for all of that but not for the allegations of human rights abuses and oppression they have overseen in the United Arab Emirates.

But to turn a blind eye to that, as the game’s authorities seem likely to do, is to help yet again usher in a game with one rule for the rich and another for the poor; a game of governing bodies that cower at the trembling fist of the great and the good; a game of teams who decide which rules suit them, and when, and of authorities who act at the behest of their most powerful subjects and fans that contort themselves to praise actions that might otherwise draw scorn. It is to embrace a game that is not being run in the interests of the many, but the few, and a world where the quality of an idea is no match for a quantity of petrol

Pruitt wrote: ↑Sun Nov 11, 2018 4:26 pm Great piece in the Times about the disgrace that is Man City.

At Manchester City, Uncommon Greatness. But at What Cost?

I will of course say that if my team had that kind of money and flouted all the rules and got away with it... I would be happy.

Perhaps, too, it would be evidence of a skewed morality to condemn City’s owners for all of that but not for the allegations of human rights abuses and oppression they have overseen in the United Arab Emirates.

But to turn a blind eye to that, as the game’s authorities seem likely to do, is to help yet again usher in a game with one rule for the rich and another for the poor; a game of governing bodies that cower at the trembling fist of the great and the good; a game of teams who decide which rules suit them, and when, and of authorities who act at the behest of their most powerful subjects and fans that contort themselves to praise actions that might otherwise draw scorn. It is to embrace a game that is not being run in the interests of the many, but the few, and a world where the quality of an idea is no match for a quantity of petrol

The Athletic wrote:...Brexit’s most significant impact upon the Premier League will be on which foreign players—and how many—are allowed to play in the league.

The UK has strict rules on the eligibility of foreign players, which are set by the Football Association and Home Office, the government ministry that oversees immigration. Players need to have played a certain proportion of matches for a national side in the top 50 of the FIFA rankings, or command a transfer fee roughly in range of the median in the previous year of the Premier League—both being methods to demonstrate that they possess exceptional talent—in order to be eligible to move to the UK.

For the time being, there is an exception for European citizens. Free movement within the European Economic Area (EEA), from which the UK is now attempting to negotiate its departure, has also meant free movement for European footballers, including hundreds who would not have met the eligibility criteria had they come from outside the EEA. Since the Premier League was formed in 1992, 591 of the 1,022 European players signed by clubs would have failed to meet the criteria applied to non-EEA players, according to research by Laurie Shaw from Harvard University. It is estimated that more than 60 percent of the European players currently in the Premier League would not have been eligible to be signed.

If nothing is done, and no exception is introduced to the eligibility requirements for non-EEA players, Brexit would decimate teams’ foreign recruitment—and the standard of play in the league. It is not only comparatively mediocre players that would be affected: two of the past three players of the year—N’Golo Kante and Riyad Mahrez (who plays for Algeria but qualified through his French passport)—would not have been eligible to sign for Premier League clubs.

A particular concern is that weaker clubs would disproportionately be affected, entrenching the elite. Shaw’s research shows that the richest clubs would generally have been able to sign the European players they wanted anyway—68% of Chelsea’s European players would have met the eligibility rules for non-Europeans. It would be very different for smaller clubs, who have had to rely on shrewd recruitment of relative unknowns, as Leicester did with Kante and Mahrez in their miraculous title run in 2015-16. Only 32 percent of the European players that Crystal Palace have signed in their history, and just 19 percent of those recruited by Watford, would have been eligible. It is clear that treating players from the EEA as non-Europeans are currently treated would hurt the smaller clubs most. And this could erode perhaps the greatest selling point of the Premier League, compared to the other Big Five leagues: its superior competitive balance...