Manzambi and Gomes for Rogers, Tielemans and £63m is transfer magic from Aston Villa | OneFootball

Aston Villa have quietly had an excellent summer transfer window so far – and do Newcastle deserve more credit for their work too?

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In the articles today on Eddie Howe’s reasons for his departure from Newcastle, a key possibility has been missed.

When appointed as manager under PIF in 2022 and rightly questioned by the press about the appalling human rights record of the new real owners, the Saudi state, Howe responded that he didn’t know much so was conducting research into Saudi politics and history.

Perhaps he’s just had a really, really bad mobile signal, but has just changed providers and after four years the wikipedia page has finally loaded. Iain, Sunderland

Howe about a little more positivity?

As a Newcastle fan I’ll always love and respect Eddie Howe for what he’s achieved. Its no surprise he’s taking a break from football, he’s earned it but I also think he waited too long to acknowledge he was burnt out. It was all there; the reversion to his comfort zone, the inability to adapt in game, the mechanical substitutions, the defeated body language, how tired he looked all the time. On a human level he gives everything to the job which is the be admired but you have to know when you’ve taken yourself too far.

Yes people should applaud him for what he did, which was a lot, but it’s easy to see why the current transfer strategy doesn’t chime with him. We saw last summer he wanted established PL players and convinced the club to pay for them – that was a disaster. Then he was given a shiny new toy in Woltemade who was not aligned with his style of play and he couldn’t make it work. He is tactically inflexible, dependent on certain players to breaking point (our record without Bruno is/was appalling, before that we couldn’t win without Isak), and the points thrown away from winning positions last season were criminal. Although the timing isn’t good it could be so much worse, at least a replacement was already found and we’re not spending the rest of the summer chasing a new manager.

I’m trying to be positive about the new coach who seems to have a decent rep, is young and likes a similar intense style of play to Eddie. There is a logical question to ask on was this chap hired for the right reasons or because it was easy for the owners to pluck from one of their other clubs? I guess we’ll find out but he’s being written off before he’s even arrived.

At least we have a Sporting Director and transfer strategy which seems to be operating mostly independently of the manager, unlike last summer. Whether the strategy of hiring these younger lads works is another thing we’ll have to find out, but people seem to be predicting they will all be failures before a competitive ball is kicked. Last summer we had one signing by this stage, this year we have four already in, with a fifth (and much needed new GK) apparently on the brink of joining (although we’ve heard that before).

There’s a fixation (F365 very guilty of this) to paint everything around the club as negative. Every player not signed is a ‘snub’ – in the James Trafford case we didn’t even bid for him. Young players signed are inexperienced and unproven rather than exciting. If Munoz and Manzambi had signed for us they would be part of the negative narrative, and that they haven’t is still negative for Newcastle anyway, so there’s no winning. I can think of at least half a dozen clubs who are currently having worse off-seasons than us and look quite shaky and they get zero coverage. I feel like even if we have a moderately decent season and finish 10th having had some fun games, a few scalps but some mediocre results along the way, it will be painted as doomsday.

I’m staying positive that the £80m we’ll bank for Bruno will go towards 2-3 more signings, we’ll at least have some fun, a really good bash at the cups, and there’s light ahead with a coach coming in with an open mind who isn’t anchored by dependence on a formula which had been worked out under Eddie. James, Leeds    

Hats off to Villa

While fans get giddy over transfers around their own clubs – who has moved, ridiculous valuations, players still needed etc – I just wanted to appreciate Villa’s work this summer. Getting over £100m for Rogers and replacing him with Manzambi who looks a serious player for half the price. Then probably replacing Tielemans (transferred by a robbery) with Gomes for another.

Sterling work! And it’s a strange and unusual state of things where virtually everyone involved has caused to be happy.

Now if Chelsea can just sign Sancho, for a hattrick of ex-City escapees who kind of end up proving City right by not really being quite as good as it first seemed, that would be golden. Badwolf

LOL at UEFA

All this talk of UEFA being the best hope of stopping Infantino’s World Cup sell-off is, frankly, hilarious. This is the same UEFA that turned its flagship competition into a bloated European Super League – a confusing, gambling-infested, ad-supported mess of a contest, dominated by a cartel of super-rich teams, riddled with commercial partners desperate to sell you their crap, while consumers empty their wallets for the privilege of witnessing it.

UEFA are just pissed off that FIFA has stolen their ideas. Here’s wishing UEFA’s heroic negotiators godspeed, as they voyage to Infantino’s lair to figure out a more equitable way to carve up football between themselves. Whatever happens, the fans will lap it up like they always do, and in a few years the scandal will fade into the background, like the animated pitchside advertising boards that were once the scourge of televised football.

