Panto_Villan

I hope he's their Steven Ireland.

If you look at the defender and where he's holding himself, I reckon he broke the collarbone when he landed rather than when he hit Benteke. I did my collarbone doing something similar but it was mostly because I was a moron and fell on the point of my shoulder instead of just doing a sort of high-speed bellyflop that would have looked sillier but probably done me less damage...

"Droll" means whimsically amusing. "Dull" means boring.

I have been flicking through RAWK after a poster above mentioned their overzealous moderation and it's genuinely hilarious how many threads they lock. One quote from a mod is "We never have and never will allow speculation on RAWK", referring to transfer things or even the news coverage of Sterling being put in the cells for a night (which isn't even speculation). WTF do you plan to talk about if speculation's not allowed? Their stated reason for all this is a whole bunch of threads are turned into endless rehashes of "we have shit owners" because of a vocal minority of posters who are always derailing the threads with complaints (sound familiar?) but the result of it is ludicrous. You're not allowed to complain at all. "Persistent negativity" results in a short-term ban, so you're only allowed to post in the love-ins about Stevie G etc. http://www.redandwhitekop.com/forum/index.php?board=2.40 I must admit there's a couple of posters on the site I'd like to stop being so unrelentingly negative all the time, but that's not the answer.

I did not think his strikes were sufficiently atomic.

Quality! Benteke is such a monster. I hope we don't have to play Belgium at the World Cup.

Yeah, but he's upped his game since then. Been working on it in the off-season apparently.

I'd love to see him do that to John Terry.

I think Vlaar and Baker / Okore should be the starting combination. Preferably starting with Baker until he gets a head injury and needs to come off (I give it about 20 minutes), and then we'll see how Okore does. I'm kinda hoping Okore works out to be the long-term partner because much as I like Baker, I don't think he's reliable enough yet. Vlaar also has his moments of madness but I think he's still more reliable than Baker and seems more of a presence in the defence - Baker crunches people too, but I remember seeing Vlaar squaring up to the opposition strikers a few times last season and I liked that. Scores some useful goals too, which isn't anywhere near as important as being able to defend but is handy in a tie break. Did Vlaar give away any penalties last season? I don't remember him doing so.

To be fair, Rodgers can't just come out and say that Liverpool is currently a mediocre club and that Suarez should stay because other clubs wouldn't put up with him treating Evra like a monkey and Ivanovic like a banana.

Even if we had £250m to spend, we wouldn't make Champ League this season. It takes a couple of seasons to pull it all together even if you are flinging money at the problem (unless your club was already challenging for CL the previous season - I guess someone like Spurs could do it). Kiyotake on a free? Don't want. Price = quality. Next please.

Yeah, he can be rash. I'm not sure I agree with the way he treated Bent, for example. I'm kinda hoping that once he's moved on the players he inherited and doesn't want, he'll be a bit more measured (he won't have any excuse not to). I was impressed in particular with the Benteke saga. Obviously that he got him to stay, but also in the way that he didn't deal with it in the way that I feared - refusing to sell and threatening to freeze Benteke out, basically just playing the hard man like Di Canio or the like might do. Rather he seems to have taken a less confrontational approach which means we've been able to brush the entire affair under the carpet, and means that the fans won't be encouraged to get on Benteke's back or make him feel unwelcome.

Hey, chill out. If he turns out to be awful defensively we can always go back to Bennett.

Thanks guys. I think we can discount Mackay because it's not a season in the Premier League if you're in the Championship, leaving Lambert 6th overall after one season. Madness. I really hope he sticks around for at least three seasons, because by then he'll have a squad entirely filled with players he bought or kept rather than players he inherited. There must come a point where your performances are improved by actually having the players you want to play the system you want to play. I also think that the "buy young" idea means he'll be more likely to stay than the average manager. It's not like being a chequebook manager where you can just buy half a new team immediately - the buying young philosophy takes time to bear fruit and hopefully Lambert will want to be around to see the results.

I'd rather he didn't go to the world cup. He feels like "our" player far more than someone like Benteke does, so if Arsenal picked him up I'd be gutted. Off the international scene and under the radar is the best way.

A thought just struck me today - with Moyes moving to United and Pulis getting the boot, is Lambert now one of the top 5 longest-serving managers in the league?

That Guardian article is excellent. I like the way he's actually researched the transfers - Okore could have gone to Chelsea, Bacuna allegedly not being very good etc. A step further than most journalists will take it, so well done that man.

So we should have used a system based on Bent getting service from the wings - presumably we should have bought Young and Downing back from United and Liverpool to do so? You are aware we sold them, right?

Is it not conceivable that Lambert has a pot of money to spend and he doesn't want to piss it all up the wall immediately on an overpriced player, because he knows he'll have less money to spend later if he does so? That doesn't mean he's not being backed or has a halo around his head, it just means that he knows there is a finite amount of money available and want to use it wisely.

Bear in mind it's his job to fill column inches, whether or not there's any actual transfer news going on (and I'm sure if there was they'd be writing about that instead). Seems a lot of irrational hatred for journalists on this website.

I'd love to see the figures for the numbers sold compared to last year.

I heard he turned up for the last game wearing a suit. I mean, who does that?

Apparently the company going into liquidation, CCFC Ltd, isn't the only company that actually makes up the club. So they're only partially in liquidation, or something. EDIT - link here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/23548760

Is this....is this why we've not got rid of Joe Bennett?

DayZ is kinda full of hackers now, I think. It also needs Arma II Combined Ops to run, and takes quite a bit of getting used to the controls to figure out what's going on. It was awesome when it first came out, though! As Webbs says, friends make it even more fun.