Jype

Everton just announced they have agreed a fee with Man City for Jack Rodwell. Anyone know how much they will pay for him? Not Man City quality imo, and with all the injury problems he's had I'd se he's not worth anything above £15m.

What the fuck is he going to prove in two weeks? Even if he scores a few goals, that doesn't really mean anything because we've been down that road before. I'd say he has until January to prove he can be the main man and if he doesn't, I can see the panic button being pushed and another big money striker coming in. Of course now that even Lukaku has gone on loan I wouldn't rule out buying another striker before the end of the month, no matter what Torres does or does not.

Daily Mail reporting that Joe Hart is out with an injury. Increases our chances a lot if true, so here's hoping.

Indirectly he is though because in the end most of that money does come from the fans' pockets. The fans pay a shitload of money to the club and if the club's finances are too much in the red, then everything (match tickets, merchandise etc.) is much more expensive. Not to mention having to endure rival fans going on about the countless amount of big money flops we've had our fair share of in recent years. Spending big money on Hulk would mean we wouldn't be spending it on some other player some of us would prefer over him and I think it's only fair for everyone to have their own opinions about these things. We all have our dream signings and because we can't possibly buy every available top class player out there, we want the money to be spent as wisely as possible. Btw this is not me saying I wouldn't want Hulk, but first we have to look at all the different options and then decide what to do. Threatening to walk away from any deal by showing Porto that we are close to signing someone else could force them to drastically lower the price in a desperate final attempt to sell and then we will have a decision to make. No point just telling Porto we will pay them whatever it takes, that's not what a proper big club does.

Just realized Oscar won't join the squad until after playing for Brazil in a friendly on Wednesday. Surely they could have allowed him a little rest after playing six games within a couple of weeks at the Olympics.

Disappointed for him especially after that miss, would've preferred that he joined Chelsea on a high note after winning his nation's first Olympic gold but now he must be devastated. Let's hope he can stay strong and move on quickly.

At least he didn't pull of a 'Torres at Old Trafford'.

West Brom have sold Simon Cox to Nottingham Forest. Good to see them making room for Lukaku but imo they should still be looking to sell at least one more, Long or Odemwingie preferably.

He must have broken into one of the Liverpool players' house and took something valuable. Surely no one else in Liverpool has that kind of money?

If this won't happen now there's a good chance this transfer will again be speculated come January, when Torres has more likely than not once again let us down and we're desperate to sign a top class striker. And judging by that link posted above Napoli could be more willing to sell Cavani in January so that's pretty much an easy 1+1 calculation. And even if Nando succeeds it'd still be possible if Studge hasn't extended his current contract and knowing Roman he'd bite their hand off for a big name player if he's available and we have room in our squad.

I wouldn't worry about Rosenberg because he's shit but West Brom do have a worrying amount of strikers at the moment. Hopefully they will now get rid of someone to make room for Romelu.

Apparently Villas-Boas has now exiled Modric from even training with the rest of the first team, sound familiar? What a knobhead.

Great news, a fully deserved call up.

Didn't notice that before posting. No harm done here, mate.

Cavani would really be a dream signing but for many reasons I think it's a no-go. I don't think Robbie would be willing to alter the team's formation so drastically to include two strikers when so far all of our signings have been attacking midfielders / wingers and that would limit their playing time and even make a lot of our current players obsolete. And if there were no changes to the playing style, having all of Torres / Cavani / Sturridge would be too much for the 4-2-3-1 or 4-3-3. A quoted price of 35-40m€ sounds very tempting though, but at the moment we are not in a position to buy a striker like that without first selling at least one of our current ones and in fact I think Cavani would cost much more than that so I don't see this happening.