PS. In the unlikely event that Infantino needs any advice on how to pacify UEFA’s paper tigers, just slip them a few quid and remind them that even non-European players registered in breakaway federations will not be eligible for selection at the FIFA World Cup. Martin, BRFC

Feed the World Cup

In a hilariously ironic case of timing being everything, I got halfway through drafting a mail on Tuesday that involved spitting poison about Infantino’s bizarre, brazen Instagram post from Monday. I ground to a halt before I could hit send, and before I knew it the horrible goblin had given us all FAR more ammo for mailbox submissions.

The breaking news about his sell-off plan was bad enough, but the detail that really killed me was the subsequent doubling of the proposed bribes (sorry, I mean “totally legitimate payments”) being dangled in front of the national associations. The transparency in the rottenness rubs me up the wrong way massively.

The notion that he can flaunt his disregard for the game, and everyone connected to it, in this manner does genuinely leave me flabbergasted. Not because I expect anything different from him, but because the total absence of mechanisms via which to rein him in is shocking. FIFA is well known to be a corrupt boys’ club, but how can there be no fully independent oversight of them after the shit show that developed under Blatter and was blown wide open in 2016?

Based on everything I’ve read over the past 36 hours, pitifully the best hope for football is for UEFA to buck wildly and boycott the next World Cup. While I don’t agree with them essentially having to carry the can for morality’s sake, I’d love to see UEFA threaten an additional Euros tournament for 2030 if they do press the nuclear button.

Schedule it concurrently with the World Cup, to highlight the higher quality product being offered and undermine the hollowed out tournament that FIFA would offer. Price the tickets fairly, then naturally maximise the commercial revenues without resorting to some of the horrible sh*t we saw in the US – just to show that it can generate plenty of money without resorting to shameless greed.

Could you imagine the reaction of Kushner, Trump et al when their bully tactics backfire to the extent that their prospective gold mine turns into a sand pit? You’ve got to burn these guys’ fingers at some point, otherwise their grubby mitts will just get a stronger grip. I can’t believe that I’m actually typing their names in connection to football, it really does just show how far Infantino has dragged the game into the mire.

Here’s hoping that some backbone prevails, and that someone somewhere in a position of societal authority is taking notes and preparing a plan to put real institutional safeguards in place at FIFA. It’s supposed to be a non-profit ffs. Keith Reilly    

I’m sending this right after UEFA actually went and pulled the pin on the grenade by voting to boycott FIFA tournaments if Infantino’s dastardly bullsh*t gets ratified. I never thought I’d have a beaming smile brought to my face by a decision by one of football’s bureaucratic overseers, but there you go. Fair play to them for standing up as one.

Assuming that this move deters FIFA from going through with their plan because it devalues their competitions, I’m now curious to see what Gianni’s next scumbag move will be. He’s squarely in bed with Trump and his cronies – a band of swine who generally refuse to take no for an answer, no matter how much of their dirty laundry has been hung out. Immunity to shame is a powerful tool when you’re trying to swindle the world.

But all of his arse-licking and shady arrangements won’t bear fruit as anticipated this time. Not to mention, UEFA retaliating so quickly and decisively is a public declaration of how much contempt they hold him in. If this were a proper business, he’d be out on his ear after a show of mutiny like this. Unfortunately, his position seems to be almost ironclad until 2031, so I’m strapping in for 5 more years of devious, self-serving viciousness.

We can probably assume that the 2030 World Cup will automatically expand to 64 teams now, with a greater proportion of the extra 16 places handed to the smaller federations than to UEFA. More teams = more games = more money to siphon. UEFA is on record as opposing the move, but they’ll get hopelessly outvoted, so Gianni will eventually win one way or the other.

A good day for football overall, but it’s just washing one potential stain off a sport that has been shit all over by the very person who’s supposed to foremostly steward it. Here’s hoping (against hope) that UEFA’s actions might be the first step in a course correction. Keith Reilly

All 55 UEFA countries voting the same way re boycotting if the thievery continues. Infantino’s days surely numbered? Amidst the nonsense of Everton’s preseason, and the insane cost of my train for the first game of the season, finally something to be positive about. Aidan, EFC, Hoxton

Last month I found myself agreeing with Seth Blatter (over his condemnation of the Balogun fiasco).

Now I am applauding UEFA.

Is it the end of times? Carolyn, (whatever next), South London Gooner.

FFE, Infantino, Trump and Balogun’s red

I can’t believe you lot haven’t figured out the extent and time that the current Infantino scheme has been on the making. The FFE proposal is just the knot that ties everything so, so neatly, that it bears the question: how could we missed it?

