The business of football - what do you want to know?
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By all accounts its all over within 30 seconds ...
Lots of grumbling, particularly from the people who knew what the players were being paid, but that tends to be more when players aren't performing or looking like they're not arsed - not that different from a normal workplace where there are footy fans. If anything, we probably talked about the match less than anywhere else I'd worked, but that may just have been the people I was sitting with.
As far as salaries are concerned, it will depend on the club. Wherever I worked, most people seemed to be getting market rate, maybe a little more (because the clubs weren't great at benchmarking). My first salary in football was about the same as my previous job, but a different fixed/bonus split. I know of at least one club that had a policy of only employing fans because they thought they could pay them below market rate. Once they worked out that they were only getting what they paid for (i.e. sub-standard staff) they moved people on and brought in better quality people on higher salaries.
Tickets were the main perk - again this varies. Some clubs (or staff within clubs) get free tickets, others have to pay for them, but there is usually a staff allocation that's sold or gifted before the general public sale. There were other perks in other areas of the business and staff could get discounts in club shops etc. Other than tickets, not that different to any normal business.
No, heard he was a baller though.
And then they went star trekking across the universe.
Seriously though, what happened to Gary Megson?
Nope, sorry. I imagine it went on but I didn't hear about it.
15 if it’s soggy biscuit
Questions...
Transfer funds.. when a club says they have x amount to spend is that usually taking wages into account ?
Regarding Bielsa derby "scandal"why the hell was so much made of it, when essentially this always goes on..
What the funniest "spying' you have heard ?
3rd party ownership, yeh we know it's against FA rules. but what are the loopholes..
Was the Evertons - David Moyes, Mike England moment with defender Per Krøldrup true..? it was alleged the scouting report, identifed the wrong player by name, and they bought Kroldrup instead of his CB partner from Udinese which the scoring report was for..
What other instances have you heard like this ?
Transfer funds.. when a club says they have x amount to spend is that usually taking wages into account ?
Regarding Bielsa derby "scandal"why the hell was so much made of it, when essentially this always goes on..
What the funniest "spying' you have heard ?
3rd party ownership, yeh we know it's against FA rules. but what are the loopholes..
Was the Evertons - David Moyes, Mike England moment with defender Per Krøldrup true..? it was alleged the scouting report, identifed the wrong player by name, and they bought Kroldrup instead of his CB partner from Udinese which the scoring report was for..
What other instances have you heard like this ?
Transfer funds - I imagine that most of the time when you see this it hasn't come from the club in question - other than Arsenal's constant leaking of a huge budget they then don't spend (which is always mentioned around season ticket renewal time). I don't see what the benefit would be for a club in leaking. These figures are usually manufactured by journalists or people pretending they're in the know, but I always take them to refer to the transfer fees only (so in my example, the £40m net transfer fee). As far as wages are concerned, a player coming in often replaces one going out so usually the impact of wages is relatively small on a net basis and will form part of a club's overall planning. You do see some reports that include transfer fee plus wages on an individual deal, but usually that's just spin to make a fairly boring deal sound more exciting.
Bielsa - I really don't know. I'm sure this goes on everywhere. Top flight clubs seem to be always complaining about drones watching their training and some clubs don't seem to like training at the away ground on European trips because of the risk of spying. I think with Bielsa it became a big deal because he was so unapologetic about it and the Derby fans made a big deal of it. I'm sure he had that attitude because he knew it went on everywhere and I expect it was met with shrugged shoulders by most of the football community - in other news, bear shits in woods.
With third party ownership, it would be really difficult to get a deal cleared by the English FA even if there was only a history of TPO (and I think this is often the main reason behind unexplained delays when players are signed from South America or one or two FAs in Europe where they have been more relaxed about it - e.g. Portugal). I imagine there are still clubs out there with some shady TPO dealings going on via complex company structures which can't be easily traced back to them. I have no proof, but I have always suspected that this was what all the controversy about the huge agent fee on the Pogba deal was all about. The suggestion was the agent earned a fee based on the profit made by Juventus and that reeked of trying to replicate TPO. So even if the agent didn't own at least part of the player's economic rights, he appeared to have a deal with Juve that gave him an equivalent benefit, and that could probably have been considered to be TPO.
