Elliott

Well it'd be up to Spurs to report them for it, but as they eventually gave permission anyway, it seems that they won't.

It's easy to say that Alex, but consider the lack of effort that Anelka and Malouda seem to put in and it becomes frustrating.

Man City will be challenging for titles very soon now they have unlimited funds like we did.

We're playing a 2-2-1-4-1 so far as I can tell, 2 centre-backs, 2 wing-backs, 1 defensive midfielder, 4 midfielders and a forward.

Well clearly Real Madrid wanted a higher price off of us. Bad relations aside, that makes sense, seeing as they could face us in the Champions League and so selling us one of their best players would be a bad move from them. But Kenyon handled this badly and surely will be to blame.

A matter of finance perhaps? I can see your point about keeping a more defensively minded right-back, but we may just not have received offers for Juliano whereas we did Paulo, so Paulo would be the one to go. Of course, maybe the club really were just keeping two attack minded right-backs instead. Perhaps that is what Scolari wants. We are definitely using wingbacks with our current formation rather than full backs. Everytime we get the ball, Ashley and Jose are level with the midfield.

Bit of both, I suspect.

He was alright. Yeah Ferreira was better than him. But why should we keep a player because he was integral 5 seasons ago? That's just silly.

Well, actually, I don't hate Man City. They are like us, 5 years ago. Good for them. It'd be incredibly hypocritical to hate them for having lots of money. We did. We do. The reason we got shafted here was our bad relationship with Real, basically.

Used Glen Johnson more.

3 right-backs is more than necessary. But we have Ivanovic also. So that's 4. And 2 options even after one is moved elsewhere is fine. We don't need 3 players for every position. I don't think Ferreira was ever integral to our team. He's a good player, but not outstanding. We have been trying to improve on the right-back position since a year after we got him, which tells it's own story.

Funny how we start complaining about money when we get out muscled for once.

I never said Ferreira is a bad player. But with the amount of right-backs we have, losing one is not a problem.

Not really. Ferreira is hardly integral to the squad and we could cope without him with what we have.

It might just be that it's done but West Ham have yet to announce it.

Well said. It's a knock to the ego, but it doesn't matter too much.

It's simple really. Robinho was our only target. Look at it this way. He was the only possible way for us to improve our squad at this moment in time. We were unable to do so, but it's still very good, and we can cope with what we have.

There's no-one else for us to sign. We'll just have to settle with what we have. I can only hope the squad gets used to Scolari's tactics quickly and he's able to get the best out of what we've got. A plus point is we will see the increased involved of youth such as Sinclair and Di Santo... but that might not be good news for this years title challenges.

Well, considering the money now at City's disposal, they will be a force to be reckoned with and he's still relatively young and can help that team develop. Alright, he won't get Champions League football for a year, maybe two, but by then City will surely break into the top 4 as we broke the top 2 after Roman arrived.

Well interestingly there's been no more news on this for hours. Either West Ham are leaving it late or it's fell through.

Apparently Robinho is happy with moving to City too.

SSN saying Robinho offer by City has been agreed by Real. The only way Robinho would choose City over us is if Real decided to just not accept our offer. For fuck's sake Chelsea!

SSN saying right now that the deal is practically dead and to be honest it sounds as much. Schuster has basically said if Robinho goes, I go, so unless they call his bluff (and that would be a bad move), Robinho is staying put at least until January.

I would fucking love it if Berbatov went to City instead of United, be so funny.

Merged the wes' thread with this one. Good luck to Paulo if he goes. He's a decent player, but with Bosingwa, Belletti and Ivanovic, someone's got to leave.