madras

I don't think many blame him for having enough of the setup/regime and wanting to leave, but refusing to play is out of order. bollocks. many can agree with him wanting to go but are p*ssed off with the way he's went about it. put in an official transfer request so you lose your 10% and still play your best while you have to.

olly bernard wanted to leave for west ham a few years back, he was forced into staying against his will (mind he didn't reportedly refuse to play) and went on to becoming a very good player for us with the crowd loving him as his attitude when he played was spot on. cabaye will get a few boos but most will wait to see how he plays before giving him stick/cutting him some slack.

I said nowt would happen till after Profilage.

be the first time in a while we've possibly overpaid for someone if the £8million tag is true.

Like pretty much most players, a consistent run in the team in a settled back four would tell us more than the stop/start nature of his time here thus far. Think there's a canny player in there, it'll just take time not just a settled back 4 but a settled team. centre halves work as much with those in front of them as those by their side.

I think when Pardew comes out with stuff like that it's generally to prepare the fans for the loss because he knows Ashley is happy to sell. Pardew doesn't benefit from losing the players & he got stung when Derek/Mike assured him they wouldn't sell Carroll and he was fairly sure he wouldn't go...100% in fact. I think this as well, but I can't really be bothered to make the argument any more. It just seems ridiculous to me that Pardew is saying the things he does to actively shop Cabaye around. It's silly. He's just answering the fact that he can't guarantee us anything about transfers. I'll repeat it again, there had been no stories about Cabaye for weeks and weeks. The stories started again when he started waffling on about it. you'd think it would be easier to tell his agent to put about that he's available at the right price than have pardew go on tv and say that if the right price comes in for any player then they could be away (like most players at most clubs)

aye, saudi family or somelike had it.

"nothing" is quite big in cosmological terms.

you'd think if it's widely reported that he refused to play and it wasn't true he'd be able to put the story straight vis his agent, representatives etc.

Profilage is on TF1 till 9 so i can't see him doing much till that's finished.

wonder if he'll come back for his court date ?

He'd be all over that s***. he'd probably do an Ivor Broadis and sell himself.

when you put on a big accy spread over a whole nights football and 2 mins into the first early game the team you bet on goes down to 10 men. fucking Markus Henriksen of AZ.

thats pretty much how I'd go. cisse for gouffran though.

I was going to go with an HTT post but yours was more recent.

Just checked, they do go into the Europa Group stages. really don't think it matters moneywise. Moneywise, nah i couldn't care less about that madras, just daft they get to the group stages of the Europa for losing. oh aye it's daft. i just thought you mentioned it as if it may have a bearing on the gomis deal/no need to sell etc. I don't mind teams losing in the playoff rounds of the CL going to the EL, there's a lot of small teams that get to that stage after winning several rounds and several minor league champions that'd get shafted out of Europe just because they are from small countries. It's not like in the group stages where a team that beats some minnow from pot 4 and loses to everybody else gets a free parachute to the EL (and a lot of times ends up winning it, hello Chelsea/Atlético/Porto) It's great for teams from leagues like Sweden, where you need to win two ties to get to the final qualifier of the CL, makes sense that you drop into the EL if you lose that game. I understand that bit but i'm more of a "too many teams in it". The Champions League is just mental now, i dont know why they bother with the Europa League. Just expand the Champions league and be done with it and have one competition. The fact that teams that finished 3rd in their Champions League groups then drop in the Europa makes it all the more stupid as it goes along. Old school thinking from me, Champions League where a team can finish 4th in their league but be the winners, isn't a Champions League. I'm a fossil tbf mind. That's a different issue though. Most of the teams that benefit from the "drop into the EL if you lose in CL quals" are champions or runners-up in small European leagues. I'm one that thinks that 4th placed teams should have no business in the CL, but then there's a larger issue of closing even more the access to the huge revenue than CL brings. UEFA should subsidize the EL with CL revenue, imho, that way it becomes a thriving ground for up and coming clubs, and makes the competition more desirable. it's designed to keep things as they are. best thing for football would be to get rid of the champions league and revert to the knockout style with no seeding (there may be a need for a preliminary round or two), if man utd get drawn against barcelona in the first round then so be it.

we pay whatever we've agreed to. we may be paying it all or just some.

Ooooh womblemaster must be gouing on holiday soon.

a kid icarus questionaire.

i'm kind of with you. in my mind we have an unabalanced side, remy and maybe one other should remedy that, then he has a decent,balanced squad so no excuses.

What utter s***. Bigi took that because it was best suited for a right footer. 5 yards to the right and no doubt Marveaux would have taken it. FFS. You seem offended? It was barely to the left, as i say Raylor wouldnt care where it was. Marveaux is our first teams set piece taker when he actually plays the majority of the time, he should have the confidence in himself from that range. Do you think Cabaye, Barton, Solano, Raylor etc would have let a younger lad have a punt because he did well in reserve games? I doubt it. marveaux is probabaly the set piece take for delivery when he plays but i'm not sure about shots at goal. fairly sure bigi has taken a few when the shots been on when in the europa etc. always been there or thereabouts aswell. closer than ben arfa normally gets.

not many keepers do these days with tactics designed around keeping them on the line.

i think the game over here is too intense for him. too quick, too hard. it's what mapou,debuchy and sissoko are coming to terms with and may not get there. cabaye adjusted very quickly, i think he's a one off for that.

unfortunatley he doesn't do the good stuff, which he is massively capable of, anywhere near enough.

tbf due to not getting players in the box the oppo can usually press high against us meaning the full back gets closed down quickly. That's why it's not a great tactic to sit so deep and use the long ball as an out. If we encouraged forward movement and passed the ball quicker in possession like the better teams I think we could do much better. Just think back to what Keegan did to the side we were struggling with under Allardyce. it's not a great tactic but i don't really think it's a deliberate ploy. it all stems from the lack of movement. movement gives options and that makes it easier to retain possession, watch anita when he plays in the middle, constant movement, even if not for the ball if it drags a defender away it creates space elsewhere for others. our problem being he is the only one with decent movement off the ball in a retension sense