TRon

Spurs sold their best players and used the money to rebuild their whole squad. With £35m in the bank after selling Carrol,l Ashley can either do the same or prove all the critics right. I'll wait to see what happens in the summer before picking up a pitchfork.

Don't know what's wrong with what he said there like. I agree with him tbh.

The fact that they know they are considered wank and still can't rise to the occasion just confirms their wankness tbh.

Not a bad read. If we win today Pards should give Ranger a couple of starts and see if he can grab a goal.

Kuqi is shite, he just runs around bouncing off defenders. Would have preferred another start for Nile personally.

Same here. He's not quick which isn't ideal for a wide man but his delivery is excellent. He will give the strikers quality service. I know we've got Barton on the right at the moment but it's Larsson's natural position.

I think Shola might score today. He might have read that Pardew was considering changing the front line so the dozy bugger will probably wake up for his customary 1 in 5 good performances.

A player who Hughton already knew about and rated from his scouting trips long before Carr had joined the club. A player who was offered around to numerous premiership club by his agent. carr's just doing his job of being a scout, same as previous scouts have for us, and every other club, for plenty of years. personally i hope carr and pardew have the full backing of Ashley to spend all the carroll money, but the money should go on the specific players they've identified for the side, rather than buying based on other factors. unfortunately i can see us still going for opportunity signings - where players are out of contract, or can invoke the webster ruling, or have fallen out with managers, or are damaged goods either physically or mentally, or just fall into our laps. Exactly. The right leadership would see us buying the players we need to improve. The wrong leadership would see us buying whichever player is available for less than usual because of a contract loophole - which is the way we have operated for quite some time now.

Shola doesn't do very much running though, he can't. I was talking about not looking like scoring rather than running when comparing to Shola. Nile's a handful but with genuine strikers they are always making good runs into goal scoring positions. Shola doesn't and I'm not convinced Ranger does it either. Want to call yourself a striker then you should make the keeper do some work.

I'd go for Ranger up front with Loven. Let Shola come off the bench, a kick up the arse usually gets him going.

Mike Ashley doesn't decide the transfer targets though, that's Pardew. Pardew has worked with Cole before, and rates him. That's where this comes from. Doesn't really matter. It says everything about where we are going if we sign Cole.

No matter how much running about Nile does, he doesn't really look like scoring. In contrast, Leon best doesn't do as much running but you always fancy he'll have a couple of decent efforts on goal. Ranger needs to decide if he wants to be a Best or a Shola. So far it's looking more like the latter.

Fair enough if he's been signed because he's a player who we'd want rather than a player who was available due to coming to the end of his contract. Would we have looked at him twice if his contract wasn't due for renewal at Everton? We'll never know why he was signed but I'd rather have Gosling in the squad than Smith. Gosling has something to offer, Smith doesn't . None of them have anything to offer other than to pick up wages for the last 12 months. Even if they were fit there has to be a question mark as to whether they are any good to be honest. I mean who the fuck is Dan Gosling in the greater scheme of things?

Don't worry we've got Shefqi ready and waiting.

Fair enough if he's been signed because he's a player who we'd want rather than a player who was available due to coming to the end of his contract. Would we have looked at him twice if his contract wasn't due for renewal at Everton?

It only works if you have a top class forward or two. Really the wide men should be chipping in with a few as well.

I don't think it's an ideal combination in a 4-4-2, where you really want one of the CMs to get forward into the penalty area. Barton is more of a playmaker. I don't think Barton lacks flair, it's just that he tends to set up chances rather than get on the end of them. We had this situation with Parker and Emre, where they ended up playing side by side a lot of the time. One of Barton's best games this season imo was away to Everton alongside Tiote. Frequently drifted into an attacking midfield position and looked a real threat because he was able to "play football" with Ben Arfa. At the same time, the goal against Villa early on in the season is an example of what Barton can do in terms of his ranged shooting, something we do lack. Personally think a Tiote Barton partnership could be an excellent one, and it would differ completely to the Emre-Parker experiment primarily because we'd not have the problem with roles that those two had. Emre-Parker was a confused partnership because Roeder tried to turn Parker into a box-to-box midfielder whilst having Emre holding, which was a waste of their respective talents. With this it's very simple - Tiote is the defensive midfielder, Barton is the attacking one. The main problem with Barton though is that he's such a hit-and-miss player. If he's finding the opposition with every other pass (as sometimes happens) and generally being slow/sloppy/unfocused, then we'll have no creativity down the middle. However, two good strikers, Ben Arfa down the left, and a good right winger, and I think we'd see far more from Barton than we have so far. This season he's played a good number of quality through balls and long ranged passes, most of which have been wasted by the likes of Shola and Lovenkrands, so if we could bring in strikers like Gervinho/Gameiro/etc, decent footballers with a bit of pace, it could make a big difference to how effective Barton is as a CM. The unreliability might be the dealbreaker though. Hence why I would definitely be glad to see us bring in another CM with some creativity. Ideally two, with Smith being moved on and a backup DM for Tiote coming. I'd like to see Barton moved more into the centre, because like you say on form he has a good range of passes and thinks creatively. The more involved he is, the better, and at the moment he often ends up drifting inside from the wing in order to get involved, which can create problems. The problem with him playing centrally in a 4-4-2 is he's not quick or athletic enough to be the ideal attacking midfield player in that formation. If we were in a 4-3-3 / 4-5-1, it would be a lot better. Cos he's got the space out wide to do it, whereas he wouldn't in the middle. People keep saying that but Barton made his name as a central midfielder and it's not like he's over the hill to explain why the deterioration should be permanent. If he can no longer handle the pace in central midfield then you can understand why there's a reluctance to give him too long a contract.

Creativity would be nice in the middle, when we've had it in the past in Gascoigne it can transform an ordinary team into a good one. But those sort of players are like gold dust so I would agree that just to get a decent player with a good engine and some mobility and an eye for goal will do just fine.

Not really sure where the England talk has come from tbh. He'd need to improve his distribution a hell of a lot to be international standard.

The choice of striker we bring in will say a lot about our ambition or lack of. If after banking £35m we are still looking at strikers like Long and Puncheon to replace Carroll then premier survival is the name of the game for now and as long as Ashley owns the club. Doesn't mean that's how it will pan out though....Pardew has been making noises about a top quality striker being his no 1 priority. Now let's see that backed up with action.

Can't really argue with that. Defensively he can do a job but is light years behind the likes of Enrique, and his crossing is fairly haphazard. At least he's fit and mobile though, and he seems to have a good attitude.

I predicted Liverpool would be lucky, and so did most others who compared our shite strikers to their world class ones. We must all just have been lucky with our predictions. I predict Chelsea will be lucky against us as well, they will probably luckily score at least 3 flukey goals.

Around September if we haven't spent the money on quality additions to the squad.

Shola is ok to fill in for a couple of games, but you are never going to get him scoring goals over a stretch longer than that. Look at Best in contrast...whatever anyone says about his overall game he looks like he will get in the box and get goals.

You can pick holes if that makes you happy but there WILL be top clubs in for him this summer. Why? because he's a top player. End of.