francozola

I'll die of laughter if he goes to arsenal over the scum

I heard that City are going to give Liverpool Adam Johnson as part of the Agger deal and sign Scott Sinclair to replace him. Sounds plausible...

It would be best if we don't have any expectations for Hutchinson. He might become a good 2nd choice RB one day but with his injuries, it's still a long shot that he can make it here. Kane too has a lot of work ahead. Let's not overrate our youngsters as we've been doing over the years. If it happens, great. But with these sorts of things, like I said, it's better not to have expectations.

Exactly. There's no way we'd be haggling over a million or two if we truly wanted him over other targets. This is like the RDM situation... The board are waiting to see if their 1st choice pans out before deciding whether to commit

All the best everyone! I get my results for first year uni tomorrow!

Are you referring to the downloads? Um, I'm not too sure to be honest! Haven't done it before. I've burned television shows that I downloaded onto DVDs before and it was pretty simple. Would the Sky downloads be different?

Definitely won't be getting it now that it's confirmed it has Chelsea TV commentary. I'll just burn my Sky downloads onto DVDs and get a nice cover for them :D

Hmm. I had forgotten about those two incidents!

lol at some of the Luiz criticism (not only here) when terry was far worse than him. Luiz just gets more stick because he looks more clownish when making errors, whereas JT's errors were actually costlier. His 'defending' during Tevez's goal was utterly ridiculous and laughable. And mikel is fucking useless with this style of play that we're trying to apply.

Very funny. But we got dominated before the red card too. And it's not just this game, this has been happening since Carlo's "bad moment".

Our midfield is fucking atrocious. Hope the board sees this. They don't give enough protection to the back 4, and don't give enough support to the attackers. Not good enough at all. We get dominated in midfield all the fucking time

^ one example doesn't really prove anything tbh Anyway he isn't that bad but he's clearly not comfortable nor good enough to play in that role imo

I'm not totally for signing Moses but at 8million is there any harm? obviously I'd rather we sign someone better but we only seem to be interested in Hulk and I've not been impressed by him at all, especially at that utterly ridiculous price. And I don't see this deal (if it happens) restricting any midfield purchases if RDM/the board are truly keen on getting someone. Hardly think 8m will make a difference. If they feel we need a central midfielder, we'll go after one regardless of this deal.

No way should Ramires play as a RW. Id bet my house that kakuta will leave. Hazard doesn't seem to be interested in playing as a winger (or one that goes to the byline and crosses) Sturridge should be used as a striker. Malouda performed better as a wide midfielder/centrally last couple of seasons imo he's totally useless as an attacking winger now I do agree with your point about getting a midfielder though. We're weaker there as compared to the wings.

Like KOF said 18 mil or so for two very good squad players is excellent business by the club.

Happy belated birthday Kez! Hope you had a good one

Weren't there rumours at the end of last season that city had "agreed a deal" with both the club & player? IIRC even the BBC were running the story, lol.

Congrats manpe! It's been a long time coming

Agreed! Also it frustrates me when people say "no one goes past Brana". There are countless examples of poor defending by Ivanovic where he didn't follow the winger properly. One example of the top of my head would be Utd's 3rd goal in the 3-3 draw at the Bridge last season. That was just pathetic defending. I know every defender has shit moments but Brana is over-rated by some in my opinion. He's been superb for us overall with his determination, heart & countless important goals but purely as a defender he is replaceable

Last season we were going for the park-the-bus option and hence it was probably drilled into his head a million times to reduce his forward-runs and keep it simple. We're trying to play some 'proper' football now so your point about him seeing lack of movement upfront is probably correct. I tried to visualize the game from his perspective and it must be hilarious. Most of the players are static. When they get the ball they have 0 ideas on what to do with it. He's just trying to help the team and he has done it successfully before which led to a couple of goals last season like the Leverkusen one, etc. He does have the tendency to make mistakes which irritate me too but to be honest, David Luiz should be the least of our worries. If there was some proper possession play going on infront of him and evidence of creativity he wouldn't see the need to try and make something happen as often as he does

Sigh. Our transfer policy has been ridiculous. Instead of going after someone like Modric that summer we signed the has-been Deco

Yes but we shouldn't really be aiming for 0-0 draws should we? But perhaps until our team develops further we might not have much choice. It's laughable that we're suggesting to play defensive football against teams like Brighton and pray for a goal on the break or whatever. And (re: your post [i believe it was you who posted that, forgive me if it wasn't] a few pages back saying that you'd prefer seeing ugly football as long as we got wins) our current team is completely different from Jose's team when we were able to sneak 1-0s with not very attractive football. We had Makelele the rock back then, along with Lamps and Essien in their prime. We're now stuck with Meireles, a past-it Essien, a much older and less capable Lampard. We had Drogba and we now have Torres. There's still a lot of work to be done especially in midfield. Our pathetic midfield affects the whole team. The defense doesn't have as much protection that it should and our attack doesn't have as much creativity and opportunities that it should because of the midfield's complete inability to dictate tempo and possession. We're paying for Roman/the board's refusal to sign replacements for our core group of players and start the rebuilding process in 2008.

How adventurous.

That midfield trio of Lampard, Meireles and Essien is just fucking dreadful. Midfield in general is our weak point. Lampard, Essien, Mikel, Meireles, Ramires and Romeu are not good enough to last the whole season, especially when facing top teams and European opposition. We need a proper CM. Essien is finished and should be sold. Meireles is rubbish most of the time and Romeu is a question mark. Mikel is not good enough if we want to play attacking football - no way am I drinking the Mikel Kool-Aid just because he did well in park-the-bus scenarios last season. He's still not shown that he can be a starter in an attacking formation imo. Lampard has many qualities left but he should not be a definite starter in that position or we will get found out. Oscar may help but will he be played there? Even then we need to sign at least 1 more CM.

100% agree with Peace. The forum has become unreadable at times. It's just argument after argument and they're not even interesting debates. In some threads it's just pages and pages of self-righteous crap.