No More Sarri - Premier League 2019/20

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

also

[URL="https://twitter.com/dwight_mcneil99/status/1275191884307214337"]https://twitter.com/dwight_mcneil99/...91884307214337[/URL]

It is bit eyebrow raising though. There's loads of black footballers in the North west, and loads in the lower leagues. I mean it was eyecatching when Liverpool had basically just glen Johnson for a bunch of years.. A quick look at dyche's time at watford would suggest that it's not down to him. Most of the teams he fielded there seemed to have a majority of black players. with two black top scorers, and a black player of the year. It may not even be down to the club. we can only see the players that ulitmately did sign for them, not the full list of players that they tried to sign.

[Satchmo Distel]

Danny Murphy is a fucking idiot:

[URL="https://twitter.com/LivEchoLFC/status/1277714524477566976"]https://twitter.com/LivEchoLFC/statu...14524477566976[/URL]

[Toby Gymshorts]

I'm pretty certain we've known that for a while now.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

I am pretty sure that liverpool's midfielders can tie laces. I couldn't be 100% certain about jordan henderson, but the rest can definitely tie shoelaces.

[EIM]

No it isn't. First off, it ignores Aaron Lennon, Ali Kioki and Mace Goodridge who were unavailable for various reasons. It ignores the fact that we've had players like Andre Gray, Georges-Kevin N'Koudou, Clarke Carlisle, Leon Cort, Ade Akinbye, Chris Iwolumo...

The second is that unlike the clubs around us in the table, we can't afford to spend millions on players from the lesser European leagues. We simply don't ship five players in every year. In fact, until Brownhill started we hadn't bought a player for the starting XI since August 2017. (Unless I miss my guess, that starting XI tonight cost ?40m. Vydra, Westwood and Brownhill cost ?28m of that and each from Championship sides.)

Lennon, Kioki and Goodridge have 16 league appearances between them this season. All of them belonging to Lennon.

[Satchmo Distel]

de Bruyne is good but he's no Paul Scholes.

[EIM]

Lennon, Kioki and Goodridge have 16 league appearances between them this season. All of them belonging to Lennon.

The others you mentioned, a couple left three years ago, one was on loan for 8 games, the rest left about a decade ago.

With all due respect, if you're listing players who left in 2011 and players yet to play a minute in the league to make your point, then i think we can class it as eyebrow-raising.

[Snake Plissken]

“Burnley don’t buy black players.”
Guess what, we don’t buy white players either.

Or are we supposed to piss money up the wall on imports from the French, Dutch and Belgian leagues? How did that work out for Sunderland, Swansea, Huddersfield?

We didn’t even have an overseas scouting department until last summer.

I know that “proper football recruitment” consists of spending ?40m and 70 grand a week on players who doesn’t give a shit and gets shipped out on loan 18 months later. “Proper football recruitment” is easy when you’ve got sugar daddy owners and international noodle partners. “Proper football recruitment” is easy when you don’t have to write relegation clauses into contracts that give 50-75% pay cuts. “Proper football recruitment” is easy when you can’t get outbid on fees and wages by every single PL club and a good chunk of Championship ones. (Britt Assombalonga was made a big offer but signed for Boro for more salary than any Burnley player gets.)

But nah, just put it down to racism.

[ad hoc]

However you slice it, Burnley would appear to be a statistical outlier. Of course that doesn't mean that there is a racist transfer policy in place, but you also can't be surprised at eyebrows being raised. Clubs all over the continent with far greater financial limitations than Burnley don't "look like" Burnley. That's a simple fact.

[Jumbo McGinnis]

I’ll be honest, until it was pointed out by Bent, I hadn’t even noticed the skin colour of Burnley’s players.

[3 Colours Red]

As ever, Murphy is missing the point about how Liverpool's midfield is meant to function. It's meant to facilitate the full-backs bombing on to get crosses in and to allow Firmino the time and space to play in and support the wide forwards.

A player like de Bruyne, undoubtedly talented as he is, wouldn't really work in that midfield. Klopp tried to shoehorn Coutinho in there and as much as he had moments of magic, it was all a bit Roy of the Rovers to the detriment of the team.

Fucking hell, over 5,000 posts and I finally talk tactics.

[ad hoc]

If you buy into the whole guard of honour thing (which I don't because it seems fucking pathetic), it doesn't matter who claps who. The club they're playing claps the club who just won the league. End of story. Under Murphy's Law players would only clap the players they think are better than them.

