Chris_R

Hopefully the player will turn out to be Michael Owen. I'd wet myself with laughter if they spunked all the Bent money on keeping that fraud in racehorses and ibuprofen for the next 3 or 4 years.

I'd love Owen to sign for them, just for the massive amounts of vitriolic abuse he'd get at SJP next season. I'm exiled 360 miles away now but I'd bloody crawl back on my hands and knees to get to that match.

There's just so much wrong with this deal I'm not sure where to start: - I'm laughing that Sunderland are losing their best player and only natural goalscorer - I'm curious to see what Brucey can do with £18m, hopefully utterly waste it - Villa are overpaying and are desperate, but tbh Bent will probably keep them up. Sadly.

As others have said, nobody should be a guaranteed starter. If you're good enough, you'll start. If you're not, either raise your game, sit on the bench or fuck off. Same goes for Carroll, Barton, Nolan, Ben Arfa, the whole lot of them. I'd be mightily suspicious of anyone coming here on the sole condition that they're guaranteed a place in the first team every week.

I think it is in Tunisia for a family bereavement Family bereavement...what happened? A relative died. Not exactly something to laugh about, you heartless bastard.

Carrott's a Birmingham City fan.

Clicked Houllier but meant Hodgson. Oops. That said I think Hodgson isn't really to blame, Liverpool have been on the slide for a while now. You look at their lineup and there's lots of players in there that you just don't consider to be 'Liverpool' players, if that makes sense. ie they're shite.

Get in Best you fucking legend!

I honestly can't see Carroll going now. Ben Arfa's advisors will almost certainly have wanted to know the club's intentions regarding the club's ambitions and future transfers etc before he signed. I'm not saying our regime are saints when it comes to telling the truth, but I can't see even they would tell Ben Arfa blatant lies then flog our best up and coming player just days later. I'm no Ashley apologist, but they must have done well to convince Ben Arfa that the next 4.5 years of his career should be spent here.

2015 Bloody hell, whilst I'm delighted he's signed I'm not sure we should be signing players on deals until they're 2038 years old. Though we set a precedent with Nicky Butt...

From that "This is London" article a page or 3 back... I know it's only paper talk but if we flogged Carroll for Bentley, Keane and £8m I'd be frankly furious. Keane value: Zero, maybe £1-2m max. Wants out, not playing and over the hill - this would be his last move. Bentley value: £3-5m. Basically hasn't kicked a ball for a year and wants out too. Redknapp needs to be told to gtf just out of principle, the massive twitchy-faced bellend that he is.

Considering who the owner is, that's probably exactly why he knocked us back!

This. If we can't beat this rabble, I'll be really worried about our prospects of staying up.

A rare sight there - A good ball in by Jonas.

Shola so fucking frustrating. Brings an impossible ball down brilliantly then rolls it pathetically to the defender when there's an easy through ball on to put Loven in 1 on 1.

Keeper never even moved, would have been a glorious goal.

Guttierez really didn't do well with that chance. Not that I expected much different.

Why did Loven think he could get that on his left? Just twat it with your right foot ffs, you're 6 yards out. Even if you miss-hit it, you'll still probably score.

Jonas has been utterly anonymous so far. Normally he gets a fair amount of the ball but he's hardly touched it today.

Shola for England!

How the FUCK did Ameobi miss that? Just sod off Shola.

11 is LW for me. 10 is a second striker, a-la Beardsley, so could see Ben Arfa there too. Or 8, as an attacking midfielder. He can have whatever he wants though IMO if he signs full time.

Can't stand not having 2 wingers and 2 strikers, and have yet to see anything other than 4 at the back look comfortable. Plus overlapping fullbacks are fun on the attack. So 4-4-2 really.

Barton's value is what it would cost to replace him with a player of equal ability. And to me, that's got to be around £6-7m if we manage to get a decent bargain, or £9-10m if we can't be arsed to look properly.

Couldn't happen to a more deserving bloke.