With Premier League sides horse-trading their best young talent, there is no chance of another Class of 92 todayHow to establish a football dynasty? For decades, the orthodox, long-range formula was to establish excellence within the youth team, recruit complementary talent, and facilitate those with club values within their veins to set standards, to help run the dressing room for a manager.European football’s greatest teams have almost always laid their foundations on youth systems – Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona, Arrigo Sacchi’s Milan bedrocked by Milanello-hewn defenders, Johan Cruyff and his fellow Ajax graduates, the Bayern Munich team led by Franz Beckenbauer – all followed the template. Continue reading...
Clearlake and co care about marketing an undervalued product to 7 billion people: legacy supporters can only get in the wayWhen it comes to the current Chelsea ownership model it has been easy, and indeed quite comforting, to assume the entire story, from initial purchase price to that lost billion splurged on ill‑fitting new talent, is the product of good old-fashioned footballing idiocy, idiocy on steroids.A more plausible plan for change, power grab, paradigm shift, would surely come with cleaner lines or at least a set of coherent demands. Super Leagues, breakaways, nation‑state propaganda plots. We know what this stuff looks like. We can denounce it grandly on Monday Night Football, write hand-wringing editorials or come out into the streets...
Spurs have found midfield balance, Sean Dyche needs changes and Brighton are still a step ahead of the gameThe last time Luton visited Stamford Bridge for a league fixture, George HW Bush was US president, Bryan Adams was in the middle of his monster 16-week stay at the top of the charts with (Everything I Do) I Do It For You, and Liverpool had just broken the British transfer record by paying £2.9m for Derby’s Dean Saunders. The record has gone up a touch since August 1991 but again the Hatters visit west London in the wake of a new spending benchmark being set, and the player in question could well be in line for a first start for his...
Both teams are desperately lacking a holding midfielder with discipline and this encounter was fun but worryingly open If, as free-market orthodoxy tells us, price is dependent on the interaction between demand and supply, Brighton and Southampton should probably be thinking of adding a few million to the fees of both Moisés Caicedo and Roméo Lavia. There is only one of each and both Liverpool and Chelsea are in desperate need of players who can add discipline and muscularity to their midfields.There were stories during the hyperinflation in Zimbabwe of golfers who would pay for their drinks before a round because by the time they got to the bar the price would have gone up. Having signed Jude Bellingham for...
Luton’s return to the top flight, a return of Everton’s anxieties and a big showdown at Stamford BridgeVincent Kompany’s old club provide a litmus test for his current one for the second time in six months. Burnley were storming towards the Championship title and unbeaten in 18 matches when pitted away at Manchester City in the FA Cup quarter-finals in March. Club officials, as the new Mission to Burnley documentary reveals, viewed the tie as a gauge of Burnley’s Premier League credentials while Kompany fired up his players with talk of Wembley. They were swatted aside 6-0. There is no shame in a sound beating at the home of soon-to-be treble winners but Kompany will expect a more competitive display...