FC Barcelona - Campeones de España!

Time for some news:

- Henrique to Racing on loan for another season is confirmed

- Txiki apparently in talks with Chelsea to take over as their sporting director

- The board has thrown out the financial results from the previous board, and asked Deloitte for a complete re-audit of the club's financial situation. Press conference tomorrow to announce the results...it's not going to be pretty

I wonder what deloitte will find different since they are suppose to be an independent auditing form, so their first audit shouldn't have been that far from the truth.

what he is going to do add a billion dollars debt to the club accounts and says its laporta's fault, and then make the club profitable by the end of his term.

Haha yeah they're just going to "interpret" certain numbers in different ways.


btw, Henrique has been called up to the (admittedly experimental) Brazil squad
Hope his value goes up


And according to MD, the DM signing will be Senna, mainly to allow funds for the Cesc transfer.

But we know that in reality it's because Senna is Brazilian

Now that Henrique is in the Brazil team I'm sure you'll be keeping him.

fcb wrote:Haha yeah they're just going to "interpret" certain numbers in different ways.


btw, Henrique has been called up to the (admittedly experimental) Brazil squad
Hope his value goes up


And according to MD, the DM signing will be Senna, mainly to allow funds for the Cesc transfer.

But we know that in reality it's because Senna is Brazilian

, a bit on the old side, i guess pep sees a future for Oriol as a DM and with him and busquets, they should be able to give senna enough rest.

so appearently we made a 77m euros lost last season according to rosell's new interpretation of the clubs books.

he is really just clinching at straws, trying to undermine the former administration, and he can't really find much wrong.

Messiah wrote:so appearently we made a 77m euros lost last season according to rosell's new interpretation of the clubs books.

he is really just clinching at straws, trying to undermine the former administration, and he can't really find much wrong.

I think the truth is somewhere in between. Auditors follow the general guidelines and the check wether the things are booked according to what the internal company guidelines say. So, if Rosell purposely told the auditors to follow extremely tough internal guidelines, things look ugly, just like Laporta probably used quite optimistic/lax guidelines allowing for good profits.

But you are right, Rosell cant hope to compete where the fans really care, the football achievements, so he has to attack from somewhere else.

La Liga Loca raised a good point - this is just Rosell preparing for shirt sponsorship.

I think it's inevitable now...I'd be surprised if takes more than a couple of seasons to happen. They'll probably still maintain a link with UNICEF, but not on the shirt.

No doubt when it happens everyone will start calling Barça hypocrites, but the fact is the club held out for longer than any other big club. That UNICEF deal was a stroke of pure genius.

As long as Rosell uses his contacts and background to make sure the deal is worth more than any other club in the world (bar Man. Utd, I think they're an exception when it comes to commercial value) and isn't some dodgy betting or insurance firm, I'd be ok with it.

fcb wrote:La Liga Loca raised a good point - this is just Rosell preparing for shirt sponsorship.

I think it's inevitable now...I'd be surprised if takes more than a couple of seasons to happen. They'll probably still maintain a link with UNICEF, but not on the shirt.

No doubt when it happens everyone will start calling Barça hypocrites, but the fact is the club held out for longer than any other big club. That UNICEF deal was a stroke of pure genius.

As long as Rosell uses his contacts and background to make sure the deal is worth more than any other club in the world (bar Man. Utd, I think they're an exception when it comes to commercial value) and isn't some dodgy betting or insurance firm, I'd be ok with it.

Well you've already got "Herbalife" going on your sleeve. Probably get betclick.com on the front of your shirt. In fact you guys are so in debt you might have to find a place for a "La Caixa" sponsorship as well. Maybe the cule????

SPORT predictably goes against MD by claiming that Bruno and Senna have never been on Barça's shortlist, and it's actually Capoue and Ozil who are the most likely signings.

fcb wrote:SPORT predictably goes against MD by claiming that Bruno and Senna have never been on Barça's shortlist, and it's actually Capoue and Ozil who are the most likely signings.

Please please please sign Ozil.

Only next year, on a free. Otherwise you can sign him this summer for 20m and add to your collection of attacking midfielders

As much as I like and rate Senna, I don't see a point of signing him. In general, I would gladly move Marquez to play more as DM and it could easily work for one more season. Instead he was let go for free, following good performance at World Cup

Respect to Barcelona for banning bullfighting

L r dd wrote:Respect to Barcelona for banning bullfighting

They just did that to pretend they aren't Spanish.

Marquez still in limbo, still hoping to stay


But anyway, Barça back in action tonight

Hleb left out of the 22-man squad (15 canteranos, including the also-on-his-way-out Victor Sanchez, chosen ahead of him) despite doing the whole pre-season so far. I don't know whether to laugh at this, or cry that 15m worth of a player is now worth nothing.


