MessiWillSignForVilla

Momo Sissoko was released today as well. dont think many great free agents out there for us I misread that at Moussa Sissoko, was about to say snap him up. Newcastle would really be going tits up if that started to happen

Breaking news on the BBC... "World Cup 2014 win unlikely, says Dyke." Scoop of the century

Helenius also said that, or rather he was disappointed that he wouldn't get to work with Benteke when he handed in his transfer request, indicating it was a reason for him to join. I wouldn't read too much into it He's one of the hottest talents in Europe at the minute, I'd assume a lot of young, up and coming players would jump at the chance to join his team and just get to work with him in training, especially the strikers.

Thats complete rubbish. The difference being that their respective boards made the money available for the manager to sign those players while our board refused to back Lambert on several of his targets. Rodgers said Suarez had a valuation that wasn't met by arsenal, you could easily say that Wenger wasn't backed with the funds. Yet Arsenal then paid £42.4m for Mesut Ozil out of a reported 100m plus transfer fund. Considering how much Arsenal charge for normal/season tickets they'll probably make that back within the year purely from ticket sales, so it's not really a good comparison is it? (It wasn't in the first place either). Arsenal are much, much richer than Villa, so will always have a bigger budget. I don't quite get how much Lambert is supposed to have had available to spend, we aren't a rich club. Lerner maybe a Billionaire, but that is US Billionaire, not UK. Therefore Lerner has a personal wealth of roughly £700m, a hell of a lot for a normal person, but to run a Premier League team? Not anywhere near enough to keep pumping your own money into. Considering how much Lerner has already given the club (and lost), why should he put more in. If we continued with a similar amount of investment as we had under MON, then Lerner's personal wealth would be exhausted within 10 years, with Villa left in huge debt, much bigger than we have now, and Lerner would want a considerable amount of money from the club. I'd much rather have a few years of turmoil, reining in the spending and have a club that begins to climb back up the table and also turn a profit (or small losses) than have a few years of fun and end up with a debt of around £500-700m that we have to pay back to Lerner at the end. As much as challenging near the top of the table would be great, the only way to do it in modern football is either taking the better part of 10 years to get there (Spurs style) or have a multi-billionaire buy the club who is willing to spunk money up the wall for a few years (and with FFP, that won't happen to small teams like Man City again).

Well these lyrics seem to be on a par with modern pop music... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jofNR_WkoCE

Bannan to Ireland: "You're saying I have to pass to a player in Claret and Blue?! That doesn't sound right to me."

Been um-ing and ah-ing over which one to get and I was swinging towards the XBONE due to the free FIFA 14, but then I realised you can buy a PS4 and FIFA 14 at full price and it is still cheaper then XBONE. That's pretty much made my mind up, unless Microsoft come out and say they will release XBONE without Kinect and offer it at £60 less.

Just seen an offer for this at GameStop for £5.97 when you trade in 2 games from a list of certain games, has anyone here done that? I'm not sure whether to do it as the deal seems to good to be true. The list of games on there isn't bad either, games like Black Ops II, Madden 13 and GTA IV, so it's not a list of unheard of games. I just don't want to be stung by it with them saying the disks were shoddy or something. I don't know why I'm so wary to be honest, GameStop are fairly reputable, right? I'm thinking of doing it, as when I've looked at bundles for the new consoles I've looked for ones with FIFA, but doing this may mean I can get one with a game I may not necessarily buy, i.e. Knack if I get PS4. EDIT: Damn it! I knew it was too good to be true, just double checked and it's only for the 360 and PS3 versions

They shouldn't be, but they probably will. There's too much unrest up there, and with no signings I can't see how they'll improve from last year, they're just hoping there players who were poor last season will up their game. I imagine they'll do what they did last year, flirt with it and look in danger but end up between 14th-17th.

I've only ever played 7s and 15s, I joined my club at u14s so never played 12s and don't really know what differences there are at that level. What positions don't play? I always thought back row was the last positions to be added. In junior rugby, scrums don't tend to be all that important IIRC, it's more about quality in the backs and generally faster players are the better players. I hated youth rugby, our team was awful. We lost every match by ~30+ points, and we ended up having to find a team roughly our standard who we played about 8 times a year. But about three years later after we stopped at u17, 5-6 of our age group have played first team rugby for our club, another 4 have played second team (including me) and most have played third team and one of our squad is now 3rds captain. It's crazy how much a team can change in just a few years.

I never said Palace had a better team. Palace have the worst squad in the league IMO.

Rubbish....... Don't believe the media line..... This feckin obsession with players needing to be 'World Class' is utter cobblers. If you're English and play in the top division in England you're good enough. Is that not pretty much the definition of World Class? Being the best in the world and performing on a world stage? To expect England to win the world cup within 10 years is ridiculous unless we get some top, top players soon, as our current crop won't get anywhere near.

Is there anyway I could watch Bundesliga without BT? Going to Uni soon and I won't have my parents BT Sport to watch it on and I want to start watching more Bundesliga games. Also, what teams compare to other Premier League teams in terms of standard and style, for a kind of measuring stick for the teams, i.e. Bayern = Man Utd?

