brummie

Someone needs to take the time to tag every single person in the Spurs end with "ITK"

It is almost certainly "ITK" bollocks, mind.

There's lots of chatter on Twitter this evening about him coming to us. Not sure what I think about that (assuming the price is right). We struggle to get the ball to the front men (although, impressively, Sky had us having 66% possession at West Ham yesterday, which is certainly a change from last year, even if most of it was passing the ball in nice midfield triangles that didn't go anywhere). Rumour is the fee for Carroll is 16m, but they still owe us 8m for Downing, meaning we're chucking them 8m for him.

No, but not much to spend I suspect, or it will at leat be prudent. Hutton and Warnock to move on.

They must be paying him a canny wedge too, he turned down Spurs because he didn't like the wages he was offered. Ha ha, as if any player ever turns down Spurs!

Is Martin REALLY paying Saha, at 34, 40k a week? That is terrible even by his own mental standards.

That thing about only having one man, Storey-Moore, and zero scouting network is absolutely true. In fact, one of the first things Lerner told Houllier was to sort scouting out, which he started doing. Lambert has just appointed Michael Henke who was at Bayern and Dortmund to run our European scouting. Finally, we're in the 21st century. Martin's ways were determinedly 20th century.

That's a well written article, and seems to be written by someone channelling my opinions on him. Is it someone on here? I'd just add that he never really did Heskey on for Carew, it tended to be Steve Sidwell on on 75 minutes. In fact, no "tended to be" about it, it was almost every week

Bit unfair on Cuellar, he's not a bad player at all.

You won't find many journalists arguing against MON. The thing that annoyed me most about him was the degree to which we became MartinONeill'sAstonVilla, and how when he walked out on us when he did, it was somehow twisted by fauning apologists like Patrick Barclay, Henry Winter and - absolutely worst of the lot - Oliver Holt to make it look like we'd sacked him. I think about some of the shit they'd write about him, and I feel sick coming up my throat and into my mouth.

This is just absolutely word perfect repetition of what we used to hear from some of our fans when he was making lazy, inexplicable signings:

I know I'm a neutral on this, but fuck me, they don't half have some idiots posting on there.

Villa are a far bigger draw though, this is going to be hilarious. It isn't half bringing back some memories, reading that RTG thread. Christ. The "I trust in MON, but ..." stuff is pretty much exactly what we used to say.

Stephen Ward, eh? Christ, that's a level below some of the fucking dross he signed for us.

Except Guzan. He's good. I'd add Richard Dunne, James Collins and Stephen Warnock to that list, too. It's all very well Dunne and Collins having one superb season, but it makes the whole three or four year contract look piss poor if they're not capable of anything more than that and inflict a couple of dreadful season on you afterwards. Warnock in particular has been just atrocious. Oh, and when we needed a striker to have any hope of pushing on from sixth, who did Martin get in (in the summer Darren Bent went to Sunderland for 10m)? Marlon Fucking Harewood for 4m.

£51.5 million spent in 1 summer, on THAT. TBF Milner and Friedel were both good signings. Too right. Milner was fucking brilliant for us. I'd kill to have him back here now. So was Luke Young. But he'd had been a better signing had we had him for 2.5m the year before when he was going begging rather than opting to play ANOTHER season with no proper right backs, then paying double that the year after.

I've never known a player look so terrified by the proximity of the ball. Like a rabbit in the headlights. I remember one occasion, think it was Man U at home, and he was terrified. At one point, the ball was hoofed up in the air about 50 yards up-field towards our defence. Curtis Davies was in position, and stood for what felt like 3 minutes just watching the ball come towards him, out of the skies. All he had to do was bring the ball under control (there was no other player within at least 20 yards of him) and out of danger - simplest of procedures. So he stands there, watches it come down, and it bounces literally about 15 yards behind him. The best thing, though, was that at that very instant, 40,000 people all *sighed* at exactly the same time. It was poetic.

There are many who think he'll be our no 1 keeper by the end of the season.

To be fair, there was also Brad Guzan, a rookie keeper brought in from the US, and Moustafa Salifou, who MON decided to get in from the Swiss third division for some bizarre reason, give him 10k a week for three years, then forget about.

Actually, they do, they've one of the better academies in the country and are surely right up there in terms of developing talent. Well, they were but they won't be now.

Trust me, it's overrated. Tangent - Man City fans yesterday singing "you only left for the money" at Sturridge. Kinda ironic.

Fletcher is not a bad player at all, he got a decent tally at a relegated club. However, 15 million is stupid money. 7 or 8m is more like it.

Nope, us too. That's why we can't get anyone in. At our level, players who can improve the team are simply costing a fortune in fees and wages, unless we take a punt. We are as well. In fact, I think this close season more than any for a while, there are quite a few clubs only interested in value signings. Then there's Liverpool, and their reported activation of Joe Allen's £15m release clause. Fifteen million pounds.

I can't blame City, Chelsea, or any other club. The way top, European football is designed creates massive gaps in spending and monopolies at the top that are exacerbated over time. Aggressive spending is the mst efficient way of success. It is the system itself more than anything else. There's a certain amount of truth in that "the system" thing, in that the game is now more than ever totally skewed to money. Don't get me wrong, the richer clubs always had an advantage in the past, too, but the gap was never, ever as wide as it is now. What we have now is more or less a direct correlation between money spent and success gained. This probably won't get much agreement on here, but whilst the PL has been good in some ways, in bigger, more important ways, it has seen the slow ruination of the English game, as money decides everything. We now can no longer realistically have an Aston Villa, Newcastle, Everton style club winning the league without a gigantic financial windfall. When i was a kid, I remember Cloughie taking Forest from nowhere and winning the league and European Cup. I remember Villa using 14 players all season to win the league. I remember that brilliant Everton side of the 80s (who would no doubt at all have won more European honours had it not been for Heysel). None of that can happen now, and it has made football much the poorer sport. I don't blame Man City for doing what they're doing, if they can afford to do so, and I don't begrudge any of their fans their success, either. I just don't like what it has done to the game. I also get particularly annoyed by the fact that, with our game awash in money, there's never any question of using that cash to subsidise ticket prices - the clubs would rather spunk it straight into the gaping mouths of agents and players, rather than the people who - through generations - have kept the game going, even when it was on the brink of collapse a few decades ago.

Talking of Ravel Morrison: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2184678/Ravel-Morrison-seven-teeth-removed-emergency-surgery.html Losing seven teeth at that age, and it not being due to them getting punched out by Marlon King?