strong centreback

I personally thought it was more a 4312 than a 442 diamond, similar to what carlo used at ac milan whilst there.

The latest man city financials dont include on the wage bill: dzeko - 7-8m pa yaya toure - 10m pa kolorov - 4m pa ballotelli - 9m pa silva - 8m pa boateng - 3-4m pa milner - 5-6m pa and also the hughes and his backroom pay off, say 5-10m So thats at a conservative guess another £46 on their wage bill plus a one off in the region of 5-10m, and also ours would have decreased by about 25-30m with the players that have gone this summer. Id expect another cull of deadwood and perhaps a top earner leaving as well so that the wage bill can be reduced further.

I think you mean Dirty scouse-who-cheated-on-his-pregnant-missus-with-a-handful-of-prostitutes You can take the lad out of liverpool but you cant take the scouse out of the lad, watch him do a collymore upon retirement, coming to a carpark near you.

Best thing they could have done is spend the bulk of the torres money in what seems like a panic buy, carroll never in a month of sundays is or will be worth 35m

Good riddance talentless manc

Agreed, wanker of the highest order with john aldridge riding shotgun.

Who's the bitterest man on sky sports news... the bitterest man on sky sports news..., I think phil 'pinocchio' thompson takes that moniker by some margin

Goes witout saying that seeing as when announced he mentioned our club by name as an example, english football has the most money in it and fifa/uefa dont like it, more than likely because they realise that if clubs get fed up with uefa that our top clubs in england will be the first to march off and setup a european super league with its own managing body (uefa/fifa), the top clubs have alot of power in the modern game and if they wanted to they could go setup the ESL tomorrow, and if that happened where would uefa/fifa money come from?

Well the owner can pump 35m in the first year then less over the next 2 years so I wouldnt be suprised for the plans to happen but after the first year of doing it id wager platini giving clubs longer and allowing owners to pump more money in, he will use an excuse along the lines of to many teams are to far away from being even, he will then alter the original plans to a 5 year break in period with the owners allowed to pump more money in the first 2 years then the original plan for the remaining 3, he gives the big clubs longer to break even without losing to much face in the eyes of the media and fans, can anyone really see real madrid, barcelona etc not being able to play in uefas showpiece event? I cant it will be those teams that get the rules bent to suit and we will be able to follow in their slipstream, imo that is what man city are banking on and even then they will be very lucky to make the cut, as I reckon it will take man city 10 years to break even and thats like us having the debts written off by the owner each year, as they have far superior expenditure than us and im not talking about transfer fees.

See my post in the finances thread, we are almost rosey imho with our finances from this year accounts (released year from now), im sure platini has said something about any sponsership deals signed would need to be proved as market value or words to that effect if I remember rightly to stop the exact thing your insinuating will happen at city, im sure it would contravene uefa/fifa rules if etihad suddenly bumped up their sponsership deal to 100m a season in 2 years time especially as if you say the sheiks brother owns the company then im sure it wouldnt be allowed to be used as a way of balancing the books.

From what I have been able to find man citys etihad deal is worth around 30-45 over 3-4 years depending on which source you read, so at best on par with our current samsung deal which is to be no doubt bttered when it is due to be renegotiated come the end of this season (I think its this season) and their kit manufacturing deal is by far more insignificant compared to our adidas one, which is one the biggest in the world. You are right about there being somekind of loophole that some clubs are going to find, man citys deficits are going to affect their finances for years to come and with their chairman only allowed to pump so much in from the summer their is going to be a loophole to be found. We are still making losses 3-4 years on from our last significant spend and we had a greater position both footballing and financially to build on then city did so even if the sheik does as roman did and turns the debt into equity the running losses of the club are going to be sky high for many many years (see us as prime example) so it will be interesting as to what they do, their wage bill (135m not including their latest batch of player ie toure dzeko silva etc) is far in excess of ours now and on last financial reports their turn over is about 55-60% of ours (125m) so id ssay that its gonna take a good number of years just to get their revenue up to that of their wage bill, let alone break even.

Apparently had a bid of £12.5m for kjaer accepted, glad we didnt buckle if true over the price for luiz.

My theory is that if it is to do with cutbacks on spending then it makes sense to trim the fat from the department and instead of having say 10 scouts round europe of average quality it would be better to have 3 of high quality, less is sometimes more or a better phrase quality over quantity, it seems we went for the later in the last 5 years but hopefully are now moving towards the former, big things are gonna happen with the backroom staff in the summer, and id speculate that carlo is gonna get more responsibility, roman tracked and wanted ancelotti for about 3 years before he got him and has stuck by him through our 'bad moment' when the clever money would of been on him getting the chop, maybe just maybe roman has decided that going back to the english model of football management after giving the european model ago id say its probably cheaper to run as well which could be another reason for the possible switch.

Not one mention about snubbing us for spurs in that article yet look at their headline

Gives abit of weight to the theory our name being used to drive the fees up, as redknapp said 'carlo is as honest as the day is long' wouldnt be the first time we have been used as a pawn in anothers game of chess.