Don't know re Kroldrup. I did hear the same story but it wasn't through any football sources, just hearsay on forums. It always seemed credible. I've not heard of similar instances. I think clubs in England have been a lot more careful since the Kroldrup deal. Clearly there are still instances where really below par players get signed, and sometimes that's just because clubs play a long game with the hope of getting a better player from the same club / agent further down the line. Maybe Bournemouth think we're going to sell VVD to them at some point
Back in the day we had to pay an astronomical fee for insider knowledge such as these, only crappier.
You don't happen to know a person called Dunk do you ?
You don't happen to know a person called Dunk do you ?
1.How friendly are the clubs with each other? For example , do the management of Utd and Liverpool hate each other like the fans do, or are they actually kind of chummy?
2. What is a typical routine non-match day at the club like? Is it kind of chill, or high tempo, intense training?
3. Agents - do clubs hate them , or love them ?
2. What is a typical routine non-match day at the club like? Is it kind of chill, or high tempo, intense training?
3. Agents - do clubs hate them , or love them ?
Do the lads accidentally send the manager absolute filth on whatsapp?
Still no answer on Megson. You’re even more of a let down than that movie The Meg. At least it had a shark.
- Varies club by club. Most clubs get on with each other and are happy to work together on things, but in some cases the rivalries get in the way. Can't speak for particular rivalries but it's fair to say City aren't too popular with the other clubs at the moment as they all perceive that City have gamed the system on FFP and obtained an unfair advantage. I didn't have a great deal of interaction with other clubs, other than when we were doing business with each other. There will also be occasions when clubs are bidding for the same thing (players, sponsors etc) and obviously there is no co-operation there. But where there is mutual benefit in sharing information (e.g. to ensure clubs take a consistent approach or apply similar standards) then it generally happens and the Premier League / Football League will often intervene to facilitate that (e.g. they might commission some central advice on a particular legal / financial / safeguarding issue and then share it with all clubs to ensure consistency). You can usually gauge this by looking at the directors' box on a matchday - some clubs' officials are quite happy to mingle, others choose their corners and stick to them. Usually the chairmen are quite pally with each other, but by the same measure they'll happily gang up on each other when it suits (hence all the stories you hear about tense meetings when the clubs get together at Premier League meetings). They'll be pally to a point, but will always look out for their own club's interests.
- Don't know, I didn't get to see any training sessions. Think it's what you'd expect - easy recovery day the day after a match with tests for injuries / general fitness and then build fitness / tactical training ahead of the next match. Each club will have a different approach and usually that's dictated by the manager or his fitness coaches (if he has them).
- Bit of both. Clubs resent the fees they have to pay to agents, but they recognise that they are often required to get deals done, especially when a deal is time critical. An agent can often help clubs overcome obstacles by playing devil's advocate in negotiations (e.g. they can persuade a player to stop being unreasonable) and they can also be useful when a club is looking to off-load a player in that they'll go off and seek to sell the player to potential buyers when the club wouldn't have the time or the contacts to do that. They also provide a layer of deniability - so, for example, if an agent is seeking to get a player sold, the club can deny he has their authority to do so if it comes out and it suits them to take that line. I think they can also be useful when a player gets into trouble off the field as they can act as "fixers" in a way a club can't (not suggesting anything hugely sinister there, but a lot of players have short arms and deep pockets, so will look to their agent to help them out when a club says no). But the extent of the fees is a problem, and the fees seem to be going up and up and in the most straight-forward deals the agent won't offer any real value. In theory, the club will also rely on an agent to keep the player sweet, but the reality is if an agent has had all the payments due to him under his contract, it may be in his best interests to move the player on and get some more fees from the next club.
No, that's usually deliberate, but not on their own phones like.
You just made me hard.
I did.
Pre-season friendly against Melbourne Victory in the twilight of his career when he was leading the line for the great Whittlesea Zebras.
Kevin Muscat booted him up in the air and he went down squealing.
Not much else happened.
And you still got great value for the price of admission
You only get one of these - and I'll happily oblige.
Is that your final request sir?
one of the best threads we've had in a long time - we know @Beamrider is legit as he's not tried to sell his great paintings (yet)
I have never worked in football, but I am prepared to give some educated guesses and vague approximations of familiar situations if that be your want?
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