General Football Banter

Newcastle have agreed a 12m deal to sign Shelvey. I'm a little disappointed but 12m is a good price for him. He'll do well at Newcastle.

I'm disappointed too. £12m for a player that hasn't done much in a struggling team. Can't see how that'll help us. That said, he can be a top player when he wants to be, so hopefully he'll get his head right and do well.

He'll do well for you. I was very anti-Shelvey when we first signed him but when he's playing well he can turn a game around. He scores some blinders too.

Well if he's going to play like that most weekends I'll be happy. Brilliant debut showing a lovely range of passing. His shooting wasn't great, but the passing really was top notch and he was getting stuck in.

Gary Neville should have stayed in the Sky Sports studio where everyone respected his opinion. 6 games in & he still hasn't won in La Liga for Valencia.

Swans are bringing in Francesco Guidolin to work alongside Alan Curtis til the end of the season where, assuming we survive, he'll probably become full time manager.

He took Udinese to 3rd and has managed a lot of different European clubs including Monaco, Parma and Palermo.

Pellegrini is out, Pep is in! It's a shame to see him go, but at it's a necessary upward move.

I really don't like the way Man City have gone about the whole thing. They said "out of respect for Pellegrini", but they've been incredibly disrespectful towards him. There's been at least a month of speculation with no one from Man City management supporting Pellegrini, they then announce that no matter what he does this season (he can still win 4 competitions) that he's out of the job at the end of the season despite having another year left on his contract, and then to top it all off they say that the Pep signing is a continuation of their previous talks with him - making it seem like Pellegrini was only ever a stop-gap until they got the man they wanted. Very disrespectful towards a guy who has done very well with the club and doesn't cause a scene.

Hey Pellegrini, you could win four titles for us this season but even if you do we still don't want you.

So disrespectful. If I was a Man City fan I'd be pissed off with his treatment. So you've got Pep. That's great.    Let's see how happy the owners will be when he loses a few games or messes up a cup final which will inevitably happen at some point.

Last edited by rhys (Sun-7-Feb-2016 17:58:37)

If Leicester win the Premiership they don't half deserve it. Not just beating Man City away from home, but are looking better overall than the most expensive team in the Country. Ranieri has done a cracking job - Vardy up front instead of on the wing, Mahrez as an inverted winger, signing Kante who has to be one of the signings of season and has been a perfect example of a holding midfielder. Just how he has them playing, it's almost like he's told them that he knows they're not the best, so just go out there and attack and man are they doing it well. They remind me a lot of Newcastle when we had Keegan the first time - hopefully they'll do one better than we did though and complete the season on top, as they thoroughly deserve it.

Oh man, hilarious. Man City just brought on 19 year old Bersant Celina and he looks like Gary Oldmans character in 5th Element.

7-0 loss to Barca in the Copa Del Rey as well. If the Valencia board keep him on, they're better humanitarians than the UN.

He could be a good manager with time - but the mistake was going to Valencia to start his career. I'm sure he'll get another job, in League 1 or 2 or something, and maybe find some form there cos I can't see him doing it at Valencia.

Eh? You think a club with massive resources is a bad place to start as a football manager? You really think the England assistant manager is going to manage a League 1/2 team on the side? Valencia are top 4 La Liga team with quality players. They've drawn against Real & Barca & then lost against some of the shittest teams in the league. Even the most inexperienced manager would have been able to roll over them.

He's struggling from language problems partly - but mainly it's down to their players just not caring enough. It's a shame really, as he's one of the few English managers that I'd like to see do well. Hopefully his next job after this is better suited for him and he has players who care.

Eh? You think a club with massive resources is a bad place to start as a football manager? You really think the England assistant manager is going to manage a League 1/2 team on the side? Valencia are top 4 La Liga team with quality players. They've drawn against Real & Barca & then lost against some of the shittest teams in the league. Even the most inexperienced manager would have been able to roll over them.

I think a guy with no proper managerial experience going to a big club puts huge pressure on him right from the off. At least if he'd gone for a lower league side he would have more time to get the form he needs. The Valencia fans and board expect results right away, that's why it's a bad club for him to start at. Nothing wrong with the club itself.

Anyone see the injury to Zouma? Fucking savage, his knee bent backwards when he landed. You could hear him screaming from the touchlines. A complete freak accident, but dam that's going to mess him up for a while.

Eh? You think a club with massive resources is a bad place to start as a football manager? You really think the England assistant manager is going to manage a League 1/2 team on the side? Valencia are top 4 La Liga team with quality players. They've drawn against Real & Barca & then lost against some of the shittest teams in the league. Even the most inexperienced manager would have been able to roll over them.

I think a guy with no proper managerial experience going to a big club puts huge pressure on him right from the off. At least if he'd gone for a lower league side he would have more time to get the form he needs. The Valencia fans and board expect results right away, that's why it's a bad club for him to start at. Nothing wrong with the club itself.

