Sure, but somehow it's sustainable.
PL Opposition Tidbits
- Thread starter Frogfish
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They have 89 pro players at the club, its not sustainable.
Super Miks Arteta
Depends. They've done similar for years but they've really ramped it up recently. half the players they bring in will end up on loan and probably get sold at a profit.
Lot less effective though when the first team is an eclectic mix of styles and struggling though. It'll help them balance the books
I don't think it is in all honesty. A lot of the young players they've brought in haven't been successfull out on loan or at their Multi Club Ownership affiliates.
Like Casadei. Bought for 15 mill and loaned out to two clubs before getting sold 2,5 years later for 13 mill.
There will be loads of stories like this and these kids sign 7 year deals.
The worst part is that these kids get so insanely bad representation and advice.
Estevao and Kendry Paez are two very exciting signings but play in the same position. Its all just very weird.
15m is low cost in the grand scheme. Losing 2m isn't end of the world. They want to try and hit a jackpot, whilst also shifting homegrown. I'd be surprised if the 2 you mentioned were there in 3 years time, as they would either 1) be a flop or 2)sold for stupid money. To Boehly it seems like the football aspect is secondary to this football club ownership malarkey.
It'll keep their finances in good health, but not their trophy cabinet
Getting a credible shirt sponsor would do a lot more for their finances, but they don't seem to have got their shit together to do that. It is beyond insane that they haven't sorted that. They would have missed the deadline long ago to get the sponsor on their replica kit for the season, but they could still get good money for having it on their first-team shirts.
And it is not like the transfer fees for the 150 players they are signing are small or anything. They are paying, quite a decent amount for some of these players.
Do they never release some kind of ranking of the players with the best acceleration? They must have the data to calculate it. That's probably a better measure of how fast a player really is in most situations than raw top speed.
Still think we should have signed Tielemans.
He would've been very good on a free but then you see him land at a club like Villa and wonder why no CL side offered their services for him.
A bit like now with this Cherki chap, all these rumours Lyon were happy to let him leave for 20m in the summer......now look at the season he's having.
I was shocked we weren't in for him when he was out of contract. He's been a great pick up for Villa and definitely could have fit in our midfield rotation.
I thought he didn’t impress last season but this season he could be considered Villa’s best player.
I've always rated the guy and would have loved to see the best version of him in the red shirt, but he was disappointing last season. Can't really blame those who hesitated.
Absolutely. The infrastructure isn’t there and they can leave by just three routes. That’s it. The train station isn’t designed for that much intense traffic.
At least with Anfield and Goodison you can exit 360° out of the stadium. There it’s only 3 exits and 180°. Unless they throw themselves in the Mersey which many will want to do when they’ve got even less money to spend.
LFC: we want an 80,000 seater stadium
Chippy tits: you pay for the whole of the infrastructure including the reopening of the Bootle line train service
EFC: we want a new stadium
Chippy tits: give us 200k and do what you want
I also read a review from a fan who was there that the design is a bit shit and that the away supporters will be in the prime TV spot for the cameras. Its also steep as fuck and several fans were complaining about no rails and potentially falling over while being pissed. They also added "while celebrating goals" but lets be honest there wont be many of those.
View: https://x.com/TomCollomosse/status/1905231461990494329
In the 76 years since George Robledo became the first South American-born player to compete in the top flight, English football has always kept a close eye on developments there.
When Ossie Ardiles and Ricky Villa joined Tottenham not long after Argentina won the 1978 World Cup, interest among clubs and fans soared. Ardiles and Villa built a trail that fellow South American stars like Luis Suarez, Sergio Aguero and Gilberto Silva would follow.
Yet while there have been numerous South Americans in the English top flight, a relatively small number have moved directly from there to England.
Since the Premier League’s inception in 1992, English clubs have generally preferred to wait until these players prove themselves elsewhere in Europe before making their move. There are exceptions, of course, like Carlos Tevez, Javier Mascherano and Gabriel Jesus, but the approach has often been cautious.
Now Nottingham Forest are one of the clubs adopting a more assertive style. The days of Forest’s chaotic recruitment drive after they won promotion from the Championship three years ago are long gone, with the club now using an extremely smart transfer policy to drive their push for the Champions League.
When they signed Murillo from Corinthians for just £10million in August 2023, Forest proved there was talent in South America that could adapt immediately to Premier League football.
They had seen glimpses from midfielder Danilo, who has done well in phases since joining Forest from Palmeiras in January 2023, but Murillo is a different matter altogether. It seems inevitable the 22-year-old will wear the white of Real Madrid one day.
