AyeDubbleYoo

Never been a massive fan of some of the foreign commentators who go absolutely mental when anything happens. It's a goal FFS, there's one or two every game!

It's amazing that a governing body actually has to consider legislating to prevent businesses running themselves into the ground with excessive borrowing. You'd think they'd work that one out on their own.

I quite like Motson, never had a problem with him.

Got no feelings about Habib Beye or Sunderland at the moment, we've got bigger fish to fry.

Missed this, good info if true.

6ft 4 as well, that's a positive. And Tony Adams seemed to rate him... can you tell I'm reading Wikipedia?

If that's the case then great, even bigger faux pas by Fergie then.

At least he hasn't been playing for Portsmouth, that's something to be thankful for. Haven't a clue about this lad TBH, so will wait to see if he's any good.

He always looked nailed on to be a success, don't understand why Man Utd didn't try to keep him. Maybe some dodgy goings-on with his ownership and contract stuff, could be they didn't want to get involved in that I suppose.

Stuart Hall is an absolute legend, I'd love to hear him do a full commentary instead of summarising... would be amazing.

He played 23 times for Watford in all competitions and scored 3 goals. That makes him 23 games and 3 goals better off than Beckford at this point then He reminds me of a young Andy Cole TBH.

The danger though is that if we don't speculate to go up this year that we'll be stuck down in the championship for a number of years. If we dont go up this year we will lose: Enrique, Jonas, S Taylor, Colo, Nolan, Carroll and possibly Smith, Loven and Harper. There will be bidders on all those players. At the same time the exodus will mean we have to hang onto Butt, simply to make up the numbers !! Do we trust Hughton and Ashley to replace that lot with players capable of winning promotion, I know I don't. This year for the club is make it or break it, if we don't go up we could very well plummet down like Leeds did. This all means that we simply have to think short term to ensure we make the signings we need to get back up. Yeah, totally agree with you there. It's essential that we go up this season, things will get infinitely harder if we don't. The problem is that January is the only time to make signings that might help with that... and nobody will want to let players go that are much use to us. It's a difficult one, and a gamble not to spend if players are available... let's hope that Mike's roll of the dice comes up this time.

That response from Tevez is immense, love him now! Shame he's not picking up English very well... you'd have thought the club would be right onto that and make sure he does lessons etc.

Motson... legend. Obviously much easier to list the ones I hte. Mark Bright makes me mute the TV, and Alan Green makes me want to hurl the radio out the window.

I had never been as terrified of relegation as under Allardyce. Obviously what happened after he left was even worse, but he was absolutely shite... no two ways about it.

Well wasn't it?

I'm not cynical at all, I think he could have done it because he really believes he can do well at Everton. This could be the peak of his popularity, he needs to capitalise on it. Some players might not believe they can make it, or Beckford might just be after the money. As I said, it's hypothetical because we have no idea which it is.

Just speculation/rumour, Boro are in for him and 'another Championship club' are competing, according to SSN.

The last thing we want to do is saddle the club with masses of debt to buy short term success. We've been down that road before, it leads into the shit. If people (rightly) hate Ashley now, it would be nuclear meltdown if it emerged he'd saddled us with another £50m debt, surely.

Haven't seen Routledge play for ages, how's he doing?

I know this board doesn't agree, but I think he will get a new manager in. Do you really think so? I hope we get a proven manager in, but I don't see any reason to believe we will.

You might have a point if we were talking about a world class player, but we're talking about a 26 year old League 1 striker who would almost certainly be used as backup at Everton. Edit: To clarify, I'm speaking completely hypothetically here, as I'm not at all convinced about this Everton link and I think the deal probably broke down simply because we (rightly IMO) didn't offer Leeds enough cash for him. I'm just arguing about the principal of "we can't compete with Everton for players" and commenting on a worrying trend I see of the club's dealings with players into and out of the club. Don't see how those details about Beckford make him any less likely to join Everton. The fact is that they wanted him, and his age and current playing level probably makes it even more likely that he would bite their hands off. It's all hypothetical really, as we have no idea what went on, how much we offered and/or what would have been considered 'enough'.

I think we're prepared to make small signings of players that we feel are good value. How many of those are around is anyone's guess though. Also, the signings we do make will be considered by a lot of our fans to be the kind that we shouldn't be considering. The best hope we have is to offer Premier League reserves first-team football, or to unearth younger players that are much lesser known. Not sure we have the ability to do that though.

I think the first choice 5 is definitely good enough. The backup obviously isn't, because we don't have any. But as a lot of people have said, we could have Chelsea's back four and we would still be in danger of relegation with a strikeforce that can't make the ball stick and a midfield who can't run about. Absolutely essential that we short out the midfield ASAP.