2015 january transfer window

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

He's p good actually, although St Etienne are a p defensive team since Aubameyang and Payet left so he doesn't get much chance to shine.

think i vaguely recalled him as a good winger from old ffw lists i perused when qpr and newcastle were in the french market. does he play left back too?

recent twitter mentions suggest he has an occasional propensity for violence

nice to see u round here again lately btw pandz, i have often this season thought of your sage counsel that lfc should have bought calhanoglu

this latent lfc connection had in fact led me to wilfully mentally mispronounce his name like ian callaghan-ogloo, even though the actual challanoloo already kinda meets the scouse reference requirements via dave challinor

i'm really bored today

nice to see u round here again lately btw pandz

quite

sightings of localgarda too, as if everyone is realizing that at least once this season sterling will play behind sturridge and balotelli and they will briefly look amazing again

http://i.imgur.com/Nztfo0I.jpg

Eltham?

sightings of localgarda too, as if everyone is realizing that at least once this season sterling will play behind sturridge and balotelli and they will briefly look amazing again

just getting into the groove for next season's real push for the title.

xp def

v a la mode rn, lucas digne has one that says sidcup

sidcup would be a great first name for a frenchman come to think of it

now that garda's back on the scene i feel it's okay to wonder aloud of the whereabouts of flanno lad i miss him :(

he was sitting beside gerrard during a game recently. maybe bolton at the weekend.

would have him back if it meant johnson fucked off for good.

that clichy-sous-bois neck tattoo wasn't good optics for the city game

xxxp

Thanks r|t|c and Nakh. Also great to see Garda back, reckon it was the nostalgia brought forth by seeing Heskey and Spearing at Anfield again that summoned him back ;)

Read somewhere that Johnson would be offered a new deal in order to play right-sided CB in a back 3!!?? Thought our 3 at the back was a no Sturridge stopgap tbh. Although should probably plan for 1/3 of each season being a no-Sturridge zone. Tottenham away still the highlight performance of the season so far although 2nd half vs Chelsea wasn't bad.

how is can doing

i'd say good with ball at his feet, not great positionally. probably cos he's a midfielder not a defender.

he looked extremely fat at the start, like neil ruddock fat - but i think he's gaining fitness too. prob needs to just play in midfield.

id rather he played higher up the pitch in midfield although he played well against chelsea last week despite getting sonned by hazard for the penalty.

He's been fine, decent distributor from the back. Made a mistake in the Chelsea game, well 2 really, but otherwise has been steady albeit against v limited opposition. Find it hard to believe that Rodgers purchased him as a CB though. Not sure he's ever gonna have enough goals in him to be a productive midfielder given that I don't see him in a shielding role. Probably end up being Phil Neville circa his Utd years.

jesus michael i just remembered for the first time in probably two decades that i had a copy of that book which was last seen circa the age of 6 when my mother gave it to the mother of some other child
i hardly remember anything about the kid but i remember his mother (voluble slightly deranged eastenders type) who had hair like alan smith in the late ridsdale era
she was supposed to have picked up dogshit left in her front garden and thrown it at the culprit's owner

admittedly i've only had a good look at can during the awful early season form (and yeah he was quite possibly overweight) but he didnt really strike me as anything other than adequate in cm. as a mobile, technical cb he makes a lot of sense imo - certainly the rarer and more necessary asset there

plus he was playing lb in germany, dunno to what standard but

just in relation to his predecessor phil neville, clearly it's been said enough what a thick resentful cunt he is but i'd just like to transcribe his words imagining what his son would say about rosicky

that guy's got skill he's a baller and all these sayings that the young lads are saying now

You mean his son doesn't want to "two foot him"? Phil's not teaching him right.

can as phil neville does make sense in relation to the general evolution of the epl i was thinking of in relation to pogba/vieira

'new vieira' must be the most commonly iterated hypothetical football player of the last two decades in england, so many tall midfielders of francophone african extraction mislabelled by the tabloids and the lumpen brit managers trying to copy the one part of the wenger playbook they really envied

pogba is probably the most hyped of all, the lost object of desire since he was once 'let go on a free transfer' by ferguson as the mail helpfully put it yesterday

and even though he is even less like vieira than any of those others were, pogba is probably the vieira for 20 years later; more inventive, more technical, not as hard, not as defensively minded, not as tactically discliplined, more of a player for a 5-3 than a 1-0, more of baller and all these sayings that the young lads are saying now

yah pogba is in no way a defensive midfielder, or a destroyer.

I see Joel Campbell is off on loan again, he's never gonna really play for Arsenal is he? Does anyone think Sanogo will either?

pogba the new gerrard more than the new viera, although more elegant than either.

yeah i could see him as a more intelligent version of gerrard in a few years, more in than period when he was playing ahead of mascherano and alonso than when he was doing the bryan robson box to box stuff

nostalgia for the prestige football the 96-04, if it weren't already clear, is probably the only viable trend in fitba right now

luiz ronaldo was the best player of all time, he was at his best when he played for inter

emerson at juventus was a better midfielder than pogba, bayer leverkusen of 2002 were better than today's bayern

paolo montero, youri djorkaeff, psg when they were borderline shit, the parmalat era, sinisa mihajlovic, creatine and bulked/doped up serie a players, jimmy floyd haisselbaink, 'defenders who like defend', john o'shea nutmegging luis figo, valeron at depor, sami kuffour, faith terim and mircea lucescu in serie a, viduka and kewell in the champions league

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