NEWS, TRANSFERS, TROPHIES, GOSSIP, AND DRAMA FROM THE CLOUGH GAMEWORLD
The shortlist in full:
- Colin Mills
- Paul Wheeler
- Michael Marsden
- Kenny Purdy
- Richard Millar
- Jose Arqued
- Amjad Parkar
- Kevin Bristow
- Jordi Calvo
- Sturla Pettersen
I think that Marsh Factor are strong favourites to go through to the final, with quality and pace throughout their team that I think my young side will find difficult to deal with. The T.I.T. Howell players have already exceeded my expectations by getting this far, and it's a real achievement in of itself.
We're still building for the future here at Tar Valon, and the aim for the season was (and still is) to consolidate our Premiership status whilst bringing through quality youngsters to the first team.
In the last 3 seasons we haven't made it beyond the 3rd round so we are delighted to be so close to glory. We won the CWA Cup a while back but it looks a bit lonely in the trophy cabinet. Our semi-final opponents won't be a pushover, they've got a very creative midfield, but our lads are buzzing at the moment after scraping through an epic quarter final on penalties. It's going to be a great game.
We are estatic to have made it to the semi-finals of the Game World Cup. FC Koselsk away is a very tough draw: Andrew has a great team, and I don't have the best record against him, but as every game, we'll go out on the pitch with an attacking mentality and fight for every ball, and see if we just can't scatch out a result
I felt the second match was tight but my team attacked throughout. However Rapid scored with one long pass after a break, one corner as usual, and the last one at the death after I tried to come back into the match.
It's important to learn from defeats. I saw where I was weak in the first game, I made two little changes and the game went my way.
To be honest there is nothing I would love more than to keep my star players but keeping my club alive has to be the main priority and we just couldn't afford it financially.
It's quite sad for the economy that one of the top strikers in the game sells only £500k, but it was expected.
I'm very happy and excited about the signing of Samuel. He is world class and, even though the wages are £65'000, I know I am buying goals. I hope he settles into the side nicely so we can continue our push up the UFFA rankings.
I have so much debt I will probably go bust so I have no choice to be honest. I need to find £5 million from somewhere in next 3 weeks to pay my debt before I go bankrupt.
I had a £4 million pound debt but needed a £9 million stadium.
My problem is that I didn't play the markets beforehand - I got a squad and stuck with it. That coupled with the uncertainty over actual costs for stadiums led me to believe I was being responsible. I knew the stadiums were coming, but there was constant uncertainty in the forums as to costs (which were changed several times) - by the time I realised there would be an issue, the markets had frozen. I was a day or two late on capitalising on the increased market before 'the big crash'.
I feel that, with this current fiscal situation, the market will make a steady rise within the next couple of seasons. It will never reach the dizzy heights it once was but it will return to a sensible level where players will sell for around their Market Value.
No complaints about it [the red card] though, deserved a red and of course I'm disappointed with Avine's challenge. From that moment on, my team were second best and it was going to be a rearguard approach to the rest of the game. We have faced similar situations in this competition in the past and always prevailed but this time around we just couldn't deal with Strawberry Fields' one man advantage.
It's never easy when your drawn against a team of the Dragons' stature, and having never beat them before I think only a fool would have bet against Mr. Parkes side progressing. To see the kid Dejan grab the winner was great for his confidence. Hopefully some 'Berry fans can gladly call them self a rich fool.
I have to admit to being very disappointed to be out of the competition, largely due to my team's history with this cup. We will just have to regroup and push hard for the other titles up for grabs this season. I would also like to wish Craig the very best of luck for the rest of the competition and I shall be watching keenly as to who wins the cup before I work hard at regaining the crown next season.
I will say that our policy is to deal with each investigation on it's own merits, but I will be looking at some of our policies next week to see if we are being too soft on some obvious cheats.
