Village Idiot

I expect a pretty nasty raping today. Given what they did a few months ago, the fact we are managerless, and that all the Spanish and Brazilian internationals are still on holidays, just nothing good can happen today

By the way, lots of talk over here that the Madrid-Napoli transfers have inflated fees to hide payouts to the players. According to the "reports" 1) Madrid sells player to Napoli 2) Napoli offers a salary within their guidelines, which is lower to what the player wants. 3) To circumvent this, Napoli pays an inflated fee, and Madrid stumps up the difference in wages. I have seen them outside of the usual Barça press, which will just run anything to make Madrid look slightly bad, so I give them at least some resemblance of truth. And to be honest, those prices are way too outside any sensible valuation of those players. According to the reports, Madrid would have paid Albiol €4m out of the €11m transfer fee. No other figures from the other sales have surfaced.

You should have signed him and Delfouneso together. Pair them upfront.

More misspellings... (the rightmost shirt) http://estaticos01.marca.com/imagenes/2013/07/23/futbol/futbol_internacional/espanoles_mundo/1374597705_extras_noticia_foton_7_0.jpg Was bound to happen with that name, he should just go by "Gerard"

Completely agree one of the reasons Higuain has struggled at Madrid was because the bigger Ronaldo's influence got the more his space was limited. Same with Bale and Adebayor but on a lesser scale. Would Adebayor ever be capable of replacing even half of what Bale offers though? I would be surprised. Not saying that just that Spurs would need to get a forward of the type Deuce described to get the most from the team. Just buying a goalscorer wouldn't work. Soldado's pretty fluid isn't he? Would he be a good fit for them? He really doesn't have anything to his game other than goals, but as a mobile striker he's as good as it gets. He's extremely smart on the pitch too.

I don't know. Spurs always flatter to deceive me. They look good, but somehow there's a fundamental lack of substance to their attacking play, that's why they need such a battering ram like Bale. I'm not sure just a mobile striker would do.

Messi would improve Spurs immensely too.

To be frank, it looks like a clerical error to me. The registration at his old school makes him 29, but every other official registry says he's 27. Now that we are on this, a Barça staffer told me once that Ronaldinho did lie about his age, and that's why he declined so early. I have never heard about this ever again, so it's probably BS. But conspiracy theories are fun.

Almost €40m for Higuaín man, a combined €60m for the lot of Albiol/Callejón/Higuaín. Benítez might as well just have wired the Cavani money to Madrid's bank account and be done with it. f***ing madridista c***, why couldn't Guardiola buy, say, Sánchez for €50m

Actually I'd say that both Real and Barça will be weaker this year with new management and some squad issues (lots of youngsters over at Real, some aging key players at ours), but everybody else in La Liga is selling their best players. Gotta balance out that national debt I guess. No way Soldado is worth €30m by the way.

Spurs closing onto Soldado, Valencia ask for €30m, they are offering €24m.

Good read that. Don't think he did himself any favours last season otherwise he probably would've had a chance. Unless he's gone somewhere since leaving Athletic I think he is still without a job. Might end up going back to Newell's. Bielsa is far too unpredictable/unstable for long term planning at a club. Crazy genius that he is.

Well, I like that a lot. We'll see if it works. I still can't forget that utterly unwatchable Paraguay side though (but they did get the job done).

Neither do I, it looks like a massive gamble to me

it annoys me tbh since if they cared so much why leave. Its what really annoyed me about the Fabregas to Barca saga since the comment was he wanted to "return home" but why did he f***ing leave in the first place then if he loved the club so much Arsenal were miles ahead of us at the time he left. He just left for a better job opportunity. You can still love the club and look after your career. I know football is emotional for us, but those are professional careers too. My customers didn't call me Judas when I left the last company I worked for...

Thiago has released a goodbye letter to Barça, thanking fans etc... actually pretty heartwarming. It's just PR, I know. And most likely he hasn't written it myself. But hell, I love when at least they seem/pretend to care.

Typical yanks, they ignore foreign countries even when they score.

Wait... wait... you can change the squad in the middle of the tournament?

Is that why Bayern picked Barca? That's why *we* picked them, it will be our first and they have played a lot of friendlies already

First friendly of the season, you always pick shit opposition for that so you can play at a canter.

Given the reactions in this place, I'm starting to believe Ashley makes those heel appointments to put over Pardew as a face.

Yes, that's him. "New Rafa Márquez" in FM parlance.

Our DoF has two assistants, fwiw.

Actually their valuation is €40m. Ridiculous, but Benítez seems bent on getting him. Madridista cunt. Espanyol have turned down a bid from an unnamed Premier League club for Héctor Moreno. He's a CB, so I doubt it's you.

I bet he wishes you could glory hunt internationally too. Oh you can. A bunch of people over here supported Brazil/Netherlands/whatever in the times where Spain was crap.