Man City are ‘f***ed’ in 90s tribute act as they become true 115 Club

Long-time Man City fans will recognise this kind of nonsense from the 1990s. Plus, more talk on Mo Salah and contract shenanigans.

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Man City turning back the clock
No more words needed for last night other than…

We’re f**ked.
Ben MCFC (used to do this shit all the time in the 90s. We’re past masters.)

 

115
So that’s 1 win, 1 draw and 5 defeats in City’s last seven games. Coincidence?
SC, Belfast

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Why we must keep Salah
Throwing in my two penn’orth on the contract situation for Salah after recent mails on what Liverpool should or shouldn’t be doing.

Before we drift into intangibles it’s worth outlining some basic numbers here – he currently earns £350k which has meant that he has managed to avoid having to go to food banks in recent times.

We don’t know what his agent is asking for but I would guess that it isn’t going to be too much different from the £18m a year currently paid, contract length perhaps being more the sticking point.

If a 3 year contract were signed that would be around a £55m outlay for the club, for a proven, reliable (hardly injured) asset.

If Liverpool don’t chose to renew on acceptable terms for Mo then what are the alternatives ? They have brought Chiesa in but it’s tough to have any confidence on that being a solid replacement as of yet, but the gut tells me that it is unlikely. We also have a blinding little player in Ben Doak who will be in and around the first team next year, but for whom ownership of the position is likely too soon.

So it would likely be off to the shops to see what’s on the shelves – not sure how much change we’d see out of £50m in order to bring someone of note in and that’s before we pay a weekly wage (Raphinha has long been my preferred since Leeds day, but his asking price appears to be soaring based on recent form).

Therefore I would conclude from an economic perspective that extending for 3 years on current terms has merit.

It’s no coincidence to me that Salah chose to give us another airing of his Bay-Watch screen test at the weekend when he ripped his top off … “you trying to tell me I’m over the hill … look at me … granite abs”.

Lee highlighted concerns in yesterday’s mailbox about whether Salah’s form would continue and made reference to dips post AFCON tournaments. I hear you. What I would say though is that form is never linear and it is a sign of a great player who is able to get past those dips and come out smelling of roses the other side. Salah has done that, more than once – a sign of quality.

So the question here is do we think he will get the onset of Casemiro-itus and start to see the game passing him by in ways that we’re not used to observing. In answer to this I would highlight that unlike Casemiro, he hasn’t spent his summers at international pie eating championships and appears more than fit enough – I can’t see that materially eroding across the next 3 years.

I mentioned the AFCON, so let’s bring that together with an economics point – has anyone tried to quantify what having the leading African / Muslim player in the fold means for LFC in terms of increased revenue (be that TV rights / merchandising) ?

I doubt that figure is immaterial.

Will close with my personal feelings about him as a player and the journey I have been on with him across his times at Liverpool.

Salah formed part of one of the most lethal attacking lines in prem history, alongside Firmino and Mane.

Bobby was always my favourite, the oil that made it all work so beautifully, and I have to admit Salah sat in bronze place for me on that ranking podium – I became frustrated at times with his goal-blinkers and felt in many ways that Mane was the better skilled team player at the time.

But I’ve come on a journey with him (a crappy comment normally associated with reality TV shows, but appropriate in this case). I see a better balance in his desire to score and provide assists. The more seasons he bangs out the 20 goal minimum helps to crystalise and set in stone what quality we are witnessing (the mental fortitude to keep producing year after year … very impressive).

My cold heart has thawed and he has a place in it.

Very keen to keep him.
Sparky, LFC

READ: Five next moves for Salah ranked on likelihood include leaving Liverpool for Barcelona

 

Lengthy analysis of Chelsea transfer strategy
I thought it might be interesting to speak about two very contrasting approaches to recruitment. Liverpool and Chelsea. This will come in two parts because even split this is sprawling and very dry. Heavens knows what the academics that proliferate the comments section will make of it. My advice, just skip it, you know you won’t like it.

