Falastur

Agreed. It's the same in MLS. MLS keeps making sudden, unnecessary rule changes trying to tweak situations to help certain clubs - usually in the name of supporting lesser teams in order to prevent bigger clubs from getting too powerful, though they have been accused of being in the pockets of the big-name brand.

You mean something like this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Jihai_Youth_Training_Football_Base

I find myself wondering why, if the season is so short and the players just go on sabbatical to state league clubs, we don't operate a state league club too? It could be used for youth development to fill the gaps left by the players who will inevitably prefer to go off to play in the US or somesuch, while those who stay would benefit from playing together with teammates all year round, with the ensuing smoothness of play that it generates between players.

Well...it took a while for them to listen about this one :/

Admittedly it's horribly cartoony, but it's a direct result of demands by the fans to go back to using the 1970s badge. Obviously they had to make changes, of course, because what club ownership would be able to resist the urge to tinker with something that doesn't need tinkering with, but it is at least far more popular than the old badge, which was widely viewed by the fans as a travesty of a design.

Whoever came up with the idea of giving it a different coloured sleeve from the body deserves to be shot. Also, what is up with that shade of light blue? It's far too dark - it's almost a grey sky blue rather than proper sky blue.

Nike's kits are always underwhelming - that is, if they aren't downright awful.

I know you're joking, but on a more serious note, we don't really know what kind of experience the guy is supposed to have, either. Could be someone who has played in the league, or worked as a coach there.

The reason they booed him is his perceived commitment to the job. First he stays in Manchester when NYCFC need him, then he spends all of his time injured uploading dozens of photos of his sightseeing trips while not mentioning any recovery training, and finally he agrees to take a job in the middle of the MLS season to commentate on Euro 2016. CFG refusing to comment on his injuries is just the icing on the cake - there are plenty of other NYCFC players who are out for goodness knows how long because of lack of communication from CFG but only Frank gets booed. Personally I believe there are rational explanations for it all (the BBC have announced that he won't be leaving NYC for his commentating role, for example, so there's nothing to suggest it will prevent him from playing) but many of the fans have simply had enough and never want to see him again.

There are a lot of Adama Traores around. I suspect jeffplz was talking about the 20 year old Spaniard who just got relegated with Villa. Edit: Just saw how much they bought him for. No wonder they're in trouble. They'll want to make back some of his original fee, even though he barely played and his value will have plummeted. Maybe not that one then.

Presumably something a little less Adidas-three-stripes from Nike, though?

The results are in: http://bbc.co.uk/sport/live/35944880

In fairness, the east in MLS is just far worse than the west. NYCFC may be top of the eastern conference, but they're 8th overall.

Nah. I know that sometimes you get Chinese Whispers, but I don't think you would ever get a story of trying to hire a new manager turning into some story about bringing in a foreign assistant manager in order to back up the incumbent. If that arrangement was common in the sport it could happen, but it's not something teams usually need - not in this way, anyway - so I just don't see why people would misinterpret in this way, especially as it's usually pretty obvious from the person you are targeting whether they are going to be a manager or an assistant. It's a weird thing to do, but I genuinely do think that CFG want to bring in an assistant.

It's more erratic than that. You're right that you only play teams from the opposite conference once each, but it's entirely random whether you play teams from your own conference twice or even three times.

Even in China? They pretty much pay players for their names, not their performances, anyway...

Not that I'm trying to knock the A-League or Australia but that's a very pointed ambition isn't it? It's one thing (and entirely understandable) if he's been approached by a club or clubs, but if he hasn't then it's a very specific focus to want to go to the A-League. This is a player who has not played in either the US or China, which are generally the two countries you associate for players looking for a payday, so he's hardly exhausted his opportunities in those countries, where he must surely be able to earn far more than here. Alternatively, if he wants to play at the highest level he can then - again, no offence - you suspect height do better by staying in Turkey, perhaps. Not saying I don't believe it can be true, but if it is then you have to believe that there's something more to it.

