Village Idiot

Yes. Torres benched.

The team has been utter tosh since we won the WC, we actually need some hungrier players and people like Capdevila, Puyol or Xavi will be way too old in 2012 anyway.

Get in.

What? Wasn't he capped for Brazil while he played for us?

Gervinho linked to Atlético today in "As". No quotes or anything.

Figures haven't been made public yet (and I presume they won't), but I expect our local press to find out. AFAIK the last time around he was asking the same salary as David Villa. La Liga has called a strike for the first week of April. That means the first Clásico (out of possibly many) to be played that month will be postponed.

Wouldn't be surprised if they (and a host of others) frontloaded expenses/financial housekeeping before the financial fair play rules came in.

Luque didn't seem to have any kind of desire after leaving you, to be frank. Barely played for Ajax and he just had a good (actually quite good) season at Málaga before sitting on his arse picking up wages until they released him this January. But I stand by what I said, Deportivo/Mallorca Luque was a brilliant player. His mobility and overall nippiness was a big asset so probably the injury hurt him a lot.

Then why did you pay €14m for him?

As I (kind of) mentioned in my opening post, Tiote is the exception in that he's the only player we've recently bought who actually plays on a regular basis and even he's now racked up 6 missed games via suspensions. Jury's still out regarding Gosling and Ben Arfa, and Ireland is just a loan. Pending this, that's an okay record coupled with Tioté's success. Probably needed another striker, though.

Cheick Tioté?

Albert Luque was honestly a brilliant player up until you signed him. Probably wasn't suited to your league, but he was worth the money at that point, imho.

Xisco scored 9 in La Liga for a very defensive side. That's decent. Not great, but decent.

Post-2000 Dutruel Sorín Christanval Dehu Cáceres Quaresma Rochemback Motta Ezquerro Dani García Geovanni Probably could find somebody crappier for FBs. Hard to leave out Maxi "White Drogba" López too.

Personally I don't mind the "leave on a free" part of the ruling, it's a basic worker right and it was always the case in Spain to begin with. But the "no foreign player limit" part of it has done a lot of harm to football with the rich leagues stocking up all the talent and turning continental football into a wasteland dominated by the same few.

bit surprised at the low release clause tbh....Spanish clubs usually have some ridiculous buy out fee. Though not exactly a prolific goalscorer ,but strong, quick, good on the ball and he would certainly be worth having for 5m euros IMO. It's all part of the negotiation. In this particular case Valdez agreed to cut his wages (nee chance in hell Hércules could meet Dortmund wages), in exchange for a low escape clause.

Serves him right.

Yes, €4m.

good job we got Stephen Ireland. Don't think you could have beat Sevilla. No reason why we couldn't have been in there though. Fits our model of buy em low, sell em high perfectly too. In other news what a run Levante are on at the moment. Luis Garcia is doing a fine job. Still mightily surprised they got him for so little and no interest from other teams. And yes, Luís García is working a small miracle at Levante.

good job we got Stephen Ireland. Don't think you could have beat Sevilla.

Hércules manager "Boquerón" Esteban sacked.

Rakitic, man, such a coup.

Almería and Hércules starting to look certs to go down. You could fish up Piatti from Almería, Mbia as a decent backup for Tiote. Nelson Valdez from Hércules is a good player, but it looks like you have already 20000000000000 people that can play off the main striker. Trezeguet is probably too old.

http://estaticos.marca.com/marcador/futbol/2010_11/primera/jornada_29/val_sev/images/ima4_300x227.jpg Personally think it's pretty cool. They will reportedly auction them off and donate the proceeds.

Bojan will stay, unless he wants to go. He extended his contract this January so it's not like he's unhappy just yet. I get the feeling Afellay could become a great winger if we played him more. But I would feel better with another striker, yes. But we need to fill up our defense first.