VillanousOne

Was it Bony who we went for before we signed Benteke but his club pulled the deal?

sounds like Castaignos has had more high profile interest although he did get in hot water for spitting at Inter Milan! Internazionale (2011-2012)[edit] After rampant speculation during the January transfer window linking Castaignos with Italian giants Inter,[11] On 4 March 2011, Feyenoord announced that they had agreed to terms withInternazionale, selling Castaignos for a fee believed to be around €3 Million upon the completions of the 2010–2011 season.[12] He featured throughout preseason, most notably scoring the opening goal in a friendly against Celtic on 30 July 2011.[13] He made his competitive debut for Inter in a Supercoppa Italiana, coming on for Joel Obi in a 2–1 loss against Milan, where he played in front of 70,000 people at Beijing National Stadium, Beijing China PR. He made his full league debut in a 3–1 loss against Novara. Castaignos scored his first goal in Serie A in an away match to Siena on 27 November 2011, latching on to Thiago Motta’s through ball before firing low past Brkić, which proved to be the gamewinner.[14] On 17 February 2012 in a 3–0 loss against Bologna, Castaignos was involved in alteration with Andrea Raggi after Castaignos spat on Raggi in the 85th minutes. After Serie A officials reviewed footage of the incident, he was subsequently banned for three matches.[15] His actions caused Inter to immediately move him into a reserve role, scoring twice in three appearances for the reserve squad. In April 2012, Castaignos suffered an hamstring injury, missing out for the rest of the season during a match against Calcio Padova.[16] At the end of the season, Castaignos announced his intention to leave Inter in favor of a 'big club'.[17] Castaignos was linked with Liverpool.[18] Liverpool tried and failed to sign him in the January transfer window.[19] Tottenham Hotspur also displayed interest,[20] as well as West Ham United,[21] Everton,[22] and even including his former club Feyernoord.[23] FC Twente (2012-Present)[edit] On 28 July 2012, Castaignos made his return to the Dutch Eredivisie when FC Twente agreed to terms with Inter Milan for 6 million euros.[24][25] Castaignos was seen as the replacement for the former Twente striker Luuk de Jong, who had been sold to Borussia Monchengladbach. On 12 August 2012, he made his debut, coming on for Dmitri Bulykin in the second half, in a 4–1 win over Groningen. On 26 August 2012, he scored his first goal and set up a goal for Dmitri Bulykin in a 3–1 win over NEC Nijmegen.

Afreo is 24, Luc is 20, both emerging talents in Holland - who have had one or two seasons at the top level, very much Lambert style signings and already have international experience at u21 level with Afreo having played as a senior international. sign em both!

Get rid of ASAP take the money and have faith the club will uncover a new striker that will make us forget the mike Tyson faced ungrateful berk. As a team we over relied on one player, we need to better than that.

It's weird for some reason we all expected Ireland to be this amazing player, most of the time he played he did ok but never really found a role in the team that worked. Lambert either wants grafters or strikers, the concept of a creative midfielder barely exists in his teams. McCleish player 10 defenders and one striker, Ireland could pass the ball fwd so was therefore out best player at that time. I don't think he deserves the hate he gets on here, but I admit he really must do something to wind managers up to get binned off repeatedly.

Ba would be a good signing but he won't reduce his wages from 70-80k down to the 40k we would want to pay. Lukau x 2 did well at WB so I'm sure Mourinho would want to see him play first before writing him off, plus the bloke said last season that Tekkers should move to a bigger club so is clearly as much of a big time Charlie as Benteke wants to be. If we sell Benteke I expect us to gamble again on a relative unknown successful in another less thought of division and 6-10 mil in value 40-60k wages. I don't think there is a single striker ot player in the prem ship Lambert would bother with, it is the most bloated overpaid overrated league in the world full of mediocre players getting paid buckets of cash to do **** all. Look at the England team on all levels, shite and when teams like Villa develop young stars like Crowley any word removed can poach them for peanuts.

http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/sport/football/transfer-news/aston-villa-interview-paul-merson-5072152 Anyone else read that and want to tell Merson to shove it?

Forcing him to stay another year is a horrid route to go down, as he will get roasted every time we think he is not trying or performing well and will end up getting booed. Gareth Barry was a consumate professional, I expect Benteke to play silly buggers if we force him to stay and as much as it's right to make him rot in the reserves i'm sure we would rather he **** off asap and we used the money to rebuild the squad further. Based on rumour and conjecture it would seem Lambert already had about 10-15 mil or more to spend on further re-enforcements. Add another 20-25 million for Benteke, and we would be able to massively improve the overall team to a higher standard than we would if we kept him. I don't want us to sell him on the cheap, but i just want this whole **** saga ended asap. If Benteke has any sense he will look to a club bigger than Spurs - however much better than us they are at the moment they are still a one man team who have one **** all in decades. If they decided to pull out of transfer to David Villa because they thought they could get Tekkers on the cheap then they are barking up the wrong tree.

