We can't compete with this

[BobHirst]

I know it's only Paper Talk but it's being reported that Manchester City are trying to buy Grealish for 100 million AND Kane for 150 million this summer.
They already have enough quality players that they could probably come 1st and 2nd in the league if they were allowed to enter 2 teams.
It's true that there has always been financial inequality between the clubs but this is now utterly ridiculous.

[weasel]

Well we beat and drew with them last season. While it is very difficult to compete look at how we did with what we had? Bielsa somehow keeps making these players better. Alioski the latest who actually looks like a pretty decent wingback now. Will the City players continue to improve, maybe 1 or 2 but are players like Sterling already in decline? If our players continue to improve then for me the gap closes a bit more. A couple of good signings and it closes even more.

[Norm]

It used to be the red half of Manchester that had the crowds and the money, but Citeh are now assuming that role, or at least the money part of it..

I for one don't begrudge them their chance to grind Old Trafford down a bit, but I also realise that billionaires buying football clubs like they've done these last years has not necessarily been good for the game as a whole.

I love the fact that our owner invested in a superlative coach, who is getting bargain players and using his skills to train them up and make them better players, rather than us throw millions at over-egotistical showhorses.

I hope Marcelo becomes Sir Marcelo before he leaves these shores. He is worthy of the highest honours.
I wonder if the Queen likes Leeds? Maybe if we hired a few corgis she may take notice.

[Norm]

If Manchester City aren't careful they'll implode with the expectancy of EPL, FA CUP and ECL expectations. They have a talented manager and squad, but it's the continuity that's most difficult.

Credit to SAF, he managed it for all those years, more than rivalling Liverpool's achievements for, what, 20 years. 1993 to 2013, but all dynasties come to an end.

[whiteroseboy]

You can have as many top players as you want but can only put 11 on the pitch at once.
Players need to be playing regular football Sat on the bench with a few minutes here and there will see some big names lose interest.
City already have the best squad on paper but we play on grass, running faster and further can narrow the gap as proved last season.

[1964white]

Eventually we'll compete with the top four

Marathe's family (our new board member) is worth between 6 & 8 million £££'s

[JayKayDubu]

Having the ability to buy all the best players doesn't mean automatic success. Real Madrid tried to do that but they haven't won everything and they are not dominant in their own league.

[The Subhuman]

Would Grealish actually play much for MC?

[YorkshireSquare]

I think teams like Leicester consistently prove their are better deals to be done, diamonds to be found just as we have with Raphinha.

The top clubs overpay to, Southampton made £60 million on van Dijk! Paying big money doesn't guarantee you success either. Man Utd have spent £1 Billion since Fergie left and have not won a trophy for 4 years!

And Grealish isn't worth £100 Million!

[Ratscoot]

Would Grealish actually play much for MC?

If they invest in a top specialist doctor who can work out why with such big legs he keeps falling over and manages to fix it they could turn him into a half decent footballer rather than a grass inspector

[1964white]

More to the point, I don't see the enjoyment in supporting a team like that. I'm loving what Leeds are doing now because of the team spirit, and bonding with players we're seeing improve year on year. Money can't buy the attitude and side before self commitment that we have; in fact, a huge squad of prima donnas mitigates against it.

Indeed you only have to look at the likes of of Manure, Spurs & Arsenal.

[Scoobychief]

irrelevant whether grealish would play or not or is he worth it or not, same goes for kane, the question is could we compete with that??. absolutely no, not unless mega rich arabs or some other entity buys Leeds. otherwise i hope not but we will allways get picked off our best players, and so far out of our bunch, phillips, koch, llorente and raphinha we certainly hope we can keep hold of them and build on it.

[Mountain]

I'd rather never be successful again than have owners like Man City.

I've posted about them before, the charges levelled against them are all across the internet, the whole project is a disgrace. I would take ManU and Chelsea 10 times over, I dislike them for football reasons, I dislike Man City because it is a front for depravity.

[The Subhuman]

I'd rather never be successful again than have owners like Man City.

I've posted about them before, the charges levelled against them are all across the internet, the whole project is a disgrace. I would take ManU and Chelsea 10 times over, I dislike them for football reasons, I dislike Man City because it is a front for depravity.

Good Post.

[mothbanquet]

The joy of Marcelo is both his fantastic coaching and exciting football, AND the spirit of humility and cohesion he brings to the team... and the whole club. It's absolutely priceless, but would he be appreciated the to the same degree anywhere else? I suspect not, which is why Leeds is his longest club tenure.

I think the focus on community and lifting up the city itself under Radz and co speaks right to Bielsa's heart. I'm hardly an anti-capitalist by nature but there has to be something deeper to it all. It feels like we're becoming a small kernel of genuine goodness in the cynical world of global profiteering, which is the antithesis of sport at its core.

