The Dempsey and Dembele to Spurs thread

Re: The Dempsey and Dembele watch thread

UUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

Ugly sells papers - hopefully there's a quick way out or a long road back. The pissing contest must end.

 

Re: The Dempsey and Dembele watch thread

The truth is the first casualty of any dispute.

Great song - I am surprised I never saw OMD live.

What shocks me is that McBride was his mentor. I would have thought being classy was better than being an idiot. This whole dispute is probably killing the Dempsey family and whining will not help matters. If he stays with FFC, he could be considered a god (oh, yeah, no one blames McBride for going home; the bar at Craven Cottage is even named after him!), but this manner of dealing with his desire to go to a bigger club just leaves a bad taste in fans' mouths. Just look at what happened with Saha. I bet there are only a handful who don't use the word "Judas" in discussing him.

 

Re: The Dempsey and Dembele watch thread

Still had a glimmer of hope that maybe Dempsey wouldnt leave but now it's getting ugly. Hope this can get settled soon and we can all just move on. With such an incredible career, I just hope it doesnt get any uglier.

I dont understand the fascination with Liverpool. 3-4 years ago maybe but now it just doesnt make sense. :icon-rolleyes:

 

Re: The Dempsey and Dembele watch thread

Me neither so I assume it was big money.

 

Re: The Dempsey and Dembele watch thread

Those were the days my friend

 

Re: The Dempsey and Dembele watch thread

Zamora forced a move out. AJ was let go. Murph pulled the plug on re-signing at the last minute before leaving. Etuhu asked to be let go. Now we find out Dempsey both refused to re-sign and is forcing a move. Hangeland has made public his reluctance to re-sign and, contrary to comments by the player, Dembele hasn't re-signed yet either.

Add to that, Hodgson left for Liverpool when his ultimate goal was to coach England and the safe way to that end was to stay at Fulham. Any halfway knowledgable football fan thought Hodgson would be booted within a year....and he was. Now he landed at West Brom, pulled them out of trouble and ultimately got the England gig, but did going to Liverpool help that? One year later, Mark Hughes bails like a fart in the wind after just one season.

Does that sound like everything is hunky-dory and the club are faultless to you? It doesn't to me. There's a problem either with Jol, MAF, the front office or all of the above that is at the root of this. I'm not trying to suggest Clint is 100% innocent in this. But something smells rotten and it's not emanating from Denmark.

I'm not alone in thinking this. I do think we can agree that Steve Nicol knows Clint quite well. Robbie Earle knows Clint a little. Here's what they have to say about it:

http://soccernet.espn.go.com/video/espnfc/video?id=intl:1136183&cc=5901

I still can't embed video....grrrr.

 

Re: The Dempsey and Dembele watch thread

I'm not crazy about making excuses for a player not honoring his contract, but Dempsey didnt make comments on twitter directly addressing this until Fulham released their video. Keep in mind that video was made by Fulham with Fulham asking the questions as if it was a reporter from the media. If I'm wrong about that let me know, but it's definitely the same person who is always asking the questions in Fulham's videos. That is a little misleading if you ask me. Most of the world will think that's a reporter asking the questions when I think it is a Fulham employee. They were all probably scripted questions with scripted answers that, if Dempsey is being truthful, dont tell the full story. And insure that Jol could be sufficiently vague where he needed to. If being in control of the questions wasnt a need then why didnt Jol let the media at large interview him, the media would have jumped at the chance to get the story. That's why Dempsey tweeted what he did; it was one side.

I still cant condone refusing to play, but I'm going to wait and see if more details come out. I can think of several scenarios that would make his behavior more understandable, if not tottally understandable. We all know how Al-Fayed can be. I wouldnt be shocked if Mo wasnt the one who said he was "a nobody from nowhere", given some of the things that come out of his mouth.

The buying out his own contract is interesting.

 

Re: The Dempsey and Dembele watch thread

You are right. I could say Fulham wasnt exactly taking the high road either with their "interview", but as you suggest it was done likely to bring in bidders - apparently what Dempsey wants. Can they get bids in a better way? Probably but I dont really know.

 

Re: The Dempsey and Dembele watch thread

That's a quick bit of backtracking. The club also refuse to confirm or deny the "fine" rumor.

Here's more backtracking....or an olive branch....or both.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/19298824

Fulham have a habit of saying there have been no bids quite often. When Arsenal were rumored to be in for Hangeland they said the same thing. I don't know exactly how the inner workings of these deals are done in England, but I rather doubt teams blindly submit bids. Instead I suspect they negotiate and then if you're close you might table a slightly lower bid in the hopes it's accepted or submit one for what you've agreed to in negotiation. To say there's been no "official" bid without saying how far any negotiations may have gone seems somewhat disingenuous and makes the player look bad. Then again the player may actually deserve to look bad.

The lack of consistancy on Fulham's end potentially hurts their credibility imo, but it could just as easily be an attempt to protect the player in hopes that there's a way back. I've heard and read so many different things at this point, who knows for sure. Hopefully cooler heads can prevail or we can move Dempsey in short order. Either way, like everyone I'll be glad when this is over as I'm a fan of the club and the player and want the best for both of them.

 

Re: The Dempsey and Dembele watch thread

Despite these developments, I'm sticking with my original prediction...there'll be brinksmanship on all sides, and he'll end up at the Emirates. Makes even more sense with their most recent departures.

 

Re: The Dempsey and Dembele watch thread

I wish I understood more or knew why dempsey is so unhappy. I know the Champions league excuse, but Liverpool certainly isn't the answer to that. As a US fan, I sure hope he gets the best deal available, but as a Fulham fan, I'm pretty disappointed in his actions and stance.

 

Re: The Dempsey and Dembele watch thread

Watching football this morning I was struck with a black helicopter, tin foil hat thought. Fox is advertising "Liverpool: You'll Never Walk Alone" with "unprecedented access" blah blah blah. I wonder if it's at all possible that someone over at Anfield thought, let's gin up some controversy with us, Fulham & America's most popular player so folks will tune in in the hopes of seeing what happened. Kinda like the suspicions surrounding Miami giving Chad Johnson/Ochocino a tryout while signed up for Hard Knocks.

I'm not suggesting this has any more than a .05% chance of being likely, but it did cross my mind and it's refreshing to have some fun with this whole saga for a change.

 

Re: The Dempsey and Dembele watch thread

well as a minimum I bet they figured having Dempsey on the team would help the programs viewership. Annoying that in the ad it says, "the world's most prestigious football club". Really? I certainly wont watch one millisecond of the program.

On Fox's Goals on Sunday, Wynalda, McBride, and the English dude all defended Dempsey as a true professional with a great attitude. McBride was just with Demps last week and said he knows for a fact that Dempsey has cherished his time with Fulham and his relationship with their fans. He said this has been going on for a month, kind of implying that is was wrong for the club to make it sound as if something new just happened on Friday. Also implying that a month of course is way too long for this situation to have existed. Or at least that is how I interpreted it. Wynalda talked about Jol's olive branch as sort of proof that some of what the club has done was not totally in the right. While they didnt clear Dempsey of all blame, they clearly clearly were coming out in support of him. Since I trust McBride 100% and he was just with him a few days ago, I'm not going to let this lower my opinion of Demps (other than the Liverpoos part). It may or may not lower my opinion of FFC, but probably not. Just an unfortunate family argument break up likely mostly due to Mo.