TRon

Ryan Taylor and Perch? What you on about man? So Taylor was bought when we still technically in the Premier (on the way down). Perch was signed after we won promotion, my bad. We first tried to buy him while we were in the Championship. Regardless, they weren't quality signings that's the point.

Part of the problem is we bought too many players suited to the championship when we were down there such as Perch, Ryan Taylor, Best etc. I said at the time we should be buying players who won't look out of place in the premier but I suppose our finances at the time restricted us. Now we are having to try and shift these players before we can allocate those wages to better players by the looks of it.

They had known for months they were going to sack him and Alan Pardew is the best they could come up with? Bollocks. His apppintment, and the reasons for it, are obvious. They might have spent more and appointed Jol and still got worse results. Do you really think Jol would want to work for those two? Or any self respecting manager? There's a few good reasons no other cunt was in for the job. My point was he's done okay results wise, there's no guarantee a big name would necessarily have done better. My point was a big name was never in the frame. They could have been offered Wenger, Ferguson and Mourinho and it wouldn't have mattered. They wanted a yes man. As long as the yes man produces results on the pitch I'm not arsed. Ashley is tight with his money but I read an interview with Beardsley in today's chronicle where he was over the moon the reserves were being allowed to go on tour in Holland. Great gesture IMO, at least Ashley's been prepared to spend some money on the younger players.

There's nothing wrong with holding cash back for later use btw, as long as we've built a strong enough squad ready to go for this season. In my view we are still short of a left back and a striker minimum. The thinking seems to be that these are players we will look to bring in so if that happens I will be fairly happy with the work done this summer, provided they are of sufficient quality. If it doesn't happen for whatever reason/excuse I'll be fucking angry.

Was Downing in the last year of his contract? If he wasn't then it's a totally different situation. No, Downing had two years left. Whelan's ace at this, wringing every last penny out of a deal, but if he's going to arse around till the last day of the window, then we need to move on elsewhere. I think he should consider himself lucky if he gets £7-8m for Zog in the last year of his contract. He'll capitulate as it gets nearer the close of the window but it would serve him right if the deal fell through and Zog walked for free next season.

Brazil aren't a patch on the teams that used to turn out in their colours. They are more athletic and have plenty of eye catching skills but collectively they lack football intelligence. They get into great positions and make bad choices, either over-dribbling like the Argies aor poor final product. That said they would have won against Paraguay if the ref hadn't been piss poor. He allowed Paraguay to wreck the fluency of the game with their niggling fouls all night.

I doubt we will get the striker Pardew was talking about either. There's still plenty of time but I expected either Erdinc or Long to be close to signing by now but both deals seem to have died a death, and the noises the club are now making about only the right player being signed leads me to believe they'll stick with Best. That's just my own unfounded speculation BTW, before anyone jumps in with "there's still a month to go!"

They had known for months they were going to sack him and Alan Pardew is the best they could come up with? Bollocks. His apppintment, and the reasons for it, are obvious. They might have spent more and appointed Jol and still got worse results. Do you really think Jol would want to work for those two? Or any self respecting manager? There's a few good reasons no other cunt was in for the job. My point was he's done okay results wise, there's no guarantee a big name would necessarily have done better.

Gosling looked fairly chunky before to me, although it appeared to be more fat, whereas now it looks like muscle.

They had known for months they were going to sack him and Alan Pardew is the best they could come up with? Bollocks. His apppintment, and the reasons for it, are obvious. They might have spent more and appointed Jol and still got worse results.

Was Downing in the last year of his contract? If he wasn't then it's a totally different situation.

Would Capdevila be ready to handle English football straight away?

We must keep Tiote at all costs. Sturridge can piss off if it meant The Terminator going the opposite way. This. Sturridge is a good striker but Tiote is one of a kind. We haven't had a genuine world class midfielder for years and the difference when he was on the pitch last year was immeasurable.

Wish I shared your optimism that we wouldn't sell Tiote if Chelsea decided they wanted him. A deal for Sturridge when he was out of our price range until now sounds fishy to me. If we want to sell him then we'll sell him, regardless of Sturridge or not. We don't always have to go all doom monger you know. We're not going to sell everybody. Good luck with that argument Jonny, it never works for me. It's just a pointless argument in this situation. If we sign Sturridge, we could sell Tiote. Well it's the same if we buy Erdnic, or Long, or N'Zogbia, or Wayne Bridge, or Dave Nugent. Let's just sign nobody then there's a chance we won't sell Tiote. But I'm not making any argument, I'm just pointing out that it sounds fishy to me as we had dismissed the Sturridge links previously and Essien has now got injured. That might just be me getting paranoid so don't fret you can view the situation entirely differently, that's fine as well. I hope you're right.

On a separate note I wonder how much the agent's fee is? It must be a fair wedge to have put us off going for our preferred target bearing in mind our public announcement that a lot of the Carroll money had gone on player signing and agents fees.

Or that we haven't got any back-up plan Of course we have. It's called Leon Best.

Wish I shared your optimism that we wouldn't sell Tiote if Chelsea decided they wanted him. A deal for Sturridge when he was out of our price range until now sounds fishy to me.

He'd be exactly the type of forward we were looking at, pacy and a good eye for goal.

In a nutshell yes.

Talk of Sturridge coming here doesn't do much for me. I'd be worried Tiote might end up going to Chelsea as part of the deal. I know Villa Boas has said they are interested in Parker on loan but it's reported that not all the Chelsea staff rate him.

Hit the nail on the head Sewelly and im being made out to be negative and getting digs in whenever i can according to others on here ,i will critise when i believe it is warranted and at this moment in time the soundbites from the club are not very positive with all this £35 million being eaten up in fees and s*** . and there is the problem, the perception that it's all gone when even the word from the club is that we still want to bring players in. Have to say I'm not convinced that we do want to bring more players in other than those we are forced to by departures. I can well see us deciding to stick with Best rather than bring in another striker for example.

Argentina have some fantastic attacking players but the balance is wrong. Too much over elaboration and over dribbling the ball.

Would you have preferred him to borroewrd against the club?

By all means chuck abuse at him if you feel it's the way to go, it's a free world. I just don't see why anyone who does that then thinks moaning about no big signings is consistent. It's effectively saying "spend some of your money and buy some players you cockney cunts" Now if I was a cockney cunt I might well think "well fahck you you norvern baarstards I'll start charging interest on the loan" Far as I recall people were very happy when Ashley and his lot first took over the club. People aren't just chucking abuse at Llambias for the laugh like, they're doing it because he represents a regime that has come in and basically pissed on the fans and the club for the last couple of years. But yeah, maybe had the fans been nice to him yesterday then they'd have changed their outlook entirely and started to really try and take us places. How would you feel if the cockney cunts started charging interest on their loan? Only to be expected of the grasping twats surely?

They were playing that way anyhow. Doubt it will make much difference other than Uruguay will have less numbers to counter attack.