2015 january transfer window

Jermain Defoe ‏@IAmJermainDefoe 7m
Just touched down in the UK from south of France,was training with my fitness guy feeling stronger than ever! #Ready

I have no idea what spurs need

squad's too big to be proactive there really

presumably poch would drown at least seven youth team prospects if he could still get schneiderlin (he cannot alas)

bobby and ade are obv finished for sure so idk strikers i guess but your likely suspects like ings and gignac are more summer value. doumbia? all depends how aroused levy is by being within 3 points of the cl

do lfc rly have any chance at getting shaqiri cos if so they will probably never again have a better chance to stay big dog relevant post suarez n stevie

Conference South side Ebbsfleet United have signed Gillingham striker Danny Kedwell on an 18-month deal.

wow

apparently paying him 2k a week (to drop three divisions from l1 to conf south)

Kedwell said: "It was just not playing and things like that.

"It was a hard decision because of how much I support the club. I love the club so much, so it was really hard for me.

"I could have just sat there and picked up my money but I’m not that sort of person".

Can non-league clubs still do a "Fleetwood" without ffp sanctions these days?

I am usually against the patronising of lower-league clubs and their adorable transfer shenanigans but I may make an exception for the inner Kent lot

tony watt's career going well then

that's the spirit

Manchester City are in advanced discussions to sign Wilfried Bony from Swansea City in a deal worth around £25m, with Manuel Pellegrini seeking to strengthen his goalscoring options.

Bony is due to join up with the Ivory Coast for the Africa Cup of Nations, meaning he may be unavailable until the middle of next month, but Pellegrini has moved due to having only three front-line strikers in Sergio Agüero, Edin Dzeko and Stevan Jovetic.

that must be one of the more dispiriting hoarding transfers given that their best formation contains aguero as lone striker and bony and dzeko are fairly close in most aspects

not to mention that jovetic's time at fiorentina shows that has the potential to be better than either of those two if he was given enough time to evolve into a technical #9 in the manner of rvp, and there is no prospect of a team like city giving him that time with the others on their books

and i think they're averaging 2+ goals a game with none of the 3 front-line strikers playing

remy to chelsea is another one like that, seems to be a third choice striker even though he has mostly played alright when he has played, 28 yr old france international who doesn't even get on the bench sometimes but earns about 80k or 90k a week

blocks spurs from getting him in, repeat each 6 months as necessary

yeah it definitively prevents the 2015/16 dual assault on manchester city's epl/champions league aspirations everyone was anticipating

why wait til we're an inevitable is obv the thinking

Yeah but we all know Remy is a venal cunt and at this point in his career is too injury prone for any moderately successful team to rely on as their main man. Bony is younger, more consistent and more stable with the potential to be the main goalscorer for a whole range of clubs between Swansea and City in size. Liverpool for one, but there's something depressing about any club cashing in on their most important player in January.

the lowest number of league games remy has played in a season since he became a first team regular seven years ago is 22, during the season when he went to qpr in january

bony is a better player, not that much better, but they would both rather transfer to an elite team and end up like illarramendi or alex song than be an assured starter in a team at their level, which is probably newcastle for remy and tottenham for bony

there's a possibility that city will go back to a 442 but they are playing better this season with as 4231 with aguero (or.....milner) as forward than they did with aguero and negredo when they formed a good partnership last season (negredo being another player at the same level as bony or dzeko)

Stoke's ambitious bid to sign Xherdan Shaqiri could meet an abrupt end as the Switzerland international is poised to tell Bayern Munich he wishes to join Inter Milan.

Bayern had hoped Liverpool would come to the table but that has not materialised and Inter have offered a £2m loan fee with £10m to follow over the next three years.

They're both 11th in their respective divisions, in fairness.

