gbandit

Lee Dixon started out ok, was good on the tactical stuff and just kept quiet most of the time. Then, slowly but surely he became more and more boring and repetitive. If I had to take out three from the BBC, I'd for Mark "I crack appalling jokes" Lawrenson, Mark "I said Liverpool would win the league last season" Bright and Jonathan "Hypnodisc" Pearce

There's absolutely no way Rooney is better than Eto'o

Nope, I've honestly never thought he's selfish. I think he gets a really good balance between setting other players up and going alone. When he's around the halfway line and our half he generally tries to bring others into play, when he's in the opposing half, there's a good balance between him racing down the right and cutting in and also spreading the play/delivering crosses. The only frustrating thing is his consistency, but I don't mind that, his quality is good that of course he's never going to be as consistent as some other players

Not interested in him, just don't rate him as a team player at all

I actually cannot believe how appalling Liverpool are at PR. Such a fucking shambles

Ranieri is such a decent guy, shame he's not a good manager

Absolutely not

If they've paid 12.5m euros with only a 2m max on top, I think that's a cracking deal

I don't watch much La Liga, but 2 mill Euros for a player who scored 15 goals seems like a great piece of business by Swansea

I think we force them into it: show a lot of interest in them, make the player want to come to us then put in bids which are lower than the club will go for when there are potentially better deals out there. Eventually, the player starts acting up and the whole thing gets a bit ugly but we've never really done badly out of it. I've said it before, Dekka and Mike are obviously a couple of heavyweight cockends but they do some great business

Thanks for that Gerard, I'm sure your advice is very welcome

Can't wait to see this lad back in competitive matches for us. Absolute machine http://www.thehindu.com/multimedia/dynamic/01072/TH04_CISSE_1072380f.jpg What a shame, wrong thread

Need to offload Simpson first IMO. Aye, Simmo needs to make a Michael Owen 'Come buy me Vid/Website'. Bit of a gutter about Reading but there's got to be a 2-3m buyer out there

Instant win for us By the way, where's Ferguson?

Re: come at me bro - Perch is definitely the most memeable of our players

What does redcafe think? That Ba is leaving. What are the Spurs ITK thinking? I am surprised Lol hasn't been on to give us the consensus there. Lol is no doubt following the U7s tour of local playparks. For all the piss-taking of Lol, I really enjoy his Spurs ITKing

Err, Dempsey at £5 mill? I don't know when his contract is up but even if it is 2013, there's no way he'll go for under £8m

Think the stadium looks class with a bit of colour (and no SD is not colour, it's filth)

This thread's an absolute swamp, the most divisive in months. I think Jimburst has made the best post in the past few pages. If we get him back on loan then we'll be the only ones to benefit from the whole thing. If we have to buy him, it could go either way and I'd say it's more likely to go wrong

Where you getting all your inside-info from? Are we in the presence of NUFC Fans or Cwarr07?

How many goals did Carroll score from Barton crosses? West Ham away and then im struggling. Another myth is how Barton played in that season. He was better than the rest of his nothing years at NUFC but he was hardly regularly creative. He just wasn't as disappointing as prior seasons. I don't know the stats on crosses for goals but there were definitely a number of crosses over from barton with knockdowns from Carroll which led to goals/goalscoring opportunities. I'm not saying Barton was great that season, I don't rate him as a footballer that much but he certainly put in a lot of decent crosses. Ba was dead on his feet for most of the second part of the season so it's difficult to rate how effective he is in a 4-3-3 and out wide. I don't doubt for a minute that if we start this season with him out wide or deeper in a 4-3-3 we'll see a much better Ba than we did from Feb onwards

cp40, all our transfer targets at the moment are technically gifted players who can play several different roles. Carroll, for me, was absolutely perfect in the system of Barton putting in top crosses and having Kevin Nolan beside him whose movement in the final third is excellent. Carroll could probably do a lot of knockdowns for Cisse but it would probably be at the expense of Ba. Ba is a far more natural goalscorer, has better technique and can play in different systems. Whilst Carroll was once perfect for us, he really isn't anymore. That's why I'd be disappointed, nothing to do with him as a person as I've always really liked him and want him to do well, just not at our expense

Went for gutted for continuity's sake. Disappointed's a better shout if he does return. why you always gutted?

Loved Carroll when he was here, was gutted when he left. Would be pretty gutted if he came back. I still think he's a very good player but I just can't see where he'd fit in apart from being a back up and he'd not be up for that. Also, there's so much more value in going for A: none PL B: not English

I agree that he acts in different ways towards different players and it's a massive plus point. Essentially, I think everything's fine now. I just got frustrated when he was asking for more from HBA but not giving him time on the pitch. Forget that though, this season'll be the best we've seen from HBA In other news, my mate had tickets for Bruce Springsteen yesterday in Hyde park and your man Silvio was there on guitar. The guy's a hero