[Jah Womble]

Don't understand Murphy's rant at all. I mean, I know he isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he's fully aware of a convention that's no more artificial than the pre-match handshake. If players supposedly 'don't want to do it', then don't lose the bloody title perhaps?

Had Liverpool been due to play (for example) Bournemouth this week, then they'd be holding the GoH - and he'd likely not even be mentioning it.

de Bruyne is good but he's no Paul Scholes.

Agreed. He's much better.

[Snake Plissken]

However you slice it, Burnley would appear to be a statistical outlier. Of course that doesn't mean that there is a racist transfer policy in place, but you also can't be surprised at eyebrows being raised. Clubs all over the continent with far greater financial limitations than Burnley don't "look like" Burnley. That's a simple fact.

The entire club is a statistical outlier. It's been in the Premier League for four seasons, qualified for Europe and two of the regular squad was bought from a PL team. (Bardsley and Cork. Three if you count Ben Mee coming from Man Citys academy eight years ago.) Everyone else is from the Championship, or a free transfer... from the Championship. Yet despite this, there is some need from fans of other clubs to have a transfer policy that has worked so well for Sunderland, Fulham, West Ham, Newcastle, Swansea, Huddersfield, QPR and others. They bought players from the continent, look how that all worked out.

If you're a player on the continent looking for a move to England, how attractive is Burnley going to be? We pay less than every PL side and the top Championship sides. Can't offer the lifestyle. Come to Burnley for 40k a week and relegation clauses or go to West Ham for a guaranteed 70? It's an easy decision. Hell, West Ham aren't even going to make you work hard for it. We offered the deal to Andre Gray, he took it. We offered it to Britt Assombalonga, he didn't.

No doubt some club will buy Dwight McNeill for ?50m and then fans will criticise us for selling our only black player because the club is racist or something.

[EIM]

Not all black footballers are foreign though.

[Snake Plissken]

So then we get to be charged the English premium then and can't afford it.

[ursus arctos]

ad hoc, can you explain why you feel that the pasillo is pathetic?

You enjoy cricket, which is rife with such traditions, and ice hockey, where players who have been committing GBH for an entire playoff series meet at centre ice for a ceremonial handshake after the match.

Is it because football is different, or something about the form of the honour?

[ad hoc]

I think ice hockey players shaking hands at the end of a match or series is absolutely fine. It's like a cessation of hostilities/recognition that it;s just a game etc.

However the guard of honour thing happens before a game, and is pretty random as to who actually performs the guard since it's just "your next opponents" (presumably teams who win on the final day of the season don't get one). I can't think of an equivalent in any other sport (though I'm prepared to find out that there are many), and in football it seems to have just been brought in to add a new level of pointless pomp and ceremony

[andrew7610]

I agree, it's a pointless gesture for a television audience. Much like the referee picking the match ball from a plinth as the teams emerge from the tunnel, only for said ball to be lumped out of play 7 seconds into the match and replaced by a different one.

[Diable Rouge]

It certainly happens in GAA, where the All-Ireland champions generally get a guard of honour in their first National League game of the new season.

[ursus arctos]

OK, there's obviously no "right" answer here. It isn't common in other professional sports, or even outside of Spain.

Though players in La Liga have been doing it since 1970 (Athletic Club being the first, in celebration of Atleti's title).

And there's this, also at the beginning of a game, and also in recognition of an achievement (though in this case a personal one)

[Jumbo McGinnis]

If Burnley are perceived to possibly, but unlikely, racist because of their lack of black players, is the team who have the most black players deemed the least racist in the Premier League?

[ad hoc]

Snake, your arguments seem to suggest that Burnley cannot sign any players. Is Dyche just creating players in a back room out of spare parts?

[Diable Rouge]

If Burnley are perceived to possibly, but unlikely, racist because of their lack of black players, is the team who have the most black players deemed the least racist in the Premier League?

I can appreciate both sides of the debate, in that I find it hard to believe that Burnley would have a deliberate transfer policy not to sign black players, and as Snake states, their budget isn't exactly munificent. Nevertheless, if the alternative is to develop the club academy, it is surprising, to say the least, that no black players would have graduated to the first-team squad, especially in a region as ethnically diverse as Lancashire.

[ad hoc]

I can appreciate both sides of the debate

You see I don't think there is a debate. There are people expressing some surprise at how white Burnley's team seems to be (and some defensiveness from Burnley fans). That;s not a debate. No-one, as far as I can tell, has actually accused Burnley of operating some kind of racist player recruitment policy.