What did he threatened Infantino with? No World Cup in US soil? Not really.

And then comes the mysterious “disappearance” of Balogun’s red card. How that happened?  Where there any sign of a quid-pro-quo involvement here? The real question here must have been: what was promised? With what did the Trumpster threatened Infantino with?

Now we know the answer to both puzzles: money in exchange for a piece of FIFA’s competition revenues. A FIFA Peace Prize in exchange for the promise of investment; the disappearance of a red card under the threat of pulling investment from Infantino’s latest money grab.

Is that simple, coming from the king of quid-pro-quo’s. Javier Santiago-Lucerna

Well, looks like UEFA do have balls after all, committing to a boycott not just of the Men’s World Cup but of all FIFA tournaments, including the Club World Cup, which we know is nothing without European teams.

But I just read the J P Morgan synopsis on FIFA, which I assume was sent to national associations and is totally misleading. It claims FIFA is under monetized, comparing it to the NFL, for example. It states that FIFA’s annual revenues of $3.6B compare unfavourably with the NFL at $21.2B, Baseball at $13.1B, or the NBA at $12.5B. But this compares a governing body to the equivalent of a club game.

UEFA says club football revenues are expected to exceed €30B, with the Premier League alone at £6.8B. UEFA generates €5B, of which €3.9B is distributed to clubs and national associations. A better comparison is with the wider football ‘economy’, which would show that global football revenue is not under-monetized. But FIFA wants to grab a bigger share of the existing revenue pie – and, of course, have all the FIFA bigwigs take a bigger cut, more 5-star travel and entertainment, etc.

It becomes even clearer when the pitch also mentions doubling the number of global tournaments per year. The only way to do that is to reduce the number of regional or club tournaments or competitions. Clearly, players who are already burnt out will be expected to play even more games or play less for their clubs. While top players are hardly underpaid, so that is not an issue for them, it will reduce the quality of their play for their club sides or have them miss club games, so the fan who is paying to see them gets stiffed. Sure, FIFA has a fund to compensate clubs for some of the costs, but it pales in comparison to the larger costs the clubs bear.

And while the initial fight is between the regional associations like FIFA and, right now UEFA and possibly CONCACAF and AFC may vote against it, it is the clubs that bear the biggest economic burden to acquire, pay, train and support the players. When clubs are paying upwards of £100m (whether right or not) for a player and several hundred thousand pounds a week in wages, the monies FIFA is talking about ‘bribing’ national associations with is minuscule by comparison.

This is not about growth – it’s about power. FIFA can schedule and sell the tournament, while clubs can’t easily opt out because the national-team release is built into the governing rules and calendar. This gives FIFA leverage to monetize the game, while the clubs absorb the day-to-day investment and a significant risk, making it an asymmetrical arrangement.

Football is already monetized to the hilt. FIFA’s plan isn’t to grow the game but to behave like a mob boss muscling into a well-run neighbourhood and demanding a bigger share of the take. Paul McDevitt

This selling the World Cup idea must be straight out of the Infantilo playbook… Or is it the FIFA playbook?

Guys, I’ll let you in on a little known secret. ’Straight out of (insert name of designated bogeyman)’s playbook’ is Propaganda 101. That corrupt maniac Putin or that corrupt idiot Trump and their ’playbooks’ are presented as such so you don’t have to think too much about what’s really going on. They’re the clowns running around the circus ring grabbing your attention as the real villains set up the next act while you’re distracted.

A bit like how that genius piece of Propaganda, ’Conspiracy Theorist’ shuts down critical thought. Or vaccine skeptic. Antisemite. Climate change denier.

The grift is nothing new, just more brazen. We’re hurtling toward a Great Reset (we were told, remember?) This is classic Capitalist extraction for the Great Reset era.

The full houses and dynamic pricing proved that there is a market. It’s just a market that won’t include many real fans. A Great Reset for the World Cup. Paul McDevitt rightly asks ”is the game still something worth saving?”

Not in the hands of these Globalist sociopaths. I’m afraid that horse has already bolted in this time of hyper capitalism. Johnny Matrix seems to think that football’s problems started with sportswashing. The groundwork was laid long before and now it’s here, so a bit late to mobilize and ensure it’s DOA.

Now, the hedge funds, multinationals, oligarchs and petro States are poised to carve up the filthy lucre generated by this scheme. The same scumbags who devised this shit are the same class who want to turn Gaza into prime beachfront real estate. The only thing DOA with the completion of that project will be the countless thousands of dead Palestinians. As regards football, this is the death knell of the World Cup as we have known it.

Nobody voted for Von der Leyen, either. Sixyardbox, Stockholm.