Well again you're wrong, there's very little pressure on him. Valencia's owner Peter Lim and Gary Neville are mates and partly why he was put in place to do the job. Not only that, they both own a stake in Salford City so they share business interests. The board can't do anything if the owner has got his back and the fans know he's doing his best under the circumstances. The media keep causing unrest by saying the fans are against him, then show photo's of 20 fans by the team bus after the game. The stadium holds 55,000 where's the baying mob of angry supporters...

Dortmund fans threw tennis balls on the pitch last night in protest to new ticket prices, as there's been an increase. The purpose of the tennis balls is understood to represent the perception that football fans do not have as much money as tennis followers, with the Dortmund fans wanting to show that they will not be held to ransom over ticket prices and allow the sport to become elitist. What is the new price of tickets you ask? Upwards of €19.50 (£15.19) a ticket. They should try coming over here and seeing if they can get an adult game for £15... the average price of the cheapest ticket over here is double that price.

Chesea's cheapest ticket is £52 apparently - being in London you can expect to pay a bit more, just like everything else. So let's look outside of London. Man City - £42. Liverpool - £37. Watford - £36. Everton - £35. Southampton - £32. And it goes on like that. The lowest price is £22 by Leicester. There are 10 teams that range from £22 to £30. 10 teams that range from £31 to £52.

And they're complaining about tickets that are as low as £15. They really need to see what we pay over here.

Talking of tickets though, I had a laugh last year when Plymouth mentioned the cost of their tickets. People are regularly complaining about them, as we have the highest prices in League Two. They say that it's in line with everyone else, until a load of fans pointed out a lot of League One, Championship and a few Premiership teams have lower prices that we do. And let's face it, paying £2 extra to see Leicester playing against the likes of Man Utd, Man City, Chelsea, Arsenal is a lot better value for money than paying to see Plymouth against the likes of Crawley, Newport County, Barnet, York, etc. There were Championship teams with £15 tickets (£5 less than the lowest Plymouth one) where you'd not only see better football, but bigger teams and players. Ticket prices over here are a joke. I can only wish that we'd have complaints at having to at for tickets as low as £15 to watch a Prem game.

German football runs on a completely different level to the Premier League. At least 50% of the club is owned by the supporters so they have the power. £15 ticket is also for standing in the gods & not a seat. The seat prices were between £30 to £55. This was Stuttgart setting the prices. They tried to do the Premier League method of raising the prices for playing the bigger teams & caught out.

Dortmund's ticket prices are also cheap enough so everyone can go to the games and they fill their 80,000 stadium fortnightly.

Wish they'd make games cheap enough over here for that. There was a forum with Plymouth fans about it - as technically out stadium can fit 20,000 odd fans. Attendances this season seem to average less than half of that with the biggest attendances being around 12,000. Fans have said plenty that if they reduced the ticket prices more people could afford to go, and they'd fill the stadium creating more of an atmosphere and with the extra fans they're not likely to lose much, if any, ticket revenue - but they'd make more at concessions and that. Makes sense to everyone but the people running the club who are more interested in clearing debt - understandable, but more people through the door would surely help with that.

Also, German team Hoffenheim have taken the unusual step of employing an incredibly young manager. Good to see really and is the youngest manager that I've seen employed - they're usually at least in their early thirties. Julian Nagelsmann though is just 28 years old and has signed a three year contract. Nice to see a club giving someone young a chance like that.

Hey Pellegrini, you could win four titles for us this season but even if you do we still don't want you.

So disrespectful. If I was a Man City fan I'd be pissed off with his treatment. So you've got Pep. That's great.    Let's see how happy the owners will be when he loses a few games or messes up a cup final which will inevitably happen at some point.

They've wanted Pep for years, even before Pellegrini. He had to know that sooner or later he'd be replaced when Pep freed up, and he's handled it perfectly. I don't think there was ever any suggestion that this was anything other than a temporary deal. Three years is pretty good for a premier league manager anyway.

But really I don't think Pellegrini should be around after this season anyway. We might get the league cup but I don't like our chances in any of the other competitions. We're supposedly protesting against the short rest between the FA cup match against Chelsea and the champions league match with Kyiv by playing reserves against Chelsea. We'll likely lose that, then even if we beat Kyiv I don't see us getting through the quarter finals. The premier league is still possible, but I don't know, our form against the big clubs is dire.

A fresh start is needed, including cutting some big names from our squad. Touré isn't living up to his usual standard anymore, and our defence is a mess. If Pep can attract bigger names then great, that's what we need if we want to be more than we are.

I agree improvements can be made and I know Pep is a great choice, probably the best choice, for manager; there just seems something wrong with the way Pellegrini is being thrown out regardless of his potential success. Just doesn't seem right to me.