oldtype

Even though I'm not English I feel that it's a real shame that England didn't qualify. Would have been very interesting to see how the young talent we see every week in the Premiership (Young, Bentley, Richards etc.) performs on the international level. On the bright side, at least Owen won't be breaking his leg again. (I distinctly remember screaming and chucking my remote at the television screen at 3am during England v. Sweden two years ago.)

Portugal would be favorites if they had even one out-and-out striker capable of preforming on the international level, as opposed to the rotating bunch of white Ameobis they've got. Spain have an excellent team on paper but they're notoriously good at bottling major tournaments, so I guess France for me.

I honestly didn't mind Spurs at all before I started posting on here. They played good football, they signed a Korean, and I kind of felt that we were kindred spirits as mid-table clubs trying to break into the top four. Of course, since defo (who honestly should be banned by now,) Kingdawson, and Martin Jol became the only three Spurs fans I know, my opinion of them has slided a bit, to say the least.

He doesn't need that. He has already done this in Stuggart and his next step is definitely going to choose a club that can win Champions League. Put it in this way: he is classified by the top clubs as the best striker in the world under 23 years old. He has already gain the hype similar to Berbatov. Those watching EPL may not know this but the fact that he is the definite starter for Germany speaks all. Now it's Klose and Podolski who wish the get a place alongside Mario Gomez. No other player except Ballack has similar status in Germany. Of coz I hope our club can sign some great players, but it's really pointless to have expectations for such kinda player. Is this actually true? To be honest, I had only heard of the lad once or twice before he was linked to us, and had envisioned his stature in Europe to be more along the lines of Huntelaar ie. potentially very good young striker currently tearing up a mid-tier European league. Not to be too critical but nobody's seen what he can do against real quality opposition. Podolski was putting up similar numbers a couple of years ago and he's been well and truly found out since moving to Bayern. I don't deny that he's a player with talent, but how exactly are people so sure that he's one of the best strikers in the world and way, way, way too good for us?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2008/may/20/premierleague.chelsea All this talk about the big 4 clubs having huge debt is nothing really. Many successful modern institutions run on deficit spending. Any of the big 4 going under is just about as likely as the United States of America going bankrupt due to their ginormous national debt. ie, it's not impossible, but not damn likely any time soon.

What makes it possible for us and not possible for Everton though? Their fan base is large enough, they have a decent amount of cash (granted it may turn out we have LOTS more, but I'll believe it when I see it,) and as far as the current squad goes player-for-player we simply don't compare. I'd say it's either possible for both or impossible for both.

Spurs had very advanced talks about signing Arshavin in January but his wage demands were too much and it all fizzled out. There has been no mention on the Spurs boards of Arshavin joining Spurs in this window so I'm not really expecting him to wind up at WHL. Do you hover around these board, your heart beating in anticipation, just so you can pounce in and have an ITK jizzfest at anything that's even tangentialy related to Spurs?

Spurs next year after they buy Arshavin, Gomis, Gomez, Owen, Arda, Dunne, and Diane. (Anyone else we've been linked to?)

Obviously they're all signing for Spurs. They'll even re-sign Lennon just to spite us.

nailed on signing for Spurs then

Well, young big four rejects are better than old big four rejects I suppose.

probably not true. No doubt Man City fans are reading this with the same reaction we have when we read the "OMG KEEGAN MEETING WITH ASHLEY HE IS GONNA BE SACKED!!!!!" stories.

Jesus, if we hadn't sacked Sam, Ferguson would have probably tricked him into buying Dong Fang Zhuo for 3m this summer. Rather have him than Smith tbh.

We made an offer for him in the winter, the player turned us down because he wanted to stay at Zenit another year and play in the Champions League. So unfortunately not happening. Not this window anyway.