We’re lucky, you know. Lucky that this whole thing is coming out now, and not a year ago, or even two months ago. Because I think I speak for everyone when I say that no-one is surprised when FIFA are greedy, corrupt pricks.

Russia and Qatar showed that off pretty effectively (not that any of the previous few, back to Germany, were any less doused in corruption. It was just less obvious when the finals are in Germany or South Africa.) And the events themselves are more about putting money in FIFA’s pockets than any benefit to the host nations.

But despite all that, if the man who today is feeling greedy, Infantino, had pitched this plan two months ago, we’d have hated it. But the reaction would have been slightly muted compared to what we’re experiencing. Because, as I said, FIFA is greedy. Water is wet. Whatever. They want to make the maximum money, sure. Who cares.

Except we just had the ad-break world cup. The one with “quarters”. And it wasn’t cosmetic. Those breaks consistently changed the game. And fans hated them.

So when we hear that there’s private equity buying into FIFA, we don’t think “oh, they’re super greedy already”, we hear mid-game ad breaks. Sponsors on the goalposts. Whichever team orders the most gatorade in the week before gets an extra sub. Ludicrous suggestions, except we’ve just seen one. Had a world cup with one.

So thank you, Gianni. You f**king evil bald pr*ck. Andrew M, London. (PS. I’ve been seeing a lot of mailbox emails written by AI. Is it that important to get published that you need to do that? It’s hardly expressing your thoughts.)

Infantino needs a good Tasering. Robert, Birmingham. 

Better look Burns suit

Infantino is really on a roll, and all this infuriating of people seems quite familiar.

What will he try next? Stealing candy from a baby? Blocking out the Earth’s Sun?

Keep an eye on Marco Senesi… (or Wesley Sneijder) Chris, Stourbridge 

Hutch courage

Ed,

I know you’ve already got a whole article out of reporting Don Hutchison’s comments re: Matthias Jaissle but can we please agree that “1st thing you will see are his stupid tight suit. He will try and play football but in my opinion Newcastle best version of themselves is to be f***ing horrible to play against” is a slice of absolute PFM gold?

Tight suit?

Try to play football?

If the AI is defending for you, did you really win?

Permit me to make the case for something that I suspect will become increasingly unpopular over the next few years: artificial intelligence has no business deciding football matches real or virtual.

Before anyone reaches for the “old man shouting at clouds” label, hear me out.

I’ve been following the upcoming launch of EA FC 27. You know… the one with Kylian Mbappé and Jude Bellingham on the cover. As an aside, if you ever want a rough snapshot of who the wider football community considers the biggest stars in the game at a given time, just look at the cover of the latest FIFA (or EA FC) title. It’s usually a pretty reliable barometer.

Anyway, EA has been trumpeting a new gameplay feature called “AI Defending.” In fairness, that’s marketing doing what marketing does. The mechanic has existed in one form or another for years. EA have simply tweaked it, polished the edges, and given it a shiny new label.

And that is precisely the problem.

Football games have always walked a delicate line between simulation and player agency. We accept that AI controlled teammates need enough intelligence to hold a defensive line, make supporting runs and avoid looking like eleven mannequins wearing football boots. That’s not controversial. But there is a world of difference between AI supporting the player and AI replacing the player.

Every year we hear the same promise: “more realistic”, “more authentic”, “smarter football”. Yet, somehow, every year the player has a little less influence over what actually happens on the pitch. The defender you didn’t select suddenly produces the perfect interception. Another tracks a run with supernatural awareness. Or worse, the game decides that your manually positioned centre back should abandon his man because the algorithm has seen something you haven’t.

That’s no longer football. That’s delegation.

The greatest satisfaction in football games has never come from watching the computer rescue you. It comes from making the right read yourself. Timing the tackle. Cutting out the passing lane. Switching to the correct defender half a second before the through ball arrives. You earn those moments. When AI does them for you, the game may become more accessible, but it also becomes less rewarding.

Ironically, EA’s own gameplay deep dive suggests they are actually reducing automatic tackling and encouraging more manual defending this year, which is undoubtedly a step in the right direction.

But the wider trend in sports gaming still worries me. Every generation seems to ask the same question: “How can AI do more?” I think developers should be asking the opposite: “How can players matter more?”

Football is beautiful because of human error. The mistimed tackle. The defender caught ball watching. The striker who gambles on a run that nobody else sees. Those imperfections are what separate football from chess. If we continue outsourcing decision making to artificial intelligence, whether in games or, eventually, in the sport itself, we risk sanding off the very imperfections that make football compelling.

Perhaps I’m in the minority. Perhaps players genuinely want the game to defend for them while they concentrate on scoring wonder goals.

I want to win because I defended better than my opponent not because my PS5 did.