I don’t feel the need to control the narrative, it’s just the lad doesn’t play for us and we have no interest in bringing him back to play for us? Hence I don’t think this thread needs to exist. There are plenty of other places to bash Gino and go around the forum. As for my feelings about the pozzos I saw your barbed comment at me in the other thread. If you actually look at any of my recent posts you will find that other the course of the season I have become disillusioned with the state of the club but also football in general. Like others I have been struggling with life outside of football and have been finding it very difficult to watch any games recently. The fact that you continue to make things personal on this board says more about you than me @Jumbolina . I’m not sure why you felt the need to describe me as a character on the other thread. I’ve been on this board for donkeys years now, but there are more and more unpleasant comments and I’m not so sure it’s good for my mental health to be on here at the current time. I expect I will be back at some point in the future, but I need to take a break for my own sanity. Happy new year to all. #bekind
Enjoy your break. A transfer where either we have been diddled or have messed up is clearly still of interest until resolved, in my opinion. I don’t think people should be asking for discussion to be suppressed without expecting strong responses. Anyway Happy New Year to you. Hope 2021 is better for you.
The matter as far as we are aware is still ongoing so I think people still want to discuss it at times. Closing this thread just means opening another one elsewhere under a 'Whats happening with the Pape Gueye situation?' which seems fairly pointless given a lot of it has already been discussed here. And it is still technically an issue regarding transfers etc. But more importantly, I hope you are not suffering badly with any issues away from the forum currently but feel free to reach out if you are. Totally understand the desire to step away. Take care.
I say keep the thread open. The club should surely be forced to say something about this eventually, even if it’s after some kind of legal action. They shouldn’t be able to trumpet a new signing only for him to go off and play for someone else and there be no further comment.
Agree with nearly all of what you say. It is pointlessly polarised on here now and like a bad parody of Question Time, a large proportion have a fixed view and use every post to uphold it, come what may. Too many keyboard warriors with an axe to grind. There are some on here (e.g. Burnsy) with whom I don't always see eye to eye but whose posts are interesting and well written and well balanced. There are others who just go flying in with a two-footed tackle at the first sign of any disagreement with their stated position and the board is poorer for it.
From the person who keyboard warriored away after the Norwich game when the original post match sentiment was all positive, kicked lumps out of Chumlax and then put him on ignore when he dared to point out your inconsistencies from one post to the next. Forum always delivers.
Perhaps inconsistencies, such as they were, are better than posting effectively the same opinion in every post ? Over and over again. For months now. As stated by Optimistic - too many unpleasant and personal posts on here and it is pretty much the usual suspects every time. I think a red / yellow card system may be helpful. Cue posts from....Let us all see if we can guess. And have a sweepstake on how many times the word "flounce" is used to describe anyone who differs from the narrative of the same suspects.
There's no need to stifle discussion (what does it matter if a thread stays open or not?), but there's also no need for every difference of opinion to lead to personal attacks. I've been guilty of it too but there's been so many threads ruined with direct or indirect sniping to other users. And it's not just the more positive posters like manat who are denigrated unfairly, Nath for example gets it pretty regularly. Decent discussion seems to happen less and less frequently now. Can't we all just get along?
Excellent idea. Let’s lock threads and give yellow and red cards. How many yellows/reds do I get for saying such offensive things as “soviet approach”, “controlling narrative” and “pozzo foot soldier”. After all Opti has deemed this so offensive he has been so upset as to leave the forum. Surely I need a 9 month ban for these anti Pozzo views?
Joking aside in the last 2 days we’ve had people using ignore and leaving forum for sabbaticals with not a swear word in sight. Surely some posters who are happy to dish it out need to just stop being babies. Yourself not included as you are quite happy to give me a verbal kicking
Excellent. One step closer to £3m compo we can spend on sacking head coaches and on Andre Gray's wages.
Glad we're standing up for ourselves and not accepting some low ball offer. Seems clear as day that the bloke signed a pre-contract, became aware of the Marseille interest and then decided to come up with any old excuse to renege on the contract so he could go to a bigger team. Hopefully they'll get banned from making transfers for a couple of windows and have to pay us some dosh.
Agreed. Absolutely nothing wrong with protecting your legal position, if you have been wronged. If a binding legal agreement was breached, and financial loss has resulted, it would be negligent not to pursue the loss. If there were some deficiencies in the paperwork that allowed this Gueye out, then that is a different story. Hopefully we have some sound legal advice on this.
Interesting that negotiations seem to have been going on for some time to arrive at a mutual agreement with Marseilles. Since it hasn't happened, they're either being bloody-minded about it or they think they have a watertight legal position.
I wonder what amount of compensation we’re looking for. Obviously the lad never played for us though he looked like a good prospect at the time. Has since had a bit of a breakthrough season and his value on Transfermarkt has increased significantly from £2.7m to £7.2m. I wonder if those valuation difficulties (combined with the fact that all French clubs are skint) are part of why no amicable arrangement was reached.
Hopefully Gueye reneged on his contract. Marseille end up in trouble and have to pay us a decent amount of compensation. Fingers crossed their safe is not empty. Or they can send Lopez our way.
Perhaps not - but given the way we have conducted business over the past 18 months or so, its really not beyond the realms of possibility that we cocked this signing up and Marseille, with lawyers etc mightier than ours, looked over the original deal and truly did see holes all over the place for them to exploit. I still find it hard to believe that a club the size of Marseille would just knowingly sign a player that they weren't sure they were allowed to.
Why would Marseille have ‘mightier’ lawyers than us? Their revenue last year (before our relegation and before French football’s financial implosion, when the ‘transfer’ took place) would have been similar to ours, I’d have thought.
Just to add. I think we almost certainly cocked this up. But probably not in the drafting of the contract. We should have made sure the player was happy and excited about the club and could imagine his life here - I think that was where we went wrong.