He makes injury prone defoe and headless chicken Adebeyawn look pony The only thing he has against him is that it was his first season, but I can't see many players in the world scoring the way he did in a team battling relegation. A large % of the goals he scored he did on his own. If they can stump up 17mil for Paulinho who is still a relative unknown quantity at football at prem level and can't be that awesome if no other club was in for him, then they can **** pay of 20 mil for Tekkers.

Out of interest again, because I honestly can't recall, did any of Downing, Milner or Young put in a formal transfer request? Only Downing declared publically he wanted to join Liverpool, but I don't think he handed in an actual request

but in the process have given benteke opportunity to maximise his contribution to the team and in the process at least quadrupled his value . We would never get for bent what we paid for him. This far into his contract and on his wages I would suggest the most we could get would be 10 or 12 m . So the club, ergo manager, are bad at handling players as shown by the supposed loss of money on bent or wonderful because of the fact that we are going to get a huge profit on benteke. But we could have done that without alienating Bent by freezing him out of squads in favour of Bowery, what exactly did playing Bowery over Bent achieve that we couldn't have been found out by sending him on loan which we will have to anyway as Bowery doesn't look like a Prem player yet.

Haha you believe shit from the Mirror like it's true. Seriously??? Not just the Mirror though, loads of journos are running with this shit

The Real Madrid of London try and act like they are one of the big boys again, I really can't see them paying that either, they must be paying Adebeyawn a fortune in wages and Levy can't be happy that they are not in the Champs league and haven't won **** all in decades. Spurs are good at **** money up the wall though, all there fans claim they have spent nothing, yet they rank only behind the top three in outlay - and yet the sell most of their best players just like we do. I thought the he was quoted as saying he wanted to play for Arsenal anyway?

Except that this probably wouldn't have been his best chance. If he's as good as most of us think he is then he could've stayed for another season and likely had much better options next summer. he's only 22 also, so hardly his last chance is it.

What is he supposed to do though? The player doesn't want to be here. He could grow some balls and tough it out. I am betting Lerner's pockets are deeper than Benteke's! So if the player goes on strike, then what? Leave him on the bench like everyone else is saying? What good is that going to do? He don't want to play for us anymore. Get rid and get someone who gives a ****. Aside from Chelsea and Man City Every prem side is forced to sell off their best players, even Arsenal had to do it with Van Persie and Manure had to do it with Ronaldo. Such is the power of players and their cANT agents Benteke's sale has nothing to do with mismanagement or ambition and the money will be reinvested, but the fact is we could not afford the wages of a player that cost 25 mil which is why we won't go down that route. 10/15 mil maybe.

what is this about delph texting Benteke and Lukau Lukau to congratulate them about playing together next season? I hope he goes to Chelsea over Spurs any day, although be better he f*cks off abroad so I don't ever have to see his Mike Tyson face every again.

Loic Remy looked good for QPR scored pretty much every game, wages may be an issue but he's be a proven goalscorer

And yet has still looked more likely to score than Bannan

On a negative note, if we end up selling Benteke then it would have been nice to have Bent as our fall back option. Now it looks like we could lose them both, yes we would have money to spend but could Lambert pull the same rabbit out of the hat like he did with Tekkers or would we end up going backwards? There is so much hate on these boards for Bent and I don't think it is deserved at all. I want Bowery to do well but the guy needs to be loaned to the championship to get experience not given preference over Bent. Lambert has knocked about 5 mil or more in value off Bent.

it seems according to The Mirror and Nuremberg themselves we have shown an interest in the player, but they don't want to sell him and there is no mention of a release clause in his contract. That's said the club finished 10th in Germany, so presuming the Prem League still has the lure you'd expect it to have and we can pay enough, then who knows.

Apparently from the French media although no source link. Guy is a baller. It's all over Twitter, nothing official but it sounds like the Belhanda saga part 2 - so expect 400 pages of hope and then he signs for a team in Abu Dhabi.

has cameron signed a deal also?

i'll sign him on FIFA on the xbox 360 a post a still of that just like the other **** prick did

some idiot posted a still from the game FiFA showing him being signed for Villa in the game.

can't wait when this thread gets closed and we can just move onto Behrami speculation and Dale Stephen's continued incarceration in a Birmingham hotel.