Parsley

Would rather've taken a punt on Gestede than um and ah over Austin continuously.

Shelvey's been absolute class by the way.

Jammy cunts.

Azpilicueta

Spurs have started well, Man Utd look a bit leggy.

Going to have to ditch Hazard to accommodate Aguero I reckon as I want to keep Rooney in. This news has thrown such a fucking spanner in the works

Didn't realise M'Vila's only 25.

Go with Cabaye fwiw. Swansea adding Ayew spreads out the attacking threat around more players, while Cabaye has been brought in as a focal point. The only other proper Palace option in attack is Bolasie who's quite inconsistent. Why not go for Walcott if you can afford him, he and Sterling are the same price so it'd be easier to change them later on. Ayew's surely not a bad shout either?

Usually, when a team gets signed up to wear Nike shirts (rather than paying them to do so), as we did five years ago, people get excited. What actually happens, though, is if you're not one of their most important handful of clubs - (which then, in the UK, was Arsenal and United plus the obvious foreign clubs, you get a distinctly less impressive deal. They produced some really good kits for us, that's true, but they also fobbed a lot of templated s*** on to us as well. A few years ago we had a home shirt from them with a sort of check-ish pattern down the sides. Turned out to be a template of a Lens (I think) top from a few years before. Not only that, but one season they didn't get the home kits on sale until December - they'd f***ed up the manufacture and the club rejected them and sent them all back to them, they were so shoddy. Arsenal and your Puma kits, if I am honest, I find horrible (especially Arsenal's), but I wouldn't assume the deal is much better anywhere else unless you're one of their most important accounts. Was talking to an Arsenal-supporting mate of mine about how rubbish Puma are and he actually said - believe it or not - that Puma's top 3 accounts are ourselves, Arsenal and Dortmund. Supposedly these are the only clubs that get the tighter tops which are made in-house; the shirts that all other Puma-associated clubs wear are a more standard fit and come from a different manufacturer. Could well be a load of shite but thought it was quite interesting.

Will Hughes?

I think you're mistaking him with the other black guy. That season Sterling had 9 goals and 7 assists in 33 prem games. Sturridge had 22 goals and 9 assists in 29 games. Sterling has been surprisingly unproductive so far in his career. Doesn't score or assist as much as you would think at all. It's an absolute joke. I don't care about his stats, for starters he didn't start behind Sturridge and Suarez until at least February. I watched him in that final 3 months and he was consistently dangerous and i know Liverpool fans who considered him their best player during the run in. He's a s**** winger which is where he's been deployed since, but behind the striker for England and Liverpool he has been consistently dangerous and seeing as City don't really play with wingers as such and he has a striker which will garner all the attention i think he'll replicate that form. That's not entirely true. He was deployed up front for a fair bit last season after it was decided that Balotelli wasn't up to it and he was still pretty unimpressive.

QPR didn't go down because they didn't create chances, they were a lot better than us in that department. Most strikers would struggle to score for a team which doesn't put decent delivery into the box, doesn't pass through midfield or have decent off the ball movement. Only scored 2 more goals than us.

Doing Hernandez a bit of a disservice there like. Cisse's a poor outlet - he's not particularly quick, fairly weak with his back to the goal and relatively static outside of the box. Hernandez, as prolific as he is inside of the box, is fast and can work the channels in a way that Cisse doesn't. He'd be a pretty significant upgrade imo.

Who's this Yunus lad on the left for Germany? Been quality so far, beaten his man almost every time.

He's scored 20+ goals in each of the last 3 seasons

And again

The fuck has Rooney missed that.

Good goal.

He's been miles better than Henderson imo.

Rooney's been absolute wank.

Didn't realise that Zenden was Rafa's no.2 at Chelsea.

No one per se, but there seems to be a dominant view on here that McClaren will bring more of the same, essentially suggesting that while McClaren isn't necessarily worse than Pardew, he isn't any better. Which - at this point in time - is a bit unfair I think.

I would have thought that is the job of the manager to organise his team and being buddies with Carr there really is no excuse for not getting the right personnel through the door.Ashley has publicly said that he's going to spend big this time, so if between the 3 of them - or 4 if you include lickspittle Charnley - if they can't put a workable squad together, what's the point? We're already at that stage and have been for quite some time now. But previously the pro-Pardew brigade could argue that he wasn't able to implement his own brand of football because he had no say in the transfer policy. Now at least Carr and McClaren should be on the same page so assuming Ashley loosens the purse strings even a little bit, then there's no excuse for not getting the right players for the positions required. If we need a big defender we should be signing a big defender. There's certainly a case for arguing that, had we had a manager on a similar wave length to Carr in terms of rating players in the first place (ie instead of Pardew), the likes of Yanga-Mbiwa, Marveaux, Santon - maybe even Ben Arfa - would still be playing for the club. Or, at the very least, sold on for a profit rather than a loss. It's very tempting to write McClaren off as a jobs-for-the-boys type of appointment, but his connections with Carr really should work in the club's favour going forward.

Why was Clough sacked then? You can't have it both ways like. Didn't realise I was trying to. Clough is s**** and had the club in a falsely poor position. That doesn't make McClaren good enough to manage Newcastle United. Fair enough. I thought you were arguing that McClaren somehow owed any success he had at Derby to the 'positive' foundationa laid by Clough.

Why was Clough sacked then? You can't have it both ways like.