yeah you american sports anti-hipsters are missing out on perhaps the most mental 2-3 months in world sport: FOOTBALL-PROPER TRANSFER SEASON, AKA THE SILLY SEASON.
to give you an idea, manchester united, aka the biggest football-proper team in teh UK (unless you're in teh presence of a liverpudlian scouser, in which case you acknowledge them as the biggest team in the UK because >MUH 5 EUROPEAN CUPS and etc. trust me just let them think they have that) had a funny year last year where their legendary coach who served 27yrs there overseeing something like 12 league championships, 2 european championships (as the champions league / nee-european-cup is the biggest deal in european sports. even if you've got teams like real madrid / barcelona / buyern munich / ajax / etc winning their domestic leagues like 4/7 or 5/7 seasons, they might only get 1-2 CLs/nee-euro-cups per decade) 4-5 FA cups and who-cares-how-many-league-cups (....well spurs fans care!) ---- yeah, sir alex took them from just another team living in liverpool's shadow to THE one team in a one team domestic league.... and as he left he appointed david "midtable" moyes as his successor (possibly in a fit of ego as if to make it look like he was doing magic with the team that won the 12-13 premiership and then you bring in a stiff with that aging team and they struggle to finish 7th, so this way SAF looks like a football-proper god in teh wake of >MOYES) and last year's transfer window with moyesy was an absolute disaster.
basically, the media went all pie in teh sky like MANCHESTER UNITED WANTS CESC FABREGAS..... AND HERRERA FROM BILBAO (protip: pay bilbao's release clause otherwise it's the most grueling transfer process in sports because they go out of their way to reinforce that if you want one of their players you pay their price otherwise your whole window will be fucked up from the pain in the ass that is dealing with bilbao) which even led to 3 guys in suits showing up @ bilbao's headquarters claiming to rep manutd and they didnt and yeah lol..... and to give you an idea how bad it was for manutd, they ended up only able to get one "marquee signing" --- moyes' old big doofy clown of an enforcer with dreams of playing the point man up front in a hoofball system: marouane fellaini.
well all summer long fellaini had a 23.5mil release clause in his contract, so if ANYONE wanted him all they had to do was show up and pay the 23.5mil and marouane was off.... but nobody in teh world of euro football was gonna pay 23.5mil for that clown fellaini. especially united, who was convinced they could get thiago alcantara and/or cesc fabregas for their attacking/midfield (an area where they REALLY need help, especially since SAF had ego clashes with their starlet paul pogba, who will fetch 35-45mil if juve sell him this summer btw) but they couldnt because nobody wanted to play for >MOYES, so united ends up strolling out a 27mil marouane fellaini right there on/around deadline day like OMFG WE GOT OUR MARQUEE SIGNING EVERYONE!!!!!!!!!
and of course fellaini is a big doofy afro'd clown (think david luiz just with more dreams of playing the #10 in a hoofball (read: goalie gets the ball and "hoofs" it 37-50/+ yards downfield, hoping that a united player can get the ball way downfield to make things happen because basically hoofball concedes that your midfield is a joke and can't consistently take it up against the opposing defense) who literally had like 1.5 good games, and in teh final .5 managed to get a str8 red on a stupid stupid foul and thus he was off. and now supposedly united is willing to sell him to anyone who will take him for 10-15 as this summer according to quintessential UK rag daily mail united has already reached deals with luke shaw for 27mil, toni kroos for 20-22mil, and hey cesc fabregas is once again a target!
....or is he? because see louis van gaal is clever enough to know that they dont want a repeat of last year where united was effectively that kid at school whose cousin had a hoverboard and the ITK knowledge that united was getting fabregas and alcantara and herrera.... until they didnt and it looked horrible because they had to spend 27mil on a player for the sake of spending 27mil on a player because they were MORTIFIED that their fanbase would otherwise assume that nobody wanted to come and play for moyes..... which they didnt. mata only came because jose mourinho was benching him regularly in a world cup year and you need regular games to stay in top/peak form heading into a world cup, and seeing as mata either starts or plays a first-sub-off-the-bench-type-role for the spanish national team.... yeah, hey he's a red devil living in the slice of heaven we call "manchester"
so in the span of no less than 2-3 weeks united has already gone through the process of all-but-formally-signing toni kroos to "no [buyern] is gonna try to extend his contract which has 1yr left" to "kroos and fabregas were never a target. we have never been at war with eurasia" and now is coming back to "hey they said they'll sell us the good ol pigmaster aka schweinsteiger for 8mil. and uhhh god knows what else is gonna happen other than LvG is gonna try hard to get his countrymen on united (he's managing the dutch team for hte world cup this year) and he's gonna try to go back to buyern munich and get some of his old mates...... cuz this one time traveling kid from the future has gone and spoiled the transfer window for us
by posting the 14-15 manchester united first XI and this is a beyond-reasonable list that begs the question "why is the kid being so conservative? PSG is gonna have to sell cavani if they wanna t least flirt like they maybe care about FFP (financial fair play, aka some guidelines to try and slow down the menace of sugar/oil daddies buying their clubs championships) so i'd put cavani in that united XI.
