midds

Squad. You call having Shola Ameobi as your 2nd choice striker a f****** squad! Exactly. We target whoever we can get for less than they're worth. I hate it. It's no way to build any sort of effective footballing unit. Our balance sheet is going to be mint next year.

Leaving the ground after the 0-1 against Man U in '96. Some bloke piped up "That's cost us the league, that" and it hit me. Reality hit me like a fucking sledgehammer, fucking awful.

At some point the tattooist should have said "Had on pet, you don't need this many, you've made your point. I'm going to stop at 15."

Wasn't exactly from a corner like.

I that real?

Never mind.

Bet it took him ages to type that out.

His 3 games will apply to friendlies only iirc.

Remember who you're talking about. Aye, I know what you mean. The main reason I asked people's thoughts was because there were a few signs that we only did all of that business and forced transfers through in January because Ashley had seen the Reading game first-hand and realised the magnitude of the situation. Then came the talk from DL of the previous approach being "too rigid" when the dust had settled, etc. Also that I got the impression that it was Llambias who got a stonk-on for the financial hard-ball stuff as much as anything and that Ashley wouldn't have been involved directly in much that will have gone before (the day-to-day back and forth with other clubs, the Debuchy stuff, etc.) Cannonball Joe might be a totally different proposition, if he's not here just to sabotage everything of course. We're going to have to sign a player or two to mount our attack on the CL places you know? Perhaps losing heavily to Blackpool today will get this one over the line?

Shades of Debuchy last year... Will be interesting to see if the policy remains the same since the boardroom shuffle. You'd like to think they learned their lessons when we were forced to go back in for them in January to avoid being relegated. We need strikers, we're very close to agreeing a fee by most accounts, for the sake of an extra million I'd like to think he'd cough up and get him into the club. We'll see.

Shades of Debuchy last year...

Aye, there are some amounts of money that you would be daft to knock back. I admire Levy for digging his heels in and continuing to say 'no' but eventually there comes a point whereby you think 'fucking hell, we're never going to be able to sell him for more than this. Fuck it.' I'd say £82m is the very optimum that he'll ever be worth. He could break his leg next month and never truly recover from it. It's an insanely good offer and , whilst I can understand Spurs' need to keep him, it's simply too much money to knock back. Pragmatism will win out eventually imo.

Fast, powerful and often shows some good skills, but his touch can be inconsistent. Pretty good goal scorer though, a goal every 2.8 games over his career and over his last two seasons he's been a one in two striker (45 goals in 93 games). Sounds disconcertingly like Martins tbh.

Is there a page reference?

I simply can't believe them. They tell so many lies that that I've got no faith in them leaking stuff to local journos to pacify situations. They're inherently duplicitous and I always assume they're either lying or exaggerating things for their own benefit. It's my default setting and will be until they leave.

http://www.timburtoncollective.com/images/walken2.jpg

Whoops! suppose they were strapped at the time though.

Have Southampton got a sell-on clause on Bale?

Really glad it's been resolved but I'll wait until the window closes before celebrating too much. I just don't trust them a single bit.

17/2 ... get amongst it. Where? Everywhere basically http://www.oddschecker.com/football/english/premier-league/relegation You could get 12/1 last week. Just saying.

......and we're off.

Sponsors won't like this furore prior to the Wonga derby this weekend.

Who's Cisse marrying?