Lloydie

The Guardian has some other choice quotes from the same interview... "The fans, everyone, should just chill out and relax," Keane said. "Let me do my job, that is what I am paid very well to do. Everyone is getting worried about this and that, but you can't go on what other clubs have got. You have got to look at what we have got and we've got a great foundation to go and have a great season. I know we have to strengthen the squad, I am well aware of that." Whole piece here http://football.guardian.co.uk/News_Story/0,,2123372,00.html, along with a note that their lead target in the search for a striker is Michael Chopra...

Nothing at all in that article. Sam wants a left back. Heinze is a left back. Heinze may want to leave Man Utd. Therefore 'Heinze on the menu for the Toon' Do me a favour.

Blimey. If this is true I will be seriously impressed, and very confused. Surely his agent would be trying to set up a bidding war for his services... Still the Eto'o bit is bollocks right? {I'm off to find a hat that goes well with Sauce and a side order of chips...}

Good grief, some folks here just can't read past a headline can they? Here's the quotes you needed. "The Journal understands that Newcastle have been offered Portugal international midfielder Deco by officials at the Nou Camp and have also made tentative enquiries regarding the possibility of signing Cameroon striker Samuel Eto’o" and "Barcelona will attempt to sign Chelsea’s Frank Lampard before the close of the transfer window, but want to sell Deco to make room for the England star in the centre of midfield. However, they are not interested in losing Eto’o, despite his problems with manager Frank Rijkaard last season." So it's pretty clear that the Eto'o thing is rubbish. We made a 'tentative' enquiry and Barcelona don't want to lose him. As for Deco, it looks plausible, but there's mention of Lampard, and according to most of the papers recently Chelsea have been knocking back offers from Barca for Lampard. So the whole 'if they sign Lampard then they'll sell Deco' thing looks a bit unlikely, and I'm pretty sure that if they were to put him on the market there'd be more clubs than just us invited to bid. Summer nonsense I reckon.

Don't believe either of these rumours. I'd agree that Raul hasn't delivered for Madrid of Spain for years btw but both he and Deco will be loath to spend a season without European football. Besides which signing big name players who are past their best hardly counts as 'stunning the football world' clubs like Newcastle sign players like that every season. Bring me someone at the peak of their powers from a big club and that'll stun the world of football. Get me Eto'o or Cassilas, or Totti, or Toni, or Ibrahimovic, hell get Schweinsteiger out of Germany or Huntelaar out of Ajax and it's a real statement of intent that will attract other players. Get me Raul or Deco and it's just the same old 'one last pay day'.

They do something similar in Holland (a recent introduction) and it just doesn't work. By the end of the season there are teams who know they're in the play offs because they're say 3rd, and stop trying because they can't win the league and can't drop out of the playoff spots. This season was a bit different as three teams had a chance at the title, but that had nothing to do with the playoffs.

The PL are trying to block the move because West Ham *do* own his rights, or at least claimed that they do in order to keep playing him last year. If the courts don't find this to be the case then Sheffield Utd have even more reasons to be pissed off than they do now... http://football.guardian.co.uk/News_Story/0,,2120117,00.html

Nah we've got to get rid of him. If you go missing when the clubs looking at relegation battles, or can't get yourself off the sick bed to play in Europe we don't need you. Lets hope we're just getting him fit so we can sell him. Maybe he fancies a move to the US of A, or that Saudi League? Dwight Yorke was playing in.

Well yeah, because there's no such thing as 'owning a player' there is only 'owning the registration' if you want him to appear on a football pitch for you.

Hmm, this may yet all be bollocks. I think the same Premier League panel which kept West Ham up also found that the only owners of his registration they were prepared to recognise were West Ham. Lets wait and see what develops shall we?

“The transfer deadline is not until the end of August and the feeling here is United could be about to pull out all the shots to land a big one.” That's it. That's the only quote about this in the article. The bit about "And that will possibly include the arrival of a big-name player that will stun the soccer world" is the journalists (Olivers?) interpretation of that. I think 'stun the soccer world' signings (Ronaldinho, Torres, Eto'o, Terry, Lampard etc.) are not going to happen. Personally I think the signings are coming up well so far, another 4 or 5 like this and we'll be fine.

Right, if people go and sign contracts with 12 month notice periods I don't think it's unreasonable to ask them to work them, or to ask them to buy themselves out (which effectively means we buy them out). 12 months is practically unheard of in business, presumably these clauses were there because they wanted to be protected in the event of the manager changing...

