Sorry chaps. Work got in the way this morning. How bloody inconvenient!
As Claude McAlayleigh leaves Chelsea for PSG, there’s a Czech in the post for Petr Cech as he signs a new deal. Drogba is going nowhere. Neither on the preseason tour or to another club. Meanwhile the Gazetta dello Sport reports that Chelsea are prepared to offer about £120million for Kaka. Is he really twice as good as Ronaldo?
Dave Kitson, who earnt Cambridge United a tidy 20% sell on after joining Stoke City has vowed to help keep them up.
Clever Trevor Brooking has said that we need to be realistic when thinking towards the World Cup and that wanting to reach the semi finals is unrealistic. There isn’t enough depth to the talent pool and having not qualified for the Euros we should temper our expectations. He’s absolutely right. The sooner he’s put in charge of the game in England the better. He talks nothing but sense.
Everton are prepared to smash their transfer record to sign Jose Mourinho’s near namesake Joao Moutinho.
Huddersfield will bid £700,000 for Ipswich pair Alan Lee and Gary Roberts. They will be good good signings in League 1.
Leeds have offered £100,000 for Dean Windass.
Marlon King will be at Hull today talking over a £3million move. So his value has depreciated by 50% in 6 months. Is he really 40 times worse than Kaka?
This is a bit of a rush job, apologies.
Finally, Hendon won the Bucks Examiner trophy on goal difference from Hemel Hempstead at Amersham Town on Saturday. Hemel went into the final game requiring a win by 7 goals to take the trophy, they beat the hosts 2-1. This season has already reached it's pinnacle.
Adieu to Claude and his hot wife.
I'm getting worried about Drogba - I'd almost put money that his next major move will be into retirement with terminal knee-knack.
All those snipers bullets
must be taking their toll.
has that eto to uzbekistan thing
happened?
He was still
at Barca on Saturday.
found something interesting this morning
Louis Saha's injury list:
http://www.physioroom.com/news/english_premier_league/players/220/louis_saha_injury.html
be careful opening it though, all that injury data may make your computer run out of memory.
Windass?
how unexpected, how much football does he have left in him? Hardly matters he'll bang goals in all day long in league one.
I love Trevor Brooking
Rumour of Charlton signing Matthew Etherington
from West 'Am this week. I really hope it's true, would be a good signing I reckon.
Go on Curbs, do us a favour.
Can't see it
He's our best left-midfielder. We might sell him if we get another one or two, or indeed if the rumours about his gambling addiction relapse are true.
he's had his moments
but a winger who's not that quick, can't really beat a man, loses possession a lot and doesn't really have the desire would not be a great loss
Would be if we didn't sign anyone
I'd rather not have Boa Morte, Reid and an out of position Ljungberg as our left-midfield options.
Has he been injured as
he hasn't played for a while? For some reason I quite like LBM
The Snake
Like everyone, he was injured for much of the season
Most of the second half. He played some great stuff in the first ten games. Reading away especially.
I'm pretty excited about Villanueva
He looks outright awesome in some of the videos I've seen of him. Probably will take him some time to settle, but for sure he has amazing potential. I'm starting to feel more optimistic about this season I guess. And at least if Ince does sign Andrews (BUT SRSLY, WHY?), we'll have a couple of competent players in before that. Castillo should be a decent addition, it's not exactly a strong area. And it's looking very much like Roque is staying (for now anyhow, could change with a few transfers elsewhere). I guess the main concern is goal, looks like it'll be Robinson, which I'm not especially happy about, but there's not exactly so many opportunities.
What
is Ince trying to do to Blackburn, does he hate them or something? Contemplating signing Robbie Fowler is one thing, trying to sign he ex-captain from Division 4 is another. Sporting Index predict a season of struggle...
The Fowler thing is ridiculous
But whilst he's just training, I'm not going to make a deal out of it.
But signing a player who couldn't cut it in the championship is not exactly going to endear himself to fans. He better hope that Villanueva and Castillo make one hell of an impact.
His injuries were the issue last season, no?
I completely agree that it's a strange, probably ill advised signing for a new manager, but when Fowler did manage to play last year it did slip a few goals in
But there's no need to a striker
We have Roque, Benni, Roberts and Derbyshire.
And I don't see how he'd get into a team ahead of any one of those. Especially given that it's looking more likely we'll be playing with one upfront, and Villanueva behind in a free role. There's just no need for him, or anyone else for that position.
*to get
Maybe? I don't actually remember what I intended to type there. I might have meant 'for', but I can't see how that would come out 'to'....
Sivasspor lol
http://rojadirecta.com/foros/viewtopic.php?t=44318&sid=856d516e4fb3b9197e7de31e94654795
Oh dear.
Other big stories this weekend.
Saturn Moscow won the first leg of their Intertoto game with Stuttgart.
None of the sides at the top of the Russian premier league felt like winning this week.
England went out of the U19 Euros on equal points with the Czech Republic by virtue of the 'head-to-head record' thing despite a thumping 3-0 win over Greece yesterday. Italy, Germany and Hungary join the Czechs in the semis, to be played on Wednesday.