Firstly, I would like to clarify that the Madrid Lions are not a selling club. We have never been in the habit of selling our best players, and it is not a habit we wish to get into. The recent moves made in the transfer market may have raised one or two eyebrows, but they have been made with the full backing of the board.
The players who have been brought in have not been brought in as a profit making mechanism. There is no doubt that all four of the star players currently out on loan have a future at the club, and along with Gabriel Hauche, will in all likelihood form the backbone of our team for years to come. As the more economically minded will no doubt be aware, the world is in a recession, and the 'Clough Crunch' has really impacted on a lot of clubs. However, here at the Bernabeu Den, we are aware that this kind of market presents as many opportunities as it does pitfalls.
We have looked to exploit the market fully during this time, and have brought in players that are simply outwith our budget in normal market circumstances. Obviously we have the major stadium project to think about at present, and the players being loaned out is merely a short term measure to balance the books. Rest assured I have full confidence in the players who have remained at the club to hold our reputation within the UFFA, prior the surge we intend to make when the players return.
However, at this stage I am unable to guarantee that no more players will be making similar moves out, nor indeed that the players who are out on loan will return at the end of the season. These could very well become 42 day moves, purely for financial reasons. I would like to assure the fans that the club does not consider itself to be in financial jeopardy, and we fully expect to come out the other side of this recession a far stronger team.
I was made aware of Jeremy Menez' availability through his agent, the deal was set up and all I had to do was sign a piece of paper.
To bring him in for the 'Berries Premiership push was in my club's best interest; I don't know the reasons behind Madrid Lions signing him but we won't be lining their pockets with cash after the deal is through. I'm sure Jeremy wasn't too happy with the club's intentions either but he hasn't spoken to me on the matter.
This is awful
Mods, what are you thinking, we have people deliberatly running their clubs into the grounds and caring of the impact. We have people leaving daily.
Why are you hitting this guy with such a fine? how many people have 2mil nowadays. Even West Ham got to appeal!!
Why dont you stagger the fine over a period of 2 season so he can survive. Is putting this guy out of business really the answer?- Frasier Harvie (15:54)
It sounds like something out of a mafia movie plot!- Mark Garner (16:00)
I'd give it up mate - Mods are Judge, Jury and Executioner with no fair appeals process.
And you're likely to get a fine for questioning their actions in either discussions on here or on the forums, mores the shame.
I'm a big advocate of the right to free speech and also the right to protest (both recognised human rights), but such things are surpressed in this game simply because the people (person) at the top doesn't like to have any flaws exposed (even if those flaws could be discussed, learned from and things made better in the long run).
Your only course of action here is to log a ticket with (lack of) support then hope and prey before realising you aint going to have anything changed and you have to live with it or leave and not pay your subscription any more.
I will add that the mods are generally nice guys and generally make the right decisions in keeping the gameworld trouble-free, the problem is the dealing with the aftermath, particularly if things HAVE gone wrong.
A 'Customer Charter' would solve such things by letting us know what to expect, what the mods do, what the appeals process is, etc (cue the usual 'read the Terms and Conditions' posts, please note a Customer Charter is NOT the terms and conditions and would be ADDITIONAL to any Terms and Condiitons) - I have suggested doing this, but again 'the man' does not wish to entertain the idea.- James Hargreaves (18:21)
He did a dodgy deal and was fined. Not by mods and not by mods in our gameworld but it would only be the lead mod Richard Tedbutt who can do it. If this makes or breaks him he goes in the pile with the others tagged with bad planning/not thinking about future cos his deal negotiated was one sided and that allowed him to lose a lot of unwanted players and bring in someone very good. If its gonna ruin him then im pretty sure he would have been given the option of him to have Gomez released which it would seem he didnt want to take.
Face up to your mistakes...- Craig MacLean (19:14)
That's only half of the story and you know that full well Taha. To all those jumping on the "mods are evil" bandwagon here; have you done any research into the deal concerned at all? Do you really think that this deal would have been accepted by a manager that was not leaving the game world?