And score a few more. Alan Smith (2007-2008), 30 starts 7 sub appearances, 0 goals, 10 yellows, 1 red, 60,000 p/w Lee Dong-Gook (2007-2008), 11 starts 8 sub appearances, 2 goals, 1 yellow, 0 reds, 5,000 p/w Bite their hands off!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/graphics/gallery/football/transfers2007summer/smith.jpg http://nownews.seoul.co.kr/img/upload/2007/08/30/SSI_20070830134636_V.jpg straight swap? At least the lad's on lower wages.

Having not been given any chances since moving to Chelsea shouldn't fool anybody into thinking Anelka is damaged goods. He was dominating while he was at Bolton during the first part of the Season and he's clearly one of the best strikers in the league. Heck, straight swap with Berbatov would probably be fair, never mind that crazy deal

I think Harper suffers from pretty much the same strengths and weaknesses as given. Good shot stopping but poor organizer etc. Although Given's shot stopping is (or was pre-Harewood, at least) superhuman compared to Harper's mere "very good," while Harper is slightly better in the air. I see no evidence whatsoever that tells me that Harper is better than Given at organizing the defence. This season Given lost his biggest strengths due to not being fully fit, and Harper was a better option. Harper's a good keeper and probably one of the top 3 backup keepers in the league, but I'd rather have Given if both were at 100% effectiveness. Whether Given will ever get back there again is another matter.

Hopefully soon to be followed by "Keegan kills Smith because he's shite.."

we're losing him to those fuckers again. I just know it. I swear, the one time we beat them to a signing, it turns out to be Damien Duff.

You got me wondering what the table would look like in terms of goals per minutes played.... Pos standard Pos/Player Goals Minutes Minutes per goal 1 1 Cristiano Ronaldo 31 2746 89 2 2 Fernando Torres 24 2533 106 3 2 Emmanuel Adebayor 24 2928 122 4 11 Jermain Defoe 12 1605 134 5 5 Aiyegbeni Yakubu 15 2303 154 6 4 Roque Santa Cruz 19 3187 168 7 5 Dimitar Berbatov 15 2689 179 8 5 Robbie Keane 15 2714 181 9 11 Wayne Rooney 12 2181 182 10 9 Carlos Tevez 14 2677 191 11 5 Mwaruwari Benjani 15 2897 193 12 17 Frank Lampard 10 1954 195 13 10 John Carew 13 2546 196 14 14 Michael Owen 11 2175 198 15 17 Dean Ashton 10 2001 200 16 Obafemi Martins 9 2051 228 17 14 Nicolas Anelka 11 2575 234 18 11 Steven Gerrard 12 2840 237 19 17 Dave Kitson 10 2522 252 20 14 Gabriel Agbonlahor 11 3278 298 And Owen is still 14th. Only really shines a light on Defoe. Benjani drops too. Is 14th supposed to be good? To me, yeah. Returning from bad injury, missed few games, played under BSA, our service (esp in 442, nowt from midfield and his partner was Smith) and all. Also, we ain't gonna get anyone better than him. That's for sure So, we MUST keep him. We aren't going to get anyone better than him? I hate it when a topic about Owen gets sidetracked but look at whose name is next to 16 and you'll have my opinion of someone who's more important to the team than Owen is. We need both.

Thing is the performance of individual players (excluding Smith, who was shit throughout) has fluctuated so much based on manager, form, confidence, tactics etc. that it's difficult to judge anyone based on aggregate statistics. Although I think it's fairly obvious regardless that Butt and Smith need to go.

I think Fulham's getting it, but we can hope, right?

17 million. mackems.gif Hah, that's probably more than somebody will end up paying for Drogba himself this summer.

Honestly the worst player we've ever had in the Premiership. At least Pattison was just invisible, at least Boumsong and Babayaro only fucked up when an opposing player came near them with the ball. Smith, aside from being invisible himself, somehow manages to drag down the preformance of the entire team by clogging up passing flow, giving away bad fouls, and moving into bad positions to break up the team's shape. You only need to look at how him coming on for Viduka against Chelsea completely changed the flow of the game. Utterly shocking that he was playing for Man United in the Champions League as recently as last year. Right now I don't think Roeder would have him at Norwich.