Lush Vlad

£14m should do it. Stoke will be well up for it. I'm sure one of the most highly rated centre backs in the league, will be keen to join a team in the bottom three

I don't see how they both fit into the starting XI anyway? If we get both, then great. We could actually do with some options off the bench. But I automatically assume it means someone (Sissoko) is off. I just don't trust these fuckers. I can't ever remember having decent squad depth in the prem, since Ashley has been here? If we're not going to meet the horrendously high valuation for Townsend. Then I'd rather we just went all in on Berahino. I would guess he'd be playing on the left of a 3, anyway? Similar to where Perez is playing now? That would leave Townsend on the bench. Until someone gets injured/banned/sold. Except that's clearly a good deal, with a quite high possibility of re-sale value. How much would he have been worth if he never fell out with the coaches, or at the start of the season, when he was in the squad and performing? At the prices that are being quoted, I don't see how Berahino or Townsend will ever be profitable and I think they're massively overpriced. I don't care about that, it's nice to be spending some money. But judging by the way we have done business in the past, the top brass do. Maybe the Fat Man doesn't care about that and we're just desperate to make sure we stay up. But I'm still sceptical about our transfer policy. Oh and I agree with you on Levy! It's a ridiculous price for Townsend and I think we're right to be playing hard ball. I just think we should look elsewhere. £14m for a Spurs reserve player, who isn't even that good

We're not paying that much, seems a bit pointless to me. This is just like the Townsend deal, I can't see it happening. To just parrot what other people have been saying, it feels like it will be another "well, we tried" token gesture. Got to make sure they keep people renewing their ST's. I'd rather we moved on and looked elsewhere. If we're waiting to see who blinks first, then we'll be waiting a long time. Levy drives a hard bargain and the WBA chairman seems like a bit of a fucker and all. I don't see either of them getting desperate and giving in late in the window. The players in question need to be kicking up a massive fuss if they're really that keen to leave. Surely nobody is going to meet the valuation of £14m+ for Townsend and £20m+ for Berahino? I still think we need a striker. But I didn't expect to get Shelvey and Saviet. So if the window were to shut tomorrow. I'd be reasonably happy with how it's went.

I do admire your staunch defending of Sissoko at every given opportunity I do agree with you on this, though. I just hope Shelvey keeps up the good work. I think if he starts failing with some of his Hollywood passing when we're struggling. Fans will get restless. When I used to go to games, you could hear audible groans and people getting pissed off when we kept possession and tried to work an opening. Or when certain fans used to get annoyed at HBA for trying to beat his man and losing it. But then an aimless clearance from Williamson or a massive slide tackle from a shit player, who's constantly miles out of position, wouldn't be seen as a problem. Got to play those Allardyce style percentages.

Yes. I'm sure everyone would have guessed at Emmanuel Emenike. I mean, if you had said he had been playing in Abu Dhabi, but he had previously played in top leagues, you know, the top leagues of Russia and Turkey. I'm sure straight away, all football fans would know it's this household name that he's referring to. The 20 goals a season bit makes it so obvious. Sullivan and Gold are absolute weapons.

I'm pretty sure we wouldn't be buying Townsend unless he was going to play most games. He's on about Sinclair and Phillips TBF.

Although either of those would actually provide an option from the bench and some sort of threat. As oppose to Obertan, who sprints at defenders and then slows down, forgets to take the ball with him and constantly passes sideways and then stands still. He's utterly useless to us, even on the bench.

Shola? Captain Fantastic Kevin Nolan. Although an argument could be made to say that he was trying his damndest to help out further back in the pitch, he has the turning circle of an Easyjet 767 so it was probably better for him to just face towards goal up the pitch instead. For all his faults, I don't think Nolan was a player that hid or went missing all the while. Jack Colback certainly is, mind.

he spends the whole game hiding, marking his man when we're in possession and passing backwards and sideways. I had the urge to text/call Talksport for the first time ever the other day, as I heard an interesting point from someone on there. His name has totally escaped me. But he's the Scouser, who used to play for West Ham?! He was going on about players that hide during games, stop showing for the ball, conveniently make the wrong runs close to opposition players and never look to get themselves a yard of space. He was saying that there have been players that are fan favourites, who position themselves in the right position further up the pitch, so they can go and win a tackle, after a long punt forward. But they should have been offering any easy pass in the first place. He said you get players that will constantly keep trying to make things happen and aren't afraid of the fans getting on their back or giving it away. Yet other players that shirk it all game and get seen as some sort of hero. He was saying he'd been at a club, where a player of this type was a fan favourite. He spoke to the manager about it and pointed out how ineffective he was. But the guy didn't get dropped as the fans loved him and the manager was under pressure at the time. Guess who came to mind?..............