Anyway, the thought occurred to me because I heard Romeo Lavia speaking about his choice to join Chelsea and his justification for turning down Liverpool. Now, any player can make a choice that time goes on to make look very poor. Additionally, even more time might pass to then make it ultimately a very good decision.

I’m not here to say he should have chosen different, but what he said was that he felt there was a project at Chelsea that appealed to him, and he felt the club was an exciting prospect with a clear approach to attracting a lot of the top young talent in the world. I can absolutely understand that feeling, particularly at the point he joined.

However, I feel that thought rather echoes what a lot of other people think about Chelsea and their approach, that they will continue to spend money and find future loop-holes to exploit so as to stay on the right side of FFP. However, that won’t be Chelsea’s approach because it can’t be. If there were ever present loop-holes nobody would care. Everybody would just spend what they want. They don’t, and neither will Chelsea.

So, what is Chelsea’s plan? Quite frankly, I’m not sure, but what I do know for sure is this: Chelsea saw an opportunity to gain a significant competitive advantage and looked to exploit it. If you can make a football team you own be the most successful, or one of the most successful teams in Europe, then their relative value will surge.

Along with success will come significant increases in turnover. Being in the Champions League every season is worth a £60-120m depending on how deep you go and your results in the group stage. Europa League about £20-60m. Conference is significantly below that. With titles and success comes huge sponsorship deals globally. Add in Club World Cup, Pre Season tours and the attention that comes with the top players, plus Nike or Adidas paying huge sums to make your shirts, and there is money to be made everywhere.

By contrast, falling down the pecking order (and not being a significant global brand like Man Utd) will mean overseas fans forget who you are, global fans downturn and your sponsorship deals fall off a cliff. The ends of the spectrum are significantly far apart, and Chelsea decided to make sure they were on the right side.

As most people are aware, the advantage Chelsea spotted was to do with contracts and amortisation. They realised that they could create an enormous buffer in their transfer budget by amortising the transfer fee over a significantly longer period then was previously the norm. This reduces the initial outlay and avoids the buildup of transfer costs in the short term. Additionally, they expected to be able to reduce their wage bill in the process, creating additional future transfer space, by adopting an approach that focused on young up-and-coming talent who, as a corollary, are usually paid significantly less than established stars.

If they needed to add in any additional buffer they could sell homegrown talent and in a real push, a hotel or two. But the goal was to grab all the best young talent on offer. Once you have lots of the best young talent on the planet, you really should be able to compete for all the titles. You then sell very good players who aren’t quite on the same elite level as your world class starting XI to the middling prem/European teams to offset your amortisation costs.

Chelsea understood that an additional benefit of long contracts was that it bought more time to flip the player. Players on relatively low contracts could hang around for 1-6 years but if at any point it was decided they were not quite good enough, they would retain their value for selling, plus because they were signed as young prospects and are not well paid they are incentivised to want to leave if Chelsea aren’t playing them. This process of selling your stockpiled talent should generate reasonable revenues for the later years, supplementing the increased turnover provided by on field success.

It’s a neat plan to be honest. Usually, it should work. They don’t need to hit the Cole Palmer jackpot every time, they just need 3/4 world class players from the 15-20 signed and then some extremely good players and you should be competing for Prem’s and Champs Leagues. Of course, the process comes with risk, you need to acquire enough top-quality talent to compete, and you need to be successful enough to qualify for the Champs League every season. That’s important. But with a decent playing squad to start, plus the willingness of the owners to see the big spending budget through, the odds were in their favour.

But as is often the case with businessmen, they spotted the opportunity but perhaps underestimated the complexity of the sport. They had not run a football club before but assumed their hands on approach was better than appointing someone more competent in football governance.

So how has it gone? – Very, very poorly, I would suggest. Firstly, Chelsea’s on field performance has got much worse. That’s the bottom line. They didn’t buy all those players for the column inches, they did it to make Chelsea successful. That hasn’t happened. Yet at least. In the 4 years prior to their takeover they came 3rd, 4th, 4th and 3rd in the league and won a Champions League and Club World Cup. Since the takeover they have won nothing and come 12th and 6th.