Yeah. I wondered if it might be Kidd when I thought it was just a signing to steady the ship, but the more the stories talk about him being groomed to replace, the more it's obvious that Kiddo is not the man we are talking about.

Barca supposedly want him too, but there have been a fair number of rumours to the effect that he's coming to Manchester.

Ermm...no? I think I'm missing something here. What parallels are we talking about?

I know what you're saying and I was going to suggest a luxury tax too - it's what a number of the American sports do, too. However the difficult thing is finding a level that works. If you take your suggested level of $1m to each team per every $1m spent I'm pretty sure that even CFG would be unwilling to commit. In the US, their system is $1m to the league as a whole for every $1m spent, but that feels like too little in this instance. It's hard to know what the correct amount is, but it's certainly a better system than the status quo. Because the fear is that Leicester may struggle to even get back in the top half next season, especially if some of their teammates do leave, which will have some of them looking over their own shoulders. Sure, they get the gold badge and get to play in the CL, but if by January they've been dumped out of European competition and are sliding downwards then will they judge their decision to have been sensible when they could have signed for Real Madrid or Dortmund or Arsenal. There's also the prestige of the clubs involved - they may be able to tell their grandkids that they won history's most unlikeliest championship but their grandkids are far more likely to be impressed that they once played for one of the world's evergreen clubs like Barca etc while in 50 years time Leicester will probably be back in the 3rd tier of English football. Also,a number of these players are getting on in years and will probably be aware that if their next season is not as prolific for them as this year has been then the offers from the big clubs will not arrive and may never come again. For many of these players, this is the one and only time that they will ever get an offer from a Grade A European club. I'm not saying that any of these things will definitely happen - I'm certainly not trying to demean Leicester after their accomplishment this season. But they might, and that will play on people's minds and may cause them to make a rushed decision and ignore calls for patience and for one more year, as Ranieri has requested.

Yeah, sorry. I wasn't trying to shut just you down. Just saying that, the way that the A-League has gone so far, if they tried implementing any sort of FFP I can only see it being so skewed towards the Adelaides and so on of the league in an effort to prevent them from getting reckless that it would actually cut into the regular spending of some teams rather than enabling it across the board. There's also that it would be an interesting decision, as UEFA themselves are pulling back on their own FFP right now.

Thing is, even allowing for exchange rates, if you were allowed $10m losses a season that would make it far more lenient than UEFA's own fair play. I'm sure that if they tried to implement a FFP in how A-League you'd end up with something far more constraining, like $1m a season max losses or some such.

If the rumours are true that they want someone who can take over to learn the club and be there to take over from jvs when he finally goes then it could be anyone. However, I don't recall any mention in the press stories of this purported assistant manager being there to take over afterwards - from what I recall (I guess I should probably have checked first) it was just that they wanted an assistant. If they're only hiring someone to come in to run the rule over the club and see what can be tightened up then I wonder if they might bring in Brian Kidd. I have a suspicion that Pep won't want to keep him on as the standard "PL-knowledge assistant" as he has served for Mancini and Pellegrini - it looks like he wants Arteta for that job instead. If Pep asks to move Kidd on then they either have to hand him a P45 or find him a new job.

I think you're right that CFG still has a lot to learn. For the record, though, CFG has only existed since just before Heart were bought. You're thinking of ADUG. The only person who has been at Manchester City since they were bought is the Chairman Khaldoon al-Mubarak, Mansour's right-hand man (and Soriano's boss) but he's very hands-off and leaves the decision-making to Soriano and co. Soriano has only been in Manchester since 2012. At this point, the main guys pulling the strings are still more used to running Barcelona than a series of smaller-budget clubs, and I think that the choices they make reflect their growing pains getting to grips with that fact. Note, for example, that during his time at Barcelona the only manager he ever saw replaced was Rijkaard, which was a more contentious issue and anyway was a move initiated by a President who Soriano ended up voting off the board less than 12 months later anyway. The guys running CFG know their football, but I think they definitely still have things to learn about running clubs which aren't Barcelona.