brummie

Don't really follow this .... what do you mean by players like that?

can't see that being pulled off, real are lining up for the summer (thats the common theme anyway) whats his buyout clause? No clue tbh (need village here asap). €36m from what I can find. Think he'd be class in the Prem. Some say €63m though which is a bit mad. According to Sid Lowe on the Guardians football weekly podcast his buy out clause, with VAT included, is in the region of €60m. So without VAT it should be around €50m I would take it. Since there has been a VAT discussion here already, I might add the reason being he told the buy out clause with VAT included, is that the Bilbao president is adamant Llorente won't leave the club(election coming up) so if any club are to buy him they will have to launch a hostile bid which would have the VAT Another way of looking at it is that it has only been reported in the Daily Mail. Fair play for shifting stories about swan eating asylum seekers and why we're being run by a gay mafia, but beyond that, the usual level of scepticism is required.

Honestly, how poor is ITV's coverage? It's like they're covering a sport they've never seen before. Cow tipping or something.

Ooops. Soz. Anyway, as i was saying, Sunderland have some very hard games coming up, most of which they'll lose.

Kendrick is normally bang on the money with Villa stuff.

Ah, fucking hell, Coventry, you wankers.

Kalinic, who replaced him, I like the look of, decent player.

There's never any point when ITV have the rights, unless you fancy watching a 15 second clip of 20 games, each one filmed on a 10 year old Nokia phone.

Hope Houllier brings him on and we have a top class attacking mid to play alongside Fletcher. His passing is superb at times, he's a very promising player. I just worry about his size, though, he's tiny.

I like what Houllier is doing, transfer wise, far more left field than MON's drearily predictable deals. Apparently the Bradley loan has a first option agreement to buy at the end of the season, so it makes sense. I'm a little bit disturbed about the left back situation, mind. Nathan Baker made his home debut there today, and looked very good (lovely ball for Delfouneso to score) prior to his sending off, Clark never looks fully comfortable there, and Warnock is shit. Whatever happens this season - assuming we don't go down, obv - it will not be for nothing. We've brought some good players in, and more importantly, we've really seen some of this crop of youngsters we have come on very nice. Albrighton, Delfouneso, Bannan, Clark (especially), Baker, Hogg have all done very well, and none of them would have been anywhere near the pitch had MON still been here - even with injuries.

Our kids were great today. Even Nathan Baker prior to his sending off. Fuck Charlie Adam when Wee Barry Bannan has a range of passing like that.

Liam Ridgewell has been fantastic for us, with his supply of own goals when we play them. Craig Gardner is bog standard at best. Although he's got a decent volley on him. His brother Gary is coming through our youth system at the moment, outside chance he'll get a PL run out this year, and he's the most promising player I've seen there in years. Mate you can't deny that both have performed very well for Birmingham (despite being average footballers). Lots of average players have done well for them this year. They're still average at best, though. being kind there. Absolutely atrocious team IMO. Meant the individual players, rather than the team. They're an awful team to watch. That Zigic is fucking awful. Indeed and for that reason alone I hope they go down. Me too. Well, obviously, I've got loads of reasons to hope they go down.

Arsenal are going to knock them out of the Champions League so 3? You seriously haven't got a chance mate, not a hope! Delusional Gooners. They'll give it big from now until the first 5 minutes off the game where Messi will get his inevitable goal and it will be damage limitation. The first 15 minutes of there last encounter was the most one sided game in football history. Cheers fake Dave. No problem, shit Martin Jol. This site is very funny at times. You two. Most amusing.

Liam Ridgewell has been fantastic for us, with his supply of own goals when we play them. Craig Gardner is bog standard at best. Although he's got a decent volley on him. His brother Gary is coming through our youth system at the moment, outside chance he'll get a PL run out this year, and he's the most promising player I've seen there in years. Mate you can't deny that both have performed very well for Birmingham (despite being average footballers). Lots of average players have done well for them this year. They're still average at best, though. being kind there. Absolutely atrocious team IMO. Meant the individual players, rather than the team. They're an awful team to watch. That Zigic is fucking awful.

but i suspect he might fit in very well. He was born and raised in Ghana so he should be used to the living conditions of Sunderland. gyan has looked quite good in what i've seen. And Ghana is quite well developed for an African country, too.

