gbandit

It's the awful syntax that does it for me

He's the owner so it's unlikely. :'(

He has the same driving forward element that Ronaldo had. Ronaldo was the most exciting player to watch because he almost always moved forward with the ball, Neymar does the same thing but in more of a wriggling/tricks fashion than Ronaldo's skill and pure power. Still, I'm looking forward to how he develops

Nicollin needs to land a job in the PL

Sunderland are in awful shape based on those telegraph stats, Chelsea typically disgusting and Tottenham impressive as well. I think while Levy is around, Tottenham are going to be a top 6 team pretty much every year

Off the top of my head, last time out it was Arsenal, WBA and Wolves. Cheers, not at all surprised about Arsenal

Do we know how many other PL clubs are so close to operating either in profit or not making a loss? Only -3.9 mill for 2011 is awesome when you look at the previous years and you can only imagine it will improve for 2012.

Aye, he does and there's also the point that opposition managers will be unwilling to maybe commit an extra man if Ben Arfa's on as he can break and create a goalscoring opportunity in a matter of seconds.

Turned down an offer from Barca because Marty wants him

Colocho's probably crying in a dark corner after marv's performance tonight

But Dave, there's no evidence to suggest we're not trying to make other tranfers happen. Who knew about the cisse transfer before it broke?my other point is that we've gone for loan first which would suggest we're looking for a great deal rather than desperate to land Carroll himself

Your facetious argument about getting another Ba for free was appalling. Your post you've just made is a good post. As has been argued already, we appear to be in for Carroll very much on an opportunistic basis at the moment. Should it come down to only being able to get him with a full transfer (something around the £15m mark) then I would hope we'd have other targets in mind. If we do get Carroll, I will obviously back him but transfers the whole world over suggest that for £15m you can get better value. Personally, I would have paid £15m for de Jong but that would have been my max

Your argument is appalling. When has anyone said we could get a player like Ba for free again. The point that is being made is that £15m can be way better spent.

Why use such hyperbole?of course there are better players out there for cheaper. I've made the point about cisse,Ba,Hernandez,jelavic.All these players were cheaper and yet more versatile. The reason why we don't know the players are because we don't spend our lives scouting, finding out player valuations and all the rest. This debate has become fucking ridiculous but if you honestly believe that £15m couldn't be better spent, I think you're way off

Smashed one on the way to as well. Disgusting that, they should put massive restrictions on Sunderland away allocations if that continues

I'd say we moved for Carroll in a very opportunistic fashion, we probably knew he was unhappy there and interested in coming back. I don't know what we can read into it regarding other targets as we'd only offered a loan + potential buy deal which is very rare for us. It doesn't suggest we're desperate for the player, more that we're just trying to nail a good deal. I was really disappointed we didn't get De Jong to be honest. The eventual price that was talked about seemed like it was in our range. I can't speak for our scouting team and no one else can but there have to be other targets out there that they're looking at and I'm sure before the window closes, they'll be making some moves with the view to returning to the Carroll deal as long as it's loan + potential buy. If they go for a straight buy (and I really don't think they would unless it was sub £13m) then I'll be disappointed

I'm sorry, but that's not our job. You can't discount the opinion of anyone that disagrees with you because we are incapable of coming up with a viable alternative. I am just confident we could do better. The club seemingly is not, seeing as they are bidding for the player. What do you make of that? The only bid we've lodged so far is loan + view to buy right? That's just playing the market carefully. A loan option can't possibly harm us but if the only option is us buying him, I think we'll have different plans

Nailed it in one

I'm sorry, but that's not our job. You can't discount the opinion of anyone that disagrees with you because we are incapable of coming up with a viable alternative. I am just confident we could do better. Well, the evidence that we can do better is out there in the form of Cisse for half the fee, Ba for nothing. You can make any number of arguments about cheaper forwards than Carroll because there is absolutely no doubt that out there, there are better players available for cheaper money. Like a number of people have mentioned, it's not our job to know who they are and most of us don't watch enough football to know but £17m goes a hell of a long way. I'd sooner not buy someone in this window and wait until January if it meant spending that much on him. Like I've said at other times, I wouldn't buy him back for anything over 12m. I loved the guy when he was here but the team's changed massively since then. If we're talking about spending over £15/16m for him then we're talking about a record signing for us. Should we be spending that amount of money on a player who relies so heavily on a certain system around him?

If this signing goes through and we don't lose any of our first teamers from last year (barring Simpson) then.... http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQqmQ_PCn84najV1ii_0jHuHj3tlvJXQCUvx19Ihht_esfiuyAm Yup

What an absolute fool

Same, didn't see more than 8 swansea games but I definitely didn't see enough to think he'd a good signing

Is Deschamps really that petty? He's French