Martin Lol

Gilbert who can't get a game in the Championship for Cardiff? Rather than Hoyte who has performed well when needed in the Prem? Are you sure? Complete bollocks. Phil Bardsley is s**** as well btw. Championship player at best. Arsenal are not happy how Cardiff have treated Gilbert, though exactly what they've done I don't know. There was talk of trying to get him recalled. I know Gilbert is extremely highly rated. He is seen as a possible automatic starter sometime in the future whilst Hoyte isn't looked on any better than a squad player. Although with the competition there, even a squad place is a notable achievement.

Surely not 2 Man Utd players??? Giggs has been good but his reputation is a lot better than he is nowadays so I'll go along with your 3.

It won't be Spurs, not in the short term at least. It really depends on who buys up which clubs and what money they throw at getting things improved. Villa and Citeh could be contenders soon, Spurs, Newcastle and Everton could be some time in the future. But overall, I go with your last sentence I highlighted.................. I can't see the balance shifting in the near future.

I don't think WBA will sell Davies for less than £10m. They've already had bids up to £7.5m and still haven't sold him. If I was looking to buy a FB from the scum, I'd opt for Kerrea Gilbert, not Justin Hoyte.

Chelsea. Nailed on imo.

I think Arsenal will be the first to fall from grace, but far from confident about it. Henry is falling out of love with life in London, Wenger far from happy that Dein has been forced out, I could easily see both of those gone by this time next year and the decline would have started. Add in the fact that they also need CL football just to keep the books balanced due to the huge debt building the Al Jazeera. The doubts about their demise stem from Stan Kroenke. If he is successful in mounting a takeover (I personally think he will in time), Dein will return hanging onto his shirt tails and Wenger then stays, there are no more money worries and progress goes on as normal. So if it's not Arsenal, it'll be Man Utd when Fergie retires. But even then, Utd will still that aura around them that will enable them to attract the best managers in the world (or Mark Hughes or Roy Keane). So it's very difficult to visualise them falling by the wayside either. If I'm brutally honest, I find it near impossible to imagine the big 4 not dominating the league. Which by any stretch of the imagination is depressing.

A couple of days before Berbatov signed for Spurs there was a late bid from Man Utd to hijack the deal and that was widely reported in the media. He opted to make the move to Spurs with the ITV website saying: Now we all know that football is about money these days, but as Berbatov showed by turning down a move to Manchester United in the summer, it is also about quality of footballing life. Playing week-in and week-out is the only way a player is going to be able to prove himself to the team and to the fans, and that is what Berbatov has been allowed to do. It's correct to say Berbatov has said he would prefer for Man Utd ahead of Chelsea, but he then did go on to say that Chelsea's style of play wouldn't suit him at all. He has effectively said to Spurs that he wants to see further progression, so do we all. All the indications are that he is not seeking a move this summer and Spurs are under no pressure to sell him, he is under a long contract and Spurs are currently awash with money having declared a profit of £20m for the last 6 months in the interim accounts. Mansion and Puma have both said they would be disappointed to see any high profile sales and their sponsorship is worth £13.5m each year. Spurs wouldn't want to upset one of their main sources of income. In short, Spurs don't want to sell him, Berbatov is happy to stay and Spurs would upset fans and sponsors alike if they sold him. That's why I believe there is no prospect of him being sold no matter what bid is made for him.

Selling Martins would send out all the wrong signals, irrespective of whether it was good business or not.

No smoke without fire.................. Personally, I think there's too many obstacles with fee and salary for it ever to happen.

Totally agree. I saw Reading reserves when they played Spurs in February and it was comprehensive, Reading won 4-0 with a lot of familiar names: Federici; Halford, Sodje, Duberry, De la Cruz (Capt.); Seol, Gunnarsson, Oster, Convey; Kitson, Doyle. Spurs use their reserve team to develop/fast track youngsters and the only one to have had League experience (Phil Ifil) and he is hardly a regular! Having said that, it looked like men against boys, Reading were a very well prepared and well organised unit, you don't win a league (no matter which league it is) by being lucky. Agree what you say about Sidwell also. He will be a loss for you, but not an insurmountable one. Just raid the scum for one of their kids, the majority are very talented!

Learnt from the master at Man Utd, that's why I rate Coppell so highly. That's also why I think Keane will be equally successful.

I think those 2 lines highlights what is wrong with Newcastle's planning currently. Roeder has several targets and he's watching one game? It's too much of a job for just one man to line up prospective signings and prepare the first team squad for the upcoming matches, and Roeder doesn't have the staff who he can delegate the jobs to. In the last 16 days Comolli has been to 9 different countries, including Argentina, Brazil (twice), Spain, Portugal and Bulgaria as well as England and Scotland. Much is just checking on players first hand but there is a lot of optimism about signing a Brazilian and Levski Sofia's 18 year old striker Atanas Kurdov, who's scored over 30 goals this season, comes over in the next couple of weeks to look around and train with the first team squad for a week. Getting the setup right to recruit the right players in the window is more important than finding some players to sign without the right setup imo. You might sign a decent player but was there a better option out there for Newcastle? Without the right setup in place, Roeder will never know. I agree with you that you need DOF to handle this sort of tasks.I always though that Tottenham are going in the right direction when it comes to watching young talents,watching alot of promising players all over the world.So far Newcastle didnt do anything like this and i think its a big mistake because if we have someone famous as DOF who has alot of connections and knowldege about European football this will help enormously when it comes to signing young talents. I dont know about Comolli and i dont know what kind of job he is doing at Spurs?Maybe you will tell me.Did he sign anyone so far? About Atanas Kurdov im from Bulgaria and i know alot about our bulgarian talents and i must tell that i would be very surprised if you sign Kurdov.Why?Because i dont think he is anything special.He is pretty much overrated.He has enormous confidence and is pretty much because his father was famous football player and he things he is something special. When it comes to real talent i think Marian Ognyanov is one of the biggest talents in Bulgarian football.He is only18 years old and scored the only goal for Levski in the Champions league. Like i said i would be very surprised if you sign Kurdov Where did you hear that btw? Just to give an update, Kurdov has impressed in his trial and there is now more or less agreement for a deal to go through when the window opens. The 2nd Bulgarian kid never came over due to injury but I don't think it was Ognyanov as Comolli says he is aware of him, but didn't say he was the 2nd Bulgarian kid.