An impressive 22 red cards across the top 4 division of Italy yesterday.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B61UvF1IQAETglc.jpg

nbd tho i'm sure lfc will kill it w/ milner & delph

are we rly selling Lennon wtf

suso off for free to milan as well

Lionel Messi is only at Barcelona because he promised Tito Vilanova on his deathbed that he would stay, says Henk ten Cate

Giovinco to Spurs appears to be gathering some pace here, thus bolstering our imposing forward line.

awww that'd be nice

"Everyone is available in every shape and form and there's no difference about that," said Pulis, who insisted he did not want to sell Berahino.

Sissoko told French TV show Telefoot: “The transfer market is open, so things can happen any day, but I am focused on Newcastle.

“If anything should happen, it will. I hope I’ll leave for a bigger club one day. England is my priority. If Arsene Wenger calls, I’ll have a man-to-man ­discussion with him and then we’ll see."

Ravel Morrison to Lazio would be interesting.

jozy altidore for jermain defoe trade lololol

Giovinco to Toronto?????

http://screamer.deadspin.com/mls-is-putting-the-fix-in-for-toronto-fc-right-before-1680428108

Not that this is any real secret, but it deserves to be said as often as possible: MLS is rigged. The league jointly owns each individual team, centrally controls all major decisions, and has a rule book as regularly erased and written over as a chalk board. With yesterday's reported news that Juventus forward Sebastian Giovinco will sign a contract with the league to join Toronto FC, we have even further evidence of MLS's shameless central planning.

all leagues are rigged
it's still a difficult league to excel in as a team. take the top 8 yoy and it's more various than most
tfc will still find a way to fuck this up

I want to agree on your third point but I figure they will hit on one of their insane buying/staffing schemes eventually.

Naughton out, Konoplyanka in would be suspiciously good news.

Monk described Naughton as a 'great person and good player'

http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2015/jan/22/the-view-from-the-epl-how-shaun-maloney-would-benefit-chicago-fire-and-mls

guardedly optimistic about this signing, even though other teams are getting giovinco and ...gerrard?

They see a lot in me and how dedicated I am and how I want to push on. They're delighted to keep someone like me here.

not the best oracle

gabriel has a bit of the keown about his skullform although hes not particularly feral as a defender, more of a koscielny type now the real one has chronic tendinitis

the real keown is getting more and more vacant looking
soon he will be in a catatonic state broken by hourly epiphanies into relative lucidity when he looks up from the floor and tracks the progress of insects across a windowsill

beetled eyebrows

the "scouting reports" i've read on gabriel all seem to differ from one another so i've just decided he'll be a disappointingly meek bozo who over his five year career who will garner muted flurries of hype in between regular dinner dates with his london club compatriots

i liked villareal presenting him with a valedictory plastic submarine, maybe he can have a battle with cazorla's at bathtime

hes relatively quick and technically competent, idk if his distribution is any good because musacchio does most of villarreal or whether he will be reprising stephane m'bia's traumatized affront at discovering the existence of andy carroll

mbia may be returning to either palace or everton they say

after being persistently linked with those redoubtable warriors osvaldo and m'vila in his alleged efforts to haul us of the mire thus far i can hardly see redknapp resisting a newly out of contract cassano

i have fairly arbitrarily decided that franck tabanou is brilliant, or brill indeed

p tedious deadline day.

little old heartwarming family club charmers bournemouth whacking down £5m for demarai gray from brum, not fucking about are they

bold of brum to reject

the schurrle money is completely bonkers, do abramovich's goons run people over in volkswagens or something

meanwhile hamburg sign marcelo diaz from basle for 2m euro

how much did schurrle go for? £20m+? Find it astonishing they would get more than they paid for him since he's probably a lesser player now than when he arrived at Chelsea. Then again I was surprised how much they got for another player they didn't want, De Bruyne, who turned out to be worth every single Euro Wolfsburg paid for him.

hamburg are so strange, think they signed old man olic this january as well.

Really don't get why Wolfsburg don't play a bit more hardball with Chelsea considering there seems to beno other suitors and Chelsea seem p desperate to get Cuadrado in?

might be bollocks but

According to Bild, the basic transfer fee for the player is €32 million (a club record fee for Wolfsburg), amd all the amounts they will need to pay as add-ons total up to €66 million. This includes a salary of €6 million per year to be paid up to 2019, €5 million in bonuses and €2 million to be paid to Schurrle’s consultant.