Its not much of a leap of faith to assume that the whole club went along with it, as they would if it meant more money from a transfer potentially, maybe im stretching now though lol, dunno seems abit fishy to me why didnt the club put something up on the website (our end) about having talks about a potential transfer, why didnt carlo say we have had a bid accepted, even if he were being marginalised the club would keep him a breast of things so that it didnt look like we were doing things without his knowledge, absolutely nothing linking us to pienaar besides that lone webpage which was taken from moyes post game interview.

Thought id throw this into the mixer, a rumour ive read reckons we were never in for him, our name has been used to bump the price up just like when agents say we are interested when negotiating a new deal for their client, where has it said that pienaar rejected us in his own words? when he signed for them and commented he never mentioned us at all, surely a new spud would like to mention that he rejected us for them to get the fans onside early? harry redknapp said he thought something wasnt quite right when talking about our apparent interest and that he wouldnt say what he thought it was, the media latched onto that and spun it as redknapp thinks carlos getting sacked, when he may of actually meant everton are using our name to drive the price up, he mentioned enough times about the price being high and that spurs wouldnt do business at that price, personally reading between the lines I think that everton tryed pulling a fast one to get more money, at first it was an unnamed club have had a bid accepted then moyes said it was us, me thinks a bartering chip was played, whereas the chairman of udinese has said publically that we are in for sanchez and have discussed a move and by making it public has given us a clear price to get close to if we want him 30m euros.

For what exactly? mid table mediocrity? scraping through the europa league group stages? please enlighten us.

Well thank fuck for that if lampard was like gerrard he would only be half the player he currently is and not a world class player. Where's the winning attitude that gerrard displays according to your self as its been nowhere to be seen seen for at least 2 seasons now, all I see in his attitude is one of self pity that he is in such a poor team.

You do realise that franks runs are often late and into the unoccupied space to get his shots off, that is intelligence something gerrard lacks.So gerrard would shine at sunderland which I take is your point that he would shine anywhere? if thats the case why has he been so non existent for the last two seasons? great players stand out from the crowd when the going gets tough they drag their team up by the scruff of the neck, not walk around hands on hips with a look of 'why am I here' across their mug like I said gerrard is a very good player when utilised right but you need to build a team round him to compensate for his lack of teamwork he needs two defensive minded players sitting constantly to cover the space he leaves, whereas with frank he uses his brain to know when to make his late run when nobody is picking him up and he isnt leaving a glaring hole with which the opposition can counter into, because of that he doesnt have to make the rash tackles gerrard has to to make up for it, key word here is intelligence a very important characteristic of a world class player one which they all have had from beckenbauer to redondo to zidane, they all have an awareness of what is going on around them as well as what is infront of them, gerrard has only the latter.

You mean that champions league final that milan lost a 3 goal lead in? thats what that will be remembered as, jesus even a player like wes brown has a champions league medal.

Track back and do what put a tackle in that usually results in a freekick, when he plays out wide left for england do you see where he actually plays? he plays on barry/lampards shoulder tucked right in leaving a gaping hole down the left and unbalancing the whole formation, he is as thick as two short planks, the big difference between the two is lampard is a team player gerrard it seems plays for himself and is only ever looking for individual glory.

Is this the same gerrard that when giving the opportunity to 'inspire' the national team as captain has led us out of contention for the euro 2008 took us from going through to falling at the final hurdle or captaining us through a abysmal world cup campaign, or the same gerrard that is currently inspiring liverpool out of their slump or the player that is so tactically ill disciplined that the only place you can play him is behind the strikers as if you play him deeper he leaves giant holes in the middle of the park when he makes one of his driving runs forward that result in fuck all. Seriously lampard is twice the player gerrard is was or ever will be, as he has more to his game than just running around like a headless chicken whilst scoring the odd 30yrder and pulling out the once in ten 'great' performance to which he is thought to do every other game, gerrard whilst a very good player is also a very typical english player and that is what makes people believe that he is like some second coming running = worldclass, in 10 years people will not talk of gerrard outside of liverpool as he has done little to be remembered by whereas frank is the most consistent goal scoring midfielder in europe and has won alot more medals in his career, lampard will be remembered europe wide when he retires as a player to try to emulate due to his vast achievements, it really is a no contest.

We are heading into the corner but need a run of wins to get round it, if we can win all of our games leading into the champions league first leg then id say our season is back on track, at the moment we are merely getting back on our feet.

He was good to day to b fair to him seemed to tuck in more personally I think we should be looking for a right winger to allow rotation between anelka and Drogba as the centre forward anelka plays better and scores alot more goals as the centre forward then when he is shunted/accommodated on the right hand side would allow Drogba to get fitter as he looks a shell of his former self out there at the moment though im still putting it down to fitness issues post malaria at the moment, anyway I digress anelka should get more opportunity as the lone striker as he does better there.