leffe186

Quite a good game, this. Orlando not fucking about with the tackling, as per. VDV and Modric looking sharp. Bentley and Defoe looking like Bentley and Defoe. Those of you talking about Adam Smith as an option might be better off considering Naughton, who's playing RB today.

Barmy decision IMO to give the captaincy to someone who's just put in a transfer request. Not at all, now he's guaranteed to stay! Defoe kindly demonstrating why we need a new striker.

Absolute screamer of a free kick from VDV against the other Orlando side. Modric captain - quite amusing as he completely forgot about the coin toss, then didn't have a clue what to do when he won it.

oldtype, trying to prove to colocho he's not stupid and ignorant eh ? Oldtype, having agonized for weeks over whether this joke is too lame or not, finally deciding that he doesn't give a toss. Too economical with the humour.

EDIT: Wait, he's a rightback. Sure he played on the left for Spurs reserves at one point but maybe I've had a brain failure. He's a proper right back. Looked shit hot at 16-17, then has been working his way up the loan leagues. Before I left for the States, he was looking like he might break through, but have not seen much of him since then. Good reviews at Bournemouth. His problem is that Kyle Walker will be ahead of him in the pecking order, and I don't think Corluka will move for a little while. I'd love him to get a loan deal with yourselves, actually. Might be one year too soon.

40000? Seems a bit steep.

For midfield and attack, it'd leave them with Henderson, Gerrard, Adam, Cattermole, Downing, Lucas, Kuyt, Cole, Meireles, Aquilani, Maxi, Suarez, Carroll, (Shelvey, Spearing, Poulsen, Jovanovic and N'Gog too) to fill six places in the team That's OK, they can give players a game in the Europa...

But when City does it, it's disgusting? Well quite. What's refreshing about a team spunking great wodges of cash they've essentially won in a lottery, not earned? That's been the case every year since Abramovich.

really? because he's said stuff like this before and been wrong, to me it just seems he's setting up Modric as the villain so he gets away without any rep damage His language re Berbatov was ambiguous. He's been unequivocal about Modric, stating that he's not leaving. I don't think it's about his rep in this case (though I'm not sure if it would matter if it was); I think Levy realises what it says about Spurs if we can't keep a player with five years (?) left on his contract. The money offered is not what he's worth to us.

Fabregas?

Watch that whole match instead of watching stuff on youtube. You watch youtube you get Nacho Gonzalez you watch the whole thing you get me They were if everyone were honest, what I was arguing is to that its relatively stupid to call the Brazilian cheats and not the American who were doing the same. Wambach did the same Erika did and I was also pointing it out that it happens every day, why make make such a big deal when you see it happening every weekend? Like I said, calling ONLY the brazilian cheats is only telling half the story. Half the story? So you're saying that Brazil cheat as much as the rest of the world put together? Harsh, but if you say so. Still, that's not really my point. My point is that any neutral observer of that game would consider one side to have made a extended, concerted effort to cheat. I hate cheating, because I love football. The antics of Erika do not happen every weekend, they really don't, and even if they did, that wouldn't make them any more acceptable. That level of dishonesty is all the more obvious in women's football because there really is less of it about, maybe because there is less money about. I'm no less angry about the Brazil game than I was about Barca v Real, but in women's football the level of officiating seems lower so it's even more cynical.

But that's his problem, really, and became his problem when he signed the contract. The suggestion is that Joorabchian has manoeuvred this into the situation where there is only one team in position to buy him - no bidding war = less money on the table. The bottom line is that if Chelsea and Man City are no longer allowed to run at a stratospheric loss, then the first thing that will come down will be their wages. That will remove one major attraction. The other major attraction - Champions League - will then come under greater threat from clubs like Spurs and Newcastle, with their considerable revenue and decent squads.

Type "Brasilien vs USA - Peinliche Showeinlage von Erika" into your favorite tube. Also, bare in mind that this is just one example of outright disgusting cheating in a web of many that they spun throughout the match. You're going to have to work really hard to spin that one, Felipao! I saw some pundit discussion before the tournament started where one pundit was trotting out the cliche about women's football being more honest, less diving etc etc. The co-pundit (an ex-player I think) told him that he clearly hadn't seen Brazil play.

...and Brett, you're essentially saying that anyone really good shouldn't be playing for Newcastle either. Like, say, Tiote. "He's a class act who deserves to be at a top club." For some time now players have had contracts that mean something, i.e. when the contract is over they can leave for nowt. That's progress. But it has to work both ways. The fair play rules really are a crossroads for football. If sugar daddies are legitimized then we can all (well, the clubs that really matter) pack up and go home. The only hope for us is to somehow get some breaks in building a new stadium, the only hope for you is to magically pull some revenue out of your arse. Or either of us can sell our souls to oil money.

He'll get the boot eventually.

So that's the plan.

Please let West Ham stay down. Would be mint.

The thing is, I can perfectly well understand players wanting to move to Chelsea or Manchester - the money is ludicrous and the chance of winning something is greater than at Spurs. I just have a problem with "independent" media launching sustained campaigns to shift them based upon lies. I would suggest that the following players were probably on 35-40K or more pw at Spurs last season: Keane, Jenas, Defoe, Crouch, Pav, VDV, King, Woodgate, Bentley, Lennon, and possibly Dawson and Gomes. It's all conjecture, but that seems likely. Sky Sports, then the Sun and one or two others are saying that Modric is therefore on at best the 10th highest wages at the club - after re-negotiating his contract last year. It's just not credible. He's our best player, and Levy is not an idiot.

On my phone so this might be messy! This is a complete guess, but I think the key is that when teams pay transfer fees the cost registers as depreciation over the length of the players contract. So the profit on transfers is the amount received for a player less any depreciation still left. Or something.

I think a name & shame would be fantastic. Come on macphisto, cards on the table.

I'm not really au fait with the day-to-day running of your club over the last few years, but taking this from that Swiss Ramble blog: http://img715.imageshack.us/img715/5264/newcastlepl.jpg This covering the years up to relegation, there's an operating loss of 25-35M per year over the last three, partially covered by player sales. We can expect the wage bill to have been slashed dramatically, and I think that media income will have increased. However, as Wallace says, commercial revenues will have dropped. It's not inconceivable that you are still not doing much more than breaking even. Am I missing something? Even halving the wage bill in 2009 (i.e. going from 71M to 35.5M) would not have covered the operating loss. Just compare with Sunderland: http://img828.imageshack.us/img828/4231/sunderlandpandl.jpg They lost a fucking fortune in the last two years, and relied on Ellis Short to bail them out. I presume that Ashley is not prepared to do the same (and the Fair Play rules will back that up), so the idea that the Carroll money would just go to balance the books is not entirely unlikely. Apologies if I've entirely missed the point. Wullie, you asked how much debt all the other clubs in the world must be building up - the answer is, a fucking obscene amount. Just in the Premier League, only four clubs made a profit in 2010 according to Deloitte, and two of those were essentially break-even. In that climate, speculating to accumulate becomes impossible.

The reffing's not been great. Still, the Aussie forward should have just gone over and blasted it into the net when she dropped it. At least we (Aussies) won. Better not go out on goal difference now.

As bad as anybody? I think you're being too modest!

That's been our point all along. I don't mind West Ham getting the thing and itbecoming awhite elephant, as long as they don't get a nudge and a wink to trash the track a couple of years down the line

Better men than Owen have tried to take Morgan out. Barton, for one! Piers Morgan is an unspeakable cunt. I love the fact that he is an Arsenal supporter, gives me a warm feeling inside. Much like knowing Cameron is a Villa fan (because his dad once part-owned them, or something).