Transfer Window: Losers

Well, part I (winners) is right below here, but I'd thought I'd throw the unfortunate half of the pile here. So without further ado, here are the transfer window losers of the period.

Fernando Torres

Arguments can be made over whether or not Chelsea are winners in this transfer window. Some would say they wildly overpaid, but if Abramovich doesn't care, why should we? Fair play isn't in effect yet and if he doesn't mind spending those prices, power to him. After all, you're only ripped off if you feel ripped off. I really think the real loser here is Torres. Granted, he just pocketed a cool 5mil pounds (players get about 10% of the fee) and is on a contract worth a total of 35mil pounds now, but still he threw so much away. Don't get me wrong, if Hodgson had stayed or if things looked just as dire as before, no one would hold ANYTHING against him in the summer. Look at Xabi Alonso. He had a falling out with Benitez, put in a great year and is still loved by Liverpool fans. Xabi could go into any bar in Merseyside (any red one anyways) and not pay for a pint all night. The way Torres did it, really the timing of it, shattered any love that he had built up at Anfield. And to top it off, he went to the Anti-Liverpool in Chelsea. Not to get too much on my high horse, but he went to a plastic club that is all about mercenaries and money. He will have to be the Torres of old, and a little more, for a few years for him to get anywhere close the same legend status he had at Liverpool. Another five years at Anfield and Fernando would have been the most popular boys name for Scousers. By putting in his request with 3 days left in the window, right as Liverpool finally seemed to be on the up (and had already bought Suarez by the way) was just a shady way to do it. If he had gone off in the summer before, no one would be this raw. He does get the money though, and credit to him there.

I will make a point about Chelsea as a whole though. David Luiz is a very good signing as he is an excellent defender and Torres is a great signing as he is a great striker. But sometimes, one really has to look at the team and see where they fit. David Luiz and John Terry are both significantly more effective when deployed on the left side of the center midfield pairing, and Terry's World Cup struggles have been partially attributed to him being deployed on the right half. One would hope this is circumventable but nothing is guaranteed, and we will see if they can work this out.

Torres presents another issue. Torres is an out-and-out center forward. He doesn't cross or go wide, and he doesn't drop back. He is a center forward and a damn good one. You know who else that describes? Didier Drogba. Both are absolutely terrific center forwards, and in full fitness and form, the two best in the world in my opinion (maybe Eto'o has a case as well). However, neither of them are particularly prone to going wide and crossing, and I am skeptical on how they will combine. Similarly, what to do with Anelka? He is a little more versatile, but he can't play both flanks and he's not a midfielder. He played well in the CAM type role at Sunderland but was badly exposed against Liverpool. And obviously Kalou is done as any significant role player unless something drastic changes. So while both players are great, who knows if the signings will really work out? I'm skeptical.

However, at least EPL fans can now have their very own Sideshow Bob just like the NBA with Anderson Varejao!

From the International Sideshow Bob Championships

Spain (and particularly Malaga)
Well, first off, the big 2, per usual, are exempt from this rule. Barca didn't lose anyone and got the highly coveted Affelay. And Real Madrid got Adebayor for free. So, as in all things, Barca and Real Madrid do brilliantly and life sucks for everyone else. Malaga, the biggest spenders, are still dead last and are still four points from safety. Everyone else spent...nothing. Seriously. Nothing. All these teams are broke as hell and none have anything available to spend. The league might have the best soccer in the world, but they definitely have the worst soccer financing.

Newcastle United

Poor Newcastle. Simply put, they are the victims of corporate raiders. The money from Andy Carroll will not be put into Newcastle's squad, it will go into Mike Ashley's bank account. I don't have anything to really say here. It just seems that anything goes well for Newcastle, Mike Ashley feels an undying need to shit on it. I just feel bad for the poor old Geordies that's all.

Transfer Window: Winners

So, the transfer window closed a week ago. Where to start? It was fucking nuts. Torres, Carroll, Luiz, Suarez and a host of others in the window. So let's play a quick game of winners and losers.

WINNERS

Liverpool: Well, let's start with the busiest members. Liverpool made a splash in both directions, getting wildly overpaid for Torres and then wildly overpaying for Carroll. If you look at the fact that they basically didn't spend any money, flipping an injury-prone player who has been a shadow of his sublime self for 18 months for Carroll and Suarez is great business.


I'm not totally sold on Carroll and I think he will end up being a great target man, but watching his goal compilations, how many does he really score with his feet? He'll be lethal on set pieces and that's always useful but I'm still a touch skeptical about his technique. Suarez I think is the steal of the window. A player with great touch, tireless work rate and an absolutely predatory instinct around the goal is a great addition, and who can really argue that a strike force of Carroll and Suarez will almost surely end up better than the lone figure of Torres up top.