Squad:

Pinto, Adriano, Bojan, Ibrahimovic, Keita, Maxwell, Milito, Víctor Sánchez, Miño, Armando, Benja, Dalmau, Edu Oriol, Ilie, Jonathan dos Santos, Jonathan Soriano, Martí Riverola, Muniesa, Nolito, Sergi Gómez, Sergi Roberto, Tello

Abidal when he arrived back for training last Monday:
"¿Dónde está Chygrynskiy?"

fcb wrote:Abidal when he arrived back for training last Monday:
"¿Dónde está Chygrynskiy?"

Seriously?

fcb wrote:Abidal when he arrived back for training last Monday:
"¿Dónde está Chygrynskiy?"

Classic!

That's SPORT's headline but it may be paraphrased. Basically he had no clue that Chygrinskiy got sold, and thought he was injured

http://sport.es/default.asp?idpublicacio_PK=44&idioma=CAS&idnoticia_PK=722910&idseccio_PK=803

Comments on the first friendly against Valerenga, which Barça won 4-2:

- Suddenly realised that we're actually a bit short at CB. Puyol-Pique are great but Milito is still an unknown in terms of fitness, and after that we're down to 19 year olds!

- Victor Sanchez won't even be useful in the Segunda...just get rid of him.

- At least if Jonathan dos Santos doesn't become a good enough all round midfielder for the first team, he can be used as a Gibson: throw him on for 20 mins every game to shoot from distance. He does it often and at least gets it on target, which is better than all our other midfielders put together. He was playing at the base of the midfield today, as a distributor.

- That Tello guy on the RW in the first half = rubbish. Unsurprisingly, he's ex-Espanyol

- Benja impressed me...very Villa-esque in the way he drops into the channel between CB and fullback. Good burst of pace and a real physical presence. Will be a good striker in La Segunda.

- Armando, Muniesa's CB partner in the 2nd half, was awful. No wonder, because I just checked and found out that he's a 25 year old signed just for the B team in the 3rd division last year

- Mino (the backup keeper) is basically like a shorter, uglier, version of Valdes. Same hand gestures/waving, same style of screaming at the defense, same facial expressions, same self-confidence, and very good/quick in coming off his line.

- Valerenga's left-winger/striker Shelton raped both the RBs that Pep used in the game. Good player...excellent pace and change of direction.
Good to start with a win, as always.




(Note: my post is clearly not meant to be taken seriously, it's just some brief initial comments on a pre-season game. Please don't use it to form agendas that last for the rest of this board's life.

The usual disclaimers apply when making judgments like this: Pre-season friendly, heavy rain, opposition halfway through their season, our players were mostly kids or reserves, and everyone only got to play 45 mins.)

fcb wrote:Please don't use it to form agendas that last for the rest of this board's life.

Oh kas....

btw, for those who are interested in other issues:

- Guardiola certainly is preparing for battle with Mourinho this season. He's gone for the "jihad" look. Bald head, full beard.

- Tito Vilanova has swapped his geek comb-over haircut for a fancy, spiked, dyed style. I guess that's what 4m per year buys you.

- Ibrahimovic had 2 holes in his socks just 15 mins after coming on. Pique won't be impressed with such shabby dress sense.

fcb wrote:- That Tello guy on the RW in the first half = rubbish. Unsurprisingly, he's ex-Espanyol

Is this Cristian Tello? Because if so....he is la Masia until two years ago when he left for Espanyol. Now he's back.

Jaime wrote:

fcb wrote:- That Tello guy on the RW in the first half = rubbish. Unsurprisingly, he's ex-Espanyol

Is this Cristian Tello? Because if so....he is la Masia until two years ago when he left for Espanyol. Now he's back.

Yeah, I think that's him. Literally the only interesting thing he did all half was make the commentator debate on how to pronounce his name - rhyming with Hello, or Halo?

fcb wrote:

Jaime wrote:

fcb wrote:- That Tello guy on the RW in the first half = rubbish. Unsurprisingly, he's ex-Espanyol

Is this Cristian Tello? Because if so....he is la Masia until two years ago when he left for Espanyol. Now he's back.

Yeah, I think that's him. Literally the only interesting thing he did all half was make the commentator debate on how to pronounce his name - rhyming with Hello, or Halo?

Supposedly we were interested in taking him for Castilla but I guess he wanted to go home.

Sounds from Bartomeu that we are not signing any CB or Cesc alternative.

He basically said that the CBs in the b-team have the quality to take up a position in the first team and that there is plenty of quality in the cantera (Thiago and/or JDS) to be the obvious alternative if we cant get Cesc.

I'm good with that, i just hope that we have most of the first 16 available when the big games come around and play the rest in the lesser games.

So I guess just a DM and we're done for the summer...


btw, it's official

http://www.fcbarcelona.com/web/castellano/noticies/futbol/temporada10-11/07/31/n100730112219.html

Like you said it leaves you a bit short of CB's. If Pique picks up an injury your pairing will be Puyol and Milito who arent very quick, and playing against pacy strikers would probably have a hard time.