Ridman

Aye they will do, were probably sandwiched between the both legs. Aren´t there international friendlies 3 days before the Arsenal game?

Very tricky games for Arsenal to start it of + they have the champ league qualifiers. We might see a rare poor start to their campaign, could see the pressure building on Wenger as he'll be running out of excuses real soon.

Dont´worry, maybe he'll come good. We all thought Joe Kinnear was a terrible appointment at the time and he... actually, never mind.

Ameobi?

Well we'll see if this transpires. Like Sewelly said, the other sales while they might not have been popular still made sense from a footballing point of view. If we sell Coloccini then it would be conclusive proof that the balance sheet is all the current regime is interested in. He was player of the season for most people. Player of the season for the past 2 in my opinion.

And the thing about him is that much like Nolan, he plays best when playing second striker and easily gets outpassed and outmanoeuvred when playing MC in a 4-4-2 formation. I'm guessing we'll play 4-4-2 next season and even if we were to play a 4-5-1 wouldn´t we rather want Ben Arfa in the hole?

This is just great, can´t wait til the Tiote rumors start circling around

By far the best DC we´ve had since Woodgate. Imagine an injury free Woodgate and Coloccini partnership

I wouldn't have been happy because of his behavour he showed in his last few months at Hoffenheim. Well there are two sides to every story. He had been promised that he would be allowed to leave if certain conditions were met, then when it come down to it Hoffenheim backed out of their promises and refused to let him go. That´s his version of the events. Going on a strike is very childish but we don´t know what happened behind the scenes or how the interactions between Ba and the board went. In any case we've got a 6-7m valued striker on a free, lets just be happy about that. Still need to sign a target man, despite his height I don´t really see Ba as a target man, at Hoffenheim he played a lot off Ibišević and as I´ve said I don´t think Ba is the ideal striker for a 4-5-1 formation so I can definitely see another striker being brought in and us playing 4-4-2 next season (even more so after we sold Nolan since as we all know he can´t play as a MC in a 4-4-2 formation without getting overrun).

Gudjohnsen won´t get a contract at Fulham. Can see him going to West Ham like

At least he'd come well rested. Twelve appearances (2 league games) in 4 years What's the biggest difference between England and Spain? In England, if you have to be there at so and so time, then at so and so time you're there. Here it's 'ah, enjoy your life!'. If we're late, so what? I found out about this straight away. I had an appointment with a La Liga chairman to speak about signing and he didn't turn up for three hours. When he finally showed, he didn't say anything about why he was late. It's just normal. I think the weather plays a part: if I sit in the garden in the sun and my wife asks me to do something, she gets angry because I'm there going 'Do I really have to do it now? Wait for my moment, for me to conjure up the energy ...

Former Poland national team goalkeeper Jerzy Dudek has gotten interests from English side Aston Villa, however, Dudek claims he wants to remain in Spain. The 38-year old has spent the past four seasons as back up to Iker Casillas at Real Madrid. "I have not thought about hanging up my boots yet. My family is very happy in Spain and in Madrid. My son has a girlfriend, so my priority is to stay in football without changing country," Dudek told Spanish newspaper Marca. Dudek was rumoured to be considering a move to the MLS but the he has confirmed he has only received offers from Europe as of yet, "I have offers from Spain, Turkey and England," he said. "What is clear is that wherever I go, I will go there to play." Dudek has ruled that he does not plan to return to Poland. Makes sense, Friedel leaves and they go after Dudek. Guess they really like their goalies to be old and wrinkly.

Aye, Neil and 1878 are among my favorite posters on here. I always find it annoying when people quote posts from another forum "lol look at how dumb they are". There are mongs and daft comments on every forum and they could just as easily bring up a list of quotes from this forum and laugh at it.

I´d be shitting bricks if I was a Villa fan now.

I reckon it goes somehow like this: Because of his dodgy knee West Ham only paid a small fee for him, say 2m, with up to 4-5m in add-ons if he plays certain amount of games etc. Now this whole contract situation is very confusing to me and nobody has come out and clarified anything about it but I'm guessing that he can leave West Ham and we take over those potential add-ons payments with West Ham losing their 2m.

No. Maybe we'll take over the transfer in some way? Pay some to Hoffenheim with West Ham getting nothing. Even if we are talking about Sullivan here I find it hard to believe that any club in a serious relegation battle would sign a multimillion striker and have a clause in his contract so that he can go for nothing at the end of the season....

Would be nice if we signed Ibišević as well, Ba played a lot off him at Hoffenheim and they had a good partnership going on. If Ibišević hadn´t suffered an ACL injury during the 08-09 season then Hoffenheim might have won the title as they were top of the league in November but after Ibišević´s injury the whole team struggled and finished 7th (Ibišević finishing the season with 18 goals and 7 assist in 17 matches). I'm not sure Ba is the ideal player to play as a lone striker in a 4-5-1 formation, if we get him I´d take it as a sign that we´re going to play with 2 up front. Ibišević Ba Ben Arfa Barton/New/Jonas Cabaye Tiote Wouldn´t mind something like that tough there are probably better options out there than Ibišević . I still like him and think signing him would be good business, don´t think he´d be that expensive either as the new Hoffenheim coach doesn´t seem to rate him (he didn´t start in any of Hoffenheim´s last 4 games). Say we´d sign Ibišević for ~5m then another top striker for ~10m then we'd have a nice and balanced strikeforce with healthy competition. 10m striker Ba Ibišević Best Could donate Ameobi´s and Lovekrand´s bodies to science. Guess it´s a bit greedy and unrealistic to expect us signing 3 forwards but one can always hope.

“I spoke to Charles N’Zogbia and David Rozehnal before joining Newcastle. They both said it was a good choice to come to Newcastle,” he said Really? Good to know that he enjoyed his stay despite only playing 20 games or so.

Would cost a fair packet I would imagine. How is Lewandowski doing in Germany? He usually started on the bench as Dortmund prefered having Barrios up top in their 4-5-1 formation. In total he made 33 appearances (15 starts) and scored 8 goals, a goal every 200 minutes. He needs to improve his finishing and add some muscle over the summer but overall he had a decent season and scored some important goals. He´s also very good at holding up the ball and makes some neat passes, important abilities to have in Dortmund´s style of play. On the international front he´s played quite well and has scored 7 goals in his last 16 matches. I wanted us to sign a whole year before he moved to Dortmund but can´t really see him moving anywhere now, Klopp likes him very much and it will be interested to see how Lewandowski performs next year in the champion´s league.

Is it true that he wants a 4-5 year contract? If true then we should most definitely get rid. Nolan is turning 29 this month and is probably among the highest earners at the club. I don´t want to pay him 40k/week (or whatever he is earning) til his mid thirties and I highly doubt he'll be as effective in a few years time, we'd just end up with another Geremi/Smith/Butt. In addition he can´t play as a central midfielder in a 4-4-2 formation without getting slaughtered. New ST Jonas Arfa Barton Cabaye Tiote Would you swap any of those players for Nolan? I´d still love it if Nolan would stay on and be a squad player. Doesn´t he have 2 years remaining of his contract? So what´s the rush, tell him to wait until next summer and if he isn´t ready to that, sell.

Definitely, they seem a bit desperate and I don´t really understand their plan. Whether they want instant success or are planing for the future, spending 55m on Carroll & Henderson seems a bit daft.

Nice tackle

Nice spot

Yea for sure Piszczek is by far the best of the horrid defenders and still Valbuena dribbles past him for fun. Can´t see this ending well, at all.