and think about that... this is only one team in teh UK premier league. don't get me started on arsenal, where you can see my avatar or hte video i linked in the first reply to this thread and it basically covers the arsenal routine of starting the offseason by saying "we have 75-100mil to spend on players this year" and outside of ozil last year, basically arsenal ends up selling their captain (in this case: they still could technically do it as i wouldn't be surprised if vermaelen wants to leave to get consistent games, but i hope to god he stays for squad depth cuz at least he's a known quantity out there, even if that known quantity is one that can have a guy show up from a ligue 2 side and basically take his job from him while he was out injured) and then trying to get some high profile targets (juan mata. gonzalo higuain. etc) only to fall short and get outbid at the 11th hour, and then they either settle on more unknown ligue 2 guys like tap-in-specialist giroud (seriously, he's a "striker" who only looks to "strike" the ball at the net when time is expiring against everton, otherwise he will only convert tap ins that are rolled to him on a red carpet) or mid-level la liga guys like santi cazorla.
and then you end up with yaya saNOGOALS (sanogo) who is the archetypical unknown 18-21 year old black french kid from ligue 2 with potential..... but like, seriously, his #1 talent seems to be not scoring. i remember when arsenal first showed him off to the faithful @ the emirates cup preseason tourney @ emirates stadium and his #WelcomeToArsenal moment was immediately getting a ~3-5ft setter and missing it horrorshow. #ArsenalDNA baby.... you either got it or you dont.
of course, circumstances worked out that mesut ozil tends to be a pouty little bitch when carlo ancelotti comes in and buys isco for 23mil and all of a sudden the #10 guy who was the #10 on mourinho's 100pt la liga champs and then for all of 12-13 is suddenly demoted to the wing as the season starts in favor of the new kid playing the #10 (and wearing ozil's original rela madrid # of 23, no less) and then mesut is ineffective on the wing and he's getting yanked at 60' every game early in the season so the situation reaches a critical mass where either mesut declares himself out for hte next game or ancelotti str8up benches him for pouting, then a call rings in for ozil and it's arsene wenger speaking fluent german saying "come to arsenal you will be our #10 here! it's all about you" and 42.5mil later we have our own lil pouty bumslayer, mesut freaking ozil.
if there's any smoke to these rumors of barca being willing to sell cesc and we have the right of first refusal, imagine how mesut's gonna like it if cesc comes back and plays a more #10/ish role and suddenly mesut ozil isn't the divinely-mandated-#10-on-arsenal..... it could get ugly. or it could result in cesc going back in midfield a bit like earlier in his career? kind of a waste unless they do a diamond formation like liverpool or something, but then you REALLY need to upgrade the arteta position @ DM/holding-MF if you're gonna play an offense-heavy formation like that.... and oh btw, arteta was offensively NOTHING all year. no goals or even assists.... and his defense? well go back and watch the lowlights of the fixtures @anfield and @city and @chelsea and you can see arteta casually trotting into the frame at the end of the goal scoring replay as his guy either scored or assisted on the goal. but hey @football_vertex claimed in january that it was a great day for arsenal fans as they were readying a 40mil bid for paul pogba.... so if they can replace arteta with pogba and then wanna trot out ramsey + either jack or cesc with ozil and santi cazorla with rosicky as depth and poldoski as depth, especially with a new striker who is prone to, you know, STRIKE THE BALL AT THE FUCKING NET EVEN IF TIME ISN'T EXPIRING VERSUS EVERTON.... well man that'd bne tantalizing and file it under "prioblems i'd like to have" so yeah.... GIT-R-DONE. tho it'd be nightmarish if they somehow got cesc back (in their quest to collect every "world class" attacking mid under 5'10" in the world) and then got an equivalent of kim kallstrom to BACK UP AND NOT REPLACE arteta, and then someone like serge aurier to replace sagna....
oh yeah and here's another example of transfer muppetry for you lot. bacary sagna is basically leaving arsenal because he wants over 100k/week and arsenal is supposedly only willing to go to 90k/week.... and hey man city might pay him 125-150k/week to maybe even be a 2nd choice to zabaleta @ RB so like, the daily mail and many others reported that the deal was done and sagna was doing the medical and he's all set to officially become a city player!
