simonsays

You can only do that if the players club wants to sell and the player wants to come laughable No, common sense. Ah yes, common sense. Like checking to see if your only target has any interest in coming to the club before selling the man you want him to replace.

He left a club that would have given him champions league football to come to us. It's money that really matters these days. Although obviously a club that has a chance of winning trophies helps too.

he's shown some good touches, has been direct, has put some very decent crosses in and has one some corners. Impressive so far.

Not sure if already posted but the Guardian have a story up saying that Man Utd are 'considering' a bid for Cabaye. No quotes or owt.

He'll be given time but they will only be delaying the inevitable. He'll never reach the heights they want to be at with him in charge. Even with the right signings, he'll not get them back to the top imo. Would Pardew? Genuinely interested. No

He's going to get a new contract isn't he.

Don't forget James McLean.

It isn't really anything to do with rating him or not though, is it. It's all down to nothing he says about player recruitment meaning anything. He can say all he likes about needing player x or y but you just know that at the end of the transfer window if we have got no one in he will pronounce himself happy with what he's got. By the way, I am aware tgat this has all been said before and probably constitutes a pointelss repetitive post, but your eternal optimism seems to demand it.

I have always been really impressed by Matt Phillips at Blackpool.

How does Huddlestone fit into DiCanio's desire to have super fit players? He always looks like he is about 2 or 3 stone overweight.

at least now he knows how we feel.

GTFI!

Dyer, you prick

away at Oldham 1991 on their plastic pitch. Finished 1-1.

His problem seems to be he never angles his run, and because he generally starts his run on the shoulder/already beyond the last man he is getting caught offside an awful lot. To say that he is only offside because people aren't passing to him quick enough is nonsense imo.

bbc highlights are woeful - you get absolutely no sense of what the match was like

Gary Birtles. Who the fuck is he anyway?

Someone sent in a book proposal on sporting statistics to the publisher where I work - in it was a stat that only 2.5% of corners (put directly into the box) taken in the premier league resulted in goals and that staistically teams would be much better off taking the corner short and keeping possession.

how long has this tit got left on his contract?

Fair enough, perhaps saying we murdered them was an exaggeration, but we were comfortably the best team against a side who finished 2nd in the league.

Everyone on here is arguing that we play our best football in a 4-3-3, yet I seem to remember us murdering Man Utd playing a 4-4-2 with a target man (Shola) alongside a goal scoring striker (Ba). I think Andy Carroll could work really well alongside either Ba or Cisse. I'm not saying he should necessarily be first choice but I think he would be a really good option depending on the opposition, and given the option I would rather buy a striker who offers something different to what we currently have rather than going for an attacjking utility player who can play anywhere across a front three.

Have the commentators noticed that we have changed formation yet?

As long as we buy a fullback, a centreback and some more cover in midfield I'm not really bothered if we pay 10m or 15m for him. A lot of peoe on here are saying that our style has moved on since we sold Carroll but I saw an awful lot of direct long ball stuff from us last season, it was largely unsuccessful though as we didn't have a decent target to hit - Carroll would give us that option. I agree we should be looking to play more passing football and Cisse and Ba would be my first choice pairing but we have to allow for playing different tactics against different teams and in different situations.

Can Reading afford to offer him more than the 25k a week he (allegedly) turned down from us?

I thought it was only 25% of any profit they made on him? So 25% of anything over £35million, which is effectively nothing because no-one will ever pay anything like that for him.