Local Geordie lad, puts a shift in, gets stuck in. He's a crowd favourite FFS I have started to notice a change in attitude towards him on twitter. A lot of fans are rightly pointing out how shit he is. Still got a long way to go to get some of the Facebook drongos to see the light.

Class, saw him at the City Hall a couple of years back, mental! http://i1.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/575/048/35e.png

That's all well and good. But what were their reasons for booing and then doing monkey chants at Demba Ba? Failed a medical for us did ya? Now you have the audacity to score against us? That's not on, you're getting booed and racially abused

Which was the McCourt song and probably something else beforehand. Hardly any football chants are original and are usually pinched from elsewhere. TBH, most of them are absolutely terrible and don't even work. It seems like 50% of chants now seem to be to the Sloop John B tune. "he scores when he wants/don't want to go home/get out of our club" etc.

Long term conceding one and then (fairly comfotably) seeing out 40 mins might do the whole team confidence more good then cantering to a 3/4 goal victory I'm not sure I get your point here? Maybe I wasn't clear in my post. But I was actually pointing out that it's good that we are now creating chances and scoring goals. Something we've struggled with all season. Not that we should have beat West Ham 4-0 and I'm annoyed we didn't. A win is a win ATM. So long as we keep creating chances and scoring enough to win, I'm not overly arsed. But we haven't really done this on the road, hence the grand total of 5 away goals all season.

Confident enough to roll a penalty into the net, with the keeper going the other way? I really don't see your point? If he wasn't confident, he would have just blasted it up the middle, surely? Or even worse, missed the target. He was casual, he scored. Not really much more to it than that.

I think I saw him at Brugge away. I was sat right near him on the bus for sunderland away one year and I didn't understand everything he said. I just kind of nodded with approval and tried to piece together enough words, to get the gist of what he was saying. Seen him at numerous home and aways, as well. RIP Cliffy. Oh and I pledged a bit. Hopefully he gets a good send off.

FYP.

Scoring 5 goals in 2 games and actually creating a fair few chances, is huge. In quite a lot of the games where we've played well and lost 1-0. We weren't actually creating that many chances IMO. I said as much in the Mitrovic thread. But we should have scored 3-4 on Saturday and we had plenty of chances against Man U and we were denied a clear penalty. Still need to sort out our pathetic away form. 5 away goals all season is appalling and we need to turn this around before I start to get quietly confident. Two pretty tough away games coming up, that will hopefully show us if we have turned the corner.

I went for keep him on the bench for now. He hasn't had much of a chance, granted. But is he really a better option than Perez on the left? He has looked slow and weak from what I have seen. I'd rather we kept him. But if he doesn't want to be here (which was rumoured all along) then good riddance.

I hate how the media try and act like judge, jury and executioner. Was it Ray Stubbs who was actively trying to get the FA to look at one of our players and ban him? I think it was Cabaye in the FA Cup. It was probably granted if it was the one I'm thinking of. But it was still pretty annoying the way they went on. This was absolutely fuck all. Calling it an elbow FFS. It's unnecessary and he needs to be a bit wiser. But you see worse go unpunished in most games and I'm sure there is a lot that goes on that the cameras and commentators don't even pick up on. We finally have a midfielder that can pass the ball forward

From the comment section of the Chronic. Get a good right winger, but drop Sissoko and play Colback there for now? http://cdn.makeagif.com/media/7-31-2015/HpDRj3.gif

The bit where he got totally outmuscled and then just started crawling about, looking at the lino to help him out and give a free kick. They then got a cross in and could have scored. That's right Colback. Crawl about on the floor, like the dog that you are. You pathetic little Red Setter.

Agree with all of that apart from the penalty being s***. It wasn't right in the corner, it didn't have a lot of power, but he's gone the other way the last twice and missed both I think. He's just coolly rolled it in and De Gea actually shows fairly early that he's going the other way. Would have been pretty amazing if he had shifted his weight back to get down to his left. It wasn't like it was a complete scuff, that's gone under the keeper and he's lucky to score. I thought he kept a cool head for once. I hid behind the sofa, as I was expecting him to try and lash it and put it high and wide His technique is a bit clumsy at times and it certainly is a bit worrying for his finishing. Hopefully, he improves this though and he keeps developing while he is here. I have a bit more confidence in our current backroom staff to get more out of him, than I did with the last set of clowns. I love him, though. Different players I know, but I loved Martins and Tino and all. There's something about mad b****** strikers, that clearly have their flaws.

Still trying with Lacazette? Hasn't he said he won't move in January and he's supposedly already turned us down?

I don't think you can make any judgements off Sky's highlights. But he got caught on the ball a couple of times, but did make a couple of nice tackles. He nailed someone at the edge of our box and left them in a heap. Set up a counter attack that we nearly scored from, if memory serves? He had half an hour on the pitch and I saw about 5 minutes of him on the highlights. Early days.