Felix on Roberts

[cmg]

Magath may well deserve criticism. He should certainly not be immune from it.

But to manipulate each and every incident into a stick to beat him with can only serve to undermine any valid criticism.

Some former players praise the club? This is meant to show how poorly regarded the present management is. Ridiculous.

I'd be quite happy if managers did not communicate with the press. Most have them have nothing to say but platitudes, clichés and disinformation. They are, however, because of the TV money, contractually obliged to meet the media.
Personally, I rather like Magath's approach to this task - he doesn't suffer fools gladly and he certainly doesn't suck up to them.

His comments on Roberts are sensible and factual without really saying anything that wasn't known and understood before. The bottom line is that a big enough cheque will always be sufficient to secure the services of a player who is willing to go. This was the case with Leeds/Fulham/however many million/McCormack and would be the case with Fulham/Barcelona/many, many millions/Roberts. This is the way the world of football operates not only for us but for virtually all other clubs.

[Frank]

In Germany Felix is known for spending lots of money for new players. The whole time I was wondering why he is so economical with the money at Fulham.
The other thing what I didn't understand was why he critizised Mr Fayed for selling the best players. Mr. Fayed is past and to critize him should not be his business.
When I read this thread I began to understand why. He is afraid that Mr. Khan sells the bests of our young talents for big money at the end of this season when they have developed into really good players. And it is not only Roberts the other clubs will want. Hyndman, David, Burn, ... will also be on their list.

[hovewhite]

Big clubs have always picked up talent from smaller clubs like fulham that's life get use to it,and supporters always blame managers.The managers carry on dong there jobs full stop.
I can BELIEVE fans of our club are thick enough to see a person doing the job the best they can as incompetent it seems to me all clubs have these so called supporters.GET REAL!

[jmh]

The other thing what I didn't understand was why he critizised Mr Fayed for selling the best players. Mr. Fayed is past and to critize him should not be his business.

I think this is imprecise.  The criticism from Magath (and others, including many posters here, I should note) is not about the selling of players (especially Dembele and Dempsey).  The criticism is about failing to re-invest the revenue from those sales into good enough and young enough players to enable the club to continue to play at a high level, and, instead, relying on a series of cheaper (in terms of transfer fees, if not necessarily salary), older players like Berbatov, Karagounis, Diarra, Riise, etc.