Bizarre especially considering that I'm not sure Wolfsburg even need him. Better not take game time away from Max Arnold.

pandz have u seen much of tin jedvaj this season? was p surprised roma let him go on a permanent deal given his rep, tho they do seem to have countless other irons in the fire

Wolfsburg coach Dieter Hecking is confident the club will be able to hold on to star player Kevin De Bruyne for the foreseeable future. De Bruyne has a contract with Wolfsburg until June 2019.

"I do not have any fear that De Bruyne will leave the club," Hecking told Doppelpass. "There are only eight teams in Europe that are a step up from Wolfsburg."

Leverkusen? Still with the teenage acne? If he's the one I'm thinking of he's an attacking full back. Yeah, liked what I've seen, out of maybe half a dozen full games I've caught he's had one nightmare (although he also scored strangely enough iirc) and a couple of stormers. New Lev boss all about the high press and that suits him as he's p dynamic. Not the greatest passer but comfortable enough on the ball and happy enough to seek give and goes on the edge of the oppo box.

xp

zaha back to palace permanently... for £3m

what did fergie pay? £12m? £15m?

Just looked up Jedvaj on whoscored, didn't realise he's played some CB this season, never seen him play in the middle.

milan sign antonelli to go with cerci, destro, suso and mr saddest-hair-of-all-time gabriel paletta

i like it. actually kind of a shame they're not way better and less shambolic, would be cool if they were like the scavenger rebuke to modern football excess

Juventus sign Matri on loan from AC Milan

lol italy, never change

wasn't matri a Juve player like 2 seasons ago?

ya

Mina Rzouki @Minarzouki · 17m
Pirlo is a huge fan of Matri who he labels as a hypochondriac. Player didn't work out for Milan. Back at Juve, he balances team's psychology

Mina Rzouki @Minarzouki · 19m
Pirlo on Matri: "If I was President, a guy like him would be right at the top of my wish list. He comes with a billion dollar guarantee"

spurs gazumping for dele alli, 5m

brentford signing the v highly rated jack o'connell because qpr don't look like dicks enough already and being surpassed by the bees is what needs to happen in life apparently

can see osvaldo rocking up at loftus road now after this matri thing

There are sensational reports that Samuel Eto’o could be set to tear up his Sampdoria contract, just six days after signing.

The former Everton striker is believed to have walked out of training today, refusing to take part in a double training session.

lol

Swansea City manager Garry Monk has likened the January transfer window to a cattle market.

"Everyone's selling all their cows, overpricing their cows. Some of them are bad."

i don't see what he's getting at there. metaphor too complicated.

he does have the face of an unscrupulous abattoir technician tbf

There's a face he has on him after a particularly galling Swansea defeat where you can just see him standing there, staring furiously into the distance, covered in blood.

I have decided to stay With Swansea. I wanted to share this With you before the end of the transferts Windows. It's the best choice for me.

— Bafétimbi Gomis (@BafGomis) February 2, 2015

Even if i was sad before Because i didn't play a lot. Now everything is différent.I believe in this team and his project.

— Bafétimbi Gomis (@BafGomis) February 2, 2015

I have spoken With the coach and I have his confident and he have mine. I am lucky to play and live to Swansea.

— Bafétimbi Gomis (@BafGomis) February 2, 2015

Gaffer is standing behind Me with meat Cleaver. please Help

— Bafétimbi Gomis (@BafGomis) February 2, 2015

Swansea City manager Garry Monk has likened the January transfer window to a cattle market.

"Everyone's selling all their cows, overpricing their cows. Some of them are bad."

― r|t|c, Monday, February 2, 2015 4:06 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Posts w/ striking imagery. Love this quote immensely.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iPh7X7X6So

http://www.stenhousemuirfc.com/images/uploads/tekkers002.jpg

N'Doye's pretty good but idk if he'll keep Hull up.