Considering he got to keep the player concerned, and all the wages saved on those half-a-dozen deadweights he offloaded at no cost I don't think he's done too bad with getting a £2m fine personally. I can think of a few high profile player releases lately that have cost clubs a lot of money in paid off contracts to free up projected income who would happily accept a £2m loss and a world class player instead of a similar loss without gaining a player of such quality as part of the deal.
If he'd just waited to bid for Gomez in a FAIR auction and paid to release his unsellable players from their contracts as the majority of the gameworld have done recently then he wouldn't be in the position he's in now.
Sadly, this is not the only deal of this type to have taken place during the past week either, tough times bring out the worst in people.- Dave Parker (19:30)
OK - before this gets any further out of hand, we approached the manager who purchased Gomez as he swapped 5 players knowing full well that the other manager was leaving - this allowed him to get a world class player whilst dumping 5 players and decreasing his wages at the same time.
Quote from the chat logs "We'll do it this way so it doesn't look suspicious".
We then received various pleading emails from the manager (and his brother) begging us to not release Gomez and that the manager was prepared to pay another £2m to keep him.
I was asked to look at the deal, and whilt the MVs balanced there was a significant drop in wages so we gave the manager 3 options:
1) Remove £2m from his finances to compensate (he couldn't afford this now so we gave him 24hrs to come up with the cash)
2) Remove a player with a £2m MV from his squad, or
3) Remove Gomez and refund his money spent.
Now how is that not fair (except perhaps we were too lenient?)
So yet again I invite you all to please calm down, request the full facts of the matter in private if you are concerned, and give the mods a break! They are all doing the best job they can, and unfortunately these "discussions" where they are abused really don't help- Richard Tebbutt (19:38)
| Federation | Members | Media Deal | Per Club |
|---|---|---|---|
| Xtreme Evening Football Association | 79 | £91.6m | £1.16m |
| All Evening Football Association | 78 | £82.7m | £1.06m |
| Xtreme Football Association | 75 | £82.5m | £1.1m |
| Primetime Football Association | 71 | £80.2m | £1.07m |
| Casual Weekday Association | 60 | £64.4m | £1.07m |
| Social Football Association | 58 | £62.3m | £0.98m |
| Weekend Football Association | 56 | £55.1m | £1.08m |
| Early Evening Football Association | 49 | £53.3m | £1.00m |
| Super Evening Football Association | 42 | £42m | £1.11m |
| Nighttime Football Association | 32 | £35.5m | £1.09m |
| Moonlight Football Association | 29 | £31.6m | £1.08m |
| Total | 629 | £681.2m | £1.08m |
Twenty-nine users voted in the XEFA Change in FA Times vote that ended this afternoon at 14:21.
The result of the vote was :
Choice #1 : 'Stay the same 9 to 12' - 6 votes (20.7%)
Choice #2 : 'Extend by an Hour 8 to 12' - 23 votes (79.3%)
The results for this week's Senior Goal of the Week competition are in. First place winner's manager's will receive £35,000, third place's manager's will receive £30,000. The vote results are as follows :-Carlos Ferreira was the randomly chosen winner whose club F. C. Porto Kenshin receive a prize of £50,000 for voting for the winner of this weeks award.
- Alberto Paloschi (Razorshot FC) Vs Firenze with 10 votes.
- Wanderley (Honka) Vs FC Chin Up with 10 votes.
- Issa Ba (Ann Arbor Arsenal) Vs Spaghetti Delight with 6 votes.
- Badr El Kaddouri (FC Ulander) Vs SV Furburger with 1 vote.
- Badr El Kaddouri (FC Ulander) Vs SV Furburger with 0 votes.
The Cloughite is Clough's very own Tabloid Newspaper, reporting on a wide range of stories from the hot discussion topics of the day to the big transfer stories and even match reports from the big games.
Posts
All Comments
