Village Idiot

Depor's announcement: http://www.canaldeportivo.com/servlet/es.iris.servlets.Noticias?accion=4&ver=1&nid=30933&mid=12

Very happy to have him back in La Liga. Still have memories of that game in the Camp Nou where he missed a penalty. Quintessential Gutiérrez.

17/20 - screwed Sunderland and two former C'ship clubs (Watford, Bournemouth). Thought Rodwell has been more expensive. I'd probably score worse in a similar La Liga quiz!

Last season Bryan Ruiz signed for Levante and the paperwork was similarly later, their appeal was rejected. If anything fairness mandates a similar treatment for De Gea now.

"As" claim it's Navas who's stalled his part of the deal and forced the whole thing to fall through. I agree with the sentiment that the forces of time and space will bend themselves at the will of Manchester United and Real Madrid to make this deal happen.

I would guess €60m + €20m in bonuses as reported before. Might be the case though.. Yeah, €80m with all addons. I'm aware he's a prospect, but he didn't look anything special against Valencia and a cursory glance at his stats suggest that's a ludicrous price.

Is the Martial transfer fee for real? Spanish media are quoting €80m. Absolutely gobsmacked if true.

Navas is excellent. Don't think ManU will feel the loss in the short term if he can adapt quickly.

Bournemouth fans getting cocky on Twitter saying Austin is going there and they are now a bigger club than us. Right. I loathe the fans of newly promoted clubs. They're always like this, full of themselves now they're in the top flight. Norwich fans are awful for this. Every time they get promoted. Which is a sentence which really says it all about them. Palace fans are bad as well. I had a look at their forums when we were linked to Scott Dann and the consensus was that none of their players would dream of signing for Everton since they are now a bigger club than us off the back of finishing higher in the league. For the first time in decades. By 1 point. We had Stoke fans expressing amazement Traore chose us over them. Some of them were suggesting they buy him and loan him to us, ffs Villa have a hundred times bigger reputation than Stoke in Spain. Plus it seems obvious that living in Brum is a way better place to live than Stoke. The only way he would have chosen them over you is if they threw more money at him.

Weird for Real Madrid to go for De Gea after Navas has been truly excellent for them in the first two league games. They will have to sell him now. I'd have waited until next summer. Can't wait for the warm welcome he'll get when he plays at the Calderón.

William Vainqueur is a brilliant name for a football player. He better be good though if he's called "winner".

He didn't meant to put in a transfer request? How does that work? He slipped while carrying a pen and fell awkwardly on a piece of paper?

Valencia were pretty much a "build from the back" team the year Cathro was there, and I suspect NUFC was looking to get a bit of that when they signed him. To Cathro's credit, Valencia were an exceptionally hard team to break. That said, the only defensive thing I have spotted in McClaren (didn't see the Arsenal game), is the Colback-Anita pairing, and having two mids sit back isn't hardly something out of this world, it would help if at least one of them was more creative though. I think it's too soon to really appraise the manager's intent. A transfer window where you signed one defender and three attacking players doesn't scream "the new Fat Sam" to me, though.

Awful teams both. With a bit of luck we'll get rid of at least one of them this season.

Too soon to judge a brand new manager after so few games, particularly after taking over such a damaged unit. I didn't watch the Arsenal game, but going off previous performances I think progress is being made, despite the lack of results. We'll see how the team does in a few months, when McClaren has had more time to mold it.

Fun fact: Málaga are the team that got the most points off us last season (4). We also failed to score in both legs. I hate them.

Except Fantasy Football.

I know it's Pardew, but almost nothing can tarnish a Mourinho defeat.

Lots of red cards today. Stoke

Ryan Babel is so bitter

Impeccable grammar and bad pronunciation, probably memorized or cue sheet. Haha fair enough then. He's saying he's proud to wear the shirt and play for the fans. It's really common down here to feed some phrases to foreign players to endear the fans. I'm sure he's learnt some Spanish but that was too clean.

Impeccable grammar and bad pronunciation, probably memorized or cue sheet.

Could see Dortmund winning the EL and Bayern will probably get to at least a CL semi I would imagine I can't see the other German clubs outperforming the English ones in the CL, though. Might do better in the EL since they tend to go for that trophy.

Relatively remote, I think? Italy would need to have another banner year coupled with England failing badly. http://www.uefa.com/memberassociations/uefarankings/country/ You actually have a good chance of jumping back to second if you outperform Germany this season.

Do you mean in general or Schurrle in particular? There's lots of players that are better as impact subs than as a starters.