Unbelievable

Own up, which one of yous is Shola says relax..

It's a good thing you don't speak/read Dutch. It's emnarassing quite frankly how they perceive Newcastle as a city and as a club. You'd think he was moving to the third tier of the Azerbaijan league.. i do speak dutch (i can ask the time but wouldn't understand the reply, picked up on a school football trip to axel in 1980) oo laat est haat ? (written phonetically as i didn't even know then how to spell it. I'm well impressed..

They're reading our forum too! Ssteve_69, you're almost a celebrity on there..

It's a good thing you don't speak/read Dutch. It's emnarassing quite frankly how they perceive Newcastle as a city and as a club. You'd think he was moving to the third tier of the Azerbaijan league..

I know that forum, just didn't think you'd be posting in English in their Dutch forum..

They need two, so I think they'll be trying for Saha and Fletcher. Unfortunately, that might be enough to keep them up.

Cabaye, where are you posting with Ajax fans?

"With all the respect to you..." What an areswipe..

Sounds like your average Ajax fan to me...

He's significantly better than what they've got, so a good signing for them if true.

What? I don't particularly rate him and I don't think we need him. I would hazard a guess and say I've seen more of him than you have?

Raiola is a cunt of the highest order. You can be sure he was brought in to engineer a move and he will want a considerable pay packet for his role in the negotiations. I have a feeling this deal is far from done and personally I wouldn't mind if it breaks down altogether.

link? Trust you have found it in the meantime, but if not: http://www.readytogo.net/smb/showthread.php?t=721657

Same Sky journo claims Sessegnon is Spurs bound with Defoe coming the other way.

I can barely keep up with their thread on RTG..

They might as well sign the entire RoI team and be done with it.

Adebayor?

Excellent signing for them. You have to wonder why Wenger will not give him a chance and prefers to keep signing attacking midfield and wide players.

You can when you are in a position of power, you cant when you are not. Who is not in a position of power if I may ask? Wolves with Fletcher, Lille with Debuchy, or is your comment just philosophical?

I'm not saying it's one or the other. I have gone on record saying I don't think we work to a transfer budget, but we try to get good deals when we see them even if this means our squad is unbalanced. This is my concern currently... Do you really believe that the Anita signing is an opportunistic bargain? That strikes me as frankly ridiculous if I'm honest. Not that ridiculous like. He just turned down a new deal so he's kind of become 'available' now. Obviously its not that simple and we've had an eye on him for some time like all our targets. We have a list of players and when someone's situation changes in a way that allows us to make a good value for money signing, we strike. And that's fair enough, but there is no way that we sanction knee jerk bargains at the expense of the squad and positions that are more pressing. I'd even question whether €8.5m plus future bonuses is that much of of a bargain in the first place. We want him for a reason, he will play. If we can't do a deal we're happy with we'll happily leave gaping holes in our squad as has been proven before. We've gone the first half of last season without the striker we were after since Carroll left and the second half of the season without centre back cover even though we knew Saylor was out injured for the remainder of the season, gambling our excellent start of the season by relying on Colo and Williamson staying fit for the sake of a few million.

Doubt we will sign a cb unless we sell williamson. Think Good is 4th choice and in numbers terms we should be able to make do with that. Again it wouldn't surprise me that now they've seen Good in training they already think he's on par with Williamson or near enough for the cb transfer to go low priority. That's a good point (no pun intended), the coaching staff do get to see more of the players they've brought in than we do from a few friendlies and they may well see Good as being ready for the Premiership if needed. I still hope we're after Douglas though. Him and Colo could form a brilliant centre back partnership.

He is, but Anita is just a DCM, trust me. Edit: I know Van der Wiel is apparently not interested in coming here. I was just saying that I would have liked to see him here as he has proved in the past he can be a very good right back, a position that we could stengthen our first team in significantly.

I'm not saying it's one or the other. I have gone on record saying I don't think we work to a transfer budget, but we try to get good deals when we see them even if this means our squad is unbalanced. This is my concern currently. If we get in a full back, centre back and striker alongside Anita I will be very happy with this transfer, if we don't I will see it as a typical effect of our value seeking transfer policy and regret the fact we have strengthened an already strong position at the expense (if you were working to a transfer budget as most clubs do) of other positions. Strength in depth is needed indeed with a 55+ match season beckoning, but we have the following players for/capable in centre midfield already: Tiote, Cabaye, Jonas (in a midfield 3 alongside Tiote), Marveaux (in a midfield 3 in front of Tiote and Cabaye), Perch (versatile backup for Tiote), Amalfitano (in a midfield 3 in front of Tiote and Cabaye), Gosling (make or break season), Abeid, Bigi (promising youngsters who looks more ready for a loan or the odd runout), Raylor (in the case of an emergency). That's 10 players for 2/3 positions, with no first team players known for bad injury records. By contrast, we have, at a push, 5 players in central defense (Colo, Taylor, Williamson, Perch, Good) and 3 forwards (Cisse, Ba, Ameobi), with some of these players completely unproven (Good) and quite injury prone/incapable of 90 minutes (Saylor, Ameobi).

Is it though, for a player who would so much more valuable to them as part of a promotion push? That's exactly it. Wolves are apparently in quite a good financial condition so they don't need to sell, and their aim must be to come straight back up especially with the new TV deal coming into effect next season. If they sell their best players now it may prove very expensive one year down the line if they miss out on the minimum 60 odd million Premiership clubs will get from the new TV deal. Also fully agree with sicko's post. We of all clubs are in now position to complain about high player valuations. Wouldn't they not just be better saying he isn't for sale then? Even if a player hands in a transfer request, does a club "have to" sell? Maybe they do, I'm not sure. They could say that, but I don't think it would go down well with the players. As everywhere, every player has their price; it's just that price is naturally a lot higher when you don't need to sell and ideally want to keep the player. The point is player valuation is not some sort of objective measure, whereby you can say a striker has scored X goals and provided Y assists, so his worth is Z. It's all well and good saying Fletcher is not worth more than 8 million (and in a way that's probably true as you can get similar quality for around that mark), but there are always other, subjective considerations that determine what a player is worth to the buying or selling club. For Wolves, Fletcher may well be the difference to coming straight back up or staying in the Championship for the foreseeable, for Sunderland on the other hand, if they have no realistic alternative and considering the top bracket of players will not be interested in joining them unless they pay well over the odds in terms of fees and wages, he may be the difference between staying up or going down next season. With the money involved in the Premiership it's easy to see why a player valuation can become so distorted from a player's actual level of quality.