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If going down somehow represented a turning point for the club then perhaps *something* good could have come of it - but so far I have seen nothing that indicates relegation being a turning point - quite the opposite - we were struggling in PL and now we are gearing down to be struggling in the Championship as well. No positivity or flair in our outlook only a "stay-adrift" mentally means that Swansea will probably beome the "gift" that keeps on giving for many years to come...
I think he will regret that move - just like Neymar regrets going to PSG. Two leagues that doesn't have the same kind of limelight as those kind of players need to match their egos. Ronaldo will most likely play 1 or 2 seasons in Juventus and then move back to England for a last top-flight stint similar to Zlatan. :)
No denying he is a good player - and yes I do believe we would be raving if we had him on our side (LOL).
But I mean - we have had players on our side who took a huge amount of abuse because they overdramatized being hit slightly on the head, rolling around on the pitch. People called their behaviour unsportsmanlike.
But injuring players deliberately weeks before WC to gain an advantage is just fair game?
I've seen the rerun many times and can't say for sure if it's intentional - if it is, he masks it very well.
However, Sergio Ramos has a long history of injuring opponents in important games and unfortunately this MO of taking out key-players through injury has paid off in the form of multiple trophies throughout the years.
You could say that he is just a hard player and that injuries will happen, but there is definitely a pattern of him targeting key players during important matches.
If this is the case - he definitely needs to be penalized!
And yes - besides Salah he also tried to take out Loris Karius:
EDIT: Okay, so I guess you can claim that taking Karius out of the game would be doing Liverpool a favor xD But this happened just before the first goal - so if Karius has a proper PR manager he will soon claim that he suffered from a minor concussion for the rest of the game ;P
Glad to see him point out the "Goodfellas". Makes things stand out a little clearer from back in the days of "La Revolution" - both in terms of who he picked and who he left out ;)
If only it was possible to get a setup like - I don't know - a world class manager with his own scouting network and a seasoned agent able to get deals like no one else (like a 15 goal goalscorer from La Liga for £2m). All working in harmony to make sure recruitment is in line with the playing style and general team composition.
BUT WAIT - that's exactly what you had! Except you didn't think it was fair that the agent was paid for his work - and your chairman thought he could do a better job as a scout.
And now 5 years later you have come to realise you may need a Technial Director?
OMG - you just can't make this sh*t up :D
EDIT: Not meant as a reply to Jacket's post but to thread ;)
During Michael Laudrup's tenure the Elite Player Performance Plan was formulated that would essentially lead to the Category One status that the Youth Academy now enjoys. Staffing was increased bringing in Spaniard Pep Clotet as Academy consultant (2013) as well as Nigel Rees (2013), current Head of Academy.
The exact amount of input Laudrup had in regards to the Youth Academy is uncertain - but bringing in Pep Clotet as part of his backroom staff to oversee the Academy, replacing Tony Pennock as Head of Academy, would suggest that he was definitely involved in overseeing and shaping the Academy during his tenure.
I'm pretty sure Michael Laudrup was "all-in" on doing a great job in Swansea.
But having won the club its first major trophy, having them play the best football they have ever played, having build a squad for the future, having set up a viable youth academy and taking the team to Europe while surviving in the league - to see all that undone by small-town mentality, a bunch of unprofessional players destabilizing the club for their own gain, a chairman who started to make some terrible decisions - I can understand why he left Swansea as a disillusioned man.
That's why he went to Qatar, because he was fed up with the politics and backstabbing. And that is why he is now on hiatus - to do some soul-searching if he really wants to go back and do it all over again.
With all the speculations about who will be the next Swansea manager, and having seen Michael Laudrup's name come up, I just thought I'd mention that Michael Laudrup has decided to take a break from football for an indefinite period of time when his contract with Qatar club Al Rayyan expires this summer.
"I want to take a break. After all, I have been working with football on a high level since I was 17 years old so now is the time where I want life to be about something else for a time. It will be a break for an indefinite period of time. It can be 6 months, 12 months or permanent."
I know that things can change quickly in the world of sports and people declare their retirement one day so that they can declare their comeback the next. However I doubt that Michael Laudrup would have gone public with this kind of statement if there were any current negotiations going on or anything remotely tempting lined up.
TL;DR Michael Laudrup will not be the next Swansea manager.
I do not particular like Bayram Tutumlus style or methods - but to make him sound like a small time pedlar - a one time wonder is simply wrong.
Bayram Tutumlu has been working as a football agent since the early 90's representing several players on the Barcelona Dream Team. He helped orchestrate the famous move of Michael Laudrup from Barcelona to Real Madrid in 1994.
He has represented world class players such as Diego Maradona, Ronald Koeman and Marco Van Basten.
He even spotted Jose Mourinho as an up-and-coming manager and represented him before he became famous for his work in Porto.
Bayram Tutumlu already has more money than he can ever spend. He did not work for Swansea to scam them out of money. He worked for Swansea to help Michael Laudrup build a team that would make Swansea a force to be reckoned with.
To seriously state that "Tutu has not had any sort of recognised success previously to Swansea or after" is simply uneducated and quite frankly embarassing.
I would argue that your revisionism surrounding Garry Monk, a second-rate leacherous player/coach is insane.
To state that Monk had no blame in what went on in the 2013/2014 season is baffling. Had he not helped destabilize the squad and club as a whole to serve his own agenda things could have gone so much different.
Also good to hear that you feel that agents have no role in player signings. I guess it is one job description that we can get rid of entirely in sports then? All that is needed in your view for a transfer to happen is if a player is "top-scorer" or an "established international" and wants to play for a certain manager and the rest I guess can be handled with a simple phone call then? Similar to how it works when playing "Fantasy Football" I guess?
"Garry Monk did not erode the Swansea way"? Makes me wonder what you think the Swansea way is then. To call his impact on the Swansea legacy a "deviation" is like calling what happened to the Titanic a "deviation". Others would describe it as a disaster...
Title reads: Laudrup-agent in bizarre press conference: - I will answer with a kalashnikov.
And a paragraph reads: "The surroundings left nothing to be desired as Michael Laudrup's controversial agent, Bayram Tutumlu held a much publicised press conference Sunday before noon at the five star Hotel D'Angleterre on Kongens Nytorv in Copenhagen.
The purpose of the press conference was a bit unclear.
And even after two hours the majority of the journalists in attendance still had doubts as to why the turkish businessman had invited the entire danish sports press to coffee and filled chocolates in one of the big conference rooms at the premier Danish hotel."
I can understand all the resentment towards Monk but am puzzled at how Ashley Williams managed to largely fly under the radar. Truth is that for a long time he more or less decided who would manage the team. Being such a key player in central defense our team would do well when he "turned up" and do poorly when he didn't. Just look at his perfomances during the last period of ML's tenure. - our defense was in such disarray. And then look at the tranformation the moment his buddy GM got the coaching job. The poor run of results had less to do with ML managerial ability and more to do with key players more or less deliberately throwing games. Fast forward to the summer of 2015 when AW had hoped to make the move to a bigger club but it fell through. That's where he stopped playing for GM and a couple of months later we had a new coach... and the next summer AW got his move to Everton...
Don't expect too much from that press conference. Tutumlu held a similar press conference in Copenhagen a couple of months ago. It turned out to be a couple of hours of gesticulation and slightly incoherent ramblings. When the reporters left they had no idea why Tutumlu had called a press conference in the first place. I think he just enjoys the attention to be frank (or recognizes the value of stirring attention). In regards to him being in contact with HJ I wouldn't read too much into that either. A person like Tutumlu lives and dies by his ability to network so it is just "what he does" - and to some extent what he does very well :)
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