HalfTimePost

They must have some money as they are also signing Dunne. And his wages wont come cheap with a free transfer.

Linked with Doncaster, who are also signing Given on loan and Dunne on a free.

Joining Doncaster on a season long loan who are also trying to sign Richard Dunne and Stephen Ireland.

Quite plausible reasons why Lambert may not want him? There is 0% chance that Demba Ba will be someone Lambert would want to sign. We should just lock the thread.

Absolutely bizarre. What are Coventry supposed to do? If they can't pay to play at the Ricoh and they can't play elsewhere....?

That and Ba only moved a little while ago, for £7m, if chelsea snapped him up for £7m and then decide he isn't worth the trouble and try to offload him, on what planet is he still worth £7m? On that, I'd say Chelsea dont think he's worth it or they'd keep him. £4m would be fair imo And I still wouldn't want him.

No chance. I'd take £24m + Marko Marin though. But I think he's just signed for Seville on loan. Still think Piazon could be a viable option. Chelsea have Mata, Oscar, Hazard, Van Ginkel, De Bruyne and Moses who can play in his positions. He's highly rated and already talking about moving due to lack of playing time. Although he seems to be getting linked with loan moves to Liverpool and Crystal Palace rather than permanent moves.

Danny Crowley, 'The Next Wilshere', moved to Arsenal for a measly £200k.

There's a few articles about on this lately, not all of them about Villa but some quotes have come out over night about us too. Basically the discussion is about the EPPP rules. Rather than have a looooong post explaining them, I've put one in the Spoiler tag for those that dont understand them: So whilst we are one of the best Academies in England, we can give players the best training and development experience in the country, meaning from lower rated academies, we have the pick of the bunch. But because there is nothing to stop other Category 1 clubs poaching our talent we are missing out. Thats almost OK, as it's what happens in Football all the time. The problem is that there is a set maximum fee, we could quite literally bring through the next Messi and Ronaldo and lose both for £400k, less than we paid for Bowery, and have no leg to stand on in terms of wanting more compensation, or a chance to keep our player. In an article for the Guardian (Definitely worth a read), Bryan Jones Head of our Academy, essentially threatened that we will stop trying to develop young, british talent: And Here's another article from the Guardian detailing Gary Neville's stance on Academies in the UK at the minute. Obviously one of the main issues is that there isn't enough English talent coming through, and what is coming through isn't good enough. From the initial Guardian article: Number of players eligible for the leagues national team Premier League: 189 Players, 3411 appearances La Liga: 332 Players, 6391 appearances Ligue 1: 320 players, 6274 appearances Bundesliga: 224 players, 4035 appearances Eligible players in the leagues top 4 Premier League: 29 Players (Disgusting) La Liga: 60 players Ligue 1: 70 Serie A: 52 Bundesliga: 52 So as it stands, as a country we aren't bringing through enough English talent, yet the clubs who do (Us, Spurs and West Ham the best for it last season) are having our youth picked off at 16 because they are talented. They are then spending years in the development league and on the bench when they should be playing football. To a point where our board and Academy heads have met to discuss essentially not bothering bringing through English talent any more. Obviously the best outcome for us would be to keep our Category 1 status but have a rule change where players can't move between Category 1 clubs before the age of 18, by which point they have signed a professional agreement and we can get a proper transfer value for them. But I can't see that happening, although it would be nice. but still would leave other clubs, for example, Crewe, in a position where we could nick their youth for a pittance, which could be the difference between a club surviving or going bust in the lower divisions

Yeah he is good. That season was only the one before this one. In 23 games for Feyenoord he scored 20 goals and nabbed 8 assists. Thats a great return, much better ratio than Benteke managed in an inferior league in the same season at Genk and Guidetti is 2 years younger. We were actually linked with him quite a bit IIRC, it may have been lazy journalism because we had already signed half of that Feyenoord team Vlaar and KEA from Feyenoord. I'd be willing to take him as part of a swap if he really was on e of Lamberts original targets. £25m and Guidetti The one problem Guidetti had was at the end of the season he got a mystery virus that left him badly injured for about 3-6 months or something. I dont think anybody knew what the virus was at the time but it completely stopped him from playing and messed up any transfer he had lined up.*** Anyways, Sunderland would be a logical destination for him, they were trying to sign him last summer before his injury and now his ex-agent is their new Director of Football EDIT: *** having just read his WIKI apparently the mystery virus was caused by food poisoning, so you'd imagine it wouldn't have done his playing ability any harm like a normal big injury.

It's Man City. £25m and John Guidetti minimum

To think that innocent looking chimp would become one of the best players in the world Just look at him then compared to now Amazing what sport science can do

I think we'll see Neuer Lahm Dante Boateng Alaba Martinez Bastian Thiago Götze Robben Ribery At least a few times. Will be interesting to see how the likes Martinez, Schweinsteiger, Thiago, Gotze and Lewandowski (or Mandzukic for now) fit into a team together without pushing Gotze out wide. Agree that one of Robben or Ribery will be moved on. Got a lot of options with Kroos, Muller and Shaqiri too

I'd take £25m and this guy who plays on the left wing: (It's not Bale)

No one is talking about £23m + the £7m we paid..... I think £30m is the target. A lot of people have spoken about that as their target. Personally I would be dissappointed with £25m but I think that is the figure he will go for.

I read something somewhere that said a lot of the tricks in And Now You See Me were real tricks. Obviously some was CGI. I may have made this up in my head though.

Off Topic I know, but do Spurs really need much more than a Striker? At the moment, I think Benteke is what stands between them and Arsenal. Put Benteke in that Spurs side last season and they would've been 4th in my opininon. Depends how much Arsenal improve

Holy shit. Kudos to him if he has seriously just learnt all that from Newspapers and the Internet. I learned about Page3 and Lolcats.

The Newsroom starts again soon

What happened with the Dempsey bid? I honestly don't think for a second we thought Dempsey would actually come here. I think it was a bluff to hurry along Benteke's transfer. I could be wrong but I don't think I am

Neither. Spurs can't really come out and say they want him because even though everybody knows he's been tapped up* they can't come out and say they want him and wont meet the valuation and want us to lower that valuation as its just too blatantly tapping up. So instead they, like us, will be drip feeding their stance to the media both local and national to get the point across. *Tapping Up: Every club does it, we do it, Spurs do it, everyone. So lets not bitch and whinge about it. Of course he's been tapped up. But we tapped up Bent and probably every other player we've signed. We would'nt bother putting bids in for players unless we knew they would come. And you don't know they will come unless you ask them first.

Personally think we'll only make 3 more signings. Right Back Attacking Midfielder Benteke Replacement. Dont think a DM or another CB is on our shopping list, I agree they probably should be but we have 4 CB's + Herd and Lowton already A lot of midfielders competing for 2 or 3 spaces already. We do need a DM, but not sure who we would lose.. Westwood, Sylla, Delph, Gardner, Bacuna, KEA. + The youth prospects like Johnson. Out of those I'd be willing to lose KEA but I think we will first be trying to move on Bannan and Ireland from midfield and I only expect 1 AM to come in to replace them. If we get a DM too Fantastic, but I would worry that it would spell the end for Gardner.

Bit harsh, havent even got rid of the old one yet

Of course it is he was racially abused and then the word removed lied about it

Mirror