Blackpool

They held onto their inspirational captain, and were able to get James Beattie as he slowly tries to play in as many relegation battles as possible. Beattie isn't really that big a deal, the big thing here is holding onto Adam. If he ends up the difference between staying up and going down, he is worth as much as Torres, and who can blame Blackpool for scoffing at the 7mil offers they received. Adam is worth loads more than that for Blackpool and considering that's the case, who would ever expect to see them sell for really anything under 15? He will probably be gone in the summer, but they'll have all summer to retool and prepare for another season in the Premier League, and hey, maybe they'll use the money to buy some underground heating.

AMERICA

Michael Bradley on loan to Aston Villa

Jozy Altidore on loan to Bursaspor

Robbie Findley to Nottingham Forest

Eddie Johnson on loan to Preston North End

Freddy Adu on loan to Rizespor

Phew, OK that was a lot. But as you can see, Americans were pretty busy here. You had two players making clear steps forward, with three others trying to get some regular football at a lower level. Bradley is by far the biggest winner here, as he is a class player who can now show it provided he gets some playing time for Villa. With Ireland gone and the club mired in a relegation fight, Bradley should have plenty of opportunity to showcase his talents and secure a permanent move. Gladbach is almost assuredly going down and I think they are so confident in his abilities that they loaned him out so people could see how good he is. Otherwise, a relegation threatened team just simply gave up one of their best players. A great move for Findley as well, as he moves from a MLS side to a team that looks like it is in great shape to get promoted and even if not, the Championship is still a step up. He did pick up a knock in training but he should recover. The other three are really just in the situation of trying to get playing time. Eddie Johnson got a game almost immediately for Preston and who knows, maybe he can get some goals for them. They're the worst team in the Championship and if he can't make an impact there, he should either work on his Swedish or come on home. Altidore is going to the Turkish champions, and is still in a great situation with Villareal not looking keen to get rid of him. Altidore should probably leave the Yellow Submarine however, as he will never get in front of Nilmar or Rossi. If I were Jozy, I'd say a mid-level Spanish club would give him a better chance in the long run and he is also built for the Premier League. Finally, that brings us to the sad case of Freddy Adu. There are a lot of steps to take before the second division in Turkey, and this is where he is today. I hope he can make an impact and slowly start climbing his way up the ladder to success. He is far from past it age-wise, but he is dangerously close to falling completely off the map. He has to make an impact somewhere, anywhere and hope that things start to build. Hell, if he could raise through the ranks in Turkey that'd be a massive step up than being in the reserves at Benfica. You just gotta hope he gets it together.

Transfer League losers coming soon!

The Idiocy of Weakened Squads

I know it's deadline day, but I'm in a small state of mourning after the loss of Fernando, and so I'll cover all of that tomorrow. First, I want to talk about the fact that Blackpool is being fined by the FA for fielding a "weakened" squad. Now, 25k is quite a pretty penny for a team that cannot even afford under-pitch heating, and they did the same thing to Wolves last year. Let's just go over the facts, shall we? Ian Holloway selected a starting lineup, entirely composed of the 25-man squad he selected for the Premier League, but with 9 of the players starting not being first-team regulars. The game was very evenly matched, with Villa winning on a late Collins strike.

We Just Scored on Blackpool's B Team!

Now, look, it was clearly a weakened team (which makes it all the more pathetic that they nearly drew Aston Villa) but what exactly is the crime here? Teams all the time make callous decisions like this. First off, the FA, which controls both cups, regularly watches teams put in B (or C or D) squads in those cups that they frankly don't care much about. How is this allowed then? They are basically saying that these ties don't matter much to them. If they aren't allowed to say that about a Premier League game, why can they say that about the main cups in the country?

Furthermore, where you draw the line between rotation and weakening? Any rotation is clearly a weakening of your best XI, but when is it weakening and when is it resting? There's too much gray area, and Holloway has done a great job at Blackpool so far so who is saying that he is not doing what is in the best interest of the club? It is insipid to fine Blackpool when he simply did what the Big Clubs have always done but never get called out on. Fergie, Wenger and Rafa would all be very poor men if they were fined every time they rotated to a "weakened" team. Just because no one rates Blackpool's bench does not mean they are any less right.

Bye-Bye Hodgson

Well, it's official. After a horrible half season, the 2010 Manager of the Year is now the first fired manager of the new year (well other than that other Roy but the Championship doesn't count). It really is a shame it had to come to this. You had a quality mid-table manager just simply way too far out of his depth. Hodgson can get you some decent results, but he is never winning a title. Even at his best, he lacks an ability to get any team to perform on the road. But, I will stop. Far too much ink has been wasted on his ineffectiveness as the manager of Liverpool. He just was not the right man for the job.

