Hughesy

Not sure if this has been posted or not - Faye appears to be making friends at Stoke.. http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/apr/27/stoke-city-abdoulaye-faye-glenn-whelan

Really wasn't anywhere near as bad as people are making. Such nonsense spouted here sometimes.

Mike Hooper is a bouncer at Studio in Chester le Street. He's fuckig huge! I thought he 'bounced' in Durham.

Wolves would want a minimum of £10-12 million for Doyle, I reckon. Would be a bad buy at that kind of price.

Does seem a bit odd - but people seem to lap up the stories so... they probably don't care.

Gerrard also has a 16 year old lass pregnant apparently. Thats all from the same guy who broke the whole Terry/Bridge thing a week before anyone else. Theres always rumours about his missus being rattled by another bloke mind so i'm not too sure, she does look like she's a terrific slag though. About a month ago, I heard from someone who works at a tabloid newspaper that the papers have got a hell of a lot of Ashley Cole/Terry/Bridge type stories on England international footballers that they were planning to run in the build up to the World Cup. This vaguely fits in with this Gerrard runmour. We shall see..

Garrido isn't that.... oh never mind. Let's move on from Man City rejects.

As I pointed out earlier - not if City want to get rid of them. If City want to get rid, they will end up paying a percentage of the player's existing salary I imagine to facilitate their departure. It just depends on what wages we could actually offer over and above that.

On reflection - I am happy to admit that you are possibly right on that one. I am trying to remember how I felt when we bought Duff. Pretty convinced I wasn't happy about Smith, Butt and Geremi. Duff was probably the exception. Hard to judge without hindsight really. I suppose the distinction in my mind is that the players above were offloaded seemingly because they weren't good enough, whereas I regard some of the players that City are offloading as being offloaded simply because City just buy players on a seemingly random basis. Therefore, I suppose I think they will end up offloading players who still have something to offer and I see potential value there. As I said earlier - as a general rule I would advocate the purchase only of young and hungry players. I suppose I was making the distinction based on the fact that Petrov doesn't seem to have lost any pace (whereas it was clear that all the NUFC players above had) and seems very effective whenever I see him play. RSC just seems to have been a bit unlucky with injuries early on and then the fact that they bought Adebayor and Tevez.

I completely agree on the policy of buying players on the up. 100% behind that policy and I've always advocated it. In fact I've done it quite a lot in this very thread I think. However, I think that because City are quite unique since they have endless pots of cash to hoard good players, they will inevitably end up offloading good players who could do a job for us and are still in their 'prime'. I think there is a world of difference between buying someone like Geremi, Smith, Duff, Butt etc and getting someone like Santa Cruz or Petrov on loan - in terms of risk and the ability of the players. The reason I mentioned Santa Cruz was because you left him out of the players you stated wouldn't come to us and labelled the rest as crap. Therefore, I assumed you had lumped Santa Cruz in with the crap. All I will say in relation to Garrido is that he is far more likely to get games here than he is at City - so it is not beyond the realms of possibility that he could move if he wanted to challenge for a place.

The ones we could afford would either sign for better sides or require too high wages. Wouldnt touch 75% of them with a 200 ft barge pole tbh I suspect City might be open to loan deals as well - so I personally wouldn't rule it out. Eh? What has City's loan policy got to do with what i posted? All I was suggesting was that some of the above players might be available on loan - therefore our risk is somewhat lessened if we were to get them for a year on loan. Yeah but as the majority on that list are utter crap and Robinho, Ireland, SWP wouldnt ever sign for us what does it matter how much risk there is when they wont help us or wont come? You'd be mad to turn down Santa Cruz on loan and I think Garrido would be pretty good cover/competition for Enrique if he was brought in on loan. I don't think Petrov on loan would be that bad. I agree that you shouldn't go near Vieira, Benjani or Johnson. Not sure about Caicedo - is he on loan at Sporting? Not sure how he has done there.

The ones we could afford would either sign for better sides or require too high wages. Wouldnt touch 75% of them with a 200 ft barge pole tbh I suspect City might be open to loan deals as well - so I personally wouldn't rule it out. Eh? What has City's loan policy got to do with what i posted? All I was suggesting was that some of the above players might be available on loan - therefore our risk is somewhat lessened if we were to get them for a year on loan.

The ones we could afford would either sign for better sides or require too high wages. Wouldnt touch 75% of them with a 200 ft barge pole tbh I suspect City might be open to loan deals as well - so I personally wouldn't rule it out.

