Interpolic

Joey Barton eats babies for breakfast though, there's a difference.

He was worth a lot more than £8m when Liverpool sold him though, much of the reason £17m was such a rip off when we bought him was that he'd shown himself to be only worthy of a place on the a bench for much of the time at a top, top side. My point was that you can knock a good few million off someone's price if they're 12 months from the end of their contract and I'd be surprised if you disagreed with that.

Do you think we can buy another left back as good as Enrique for 7m before the transfer window closes ? Who's even to say that Ashley will reinvest the 7m in another left back like the 35m that has been reinvested in playing staff... I don't think we can buy a player as good for that price, no. I know he's not Mr Popular around here but Liverpool were forced to sell Michael Owen to Real Madrid for £8m all those years ago, which was half of his market value as was proven 12 months later. That's just one example.

2-2 draw @ 16/1 looks areet n'all.

I'm living on microwave Sunday dinners either way, sonna. I might put a couple of quid on it though. I'm just annoyed I never put that bet on for the FA Cup final tbh, because I did have a feeling.

It's 60/1, might put me house on that th'morra.

I wonder what odds you can get on 1-0 City, Yaya Toure FGS again - might be worth a punt.

Knew Bent must have had a knock.

And if he's our last midfield signing and Barton leaves? Still not Barton's replacement. They aren't even comparable in style. Style's not important here, it's about plugging gaps in the first team if certain players are to leave.

IMO we're dreaming if we think we're going to get a lot more than that for him at this stage. We all know he's worth more than that but even the big clubs will hang around for a bit if they can get a £10m+ player for nowt in a year's time and they have enough in the squad to tide things over. If we can get around £7m for him in the end then we've done quite well imo.

And if he's our last midfield signing and Barton leaves?

Decent delivery? A proven (admittedly mediocre) Premier League pedigree? Not such a risk, but instead a solid player at the least?

Would people have preferred Seb Larsson? My answer's yes btw, although it's interesting that we seem to be prioritising pace.

Well we'll see.

Would be pointless considering the cameras face the other way. Not really, what with all the speculation over Pardew's job that will be coming through the season, then all the stuff Ashley does wrong, and of course when our players put the boot in it it would be pretty pointless to put them around the 3 others stands instead of that when all the camera's will be focusing there instead.

If we're incredibly tight at the back then we can afford to score a few less goals I suppose. We need investment either way.

I think he'll score goals but am concerned that he'll be out injured now and again, we can't hang our hat on him.

"Signed for a fee, by Mike Ash-ley?" Brilliant, like it a lot.

Anyway, say we sing a Peter Lovenkrands song about him like "Gabby Obertan..." what are the other words? Best I can come up with is "He's fucking French, he's not Judi Dench, Gabby Obertan" so I'm hoping there are improvements to be made.

Can see why Pardew went for him then, ho ho ho.

Every time they communicate they antagonise the majority of fans - they're that fucking thick on the PR side of things that I'm happier when they shut the fuck up tbh. A perfect example is today's pre-season friendly which they could have used for some healthy PR and made the game really cheap and about getting as many people, particularly kids, through the door as possible. It rained anyway so probably best they didn't ( ), but yeah they're fucking thick and any communication that comes out sounds arsey and antagonistic and ungrateful and authoritarian, so I'm in no rush to hear any more from them.

Well that's different really. If they come out with some daft figures now then it's meaningless imo.

I wouldn't believe them if they gave us figures so there's no point.