Wolfswinkel cost them €12m . A club record. Was done and dusted as soon as they secured safety last April.
Was it? I remember it being done before the end of the season alright, presumed he was out of contract
Illarramendi joining Real Madrid for £32.8m. Wonder what that means for Alonso.
Khedira, Alonso, Illarramendi, Kaka, Isco, Ozil and Modric. Ridiculous number of central midfielders.
Following on from Raymond Crotty’s astute observations, this is more of it. Sociedad bring him up through the ranks, get a decent team together and qualify for the CL and then bigger clubs just pluck their best players. Granted, they will get a lot of money for him but, more and more, the bigger teams are just swallowing up all the best players. I would be surprised if he makes any more than 10-15 appearances for them this year instead of playing regularly for Sociedad and CL football.
Alonso may return home to Sociedad or Liverpool!?
I’d take him back in a heartbeat mate-one of the biggest, if not the biggest fuck up of Benitez’s reign was pissing Xabi off.
Has to be one of the biggest fuck ups of all time. Imagine trying to get rid of Xabi for Gareth fucking Barry. Beggers belief.
Real have bought Isco and Illarramendi for €70m and I don’t know they’ll play a full season between them. Less sympathy for Malaga because they’ve overspent in the past but it’s a shame for Sociedad fans. Impossible to turn down a bid of that size for a guy who has 50 odd senior appearances so can’t blame the club but the market is massively distorted. Spain in particular have an imbalanced distribution of tv revenue and it’s killing competition outside the top two.
Yes can’t blame Sociedad but, as you said on another thread, you wouldn’t want to think too much about it or you would lose interest. The attempted dismantling of Dortmund has just highlighted it for me although I know it’s been happening for years.
Man City bought Gareth Barry and won the most prestigious of World Leagues, the BPL. Xabi failed to do so with Liverpool. Ergo, Gareth > Xabi.
Without a doubt it was the biggest. Alonso pissed him off apparently in the 2007/08 season when he refused to play a Champions League match as his missus was throwing out a sprog. He had been in relatively poor form for him for a couple of seasons but had signed a contract relatively recently. Rafa then tried to sell him the following summer and bring in Barry as his replacement. This seems to piss off Xabi but he was superb the following season was one of the primary reasons that we challenged for the league. He may have been trying to earn himself a move. Liverpool ended up finishing 7th the following season. It also showed that top players wanted to leave the club so then Mascherano and Torres followed him. Losing players like that meant that we dropped off the pace and out of the Champions League. And now the likes of Suarez wants to leave and we can’t attract any top players. A monumental fuck-up.
Shay Given to Doncaster Rovers:oops:
And Stephen Ireland and Richard Dunne…
You’d wonder why a fella would do that. He has his money made presumably, why drag your career to those depths
3,120,000 reasons a year for the next three years.
And maybe he likes actually playing.
[quote=“Sidney, post: 800767, member: 183”]3,120,000 reasons a year for the next three years.
And maybe he likes actually playing.[/quote]
In fairness to Given he has always come across as someone who was keen to play games. He could have sat on the bench at City earning mega bucks but left to play games.
Should never have left Newcastle
Suarez again saying he wants to leave. He is citing the Evra and Ivanovic incidents as examples of how the English media ‘don’t understand him’. What is there to understand when you bite someone.
Positive news coming in Liverpool’s chase of Christian Eriksen. Frank De Boer hinting that Liverpool have expressed an interest and with Dortmund buying the Armenian they seem to be out of the running for him. Liverpool also linked to one of Ajax’s centre halves - Toby Alderweireld.