I think his career won't be soiled too horribly by this, and he surely will work again. There will probably be a few more openings this year in both the Premier League and the Championship, and he has never shown himself to be unwilling to go abroad. So, he will work again. He will be successful again, but his success is not that of a championship winning manager, it is that of stable mid-table success. An odd cup run, midtable finishes and no relegation. And that's what plenty of teams would kill for.

Roy Keane, on the other hand, has to be close to finished in football management. He is quite far removed from his only success (Sunderland's promotion and their subsequent staying up) and has followed that with his acrimonious exit from Sunderland and his horror show with Ipswich. Simply put, I don't think he has the temperament for management. Unless he got a big club (very fat chance), he will almost assuredly never manage a player as good as he was. Regardless of where he coaches, he will never coach a guy as tough as he was. And he will forever remain infuriated by his players by not reaching his own lofty standard. They will burn out by the military atmosphere, and eventually tune him out. He was hated as a player, and that's fine. In this day and age, you simply cannot be hated as a coach. The players have too much power.

Friendlies Roster

So Bradley has released the roster for the USA National Team's upcoming friendlies. It's a who's who of young American talent in the MLS, along with our old Scandinavian stomping grounds. Cervi plays for Celtic, which is the only foreign club of note here. Obviously he doesn't start. In fact he's on loan to Dundee. Where he doesn't start. Sigh.

Here's the list:

GOALKEEPERS

Cervi, Dominic (Celtic)
Johnson, Sean (Chicago Fire)
Pickens, Matt (Colorado Rapids)
Rimando, Nick (Real Salt Lake)

DEFENDERS

DeLaGarza, A.J. (Los Angeles Galaxy)
Franklin, Sean (Los Angeles Galaxy)
Gonzalez, Omar (Los Angeles Galaxy)
Ihemelu, Ugo (FC Dallas)
Loyd, Zach (FC Dallas)
Miller, Ryan (Halmstads BK)
Ream, Tim (New York Red Bulls)
Wallace, Anthony (Colorado Rapids)
Wynne, Marvell (Colorado Rapids)

MIDFIELDERS

Alexander, Eric (FC Dallas)
Bedoya, Alejandro (Örebro)
Cronin, Sam (San Jose Earthquakes)
Diskerud, Mikkel (Stabaek)
Larentowicz, Jeff (Colorado Rapids)
McCarty, Dax (D.C. United)
Shea, Brek (FC Dallas)

FORWARDS

Agudelo, Juan (New York Red Bulls)
Braun, Justin (Chivas USA)
Bunbury, Teal (Sporting Kansas City)
Wondolowski, Chris (San Jose Earthquakes)

Feliz Navidad!

So, I don't want to give the impression I have a Giuseppe Rossi man-crush by including him in the last two posts, but it's much more indicative about how bad at posting I've been recently. Here is Villareal's Christmas ad which I thought was cute. Come on it's in good fun. It is a little sad that he is clearly an Italian, through and through, to everyone in Spain and Europe. Obviously having him sing Yankee Doodle Dandy would be great but as I've said before I really have no hard feelings towards Rossi. As opposed to other players who more callously choose their national team off of a combination of prestige and possibility of playing time, he never wavered in his commitment for Italy. He always represented them at the youth level and never toyed with the US. He always made it clear he wanted to represent Italy, which for a kid from New Jersey, is a pretty ballsy move. I respect that. He could have been first-choice striker for 15 years for the US team (assuming we don't have some golden generation of 14-year olds right now) but instead is trying to play for the team of his childhood dreams. What's wrong with that? Besides he basically moved at 13 to Parma so by that logic Ghana should hate Freddy Adu (or they would if he was good) and so many other countless movements of players. I have more respect for Rossi, a kid who chose a path he has never wavered from and was always clear and upfront about who he wanted to represent, than I do for Jermaine Jones, who I really think just wanted to play some international football. I have no issue with Jones as I would do the same in his situation but does anyone really think that he would be playing for USA if the German national team had been calling? He played in three friendlies but never would have seen any starting lineup. Look, I'm going to stop ranting but where I'm going with this is that I think hating Rossi shows how weak a footballing nation we are. He is clearly the best player to have been born on American soil and barring some new prodigy, will probably hold that title for his career. Donovan is great but come on, everyone would take Rossi first. The problem isn't that USA soccer didn't hold on to Rossi (whom even Brazil wouldn't have) but the problem is that we are so desperate for a creative player that we'll scorn a kid living out his dream.

Anyways, here is that Christmas special, it is quite funny.

Quick La Liga Action

Everything the USA National Team could use in a striker (Rossi's goal, Villareal's second). In other news, FANTASTIC La Liga season thusfar. 10 goals in 8 matches for Cristiano. Legitimate contenders not named Real Madrid and Barcelona, and generally just the best football to watch from a neutral's perspective. Here's the Villareal Highlights