oldtype

I know who to nominate for worst football poster this year now.

Ironically, I'll miss this because I'll finally be in the same time zone as this lot. Working on a Saturday

They're spending 7m on keane and no doubt shelling out a hefty loan fee for bentley. Smacks Of desperation. Guess this explains why they're selling us Larsson. Hard to shake the feeling that we've been outmaneuvered.

Djeparov Burn qatar, burn

Played for my local club for half of the season, we took him on loan because Bunyodkor were on the verge of going bust and couldn't handle his wages. Played a big role in our title run. Very hard working and has a beautiful left peg. really does remind me of Emre (not just because of his height ) The Uzbeks are my second team in this tournament and I would like to see the nation of Qatar implode into a ball of fire, so it's pretty clear who I'm cheering for here Yeah the Bunyodkor experiment seems to have crumbled pretty quickly. All their foreign and good Uzbek players have all departed rather sharply. They were always a joke. Spent ridiculous sums of money trying to win the AFC Champions League but failed miserably every year.

Played for my local club for half of the season, we took him on loan because Bunyodkor were on the verge of going bust and couldn't handle his wages. Played a big role in our title run. Very hard working and has a beautiful left peg. really does remind me of Emre (not just because of his height ) The Uzbeks are my second team in this tournament and I would like to see the nation of Qatar implode into a ball of fire, so it's pretty clear who I'm cheering for here

Uzbeks have got a decent side. Maksim Shatskikh and Aleksandr Geynrikh are a pretty threatening front two by Asian standards, and Server Djeparov is just a classy little player The Uzbek Emre.

Whoopdy doo. The rest of us are in the same city as him every other weekend Fine, you freeze to death in your cold English winter while I freeze to death in my air conditioned hotel room.

Would love to be able to make my first and final contribution to the "players in public" thread

Going to be in the same city as him for the weekend

Guess you haven't watched him this season then. Well, he's not played much, has he? I'm betting you didn't think Best was worth any patience before the other night either? Guthrie doesn't have the skill or physique to compete in the premiership. He only looked decent in 1 game v Chelsea. The rest of the games i.e. Bolton & West Brom he was completely hopeless in. Also having him in the team was one of the reasons in why we went down in the 08/09 season. He got injured and was out for the season sometime in.. February I think. We had to play Smith and Butt instead. That's probably why we were relegated.

Geez, I've forgotten that he even exists. He actually played for Chelsea Seems hilarious in retrospect.

Why do we have a thread devoted to a unemployed, deranged middle-aged man?

What? Seriously?

Buy smith for nothing and we'll even throw in Xisco!

MJ Jeong, FIFA vice president and South Korea's delegate to the FIFA executive committee has lost out on re-election to some Prince from Jordan who had the backing of Sepp Blatter. Originally word on the street was that Jeong had cut a deal with Blatter by agreeing to not run for the FIFA presidency in exchange for Blatter bringing European votes to South Korea's World Cup bid, but Blatter backstabbed him by making a separate arrangement to support Qatar's bid and has now completed his political masterstroke to oust Jeong completely. This is a worrying trend because Jeong was one of Blatter's main rivals within FIFA and the new Blatter-Oil Money alliance now pretty much enjoys absolute power. Also, all four of AFC's slots on the FIFA executive committee are now occupied by Middle Eastern royalty, which is a complete joke. f*** football politics.

Where is this Parker back in talk coming from? Surely he'd be prohibitively expensive considering that he's the only thing standing between West Ham and the Championship right now. We'd have to give them more than the 5m they paid us. And yes, it was always a mistake to sell him, although it hurts a lot less now that his replacement (Barton) has finally come good.

He doesn't have the potential to make us a lot better like Bentley would, but for that price it's a most definite yes.

But why would he be happy with that? Surely it's not going to be good for squad morale if a bench player from Spurs with supposed attitude problems drops halfway down the league to Newcastle and is still just a utility player? If he doesn't start, he'd be more trouble than he's worth, and if he does start, it's probably going to be at the cost of one of our 3 lynch pins of midfield, and the season. If he's coming into the side he's going to either displace Nolan (pushing Barton to the center,) Barton (like for like,) or a striker (moving Nolan up top) I can think of any number of scenarios where we have to do this for the remainder of the season. Injuries, Barton getting arrested, Nolan losing form, not being able to sign a striker, or Bentley taking an initial chance and showing that he's just good enough that we have to accomodate him. He doesn't have starting place marked and ready for himself, but very few players get that when they move clubs. There are plenty of avenues for him to take a first team spot.

Even if he doesn't slide into the first team naturally right now, not signing Bentley if we are given a reasonable price would be madness considering the number of options he offers us, not to mention the possibly large upside.

Gah, I was at that fixture for 2008/2009 when the away fans got kicked out of the pub and Cacapa was fouled about 15 times in the buildup to Andy Johnson's winner.

He has to WHAT? How dare you offer your young footballers an education.

Let's not get carried away with all this talk of a top half finish. We just took six priceless points from our rivals but for now the goal is still avoiding relegation. Come on be honest, lose against Sunderland and it'll be right back to our form being "worrying" and how we could "easily slip into the bottom three."

New 5.5 year contract for Leon Best

I get antsy when our manager says we "need" to do something in the transfer market. Mostly because it never happens.