Hmm. The only money making machine in world football is Man Utd. Madrid lose money, Barca lose money, the Italian clubs bleed money all over the place... Most of them are wildly overvalued given their seemingly constant inability to make profits. The only way anyone's made real money out of football clubs is by buying them cheap, building up the revenues and floating them on the stock market while promising that they'll be profitable one day. Most of them haven't been. Still, no reason to think Ashley can't repeat that trick. Get us back into the CL, sign some big sponsorship deals, bigger stadium, bigger TV revenues and he might double his money by refloating in five years time.

I just wish he'd kept his mouth shut. But it looks like he's after work, he's got a tame journo to drop in those 'best english manager of recent years' lines and the price is providing good copy by attacking Sam...

Plus the money on the gates, the marketing etc. I think a homegame is worth about a million? Although the UEFA ones weren't sell outs and the prices were lower, but still, not chump change.

Personally I'm sure we'll be lining up in a 4-3-3 or a 4-5-1 formation. Allardyce has played it everywhere he went and we won't be different. He believes that it's the formation most likely to win games, and any long term rebuilding of a team will be aimed at producing a team that can play like that.

Well I wouldn't. But someone was saying a few days back that Owen was played wide right by Real Madrid and did well there...?

Excellent signing. Looking forward to seeing where he's deployed though. Allardyce in the papers today saying he wants another 4 defenders...

Yup, all possible, but however you slice it we seem to have too many players for these positions.

Right now our squad contains a number of players we think of as wingers, namely Dyer, Solano, Milner, Luque, N'zogbia and Duff. We also have a bunch of strikers namely Owen, Martins, Viduka and Ameobi. Last season playing 4-4-2 that meant eight players chasing four positions (once you allow for Sibierski being at the club and Owen and Ameobi being injured). Once Solano moved to right back it went down to seven players and four positions. That's a healthy level of competition. If our new preferred formation is 4-3-3 all those players are going to be chasing three starting slots. However it's even more competitive than that, because the central striker role is only ever going to go to one of the specialist strikers - probably Viduka. Which leaves all the remaining players chasing two starting slots. That's nine players after two positions. Applying the conventional wisdom of two players for every position we need to trim some players. Of our wingers Milner is about the only one I can see playing in the midfield 3 effectively, while of our forwards I can definately see Owen or Martins doing a job wide on the flanks the way Anelka and Diouf have for Bolton. So you might keep players like Owen, Martins, Viduka, Ameobi, Milner and N'Zogbia to provide the front three, while getting rid of Dyer, Solano, Luque and Duff. You could perhaps make a case for keeping Solano as an emergency right back and free kick specialist, and playing Dyer in a midfield three, but I don't see either of them commanding starting places on a regular basis. Whichever way you cut it I think there's going to be sales or come January we'll have a bunch of attacking midfielders muttering about how they're not being given a chance. As an aside, looking at the squad we've got now we end up lining up a bit like this Given Carr Taylor Rozenhaal Babayaro Butt Emre Barton Owen Martins Viduka With a bench of Milner, NZogbia, Ameobi, Huntington, Harper; or something similar, the cover in centre mid / defence is still woeful. So there's an awful lot of shopping still to do.

Remember the new look Owen has bulked up a bit... He might think he can do a job up front (won't win anything in the air though, and begs the question, what's Viduka for)

There's no news here. When you do a major strategic review to look at everything that means you do a major strategic review to look at everything. All that's going on here is that a mate of some architect or construction group is trying to whip up some PR to make sure the project continues. No idea if that conference centre would have made money, Chelseas was losing cash hand over fist before Abramovich came in, and now we just don't know.

Yup, and that gives us a little bit of insurance, because if someone bids for Owen they'll have to match his wage demands, which given his recent lack of matches makes signing him a massive gamble. The only reason to put release clauses in is to stop players leaving. You see this in Spain where Torres had a 90 million euro clause, which was basically a way of saying he was off the market. When they decided to sell him they dropped it to 40 million euro, which ended up being almost what they accepted. Our problem is the clauses have been there to give players a route out if things go badly, and the only reason you'd do that is to convince them to sign when you're desperate. Oh.

Think of him as a January signing. While it looks odd there are a lot of ways to take the risk out of this. If I was doing this I'd want a pre-contract agreement or some such which says if he can't pass a medical in x months time we won't be keeping him on, and puts him on some sort of pay per appearance deal - at least for the first season. It is a risk though, not many players make it through three serious injuries in three seasons and get back to where they were.