2015 january transfer window

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

Really wish I'd seen riquelme play more than a dozen or so full games. Sigh, I'll always have the you tube comps I guess.

98 parma shirt (h&a) is more or less at the top of my attainable want list these days, so cosign i guess

going to save you all the bother of reading one of those awful winsome literate football blogs called JUAN ROMÁN RIQUELME: A QUIXOTIC ENIGMA and post the best bit

After initially rejecting the transfer, the story goes that the deal was finally concluded after Boca told their young enganche that without the €11 million euro fee, the club would find itself in serious financial trouble. The time had come to put the money where his heart was: if he truly loved the club, he would go. Román packed his bags.

It didn’t start well. Upon his arrival in Catalonia, Dutch coach Louis Van Gaal handed Riquelme a child’s replica shirt as a present for his newborn son, along with the words, “he will get to wear his more than you wear yours.”

speaking of 96-04 Redondo is the best player I've ever seen in that of the 4 games of his I can remember seeing he was incredible in all 4. Never saw a big enough sample size to watch him be ordinary.

Sky Sports News are banning fans from deadline day :(

hope they dont skimp on the security then

ugh gross is cuadrado for £24m to sit on the cfc bench really happening

is there a story at sampdoria, i know they sold not-marco gabbiadini but ~20m on luis muriel and joaquin correa is kinda splashy?

Their relatively new owner Massimo Ferrero is looking to make a mark.

So Chelsea buying Salah this time last year was basically just to stop someone else getting him?

liverpool, it seems. not sure why we were in such a frenzy to buy last january and this january when our need is obvious we just sneaked out a rodgers interview on new year's day saying we're not buying anyone until summer.

We bought so many players in the summer, if we then buy players now to be ahead of those then it just confirms how much we fucked up in August. I mean we've bought how many CB's since Rodgers arrived??

most expensive defence in history of english fitba, and second most expensive worldwide after psg

(lol bantz stupid trollstat)

I had completely forgotten about the existence of Scott Sinclair. Is Jack Rodwell doing anything at Sunderland?

most expensive defence in history of english fitba, and second most expensive worldwide after psg

it's a fair point, not even trollstats. i am kinda hoping we've cobbled something together that works - sahko has looked a lot better of late and the return of lucas has helped as a stopgap. still shit from setpieces though. earlier this season i reckon it was the worst defence i've ever seen in professional sport. i don't mean that as hyperbole either.

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