According to Transfermarkt, Chelsea have spent £1.1bn since Clearlake took over which works out to very roughly £140m per season amortisation costs. For the next 7/8 years. Subsequently, without any further spending in any of the next 6 seasons, they already have a transfer spend of £140m per season. On top of that, the slimmed down wage bill has not materialised. Their current wage bill is estimated at £171m per season. That puts them 4th in the Prem. For comparison, league leaders Liverpool’s wage costs are £128m per year.

Unfortunately, I think Chelsea started to chase the next big wonderkid to turn their fortunes around and the squad ballooned. Despite paying less on average per player, the sheer number of players accrued means that the wage costs have stayed very high. Chelsea can offset this somewhat by loaning players out, but there is a limit on loans and the quality of the player will determine whether you recoup your wage fees or not.

One of the reasons why I am not really sure what Chelsea are doing, is because of the extent to which they are refusing to react to things not going to plan. The summer just gone should have seen Chelsea significantly reigning in the transfer spend. Instead, they have doubled down and further bet the house. With at least 2 more years accounts due before the possibility of Champions League football, the expected losses will be significant. 23/24 and 24/25 accounts are going to show record operating losses with a sheen applied of massive sales (though still much smaller than player purchases) that are accounted for in a single year so significantly impacting their Profit and Loss. £250m worth of sales were conducted in 23/24 and £160m in 24/25 thus far, but all of the considerable number of players sold were academy products or long term players who had reduced down their amortisation costs providing them maximum profit.

They have few of those players left, pretty much everyone else in their squad they have recently bought and will have high amortisation meaning very low profit. There might be the odd academy product but not enough to reliably offset the growing amortisation buildup. Considering no Champions League football, a relatively small stadium and little on field success in the period 23/24 I believe they are increasingly backing themselves into a very tight corner.

Yes, they can sell players, but the available options are becoming thin. If, as seems likely, they are struggling with FFP at the end of seasons 25/26 through to early 2030’s sales become ever more necessary. You then leave yourself open to being exploited as you desperately need to generate cash before the deadline. What happens then if someone comes in for Cole Palmer with £150m, the jewel in the crown of the existing approach? It is going to be enormously difficult to ignore that offer if they are reeling under the ever-increasing amortisation costs and still several seasons away from the load easing. But what does that say to the rest of the players snared by the lure of big spending success?

Perhaps they are willing to fail FFP, assuming whatever punishment is likely will not have a material impact on the footballing side. However, with the lack of specificity regarding possible FFP punishments, this seems unlikely. They could conceivably receive a 40 point deduction and be relegated, and then they really might enter a death spiral.

There are other issues with their approach. How will they manage those players afforded long contracts on decent money who utterly fail. I’m looking at you Mykhaylo Mudryk. The plan was you sell after a season or two if they don’t make it, but who is going to pay Mudryk over a hundred grand a season? And on the successful side, they have Cole Palmer, who their manager called the best player in the prem, on £130k until early 2030’s, how long before he demands what De Bruyne and Haaland get paid, instead of being on 70k less than Ben Chilwell? Are Chelsea planning on playing hardball with Noni Madueke who is on £50k and is an England international but tied down to close to a decade? There is no requirement for them to renew and they sure as shit have zero additional funds to raise his wages. Managing these situations is going to be extremely challenging and with a huge cumbersome squad, discontent is surely around the corner.

There is a lot I simply can’t know about Chelsea’s strategy going forward, but what I do know is this – even with Champions League qualification this season, they will soon have to start transitioning from predominantly spending to predominantly selling. If they don’t I fear the whole club could start to come crashing down…
Ed Ern

PS – Next, the other end of the spectrum – FSG’s data approach

 

Did Guehi have a good summer with England though?
‘Still, though. Guehi had a brilliant summer with England’

At the time, I sort of agreed that this was the case, I suppose at least partly because the media were saying so. After watching him struggle this season with Palace, I’ve looked back at the goals conceded at the Euros in a bit more detail and, in the midst of how poor the likes of Walker and Kane were, it seems that others got off lightly. It is worth a rewatch if you can bear it to see what I’m talking about. Looking at Guehi during each goal we conceded is quite intriguing.