Hull aren't great but their recent form is better than that of several other teams, Sunderland and Villa in particular are tanking it right now. Then again Leicester and Burnley are better than quite a few relegation favourites from previous years, and Rangers are, well, Rangers, so who the fuck knows.

sunderland lost two away and one home game vs top six teams by one goal margins then beat burnley

There's an element of wishful thinking there admittedly, I would dearly love Sunderland to go down by this point.

Leicester have the worst form over the last ten games but only picked up two points less than Everton. The form table for the same period has a gap of four points between 11th and 20th.

Hull looked absolutely abysmal vs Newcastle.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B86T_XQCMAE1id3.jpg

the romance of the cup

sooo, Andy Kellett joining Man U on loan from Bolton. That's a strange one isn't it? I'm guessing they realised they were short of u21 players at the last minute or smthg?

this is the best squad hull have ever had, not that that is saying much but fine work by steve bruce nonetheless

N'Doye's pretty good but idk if he'll keep Hull up.

― Rainbow DAESH (ShariVari), Tuesday, 3 February 2015 08:39 (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

n'doyency aid

fine work by steve bruce nonetheless

Do you mean for assembling it in the first place or for getting it to underperform on a weekly basis for so long?

the latter, the few good players he has cost plenty of for a team like hull so not like he deserves much credit for that, and they are playing shit anyway

£8m for livermore

Diame – who was also hunted by Crystal Palace – eventually opted for the Tigers and ClaretandHugh claims a Hammers source told it: “With a year left we weren’t going to stand in his way – that wouldn’t have been right.

“With what we were doing in the market, the deal for Diame fitted our situation and my understanding is that he got a hefty increase from Hull of around £10k.”

The players he has are EPL average to just-below-average in almost every position, their upper level is probably roughly where Stoke are now. Probably below that given Stoke have had more talent at their disposal this season.

probably a bit below stoke but enough for 13th/15th sort of level
he's spent a fuck of a lot more money than hughes has though

Hatem Ben Arfa has denied he plans to retire from football at the age of 27 after he was refused international clearance to play for Nice.

Ben Arfa signed an 18-month deal with the French club after Newcastle terminated his contract but was denied clearance having already appeared in competitive games for two teams – Newcastle and Hull – this season.

Nice contested the ruling on the basis that Ben Arfa had only represented Newcastle’s reserve team – but Fifa regulations regard “under-21 professional development league” matches as competitive fixtures.

Chelsea have sold Thorgan Hazard to Borussia Monchengladbach for a staggering mark-up of 1500 per cent on the fee they paid for him two-and-half-years ago, according to reports.

Hazard, the 21-year-old younger brother of Blues star Eden, moved to the Bundesliga side at the start of the season on loan but with his Chelsea deal expiring in the summer, he will now stay until 2020.

Reports suggest Monchengladbach have paid €8m to make his move permanent. That's an incredible 1500 per cent increase on the €500,000 fee they paid in July 2012. The increase is all the more remarkable due to the fact Hazard spent just 37 days at Stamford Bridge, never played for the senior team and played just once for the Under-21s.

Gladbach's sporting director Max Eberl said: "Thorgan has shown what a great talent he is over the past few months. We are delighted we have managed to sign him, and that he has decided to play for Borussia over the next few years."

A Chelsea statement read: "Thorgan Hazard has today signed for Borussia Monchengladbach, with Chelsea having the right to exercise a future buy-back option.

"Chelsea Football Club wishes Thorgan well for the future and will continue to monitor his progress."

thorgan donation is a viable option for russians with liquidity problems

this is obviously abramovich just giving them bags of cash to pay back to Chelsea for kids to dupe ffp rite

schalke exercise option to buy nastasic

city transfers look poor on their own terms (£40m for mangala, £30m for bony) especially given ffp and how much better chelsea are managing that

and even more so given the begiristan strategy of trying to harmonize an ersatz barcelona style and to stop looking so provincial and inept in europe