MessiWillSignForVilla

**** you Lithuania! San Marino were minutes away from a draw and their highest ever point total in a qualifying group, and you took it away from them

Di Maria. But then van Gaal played him at wing back and cm

No-ones really said that though, just that our first XI's are a lot closer now. Honestly, out of the team Tottenham started v Everton, I'd only definitely take Lloris, Vertonghen and Alderweireld, possibly Kane, though that's more because I don't really know how Ayew and Gestede will adapt to the league and I think Kane is overrated/one-season wonder. Of the rest of their squad, obviously I'd take Eriksen in a heartbeat, the rest I'm not so sure would get into our best squad. Lamela and Chadli possibly, though I'd rather see Adama, Gil or Grealish playing if I'm honest. Son may get into our squad, but like Ayew/Gestede, it's still to be seen how well he'll adapt. As a squad though, yeah Tottenham have much better strength in depth, and that's why they will probably finish between 10th-6th, whilst we'll probably be 11th at the very highest.

Mings got injured last weekend, looks like it could've been pretty serious, so Bennett has a decent chance to win a first team place.

He's been playing 30+ games a season since he was 17, that's what happened to him.

No, the Europa League is a joke and the way English clubs treat it is a reflection of that and completely understandable. I'm sure English clubs won't be thinking like that when we lose that 4th Champions League spot soon due to clubs rarely getting anywhere in Europe. Italy are very close to overtaking England, and that's mainly because their teams did well in the Europa League in recent years.

Not sure what to think about that team, a tad defensive for Sunderland at home.

Newcastle fans are starting to wind me up a bit now, get over yourselves, the refs not screwing you over. Glad Arsenal have taken the lead now.

Conspiracy theory: Villa let it go to extra time on purpose to ease traffic for both sets of fans after the game since Blues, WBA, Wolves and Walsall are all at home too

Burke who scored against us tonight was at us wasn't he? It was a good finish to be fair to him.

His Premier League winner medals would suggest it wasn't wasted tbh. Depends what you mean by wasted I suppose. In terms of trophies and his bank account, Milner didn't waste the last 4 years, in terms of his standing in the game and where he could have potentially been if he'd been playing CM over the last 4 years, then he has wasted them. And it's not as if his choice was either win trophies or improve as a CM, he could've easily done both if he waited for the right club.

You can't really not play a player who is good enough at 17 just to stop them fading when they get to 28/29. There's a difference between not playing a player and easing them in, especially when both Rooney and Fabregas were playing 30+ games a season at 17. Just resting them an extra 10 or so games a season during their late teens wouldn't have hurt them or their teams.

****'s sake, Terry's in my fantasy team

Same as Rooney, clearly not good enough for the premier league ;D tbf, I think it could be the season that Rooney's long career catches up with him, he's been playing constantly since he was 16, and it's starting to show a bit. Plus, the longer it takes him to score, the more frustrated he gets, and it's always fun to watch a frustrated Rooney play

He's also got 0 in 3 this season and missed several sitters last night that even Gabby would've scored. Considering he's a "goalscorer", he was pretty woeful at it last night.

It was 9M Euros + Mario Suarez, according to Sky Sports. To add to the defender stat, they've also spent £290M on strikers in the same period.

Harsh to say he hasn't done much since moving to Valencia, he was the only Valencia player in the La Liga team of the year last season.

4-2 to Leicester last week, 3-0 down at home to Norwich, I think Sunderland may already be gone

Whilst Everton have been good, Southampton have been poor too. All Everton have had to do is sit back and hit them on the counter, if more teams realise that's going to be effective against them, I can see them being in for a long season. Southampton have hardly created anything, and been sloppy at the back.

Again, his buyout clause is €6m. Well, it seems to change with every article about him, so I've no idea what it is £10m is just the fee I saw the most.

Not necessarily true. It all depends on the buyback fee. If the fee is something low like say £6m (as it is for Deulofeu at Everton) then all that needs to happen is that he become worth more than the £6m in the open market in order for it to financially benefit Barça to buy him back to flog him off at the higher price. They may have to hang on to him for a couple of months afterwards in order to avoid falling foul of the "you can only represent 2 clubs in a calendar year" stuff. But it is not true to say that them bringing him back means he has been i) amazing or ii) that they want him in their team. But I've said all this yesterday so I'll leave it there. TL;DR - Buyback options are a load of betty swollocks. But Deulofeu went to Everton for about £3m, so the buy back clause is roughly double. If Barca do the same for this deal, and we sign him for roughly £10m, that means would be somewhere between £15m-£20m, so we'd still get a fair whack if they buy him back.

Wish the media would stop going on about that. Shaqiri aside they were all bit-part players at best. Nah, Bojan played a fair bit when he was at Barca, scored in the QF's too I think? Not 100%. I think Afellay also had a couple games, but Arnautovic and Muniesa are stretching it.

The difference with that was that Guardiola was directly blaming them for the amount of injuries Bayern had and was essentially saying they were shit at their job. Plus he blamed them for losing to Porto. Not to mention his childish, sarcastic applause of him after a player got injured. That's not to say Mourinho wasn't being a bit of a dick, just that his dickishness seems more calculated to ease pressure on the team.

As much of a word removed Mourinho is, no-one's talking about Chelsea dropping 2 points at home on the opening day to a mid table team. And there's no way Chelsea will sack her. For a start Hazard asked for the medical staff, she was just doing her job, plus Chelsea had virtually no injuries last season which is probably in part down to her and the rest of their medical staff. Not to mention that she would probably be picked up fairly quickly by someone else in the league if sacked as she seems to be fairly good at her job (See: last sentence) Seems to me that Mourinho is just using this to deflect from their lacklustre start last weekend. Wouldn't be surprised if her and and the other guy were in on it.

Lots of bitter Liverpool fans harping on about how Ibe is better. Pathetic. Who has any idea which of the 2 is better? Well one came through La Masia and the other came through an academy whose best graduate over the past ten years was Jay Spearing, soooo...