"New Football Association chairman Greg Dyke says the England team should aim to reach the semi-final of Euro 2020 and win the World Cup in 2022." From the BBC website As much as I'd love that to happen, there's not a chance in Hell that will happen, unless we get a generation of world class players within the next couple of years, which won't happen as Premier League clubs will just buy cheap foreign talent instead. EDIT: I Like how writing E-P-L got changed to Premier League, I only did it as I couldn't be bothered to type it out properly

Played it for a couple of hours last night, but I don't now what to think of it yet. I don't like the actual battles, I just prefer the campaign, so the tutorial was torturous for me and I just gave up after it was finished and stopped playing for a bit. Went back on it and did a campaign with the Iceni, who are pretty much England (the nation I always go with first in these games). It was OK, I don't like the interface, but then again I didn't like Empire's interface as it was different to MEII, so I'm sure I'll get used to it. The campaign has been quite good so far, and I like the idea that you can't see the rest of the map until you discover that region, much like Civ. Also I like the short term and long term objectives of the campaign, it adds a different dimension to the campaign that isn't just control x regions at the end of the game, you have to actually take certain regions in a certain order (Military Alliances are good too, so you don't have to actually control a region, just be allied). I already three of the four regions in Britannia And...Rome's Finest

Considering there's a general chat for Cricket, and the Aviva Premiership kicks off on Friday night, I thought I'd make a topic to discuss all things Rugby, rather than having ones pop up every 6 months or so for the internationals/six nations. I'll get the ball rolling: I expect Bath to give Newcastle a battering on Friday. Newcastle have got some good players in their squad, but I think Bath's backs will be too much for them. Should be a good game to start the season though Don't know who to tip for the title though, I'm hoping Tigers can win it again, but we were lucky we avoided Sarries in the final last year and that Hartley is a word removed. Quins will be strong again this year despite not having too many great players and I reckon Gloucester will do well too, Burns is a brilliant player and will have a great season IMO.

You don't remember Krulak's we could spend 30m on one player posts or the 5 year plan for CL?, not idle words it 'will happen' we kept being told Of course very few believed it. Sounded more like the daft 'if you want it to happen it will' nonsense you get told as a kid than a board member And we would of gotten top 4 in 08/09 if MON rotated his squad. We spent more than enough to get Champions league, but that was spunked up the wall. I'd rather take the Spurs model and wait 5-6 years to get top 4 than go down the route of teams like Pompey and end up falling from existence because we've spent more than we were able for the slightest chance of a Champions League place (which is only worth it if you get to the Group Stage anyway)

they do supposedly Do you mean new contracts to Lowton, Westwood, Weimann etc? Wasn't it said that Benteke's contract doesn't have sell on clause. No, do Genk have a sell on clause is what was asked, i.e. they get £3m if we sell for £30m if it's at 10%. It wouldn't be in Benteke's contract, it would've been part of the "fee" we paid to Genk.

The reason Given didn't get it was because McLeish signed him, and a lot of fans wouldn't vote for a player signed by him. It's probably a reason why so many fans were ready to embrace Guzan last season too. Ireland has had one good game for Villa, when we beat Chelsea 3-1 at Stamford Bridge, it's probably the other reason he got PotY, that one game when he was actually good. He stuck out like a sore thumb as an "attacking flair" player in a mind-numbingly defensive team and another two fingers up to McLeish. When he joined, he didn't want to join and he showed it, he put in next no effort and never gave the impression he wanted to try. He's been awful for the past three seasons and it's a disgrace that he managed to earn £70k p/w for the displeasure. For that, I hate him and wish his career nosedives, he doesn't deserve a life of luxury and he's been piggybacking off of that one good season at City ever since, and even then he piggybacked on the talent of Robinho and Elano.

He didn't lose anything, he was never that good at crosses. People on here over-hyped him so much, the comparison to Beckham is laughable. His crosses looked fancy as he put curl on them and he did a little run up that made you get out of your seat and go "Oooh", but he rarely got it past the front post, and his crosses hardly ever amounted to anything. As soon as he started getting closed down by defenders, his major weakness as a winger was exposed, he can't beat a full back. He has nothing in his locker to trick a defender, the best he can do is knock it past and try run on to it, but he's not strong/fast enough to do that and will just lose the ball. Like Bannan his place is in the Championship, he'll do well for a mid-table team, maybe one that get's the play-offs, but he will never be any more than that.

Out Today Played Medieval II, Empire and Napoleon and loved them, never played Rome though so I'm excited to see what it's like! Anybody else getting this today?

27, interesting that 23 is still available, probably nothing in it. Some people really don't like 23 Didn't realise there was that sort of stigma around it.

Is it really options though, or is this just Benteke's replacement being signed a year early? It probably is, but I'd rather get his replacement now and give him time to settle than try get one after we get our £50m+ from Real Madrid

27, interesting that 23 is still available, probably nothing in it.

It is a loan, but effectively free transfer for us as he'll never return.