Joan Laporta

[FCBarca]

There’s definitely a bitter bunch who cling to bias and would even shamelessly suggest Laporta has been lazy - so devoid of reason its little else than bitterness

Unfortunately objectivity is lost these days. You can argue Laporta is risky, you can argue he is too populist, or you can argue his board is impulsive—those are debates based on his actions. But "lazy" implies a lack of activity, and by any metric, Laporta’s second term has been one of the most hyperactive and transformative (for better or worse) periods in the club's history. We were cooked by the decimation of our club by cules like Bojan who supported Bartomeu & Rosell

Cules should be thanking Joan everyday before they sleep for rescuing the club from obscurity, now the only way is up and everyone but the bitter bunch can grasp that

 

[Birdy]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/2009895005880799274

5 years in a row,
he are hearing this phrase coming from his lying mouth AGAIN and AGAIN

5 years of lies, deceiving the fans, and empty promises.

5 years of this shitshow.

Enough is enough...

 

[serghei]

Getting back to the very top would mean to sell the club to some multi billionaire corp or Sheíkh. There is no other way around to compete with the PL anymore. You just can't, if you depend on the market and others get hundreds of millions to spend each window. No matter who leads the club, or what kind of innovative ideas one might have, if a club comes around the corner spending €500m in a window without a second thought.

And then there is all the debt to pay from Bartomeu, that set the club back financially by a decade. And you can't do this by stop spending and start saving either, because if you lose competitiveness, you lose income and then it's lights out anyways.

Of course we can compete with those clubs on a fraction of their spending. But what we're spending is low even for normal big club standards. Bayern for example bought Kane and Diaz for 180m no?

The big problem is not that we aren't owned by a Sheik, but that our previous president was a terrorist.

 

[serghei]

Looking at Bayern, Bayern are just a well run club. Fan owned by majority, similar to us. Their major signings since 2021 (5 year span), no signing under 15m.

2021/22
Upamecano 43m.

2022/23
De Ligt 67m.
Mane 32m.
Tel 20m.
Gravenberch 18m.

2023/24
Kane 95m.
Kim 50m.
Boey 30m.

2024/25
Olise 53m.
Palinha 51m.
Ito 23m.

2025/26
Diaz 70m.

You add all that and they spend on players in the last 5 years exactly 552 millions.

AND, they won CL in 2020. So this is what a responsible club spent on major player acquisitions over 5 years, from a CL winner position. Half a billion.

We spent less than half that (268 m), despite losing 8-2 to them. And this is why the work of everyone in the club over these 5 years has been exceptional.

So, forget comparing to teams spending 1bn on players in 5 years. We're not even comparable in terms of spending to a financially responsible club like Bayern.

As I said over and over again, what we achieved with management in the last 3-4 years is something that no other club could hope to do. Every other club in our situation would have been mediocre at best.

We don't need 1bn spending like EPL clubs. We have that crazy amount of funds, we probably wouldn't know what to do with it and would actually harm the club if you ask me. We just need to get back to a spending pattern similar to what Bayern do. 1-2 marquee signings every summer. Buying, selling, keep the net spend manageable. So when all that buying and selling is calculated, the balance doesn't end up hugely on the negative side. A net spend of 50-60m every summer is manageable in terms of transfer fee for a club owned partially or entirely by fans that brings in a big ass revenue every year.

The key to that is smart management. And you don't have to be a genius btw, just not utterly incompetent. Even if players you buy don't work (plenty of players signed by Bayern above are not at their club anymore, or didn't deliver much anyway), unless you sign absolute bums for insane fees and give them insane wages, nearly every player you find not suitable for your needs is immediately picked up by other clubs. You sign bums like Coutinho for 160m and you basically risk burning down the house.

The club did a great work, but the poisoned chalice of Bartomeu is measured in decades to fully purge from the system, not years. Some of us will be 50-60 years old and we will still find something in the club in 2040 or something, some deal that was made, some remnants in our books tied to Bartomeu's disasterjob.