No, I said that because I read that thread too. The person who posted that originally was not at the training ground as far as I know, but a good friend of Micah Richards (Richards used to lodge with his family while he was in the academy). He gets loads of good info from him altho he has to be pretty hushed up about most of it because everyone knows what his HP is, but he posted that Barton's city career was over before this news broke... the rumours that he had done in Dabo came seperately which this poster then confirmed with that post. I believe it to be true, and I gather some of the papers this morning have ran with a similar story. Obviously the end of Barton at City, and probably knocked off half his value when we sell him in the summer. The daft c***. > You're probably right, but who honestly would want to buy him? Jol is a keen admirer of his footballing ability and has asked about getting him signed before, about the time of the £5.5m clause was first mentioned, but Levy and Comolli were dead against it. Jol has raised the subject again today with Levy (Comolli is in France), Levy's going to talk to DC but I don't reckon they will want to know again, even if the price was halved.

Ironical that Spurs have a range of "Never Red" clothing (for obvious reasons) then have the Thompson sponsorship followed by Mansion. But for £34m over 4 years, I'll suffer the Mansion logo. How we ever got that deal I will never know!

No offence taken! This season's shirt I detest, next season's I simply dislike. Can't see what the problem is with turning out a decent looking shirt. At least it seems as though there will be fresh faces to wear it next season. By all accounts we have a deal in place to sign Younès Kaboul from Auxerre for around £7.5m. Know nothing about him but for that money for a young CD I hope he's some good!

Does Roeder have his Uefa Pro badge yet? What qualifications does Pearson have? FFS ought to sack the pair of them just on the strength of that one image. What message does that send to the players? Pathetic!

It simply goes to show how much more important it is to be competing in the premiership rather than in Europe. Ipswich went down in the same season as competing in Europe and have never come back. Coppell knows he does't have the squad necessary to realistically compete in both competitions so he's prioritising. Can't blame him tbh. In fact, just another example why I hold him in high esteem, he looks at a situation, assesses it and comes up with a solution. Been doing that all season long. If I was given the choice of Coppell or Jol for Spurs, I would go with Coppell every time, more tactically astute. The comparison between Coppell and Roeder really isn't worth starting. Just before McLaren was appointed, I think it was Graham Taylor who said he wouldn't give the job to Scolari Curbishley etc, he would have gone with Coppell who he reckoned was probably the finest tactician outside the premiership. At the time I thought he was mad to be talking about Coppell for England, but having seen him this season, I'm not so sure.

As does Levy. None of them have got the money they have today by being philanthropic!

I've seen him play for England twice and imo there is little doubt he is a class act in the making. Would guess he went to Boro because of their Academy's reputation. There are a couple of Spurs supporting players who are with the Arsenal Academy for basically the same reason.

Newcastle's has gone from 63p to 74p in 2 weeks, Spurs from 84p to £1.08 in the same time. It'll be interesting to see how they've fared in another 2 weeks time and whether that is reflected across the sector. There are some, like Newcastle and Spurs, who should always be a more attractive takeover proposition than say Watford or Sheff Utd and their increase in the share price compared to less attractive teams should reflect that.

Allen at Southampton, Kroenke at Arsenal, the Thai at Citeh, it all adds life to the sector. Spurs are definitely getting a lot of interest at the present time, up another 5.37% today making 28.57% in the last 2 weeks which is pretty spectacular by any stretch of the imagination. Spurs have also bought back over 116k shares at Nil Trading Charge which effectively increase's Enic's percentage share. Should get even more interesting in late September/early October when Enic take up the shares not purchased in the rights issue which was underwritten by Enic. That will take their holding to around 52%, bringing the time for Levy to sell that much closer (imo).

On a Citeh forum, a fella at the training ground said: "he fvcked up dabo, headlock twatted him loads til he was out cold, blood everywhere " Pretty well what the good doc said, maybe he was there?

Not being launched until 12 May but the details have already been uploaded onto the Official site. Picture is here and I don't like it! http://www.tottenhamhotspur.com/shop/shop_product_f_personalised.html?pno=MHSS07&code=HOME&bcode=&WT.svl=PUMA%20REPLICA%20KIT%202006/2007&par=REP&parsub=

A journo is saying that the Telegraph reckon that Bolton have paid up Allardyce's contract in full subject to clauses, which is why they would be able to claim compensation. But why pay him off in full? They wouldn't have to, it was Allardyce who wanted out. Think there is quite a bit more of this story to come out yet.

what spurs site is this then? It was an article from fansfc at the end of last week. Our entire bloody squad didn't cost £70m and they think we're going to spunk that sort of money on one player! The source says it all really.