Maybe it's nostalgia talking but it feels like we're recapturing a bit of the old-fashioned spirit of sport representing people and not just success. The latter will come and go but the former will always remain.

[CHAPELALLMAN]

I'm more concerned about who may eventually sign Haaland than Kane ( he's the striker we missed out on signing in 2018...)

For a club like ours to end up with someone like Haaland, you have to see the potential before it becomes widely known - we did that with Raph, but missed the opportrunity with Haaland. In the end that can be the difference between being a top 10 PL club and a top 3 club.

[White Riot]

You can have as many top players as you want but can only put 11 on the pitch at once.
Players need to be playing regular football Sat on the bench with a few minutes here and there will see some big names lose interest.
City already have the best squad on paper but we play on grass, running faster and further can narrow the gap as proved last season.

Fully agree WRB.

Leeds have a team spirit, desire to win and fitness that's unmatched and it shows. It isn't all about buying expensive players. Citeh's record in the CL is woeful, as was Fergie's. I always used to wind the dirty Scum supporters up by telling them SAF is a complete failure he had all of them opportunities to conquer Europe and basically did FA

Money and fancy players does not guarantee success.

[CHAPELALLMAN]

I think the focus on community and lifting up the city itself under Radz and co speaks right to Bielsa's heart. I'm hardly an anti-capitalist by nature but there has to be something deeper to it all. It feels like we're becoming a small kernel of genuine goodness in the cynical world of global profiteering, which is the antithesis of sport at its core.

Maybe it's nostalgia talking but it feels like we're recapturing a bit of the old-fashioned spirit of sport representing people and not just success. The latter will come and go but the former will always remain.

At the end of the day though Radz as an Italian businessman didn't buy the club because of love for the club and the city - he bought it because there's enormous capital uplift from turning a sleeping giant championship club which has lost its way into a top 10 PL club. It's rather like renovating a large run down house, returning it to its previous glory and then putting it back on the market. If you can be friendly and on good terms with your neighbours whilst you are renovating the house then that can only be to your advantage and will make your life easier throughout the project. This is just basic business sense.

It's great that the club does the community stuff, but it's easy to forget that football has turned from an amateur sport into big business. I know that MB has done a great job, however this is because the club were willing to pay a premium salary for a premium manager, rather than paying peanuts for monkeys. That was also a strategic business decision which has paid off. Sorry, but I think it's going too far to suggest that a football club can show the capitalist world the way in terms of morality...And I'm no left winger either politically or in football terms.

I might sound a bit cynical, however paying players and managers millions of pounds a year in a world in which half the human population lives on less than 5.5 Dollars a day has never sat well with me...Now a footballer like Casilla earns about 50 times the average UK salary, and that's for spending the season warming the bench. At least Revie's players had more in common with ordinary people in the sense that the likes of Bremner and Giles would have earned 12,000 to 15,000 a year in the 70s - that's £75,000 to £95,000 in today's money, which is just 2.5 to 3 times the UK average wage.

Football is football. It's basically entertainment for the masses which is also now big business. No footballer or manager is ever going to be awarded the nobel peace prize.

[weasel]

You can have as many top players as you want but can only put 11 on the pitch at once.
Players need to be playing regular football Sat on the bench with a few minutes here and there will see some big names lose interest.
City already have the best squad on paper but we play on grass, running faster and further can narrow the gap as proved last season.

That for me is why Bielsa's small squad with versatile players keeps the squad happier. Players know they will get minutes. Take Alioski as an example and he is a winger but because of Bielsa training him to play other positions he has started something like 30 matches this season. At another club he'd have been sat on the bench all season waiting for a winger to be injured. Same with Dallas he'd probably be back up winger at a championship team but instead he is picking up trophies and justifying a starting position as either full back or midfielder.

You also have to look at how teams like Wimbledon in the past were able to compete at the top level. Their players were nowhere near as skillful as other teams but they identified a way to play and a way to bring out their strengths. With Bielsa it is the same but whereas Wimbledon were long ball and set pieces we instead play to a fast tempo, run forever and have team that is so well drilled a lot of the passing is done on auto-pilot. Bielsa is the difference as to why we can look to compete and beat teams of so called better players.

[Smudge3920]

For me it is real simple...greed has taken over...to take it back to what it once was would take salary caps, complete and utter implimentation of FFP rules, very difficult to go back once passed, not impossible but very difficult....Players paid a decent wage as opposed to a ridiculous wage, squads limited to a fair competetative financial size would lose nothing by way of support yet free up more money to generate amongst lower divisions.

Comparing Capitalist football to Socialist football, will always be a losing argument irrelivent of your politics Capitalism always beat socialism... the facts are there to be seen, in 1980 50% of the worlds population was below the poverty line, following India's and China's abandonment of socialism (1980) and turning to capitalism it is now down to 20% (approx).

Greed is all that has to be dealt with.