They'll all be on massive f***ing wages though and won't want to take a substantial cut i'd imagine. Same sort of problem we used to have. Well you don't know until you ask. I can't imagine there are a plethora of clubs willing to match City wages, so I imagine the above players will have to take a cut or City will have to pay them off. Can't see any harm in at least testing the water.

Genuinely think that if there is a mass clearout at City, you might be able to pick up the odd player at a reasonable price. Times was suggesting the following players might be available: Robinho, Stephen Ireland, Martin Petrov, Shaun Wright-Phillips, Roque Santa Cruz, Patrick Vieira, Javier Garrido, Sylvinho, Felipe Caicedo, Benjani Mwaruwari and Michael Johnson. Not suggesting they would all want to come to us or would be in our price range, but I can think of worse signings.

Not really....

You could be right there - the absence of the comma does add a certain layer of ambiguity to it.

Not sure if anyone has read this, but this an article from the Times, linking O'Neill to us. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/football/premier_league/west_ham/article7102740.ece For those who don't want to read the link: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ It will be no surprise when Gianfranco Zola’s tenure at Upton Park comes to an end this summer but the burning question is what will happen to West Ham United? The bottom line is David Sullivan likes Zola as a person but he is not his type of manager. Conversely, Sullivan is not the type of detached chairman that Zola likes to work under. David Gold, the joint-chairman, has been more supportive of the Italian. While West Ham could dismiss Zola and expect him to fight for compensation, that would be embarrassing and foolish. More likely is that a settlement will be agreed and Zola will leave “by mutual consent”. There were rumours that Sullivan was looking at other candidates even before he bought a 25 per cent stake in the club in January. He certainly had a good look when it became clear that he might need to make a change before the end of the campaign. The club’s managerial options are limited and will be affected by which division the team are playing in. Sullivan likes Mark Hughes but the Welshman probably has an eye on Aston Villa, where Martin O’Neill has hinted that he may consider his future and Newcastle United. Steve McClaren is among West Ham’s preferred candidates because he has the backing of one of Sullivan’s advisors. But should FC Twente win the title, McClaren would be managing in the Champions League, which would be a useful addition to his CV. Would he give that up for Upton Park? He is also rumoured to be wanted by Hamburg. Slaven Bilic, the Croatia coach and former West Ham player, had previously ruled himself out. Many potential candidates will have been put off by the way that Sullivan has dealt with Zola. On top of that, Alex McLeish and Steve Bruce, who have both worked under Sullivan at Birmingham City, have hardly given him a ringing endorsement. In addition, one of Sullivan’s gripes appears to be that Zola earns £1.8million, an increase from £1.2million he was paid when he took charge in September 2008. Steve Clarke, his assistant, is reported to be paid about £1.1million. Sullivan will want to pay less. Sullivan’s tenure at Birmingham cannot reliably be used a guide because he tended to employ young, cheap managers trying to make their name at a club generally regarded as smaller than West Ham. West Ham fans will fear that the upshot of their new ownership is that the disparity will close. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Can't say I'd heard any such rumours? Bearing in mind how much O'Neill spends, I can't see him wanting to come here...

Francois Clerc wants to play in Spain next year, also had a bad knock this season. As for KK "I’m very happy with Lyon. But I also think that football is a sport where you can’t afford to look too far down the track. You really have to concentrate on the present. I still have two and a half years to run on my contract, I’m happy at the club and I like the city, so why would I change?" Theat was from March 2010. Think Clerc's had a couple of bad injuries now hasn't he? DId his knee a while back I thought.

From France - Dabo, Perrin, Clerc or Kallstrom would all be pretty amazing signings. Not sure how realistic Kallstrom would be though. Would have thought we'd stand a vague hope with Dabo or Perrin.

Never really understood that argument with O'Hara, Portsmouth isn't exactly a suburb of London and she has "let him" go there for a year. Distance from London to Portsmouth 57 miles, travelling at 70 mph = 0.8 hours Distance from London to Newcastle 302 miles, travelling at 70 mph = 4.3 hours 0.8 hours to get to Portsmouth from London??? Takes you that long to get out of London..

Krasic would be an amazing signing. Would never happen in a million years though...

Couldn't agree more - he really wasn't anywhere near as good people are trying to make out.

Nolan has a wife, and kids. From what I have heard, that hasn't exactly stopped him...

In that case, I would question your ability to read.