Sports The Football Discussion Thread!

Watkins seems like a good acquisition, can't go wrong with a free. I like him on Football Manager.

Madrid blew Juventus away in the second half after it looked like it might be a tense game. Bit of a shame Ronaldo didn't get his hat-trick, but oh well. Hopefully that's another Ballon D'or locked up for him.

Boro kit revealed today, I think it looks quite smart, but a lot of people are complaining about the size of the sponsor. 1,000 people turned up to buy it though, can't say that about many kit launches.

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Frozocrone said:
Real Madrid deserved that. The only person I feel sorry for is Buffon, there is not a lot one can do against deflected goals and when your defense gives you no help against the opposing team by failing to track them.

Also Ramos, I am extremely glad that you managed to make your way back onto the pitch after that horror challenge on you by Cuadrado.
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I agree with you completely, even if I'm Italian I'm glad that Real Madrid won the final... I can't stand Juventus but I can make an exception for Gianluigi Buffon.
 
21 years old without a competitive senior game, that's an odd one if he had enough potential for City to sign him.

Looks like Jed Steer never reached the heights it looked like he would either.
 
Yeah, it is a bit of a strange one. Perhaps Manchester City just felt more comfortable developing him at their own place, any keeper rising through the England youth ranks must have had offers. He's apparently rejected a Premier League move to come back here this summer. Obviously the draw of home and totally not the fact that he's looked at the rest of our keepers and knows he'll have the shirt.

We've had a string of highly rated young keepers that never seem to quite make it in our first team, Robert Green was the last one to do so. Post Green our number 1s have been Fraser Forster, David Marshall and John Ruddy, it's going to be hard to get in front of that.
 
Another one, this isn't like us. Apparently he was the best player in the worst team in the Bundesliga last year. Seems to be an allround midfielder, promising stat - he created the the 5th highest number of 'key passes' in the league despite his team finishing bottom.
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Agnew out, Monk in. What a great day for the Boro. No better candidate was ever mentioned, much better than Pearson or Ravanelli.

Hopefully he gets the right transfer market backing now. Would love to see him bring Chris Wood with him, but that might be a bit greedy with Bamford and Gestede already available to us.

Lipstick Vogue said:
We've had a string of highly rated young keepers that never seem to quite make it in our first team, Robert Green was the last one to do so. Post Green our number 1s have been Fraser Forster, David Marshall and John Ruddy, it's going to be hard to get in front of that.
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I suppose that makes a lot of sense. To be fair for us, Jason Steele was promising and he was given all the gametime in the world and still turned out average. Hard to tell how young keepers will do I suppose.

Who will replace Ruddy between the sticks?

Lipstick Vogue said:
Another one, this isn't like us. Apparently he was the best player in the worst team in the Bundesliga last year. Seems to be an allround midfielder, promising stat - he created the the 5th highest number of 'key passes' in the league despite his team finishing bottom.
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It looks like Farke has a clear vision in mind in the transfer market. I suspect you're the next Huddersfield, with the obvious difference that you're a good club to begin with, so automatic promotion could be on the cards.

Slutskiy seems like an intriguing appointment for Hull, not sure he's going to have any good players left to manage though.
 
Had a feeling you'd end up with Monk, should have put some money on it. Oh well. Good appointment although football at Leeds last year didn't feel too much different from you under Karanka. You have a better squad for him to work with so it might be different.

Interesting one at Hull, very left of field.. Certainly a club worth watching over the summer.
 
I don't think it could possibly be less entertaining than Karanka. Boro have never played particularly attractive football so as long as Monk gets results I'm happy.

Morata to United sounds like another failure waiting to happen.
 
It's a solid appointment that's for sure. At least you didn't sack your defensive manager and replace him with one that doesn't know how to set up a defence like we did.

Some of our finances were officially unofficially released yesterday. Ended last season with a 34 million wage bill. A safe estimate would be that Webber will be trying to half this over the course of the summer. So no more 5-7m transfers her for a while.

At least I'll be slightly less plastic from now on, got my season ticket sorted. Towards the top of block C. Home and away last year I only got to about 11 games.
 
We kind of did that with Agnew, who basically set us up with the same team as Karanka except there would be a 25% chance of conceding 4 goals due to horrible defensive organisation.

Looks like you might go through the book-balancing phase we had under Mowbray. At least you haven't signed obvious bargain bin buys from dodgy Eastern Europeans countries yet. I would still be optimistic for your season with the new manager and your abundance of good, young players.

11 games is pretty good. I think the majority of fans for teams like ours only turn up when they're successful. Last year we averaged 28,000 I think, when I first started going when we were going nowhere in the Championship we averaged half of that. So I'm sure you're a much better fan than most. Personally I don't like away games much so I only go to 1 or 2 a season, but I think having my season card balances it out.
 
Suppose so., just be thankful you didn't let him run wild on the transfer market like we let Neil and Adams.

We just signed our 4th player of the summer. Farke's captain from Dortmund 2 on a free. A 24 year old central defender on a 2(+1) year deal. Hopefully he's more Redmond than Andeu in regards to managers going back to former clubs. Also our first German of the summer.

Seems we're also close to announcing another coach joining from the Dortmund youth ranks. Wonder if we'll have black stripes on our kit next year.
 
As much as I would love to see Ronaldo back in the Premier League, especially at United, I think we all know it isn't going to happen unfortunately.

Really slow news week for football. Although we have discovered another promising generation of English players to let us down in future.
 
Yeah, I'm surprised people actually bought into the whole Ronaldo being unhappy at Madrid thing. Suppose hope does that to people.

Only news here is that the coaching structure has been finalised. Won't go into any depth but it unsurprisingly involves 2 more joining from Dortmund and very surprisingly Alex Neil's number two staying on, all be it in a different role. He's now in charge of getting young players ready for the first team, a kind of link between the under 23s and the first team.

England have been pretty good. That Jacob Murphy (slightly less talented twin imo) is looking the real deal on another stage.
 
Looks like they'll always let us down on penalties though, ey?

It's good to see some people from the previous regime be retained in a messer role, we usually do a similar thing. Unfortunately in this case, it means Agnew has stayed on.

Did the more talented Murphy twin not get called up?
 
He has been called up in the past but not for that, presumably Jacob got picked as he's a bit better defensively and played a lot more throughout the season. Josh was up against Brady, Naismith, Pritchard and Hoolahan in his preferred position whereas Jacob only had Canos in his way.

Howson to Boro? Well that would be a shame, I hope it's just HITC being HITC. Lovely footballer that has done well for us despite being somewhat stifled by the formation we play. If he does go stick him next to Clayton in a traditional 442 and you'll be away.
 
Seeing Nick Marshiter (clearly has contact with Webber) confirming that Howson to Boro is almost done is not what I wanted to see upon returning home from work today.

Hopefully Burnley come in for him at the last minute. He'd improve every Championship squad.
 
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