1) Hjumland (Denmark). After an almost costly slip versus Serbia, this was far from a major error. But Guehi is weirdly flat footed as the ball is hit from distance. In times past, you could imagine a John Terry or Harry Maguire diving in the way of the ball in an almost magnetic manner, but the Palace centre half doesn’t react at all and stands still.

2) Schranz (Slovakia). Guehi has a huge head-start on the Slovakian scorer, yet he allows himself to be caught napping. Kyle Walker stole the show by sprinting really fast in a really random direction here so it is no surprise other mistakes went unnoticed.

3) Williams (Spain). Lamine Yamal had just cut onto his left foot and scored a corker versus France. Lamine Yamal cuts inside onto his left foot versus England and Guehi not only flies off in a Walkerbout-esque direction, but also commits the defending cardinal sin of turning his back on the attacker. Surely he was aware of the danger?

4) Oyarzabal (Spain). Faults everywhere, from Palmer not cutting off the initial passing lane to Southgate not having strengthened the midfield after the equaliser. Good old Walkerbout did his thing too. But, in a similar fashion to Slovakia’s goal, Guehi lost Oyarzabal despite a momentary advantage as he laid it off. Turn, spin, surge, goodnight.

The media seem to praise players for the bare minimum with very little actual analysis. Mainoo ranked 131st out of 132 for passes forward and was subbed off before practically every England goal, yet received plaudits.

Due to his invisibility, Foden wasn’t really praised or criticised but he still seems to be incredibly overrated. The fact that Haaland goes from a goal every 43 minutes to a goal every 91 minutes when Foden plays alongside him (this latter stat will be even worse now as I came across it on 18th September) suggests he may have really hindered the other forwards’ performance at the Euros.

Finally, watching Timo Werner annihilate Walker on Saturday evening brought me back to the Iceland friendly match when the Recovery Pace King didn’t manage to recover at all and we lost 1-0. It should have been obvious then. Five major positional errors later and he still made the team of the tournament. Some players just do so well to survive off their image and people’s inaccurate perception. Hopefully Guehi won’t be next. He’s a young defender with potential and I hope lessons can be learned rather than yet another case of us all falling for the hype.
AC in Milan

 

Confusing nonsense in the referee’s earhole
James asks an interesting question, which I can’t answer, but which triggered a further musing from me. Is it possible that the reason that commentators and pundits are so critical of VAR and show so little understanding of how difficult it might make a referee’s job, because people who work in live television and radio have someone (the producer/floor manager) rattling on in their earhole ALL THE TIME and are attenuated to it? Thus making them unsympathetic of ways in which it might impede a referee’s decision-making rather than helping it?
Dara O’Reilly, London

 

Conspiracy japes
I have just received a secret recording of the PGMOL meeting for appointing this weeks officials.

David Coote: You do realise those scouse bastards could go 11 points ahead of City if they win?

Howard Webb: You’re joking !

Coote: Honestly, sneaky bastards keep winning, what we gonna do about it?

Webb: I’ll think of something…………got it. Chris Kavanagh as ref and Paul Tierney as VAR!

Coote: Isn’t Chris from Wigan and Paul from Ashton, they’re both in Greater Manchester and doesn’t Klopp have issues with Paul?

Webb: Klopp’s gone, some Dutch blokes taken over, Arnie somebody. Don’t think he’s met any of them yet.

Coote: What about the Manchester thing?

Webb: That’s the best bit, Chris is listed as a Droylsden fan, no idea where that is and Paul as Wigan, been a City fan since he was 6, hahaha, thick sods won’t suspect a thing.

Coote: Phew, that should do it, pass us that rolled up fifty.
Howard (Anthony Taylor is driving them to the game) Jones