....until sagna tweeted 7-10 days later that he'd make his decision before the world cup. and now just hte other day he said he's played his last game @ arsenal (cuz evidently he must have multiple bids of 100k/week or more, i'd guess maybe man united is in there too, if not PSG, who has financial fair play considerations to look out for, so getting a french guy with a good top-side mentality on a bosman (free x-fer) is the way to go.
so yeah basically
this is the theme song to football-proper's silly season and even best is that when deadline day comes it makes our trade deadlines/coverage look quaint in comparison. the boys over @ fitbathatba
nailed transfer day on this little 2-3min musical piece, especially the part about the reporters/people standing outside the stadium.
and all this babble was a third draft (thank you dying laptop battery!) so forgive my lengthiness, but maybe there's ~5ppl from the board who read this and get a little clue about the workings of "the beautiful game" which is great cuz i'm telling you guys.... if you like hockey soccer is the same game... just not on meth so it's spread out and slowed down cuz nothing can keep up with hockey's compression/pace/etc..... and i can tell you that if you commit to watching through the abstract of a bunch of european manlets having a kickabout.... soccer is a great dynamic game that's fun as hell to watch from 7am-3pm on a saturday/sunday morning, especially in the dead of winter.... and once you figure out whats going on there's all kinds of top banter going on all over the place and like, the game is so variant that people can literally say one guy is the GOAT and otehrs will say he's complete and utter shit and they both have perfectly cromulent reasons for it, and odds are they're both right to certain extents..... so yeah, once you get into the game it's rewarding and fun and the drama of holding on to a 1-nil lead or chasing a nil-1 deficit as the 2nd half minutes tick by.... man, it's fucking mental.
and it's great because you can have a full sports day over with by ~3pm on the weekends.... and if you've got a job with non-9-5-hours you can catch the top euro competitions midweek around ~245pm so like, yeah man, euro soccer is quintessential for the american slacker because it's on at times usually reserved for baseball matinees.... and even tho itv will try again this world cup, there's no in game commercials/advertising so thats why you get sponsors on kits... cuz when a half starts you're going 45-50/+ minutes without a commercial break. it's a wonderful pace, and hey, after awhile you get to thinking "man my shirt says FLY EMIRATES On it, so damn right i'm an emirate of being pretty fly for a white guy" and well, yeah, TL;DR = up the arsenal! or at least up the arse if we're going to anfield, emptyhad, or stammerfordabridge.
and fuck the silly season.... especially as an arsenal fan (and now as a united fan in the post-SAF epoch) it's like chinese water torture cuz your worldwide contemporaries go and spend big $$$ before deadline day and make splashes and news and improve, meanhwile you string along hope that arsenal will doSOMETHING or better yet ANYTHING in the vein of mesut ozil (whose jersey i bought on deadline day last year direct from arsenal.com becuse i wanted to show them that my plastic ass is down for these sort of things so you keep on bringing in 40+ mil talent and i will keep buying kits from you, arsenal. thats our social contract) AHEM.... yeah it's chinese water torture dude. especially when arsenal is completely excellent on one hand (cuz unlike their contemporaries in british/world football they turn a profit and have anywhere between a 150-400mil pounds sterling cash reserve as opposed to being ~25-600mil in debt formally without their megarich owners bailing them out) so you can laud arsenal's consistency at identifying and developing young talent over the mid-long term, staying a top-4 / CHAMPIONS LEAGUE (top euro competition, aka "the big one" that even trumps winning your domestic league, which usually trumps all else) with a net spending of ~0-10mil over a ~6-7 year period (it helps when you have a ~3 year run of selling off your team captain for ~20-30mil every offseason, and then replacing them with 10-15mil players from lesser la liga sides (cazorla) or the unknwon guy from a ligue 2 side (the HFB aka giroud)
so while they're an ideal that you can be proud of, and in the end since sports are about the journey not about winning it's still like "hey at least we have our football soul in tact" --- -still, you want arsenal to finally have a "FUCK YOU" summer and make 2-3 world class ozil-caliber signings to frontload this team with talent that will challenge for a cup.... cuz if arsenal had those 2-3 world class players this year even as squad depth to cover the annual departures of aaron ramsey, jack wilshere, and theo walcott.... let alone alex oxlade-chamberlain maybe they dont buckle like bitches @anfield, @emptyhad, and @stamford bridge (let alone that one loss @ stoke before the 4 matches of hell that determined the season and ended up taking us from first into fighting for 4th with everton before they gracefully bowed out) i mean.... arsenal wasn't a worthy title contender in teh end but if they got a few well-timed results against big trams, man, they only finished 7pts behind first place, the same way they finished 7pts ahead of 5th place. win 3 more games and you win the league.
