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I'm torn. Is Aguero going to Liverpool a good thing because it will force Carrol to sit on the bench, or is it a bad thing because they'll probably get back into the Champions League?

The club has to be aware of a player's personal issues, but to offer his mentor a playing contract with that in mind, is going too far. Those two are starting to talk like they're the sole guardians of team spirit. Joey in particular always seems to get a round of applause when he starts telling the owner what he should be doing, and criticizing other players, but for me, he's getting too big for his boots. He should stop trying to run the club and concentrate on continuing to sort out his own contribution. Some of the sounds coming from these two reek of "player power" and I fear that it could eventually become a problem. I get a sneaking feeling that the club may just decide to ship both of them out, disband "this group of lads," and try to just build a team from scratch if contract negotiations start to stall.

If he's on the last year of his contract than 10m Euro is more than fair.

You'd have to compare it with other clubs' graphs to draw any conclusions though. 81-90 is when the most goals are scored in football matches in general

10 mil is hardly a derogatory bid that won't even be considered. Seems to me that we're trying to get the jump on him by expressing concrete interest before anyone else does, which is a good thing.

MA is only making a bid for a player who he knows won't come to make it look like he's doing something.

We signed him with the knowledge that if all goes well, he would never play a significant role. All went well. If anything he belongs in the home for "Huh? He played for us?" players like Lamine Diatta and Zurab Kizanhoweveryouspellhisname

Bit harsh - I wouldn't say we are fragile or that it took us a ridiculous amount of luck to get there. Essentially, just when we were well placed to break through after years of building, Man City won the lottery. Then Abramovich got interested again, then Liverpool picked up a decent lottery win themselves. Doesn't sound like much good luck for us there. I do agree that if Chelsea and City are allowed to carry on as they have been, then bracket that with Arsenal and Man U's income and it's impossible to compete on the same level. Impossible. However, which couple of our best players do you mean? Bale and Modric? That would leave us with Van Der Vaart, Sandro, Huddlestone, Lennon and a strong supporting cast. Plus an absolute shitload of cash. I hope they stay, but can't see us falling apart next year. I agree that your club has engaged in some excellent practices and invested ambitiously in the past few years but it still takes a lot of luck. Plenty of clubs are run well and go nowhere, plenty invest and go nowhere. For a "normal" team like Spurs or Newcastle to break into the CL is the equivalent of flipping a coin and having it come up heads 10 times. You can reduce it to 4~5 times by running your club well, but the stars still need to align for you to make it. Comparatively, the coin only needs to come up tails once or twice for you to drop out from that position. Say Modric and VDV are sold in the summer, the replacements turn out to be inadequate, and Bale doesn't get a full pre-season due to his injury and experiences inconsistent form. You'd be back to hanging out with the Villas, Newcastles, and Boltons. It took you years of best practices and a lot of luck to get where you did, but it would be so easy for you to drop back out of the "closed shop." Just commenting on how futile success seems to be sometimes for the "other" 15 teams in the Premiership. Not necessarily having a dig at Spurs or trying to take anything away from your achievements.

Lost a lot of faith in him towards the tail end of the season.

Think Crainey would be as good a backup left back as we're able to get on a free.

Just read that Vaughan, Gilks AND Crainey are all on frees for Blackpool. It's going to be hell for them in the Championship next season. Wouldn't mind Vaughan or Crainey on a free.

He'd get more money, a slightly better chance of success, and the guy who forgot his name and the guy who punched him in the face aren't even here anymore. I don't see why he wouldn't come. We're a selling club so he can also keep his hopes for a dream move to Arsenal alive.

That's true I suppose. You're basically the only country in the world with lower leagues that are worth anything. Be proud while it lasts.

Is there any evidence for that? I'd think that people who were going to the matches would go anyway. It may even open things up to a wider audience because people who wouldn't be bothered would at least watch it on the telly. We only started getting most of the matches regularly shown on TV this year over here, attendances have actually gone up. I appreciate that it's a different situation but I don't think the idea should just be dismissed off hand.

They're on very fragile footing IMO. Lose a couple of their best players to CL clubs now and they're right back in the 8th~14th bracket along with us and the rest of the rabble. Just goes to show how ridiculously hard it is to break into the "top 4(or top 5 now, I suppose)" closed shop these days. It takes a ridiculous amount of luck to get there even once and even if you do, it's so easy to come right back down.

I'm guessing it's the whole "OMFG people will stop going to games if we broadcast them on TV!" paranoia. I was completely incredulous too when I first found out that people in Newcastle needed to look for the same illegal streams I did to watch Newcastle games.

Didn't expect a Korean to get it. I know. We're such an amazing, glorious, wonderful nation we wouldn't know what mediocrity was if it was staring us in the face.

you joking ? in parker,noble,sears,piquiuonne,obinna,green, etc they have more than enough to come straight back up.......question is who will be there come september ? Parker is gone, Obinna not going to be there for obvious reasons. Noble and Green would probably be about as good as Guthrie and Harper were in the Championship (which is pretty good, to be fair.) Sears and Piquionne are turboshit. They don't have players like Enrique, Jonas, and Coloccini who were just blatantly too good for that division and were the primary reason we were laughing our way back up to the Premiership.

Just hope it doesn't go tits up with Pardew in his second season like it did for him at West Ham.

I still don't get Ronaldo's joke. What does Nigeria have to do with Mediocrity?

We had a core of actual decent players that could take us back up after we shifted the dead wood though. West Ham have got nothing.

Think Chelsea just need to get Hiddink and get it over with. He's blatantly the only manager who Roman respects/can get along with.

This "lots of people on here think/thought (insert stupid idea here), but I don't because I'm brilliant" line of argument is getting old, especially considering that the "lots of people on here" generally don't exist.

Because it's like playing with 10 men. We'd lost our momentum before Smith came on though... Pardew's first substitute came too late, in my opinion, because like you say the momentum had begun to shift and the game was completely disjointed (due to a few injuries in a short period of time that held things up). They then made it 3-1 around 5 minutes after this, which led to my first complaint (to myself, admittedly). In fairness, he then reacts with a decent enough sub, given that Fergie had progressively got quieter as the game played out and Lua Lua would provide a good outlet with his pace and dribbling ability (which he did on a few occasions), but soon lost the plot by bringing Smith on for Lovenkrands. Ameobi was a spent force by then, as usual, so I don't see why Ranger or Best couldn't have come on for him then and there. Lovenkrands was still looking lively to me. Pardew said himself this week that Smith would only be used "in an emergency", if I remember right, and this was far from it at the time. Then I think it went 3-2 before Best came on for Guthrie, who probably was struggling by that point due to the fact it was his first game for a while after an injury, but which again proved to be a poor decision at the end of the day because it left Ameobi still toiling. Basically, with the benefit of hindsight added to what I was thinking while watching live, Lua Lua for Ferguson was fair enough but came too late, I then would have brought Ranger on for Ameobi and later Best/Kuqi on for Lovenkrands, depending on what the score was by then, and hoped that Guthrie could soldier through. We might still have drawn 3-3 or even lost 4-3, but I'm more confident we would have held on with those changes. Just bizarre from Pardew, really, although the players do have to shoulder the majority of the blame - they are the ones out there struggling, at the end of the day. Sympathy subs, basically. Give two nice lads coming back from injury some game time in what looks like a banker before the end of the season. I can understand the sentiment but I'm certainly not happy with them.

Well, that was a shit match. Now back to the good part: speculating about hypothetical transfers that may or may not happen. For three whole months.