Village Idiot

Clean break, it should be absolutely no doubt he will be the same player bar any psychological blocks. Given his ego I doubt we'll see that, though. Exactly. There's a big difference between HBA's break and those of Smith and Eduardo. HBA's bones were broken at the middle of the leg. Smith and Eduardo's bones broke down at the ancle. That f***s up both the ancle and the leg. When a broken bone heals, cartilage is attached to it. This extra cartilage makes the area around the fracture stronger than it was before it got broken. This apply for HBA's case. But for Smith and Eduardo, the same cartilage causes them problems: Since the bones snapped down at the ankle, the cartilage that grows on the bone, hinders the ankle's flexibility. In other words, the ankle will never be the same again. Also I think Smith and Eduardo snapped some tendons too, making the injury even worse. And as we've seen, both those players never fully recovered. So all that's left for HBA is to fix the mental part. But seriously, I want him rested against the most physical teams. The man has such an acceleration that brutes are probably going to miss the tackle completely and take his leg. And yes, I want him rested the next match against City. If De Jong performs such an act once again, I will FUBAR him. Actually I think Eduardo's issues were more mental than anything. You could see him never fully commiting himself again.

I just love the logic behind it: "I know of 5 people with STs that died, if - say - 1000 other people know 5 people each that accounts for 5000 dead ST holders!" I know of 2 close people that died in the past year, if everybody knows 2 people that died Mankind has been extinct twice over

There's a plaque memorializing the gym where Barça first played, but I don't know if our first proper pitch (L'Escupidora) is memorialized. I don't work far from the site so I might check tomorrow.

Rumor going round that we'll try to get Cesc to do a Webster this summer in reprisal. That would bring the cost of signing him down to 25m-ish. Don't think it's true, mind, since I'm adamant Cesc wants to leave Arse in friendly terms and NO big club wants to open that can of worms (cue Alves leaving for €5m)

http://www.readytogo.net/smb/showthread.php?t=572430&page=12 f***ing fantasic stuff, people worrying about Quinns health because of his recent comments, and some guy claiming attendances may be down simply because people have died since 2004!!! You couldnt make this s*** up. just a point of order re missing fans. i know personally 5 people who have died, who had a season ticket in 2004. it is possible say 1000 people know something similar. a possible reason for 5000 missing people when quinn keeps talking about the seasons we had 45000 plus crowds back in the 2000/2001 season GOLD Mackems are an endangered species (Don't usually mind Sunderland but this was too good to pass up)

Samper is amazing, Ballesté is a good goalkeeper. There seems to be a lot of hype about him but I always find difficult to judge young goalies. Toral is a great loss, but we had known that Arsenal had made an offer to Samper since December and I'm relieved we'll get to keep at least him. We don't have control over who attends our youth away games. Also a lot of the scouts become club members and we can't weed those out. A lot of the games at this level are very informal and you really don't have people at the door enforcing attendance rules, etc... mostly just the families of the players and some odd loon attend.

They routinely scout our youngsters. It's a bit of a joke, if you go to a youth game near that age bracket, there's always a bunch of English scouts piled up on a side of the pitch. As you said, it's not that easy to convince a youngster to move to another country and this same week Sergi Samper and Pol Ballesté refused Arsenal, while Toral accepted.

http://www.nuwfc.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=106:alice-stroyan&catid=34:first-team&Itemid=56 "Person you would like most to meet: Channing Tatum"

Just checked the Spurs game stats, Blackpool 4 shots on goal, Spurs 10...

I know what you're saying, but I'd hardly call 1-1 there in the first leg a particularly bad result. I know. Madrid will do them easily this year. Just that they managed to put up a fight.

Espanyol are better than us at this so I pretend it doesn't exist

Blackpool would win Serie A.

Real Madrid keeps his bad record at Gerland. Fair play to Lyon, I didn't think they'd get a decent result this year.

Actually I trust the yanks more to exact change in the FIFA than us Euros, our FAs will never bark in front of their master. Where's your sig from Kaizero?

To be frank, I hope some federation is daft enough to give him the nod, but I suspect they'll fear Blatter's reprisal.

Torres just needs a summer of rest, in my opinion. Injuries and non-stop international competitions every summer since 2008 have taken its toll.

Benzema scores with almost his first touch.

Van Der Vaart missed the big club train with Real Madrid. Can't see him going anywhere "better" than Spurs. As we all know, Bale is going to Inter for 40m in the summer, though.

IIRC each club can re-register one cup-tied player in Europe. Real Madrid had this issue when they signed Huntelaar and Lass in the January window two years ago and chose Lass.

Pablo Hernández has fallen out of favor at Valencia, weren't you linked with him at some point? (Might have been caughtoffside type link, mind)

That's pretty good given how dire they were. If his pace is still there he could get 15-ish in a team that doesn't spend the season chasing shadows.

Still had a decent return for Sunderland, didn't he?

weren't real madrid also massivly helped out by the municipality (?) when they 'sold' their training ground to the city of madrid ? Yes, they got their training ground re-zoned and then they sold it to the city, at a huge expense to the taxpayer. We actually tried to do the same but we have an honest city council

The saving banks that usually bankrolled Real Madrid and Barça's debt have now tighter lending regulations (Spanish bank regs are actually very tight, but they didn't apply to savings banks). Also it wasn't banks cozying up to Real Madrid as much as it was to Florentino Pérez. The bank that holds most of Real Madrid's debt is a big investor in Pérez's businesses (and Madrid's debt is a drop in the ocean compared to those)

I don't think we ever offered anything to Afobe, to be frank. But we did scout him indeed.