Forest now have six players from South America in the first-team squad: Brazilians Murillo, Danilo, Morato and Carlos Miguel, Argentine Nicolas Dominguez and Paraguayan Ramon Sosa. Yet this is only the beginning. Last summer, Forest tempted Pedro Ferreira to leave Benfica after 17 years with the Portuguese giants.
Ferreira is an expert in South American football and will lead Forest’s transfer strategy in that part of the world, with George Syrianos, a long-time ally of the Marinakis family, doing the same in Europe.
The Ferreira hire was a serious coup as Benfica have long been regarded as one of the best at identifying and developing South American talent.
Hiring experts alone is not enough, however. Forest are not the only English club trying to recruit directly from South America, particularly Brazil. Wolves have an excellent network in the country and bought Brazil midfielders Joao Gomes and Andre for a combined £33m – each alone would command more than that today.
Vitor Reis moved directly from Palmeiras to Manchester City, skipping the traditional stopover in Portugal or France.
Brazilian clubs have cottoned on to this and Mail Sport understands that the prices for players like Murillo and Joao Gomes will soon be a thing of the past. The Brazilian league is comfortably the wealthiest in South America and their most powerful clubs can afford to flex their muscles.
Due partly to these changing trends, Mail Sport understands Forest owner Evangelos Marinakis has tentative plans to invest directly in Brazilian football. Former Arsenal sporting director Edu, who won 15 caps for Brazil and was previously the national team's general coordinator, is set to assume a global role across the Marinakis empire and has excellent links in his homeland.
One idea is to buy a controlling share in a club, possibly outside the top flight, and establish a separate academy with a direct link to the club in question.
The best academy players could then be exposed to first-team football away from the spotlight, preparing the most talented ones for a move to Europe, where Marinakis controls three clubs: Forest, Olympiacos and Rio Ave, who are 11th in the Portuguese Premier League.
Though the plans are at a very early stage, Rio Ave could provide an ideal gateway to Forest, or other clubs in the top-five leagues. As Portuguese is their first language, many Brazilian players welcome the idea of moving to Portugal and that route has produced countless success stories.
Forest’s eyes are not on Brazil alone, though, as demonstrated by the capture of Sosa last summer from Argentine club Talleres. In Argentina, even the top clubs lack the riches of their Brazilian counterparts and many Premier League clubs are now turning their attention to the land that produced Diego Maradona and Lionel Messi.
It is not only Argentina, either. Brighton signed Alexis Mac Allister from Argentinos Juniors – Maradona’s first club – nearly six years ago and they also have outstanding links with Ecuadorian club Independiente del Valle, signing Moises Caicedo from there for £4m in 2021 before selling him to Chelsea two years later for nearly 30 times that sum. Kendry Paez, one of the highest-rated prospects in world football, will join Caicedo at Chelsea from Independiente this summer for £17m.
Brighton’s data-based recruitment system, devised by owner Tony Bloom, keeps them at the forefront of the global recruitment drive yet Forest are proving they are not far behind.
While Albion’s methods are based almost entirely on data, Forest also deploy ‘eyes in the stand’ scouts across the world and like a number of English clubs, they are realising there is value to be found in Ecuador outside Independiente.
Expect Premier League clubs to start shopping across Ecuadorian football, with current league leaders Barcelona Sporting Club (not to be confused with the La Liga giants) and Deportivo Cuenca attracting particular attention.
Whichever way you look at it, the landscape of scouting and recruitment is changing. When the United Kingdom voted in 2016 to leave the European Union, it had a profound impact on the way English clubs do business.
With greater barriers to entry in place for EU players, the smartest UK clubs started to expand their horizons. This is apparent in the Championship, where there is now a strong Japanese contingent, and the Premier League has gone all in on South America.
Even with prices in Brazil rising, it remains an outstanding market. On this football-mad continent, players grow accustomed to playing under pressure from an early age. The technical level is high, the mentality often outstanding.
Forest’s deal for Murillo is one of the best transfers of recent times. And if the club can continue to make inroads in South America, it is likely to be the first of many.
I didn’t think they could get any more embarrassing.
It’s very now. Personally I’d genuinely prefer my partner to be a fan of any random other club if they happened to be a footy fan.
But culture today is a bit more pointy
View: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DHv4RMUsaWt/?igsh=Zmd3cmY4aDd5dHF4
Ha ha. He looks a broken man.