He's unbearably pompous and thinks his word on football is gospel. He has two or three managerial favourites (Hodgson, O'Neill amongst them) who he waxes lyrical about to pathetic levels. I vomited up my spleen when i read this bullshit: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/teams/blackpool/8275992/Henry-Winter-unlikely-lads-Holloway-Martin-ONeill-and-Owen-Coyle-earn-all-managerial-plaudits.html and there are plenty of other examples.

Liam Ridgewell has been fantastic for us, with his supply of own goals when we play them. Craig Gardner is bog standard at best. Although he's got a decent volley on him. His brother Gary is coming through our youth system at the moment, outside chance he'll get a PL run out this year, and he's the most promising player I've seen there in years. Mate you can't deny that both have performed very well for Birmingham (despite being average footballers). Lots of average players have done well for them this year. They're still average at best, though.

Liam Ridgewell has been fantastic for us, with his supply of own goals when we play them. Craig Gardner is bog standard at best. Although he's got a decent volley on him. His brother Gary is coming through our youth system at the moment, outside chance he'll get a PL run out this year, and he's the most promising player I've seen there in years.

Never heard of him until now. The Togolese Zidane.

For fuck's sake, West Ham.

Jesus christ. Shall I? Or Brummie? O'Neil was deemed (and rightly so) to have wasted a lot of money on high wages for players who weren't really doing anything. He was told to get rid of some of these players before he could have any more money. He also, apparently, went to Lerner and had this conversation: MON: "I want to sign Aiden McGeady" RL: "What sort of price are we looking at?" MON: "Whatever it takes" Poor, wronged Saint Martin. Ha. I'll stand corrected. Didn't realize those were the players he was spending on. Sometimes it's tough to get the whole story over here in the States. That being said, I think the guy can flat out manage. Maybe not as good an evaluator of talent though? From the outside - and brummie feel free to correct me -, MoN's player cycle looked like this: 1.Buy player of average ability for a non-average price 2.Player of said average ability naturally performs averagely 3.MoN feels betrayed by the averageness and chucks the player into the pits of oblivion 4. Go to 1 He seemed to have an obsession with fullbacks in particular. 2008: buys Shorey (LB), Knight (CB) and Curtis Davies (CB) - total 18m 2009: buys Warnock (LB), Dunne (CB), Collins (CB) - total 18m, to replace the players he'd bought the year before. In with all that, he'd also bought Cuellar for 7m, and having not had a RB for two years, he buys Luke Young for twice the amount he could have had him for when he went to Boro, AND Habib Beye to fill that role, but ended up playing Cuellar, an out of position centre back there. Some of the players, like Sidwell, Shorey, Harewood (FFS) he bought then immediately decided he didn't fancy, so didn't bother using them. See also Beye. Of those players, we're currently trying to nigh on give Davies away, Shorey went for fuck all, Beye is a 33 year old with 2 years of a 40k a week contract left to run, Sidwell went for fuck all as, after three years of coming on for 10 mins at the end, he was out of contract, Harewood ran his contract down, and Reo-Coker's contract is also up this summer - having been ostracised for over a year by MON. So that's 8.5m we spent on him, and he's walking away for nowt In many ways, he is a very good manager indeed, but he has two failings. One is his transfer policy which is short sighted (UK based players only, ALL of them except Carew and Guzan) and half arsed (we had a scouting network which consisted of ONE MAN - Ian Storey Moore). The other is his tactical cluelessness. It's great counter attacking away from home, but when you're at home and a team doesn't want to be broken down, it doesn't work, so for two years we just whacked crosses into the box all day long. He'll get teams to 6th - 8th with money to spend, but to get beyond that, you absolutely must have a great deal of tactical acumen, and he doesn't.

No idea, sorry. I just read last week he had a knee injury.

Joking apart, I really wanted it to work out for him, and I still hope it does (maybe it will, if he does well with you), but I think there's something very wrong with his head. He definately showed in that one season, think under Hughes ? That he could become a hell of a player, but his regression since has been startling and you've got to question if his head's in it, didn't he also fall out with the Ireland nation team ? In his defence, there was apparently some unpleasant bullying going on with the Ireland team, with him as the target of it.

And the fact we're quite keen to get shot of him, despite currently desperately trying to find a creative midfielder says .....

Joking apart, I really wanted it to work out for him, and I still hope it does (maybe it will, if he does well with you), but I think there's something very wrong with his head.