so now arsenal's got a young-burgeoning-perma-injured core that's begging for world class upgrades/squad depth to help make the team a beast, ESPECIALLY A FUCKING STRIKER.... which they needed to get last seaosn adn they had a good guy identified in higuain but they haggled and fought to get him for 23-27mil and RM was sangbagging then napoli gets like 50-60mil euros for cavani and offers them 37mil euros for higuain? yep. just like how it went down with juan mata when he went to chelsea.... tho it remains to be seen if ozil > mata or vice versa.... ozil's a bumslayer who i think could possibly go back and find some of his goal scoring game (that WC goal against ghana or whatever from a step outside the box? man you aint on RM anymore mesut you dont have to pass to cristiano every time out for his 25 shots per game... let 'er rip!) so yeah go get 2-3 more ozil caliber players to upgrade the arteta, giroud, and when-ramsey-and-jack-are-injured roles..... maybe a guy like serge gnabry steps up and capitalizes on some of the promise he showed us.... and then if they can go get a winger like di maria (which would make it really really had for us to #cesc cuz then where does he play unless he wants to turn back the clock and play further back in the midfield and maybe cherry pick a little bit so he can run up and be another central attacking midfield working with ozil and the wingers/striker/s up front? yeah man... arsene did the unthinkable (for arsene) and changed tactics from a 4-2-3-1 to a 4-4-2 with giroud/saNOGOALS up front and while saNOGOALS lived up to the name without scoring, he still looked dangerous in not scoring.
now imagine if you could do that with, say, someone of the caliber of costa, mandzukic (who i dont want but im just saying) or higuain or..... wait for it.... cavani? maybe he wants out of zlatan's shadow and PSG has to sell him if they wanna go 40-50 large for david luiz (supposedly david luiz is going to PSG for ~50mil which is ridiculous and retarded spending that $$$ on sideshow bob, a CB who cant defend or DM so i mean what does he do exactly other than get his range rover booted in london? (the D LUIZ license plates gave it away)
or hell if they want pogba for ~35-45mil (and juve is prolly keen to get that b4 he can prove he's anything but that kind of a player cuz playing in that juve midfield of steel with pirlo and the other guys = makes it look easy) maybe they have to move cavani? i'd take a chance. i'd rather him than falcao over @ monaco anyways....
but yeah, here's to hoping that the FA cup titillates arsene into thinking "now if we spend that 100mil for the first time in forever and go upgrade like city and chelsea do we can challenge for better silverware" as opposed to the usual "i dont need to spend 100mil to win this league.. i can spend a combined 32mil and get 3 french players from ligue 1/2 sides and develop them into the next thierry henry*!!!!!! --- well shit arsene, dont forget that you had to get thierry henry from juve after a floppy year..... so that said plz dont just be like "hey we got carlos vela back for cheap!" yes the flamini free worked out nicely but that aint no template. SPEND YOU Caller Bob.
and yeah this transfer banter can go on forever. there's so much to talk about, and of course, there's the chinese water torture cuz you know the world cup will start and finish with arsenal making 0 significant signings (maybe they get aurier or someone once sagna is officially gone, even tho he said he's played his last game for arsenal no more than a week ago, the daily mail had him signed with city for 125-150k/week and doing his medical......... so days later sagna of course said he'd decide his fate before the world cup hopefully. there are no journalistic standards in silly season, you just claim you're an ITK (in the know) and fling a bunch of shit against the wall and if anything sticks you called it and you get a bunch of new followers who pump up your ego like the next @geoffarsenal that you are... and if you're wrong?
well hey, dont forget the daily mail said that van gaal and united already had kroos for 20-22mil and then they were moving on to either ribery or robben, cuz you know, teams only 1 season off of winning the champions league and having the world's most pointlessly depressing domestic double in recent euro football history is clearly gonna sell key components to you for market value simply because you're manchester fucking united and SAF used to manage there. duh. and tahts only because THE BIGGEST TEAM IN ENGLAND, aka the scousers, didnt want them because when people think of the biggest team in london, if there's a scouser aroudn you say it's liverpool whose 5 euro cups > all the league championships in the world.
I need about 15 Advil right now.
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