Rob Hulse has signed for Derby.
Eto'o says Chelsea, Spurs and Inter have all made offers for him.
Villa want to sign Zigic for some reason.
Khalid Boulahrouz has agreed terms with Stuttgart.
And West Ham's 3-1 win over Columbus Crew (featuring a great performance by Craig Bellamy, by all accounts) was marred when some West Ham fans walked into the hardcore Columbus Crew section and some people hit each other.
Zigic and Carew up front
would be pretty brutal
They need someone.
Losing 3-1 at Lincoln with a pretty-much first choice team isn't great.
^ Bamos
Losing 3-1 at Lincoln with only 2 defenders on the pitch might explain that.
Wenger says he'll make "certainly one, maybe two" signings before the season starts
One has to be a central midfielder, Shirley. With Flamini and Gilberto gone, we're certainly light in that dept. Shame Diarra couldn't be a little bit more patient, the silly twat. He would be pretty much guaranteed a starting place in Arsenal's best XI now. But he went to Portsmouth because he couldn't risk not making the France squad for Euro 2008. Imagine my lols when he still didn't make it
With Barca now linked with Drogba, and Sky Sports reporting that Eto'o could even stay, things don't look too hot for Adebayor right now. Plus Wenger has effectively come out and said he won't get anywhere near the 100k a week that he's demanding. Too right he won't
In other news, we narrowly scraped past a spirited Barnet side on Saturday. Jack Wilshere came off the bench for 45 minutes and looked the tits. He's just turned 16. And he's English. And you should all take note of him now. Brighter prospect than Walcott was at that age, some are saying
One's Bischoff.
That's already done. I think he'll leave it there, although to have a realistic chance of the title they probably need a goalkeeper, centre-half, defensive midfielder & attacking midfielder, maybe a forward, too.
Let's hope this Bischoff dude turns out to be
an example of Wenger's amazing eye for talent. Chances are he'll be a Remi Garde though
jack wilshere looks absolutely fantastic
and sounds like he's from the 1930s
ever better!
Have you seen that YouTube of him against West Ham?
He puts the ball in the top corner a la Bergkamp and the camera cuts to Wenger, who has this real smug look on his face. It's awesome!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITVSdAzBjXY
Is he English?
Reminds me of Joe Cole.
Yeah, he's English
We've got quite a few coming through now. As Wenger has now been there 10+ years, and players traditionally come to the club from about 9 years old, we're starting to see players emerging that have been developed under his 'way of playing' at every stage of their development. We've already given six or seven English youngsters professional contracts this summer
I've watched them actually...
Barazite, Fran Merida, Gibbs & Simpson all look like really tidy players.
Is he left footed?
I believe so, yes
Interesting
Big Santa Cruz news due in the next 48 hours.
That's all i can say really, but he's erm...at places today talking to peoples. Awooga!
WHO?
Arsenal? I'm kinda indifferent to it if it is us
wow, six two-letter words in a row
PFC Kuruvchi?
Um, isn't he in Germany....?
it's 2008.
Really?
Failing to see the relevance....
I think he means that representatives
of an English club could quite easily be in Germany too
Whereas
That totally would never happen in 2007?
I was implying more that it wouldn't take long...
for a professional football club to fly a player/representative 600 or so miles.
Id this "I've heard....."
Or, "I know..."
*Is
It's an 'i'm 80%'
Blackburn have accepted bids for or are letting three players speak to other clubs.
And you're assuming Roque is one of these
Or you know that he is?
Well, Freidel, Bentley, Santa Cruz, yeah.
Oh, I'm not doing a
"yeah, whatever...." kind of thing here, I just want to be sure before I start spazzing elsewhere about it.
You already know about the Friedel one, yes?
He handed in a transfer request last week, Villa & Man City have bid. West Ham & Boro are said to be monitoring it as Green might go to Villa & Boro have, well, Brad Jones. He'll probably go to Villa, for about £2m.
Villa & Spurs have both had bids for Bentley turned down, expected to be of £10m & £14m. Spurs have upped their bid & City have offered £16m. He'll probably go to Spurs for around £18m in the end, i reckon, or maybe a swap involving Aaron Lennon, who says he doesn't want to leave WHL but might have no choice.
Man City are the only club to have bid for Santa Cruz so far, but this was weeks ago, said to be £10m and was turned down. They've bid again this week, but Spurs are meant to be interested, and even United should they not get Berbatov. I think the most likely destination is Spurs, probably for around £13m.
So where does the 48 hours come from?
The internet rumour mill
Everything's much more specific there than in real life.
He's holding a second round of talks with City...
they're hoping to get a deal tied up in time for him to play for them on the weekend, meaning something would have to be done my Wednesday in order for him to be registered.
Good one, David Healy
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=&xml=/sport/2008/07/21/ufnhealy121.xml
He can do what he likes
after nearly single-handedly taking us to Switzerland/Austria.
Carson signed for the baggies on friday
if that hasn't already been reported. £3.25 is pretty good going.
£3.25?
No matter how many mistakes he makes that's good business.
Mogga can do no wrong
...have we covered Alex Ferguson being a cunt...
?