1. It is exactly in their own hands. Or are you seriously telling me that if Mata, Alba or Martinez had told the Spanish FA they're not interested in playing at the Olympics after an exhausting season with their clubs and then going to the Euros straight after that, they would have been crucified by the media? That's bullshit and everyone apart from you seems to understand it. Your point could be valid if a player who wasn't good enough to be called up for the Euros started bitching about not wanting to play in the Olympics after being denied the chance of taking part in the better competition, but that's not really the case here and every U23 player not good enough for the senior squad will work their ass off to play whatever games are available for them and try to impress enough to be called up to the seniors. An U23 player declining to go to a tournament could send out bad signals about the player's attitude and that could hurt his chances of ever making it to senior level but if he's already a regular with the big boys he really doesn't have anything left to prove and he can make up his mind on whether he wants to take part in the lesser competition or not. All the players mentioned above opted to go even though they didn't have to and no one could have blamed them had they stayed at home. They did the best they could but this time it simply wasn't enough. Their emotions during the matches clearly showed they wanted to win and if they didn't care, I'm sure they would have given the chance to someone else and let some other player fulfill their dreams. 2. You keep going on about Beckham and whatnot. For fuck's sake, that wasn't even a proper England national team but instead some plastic mixture of all UK and you don't even get proper international caps to your CV for playing there. If memory serves, the FA decided early on that for the sake of all English clubs, they don't call up any players who played in the Euros to keep them as fresh as possible for the new season looming ahead. You have to understand that Britain doesn't have that many world-class footballers these days and since most of them already played at the Euros or were injured, they had to opt for some second-rate players who had already retired from international football or are just not good enough to play in the real England team. Mind you, England had players like Henderson and Downing at the Euros so what did you expect from Team GB if they couldn't even call up shit players like that? 3. You do realize that the Olympics are mainly a U23 tournament and including the absolute best players of their whole nation is impossible with the limit of three over-aged players? From their U23 players they had the very best of the generation and from what I understand only Thiago Alcantara was missing, but that was only because he is injured and had to be replaced. By saying in my earlier post that most of Spain's best players already played at the Euros, I did mean exactly that bunch you mentioned. They could not include them in the Olympics because you can't honestly expect that the likes of Xavi, Iniesta etc. will play two major international competitions within a month when they already play a shitload of games every year with Barcelona / RM and they really need to have at least some time off from football between seasons. Some of the younger guys who were called up for the Euros (again the same players mentioned countless of times already) don't need as much rest as +30 year olds and apart from Alba they didn't even play that much, but again I emphazise the fact they didn't have to go but instead they wanted to. I rest my case. No point going on about this (especially in Oscar's thread) when you simply can't be reasoned with.

Yep, not even Hazard and Oscar need to be registered so why would we register Piazon when we can play him anyway?

Wouldn't read too much into that. After all, he did play in the Olympics and only returned to training a couple of days ago.

"Liverpool wins the league" dominating the poll so far with 100% votes.

If those players you mentioned didn't give a fuck about the Olympics they would have stayed at home and had themselves a nice little relaxing holiday before going on pre-season with their clubs, simple as that. No one forced them to participate and they had every right to decline the call-up but instead they chose to go because they wanted to. And remind me again, where has anyone ever said that the Olympics are as prestigious as the Euros or the World Cup? Clearly it is not but to the players who decided to go it's a competition they really wanted to win and if some players underperformed it may well be because some of them are arrogant and condescending cunts, not because there's something wrong with the tournament itself. The way I see it, European nations probably don't take the competition as seriously as others because it always clashes with the Euros but to everyone else (mainly South Americans and Asians) it's the only major tournament of the year and they want to put on their best performance. I didn't expect Spain to come up with such a strong squad because most of their best players already played at the Euros only a month before the Olympics but to my surprise they did include the likes of Alba, Mata, Martinez etc. in their team. I don't know, maybe taking part in the Euros could have been partly at fault for them underperforming, not because they didn't give a fuck but because they had very little rest between the the club season and London2012 with all those training camps, friendly matches and then of course playing in the Euros in between.

edit: updated

Let's not be delusional here, that bunch would never have gone to the olympics after playing in the Euros and winning the whole thing. Our very own Juan Mata was one of their over-aged players and do you consider him to be shit? Just looking at that Spain squad it was amazing they couldn't even qualify from their group but it's not because they didn't rate the competition and not bother giving their 100% performance on the pitch but rather because for some reason they just weren't good enough. Maybe they got cocky after their nation had won three of the last major international competitions at senior level and last year that same olympic squad won the U21 Euros or maybe it was something else. I don't know the reasons for their mediocre performances and honestly I don't really give a fuck but I'll just say this: if they didn't think the Olympics were a competition worthy of winning they wouldn't have sent out their best possible U23 squad. FFS they even had Jordi Alba in their team and he played every single minute of Euro2012 and had just signed for Barcelona, I'm sure going to pre-season with them would probably have been nice too but he chose the Olympics over that. Also, Mata had an exhausting season with Chelsea and a little rest would have done him good but he chose to go to the Olympics too. I could go on...

Well, not exactly. It's the same League Cup we've got to know from previous years as the Carling Cup but for next season it's just been re-branded for sponsorship reasons. Obviously there is going to be a lot of youth players involved but that's mainly because it's not as prestigious as the other cups and with such intensive match schedule teams are experiencing it offers a good chance to keep key players fresh for more important games.

So basically they're paying €45m in transfer fees, €9m agent fees and massive wages (I don't believe that €250k / week bullshit for a second but still a hefty sum, that's for sure) for a player who can't even get a game for Brazil U23. Nice one, PSG! Getting Oscar for €25m and reasonable wages doesn't seem too much now, considering the fact that Oscar is at the moment by far the better player of the two.

Win all 7 competition by playing sexy football. Seriously speaking, I would be happy with winning the Uefa Super Cup, Club World Cup and maybe one out of the FA Cup and League Cup. Also a comfortable top 3 finish in the league is a must. Don't really know what to expect from the Champions League, obviously reaching the knockout stages is the least you'd expect from the Champions of Europe but I honestly can't predict anything beyond that.