THE WOLF'S DEN - Tana dei Lupi I

[maro]

[Jamoldo]

[RomaShield27]

No wonder he has over 4,000 posts...

The are saying we could be on the lookout for a new keeper for next season, as it says we may consider selling Doni should we fail to qualify for the CL. Who? Cagliari's Marchetti (who is also wanted by Milan).

Injury update: http://romanews.eu/news.asp?newsID=11645&pag=2

Interesting 'Roma Serie A Story': http://www.footballitaliano.co.uk/article.aspx?id=245

Hey, did anyone realise Loria scored a cracker of an overhead-kick when he was at Atalanta? I didn't know he was capable of such things. Perhaps we should consider playing him in Baptista's position and using The Beast as our backup centre-half:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4NEcM5oIjk

[Pauly W. Nuts]

[maro]

[ASR1927]

[maro]

[romawi]

[ASR1927]

[maro]

[stefano]

[maro]

[p_maldini_3]

[Pauly W. Nuts]

[Pauly W. Nuts]

[Carlo Romano]

Just...thinking out loud with this one, guys!

Counting the cost of missing out on the CL is becoming a discussed topic amongst Romanisti and others in many corners elsewhere. It hurts so damned much to face the fact that the CL is slipping from us and only by way of a sustained run of winning and injury free performances now (can we be so lucky?) are we going to get ahead of Genoa. Not forgetting of course La Viola who still have a say in the matter.

Though I was quite fond of Rudi Völler's Uefa Cup standard Roma of the early 1990's, it must be remembered if we go down that road now, recovery is much harder to achieve as things currently stand with the mega rich clubs beginning to turn the later stages of the Champions League into the private property of a small exclusive group. In any case, we've been accustomed to so much better since the playing days of il bombardiere tedesco...

As we know, our annual player buying budget amounts to around £20 mil, much the same as one of the smaller EPL clubs and it's a standard we should in fact be above for status reasons alone, to say nothing of the fact it handicaps us and leaves very little margin for error in our buying choices. Though we've become used to Roma's bargain basement buying over the years, living so to speak, on a shoestring, reading around the net from other chat forums and publications it seems the cost this time of losing out on the Champions League is going to leave us arguably worse off in the long term. General consensus of opinion sees the possible sale of Doni, Aquilani, Mexes, and even De Rossi (as a last resort I hope) just to make ends meet and compensate for the loss of CL revenue. Should this come about, we are once again left reaching for the prayer mat, hoping we replace them as prudently as possible and that our primavere can step up!

Someone please correct me if I'm wrong...while this is happening, our presidente, la principessa Rosella seems to be giving much thought to two other projects.

The first, though in its way understandable as it involves her late father, is the football museum and monument so to speak in honour of the old man. As this purportedly involves the use of her own money and not the club's, we therefore have no say in the matter. The second decision is to buy our own stadium and stop co-leasing with i Laziali from the city council. Both these projects are reportedly approved of in no small way by our Capitan' Francesco.

I'm not sure I'd approve of either even if we were in a lucrative financial position, though as I say, I can understand the museum.

Oughtn't strengthening our squad take priority over all else at the moment? My loyalty to Roma is absolute and where I may have once been sympathetic to a family run business it appears le signore di Sensi can no longer compete at the required level! The team comes first!

If there is truth in the non payment story then we are back where we were last year and we no longer need a princess but, as I dryly remarked before, a fairy godmother with a fat wallet!

[stefano]

Carlo, I think the the new stadium proposal is conceived as why to increase profitiblity rather than simply move out of our current, shared digs. It would make sense that the museum could be included as part of the new stadium complex, both to help fill seats on gameday and attract fans on non-gamedays to help further generate revenue. My udnerstanding that is that a new stadium complex will provide a massive boost to the club overtime. Can current ownership pull it off at this time? I don't know, but I doubt it. Does anyoen have any credible information regarding the club's and the Sensi family's current financial health? What will it actually mean if we fail to make the CL? Where is Giova? We need some answers.

[Jamoldo]

The question is how the club would take on such a project. Long term ideas are great but one must survive the short term first. And given that our beloved club had to renegotiate covenents in its loans (and god knows what kind of backroom dealings) while the global economy was good, it would be interesting to see how the debts have been negotiated these last few sessions and what covenants have been put in place.

Not having paid our players in the last few months? It would not surprise me one bit.

[RomaShield27]

We haven't payed our players the last few months...? Eh thats not good. There go my dreams of signing Ribery and Eto in the summer.

[maro]

I have an important question for you gentlemen - when Brighi gets back to help Riise double-up defensively against the opposition's right-winger, is the technical term for that "ginger-aid"? It's a question that's been worrying me all morning.