Thendo

Saw some quotes from Mourinho that Ake will be part of the first team as reserve defender now that Bertrand is on loan. Anyone know if he can play LB or is he mainly CB/CDM?

Shame he joined us at a time when we had abundance of attacking midfielders, hard to break through and get a solid spot in the team with players like Hazard,Oscar, Willian, Mata above you. Goodluck to him and hopefully he will be a success in bundesliga!

@Melanicus Well, it wasn't that likely that we would get him in january anyway, but with all the turmoil that has been at southampton the last days made it look like it would be easier to aquire players from them but now with their chairman is publicly stating that they don't plan to sell anyone and therefore denying all that, sure we could go all-in and bid a massive £30m to get him in this window, but I don't think we are that desperate and/or naive ( atleast I hope we aren't).

Southampton chairman Katharina Liebherr has issued a clear, albeit brief, statement. She said: 'The club has no plans to sell any of the squad during the January transfer window. The manager and the team have my full support.' - (Daily mail) So, no Shaw this window...

So in that case shouldn't Kalas and MvG count as U-21 aswell then? If so we should be fine.

We managed just fine the first half of the season, how many games did he really play tbh ? He's only 24 years old and he needs gametime,we could just damage his career if we let him warm the bench forever. And we also got Kalas so it's 7 defenders for 4 positions, And who knows we might have a recall option if (god help us) both of Cole/Azpi for some reason gets injured...

Why? He isn't going to get many minutes here as it is now anyway, better to let him get some gametime than be on the bench as Jose's 3rd choice LB. On topic: Matic won't start, Lampard fit and Ivanovic is out.

Going on loan to Aston Villa...

I agree, he could possibly compete with Cole for LB and even take the spot as it is now. I just think it could be a sweeter and more attractive deal for them, they know he won't stay at southampton forever and it's a big chance he could be leaving in the summer anyways. At the same time we are not in a great urgency to get a LB since Cole/Azpi is doing fine for now, tho I think it could be a good idea to tie him up for now so we avoid any of the manchester teams or spurs stealing him come summer.

How about buying him in january and loan him back to saints til the summer then let them have Bertrand. Think it could be a fair deal (depending on the price ofc).

So no CFC-players as part of the deal? Amazing if we got him for just 25m Euros...

We're getting closer and closer to the team of 04/05 to dominate the EPL once again! :blue scalf:

One thing I like about this transfer is how jealous fans of other teams are. I've seens quite alot of United/City/Arsenal fans admitting that they'd wanted him for their team and how it's a steal toget him for 20m and so on.It bodes well.

This. It's not like we are in a super hurry to get him signed, will probably be announced tomorrow morning/afternoon.

Sky Sports News ‏@SkySportsNews2m Sky sources: Hull sign Nikica Jelavić from Everton #SSN Sky Sports News ‏@SkySportsNews2m Sky sources: Hull agree fee with West Brom for Shane Long #SSN Hull is really going for it!

Reliable source?

Don't want to get off-topic about all that, but with new sponsor-deals and reaching knock out stages in CL etc, I highly doubt that it's bad as the media makes out. And still there is a transfer window this summer so every oppertunity in the world to sell KdB. So I don't see why we would be "Massively fucked" if the KdB deal somehow crashed...

Why? It's not like we must sell players before we buy... We're not Spurs. It just happens to be a good oppertunity for KdB to leave and us getting good profit from it. I do think we would have gone for Matic even if we didn't have plans to sell Kevin.

Matic was quoted by A Bola as saying: "I still can't say anything about this, let's see what happens in the future, you have to ask the club and the president." And, when asked about a move to Chelsea, Matic replied: "If it's good for the club and for me, we'll talk. Let's see what happens until 31 January." (http://www1.skysports.com/football/news/11668/9115041/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter) Quite confident we'll get him now, otherwise he would have said he's staying or something along that line. Might have to wait a couple of days before we get anything offical tho.

Ballon d'Or: Nicklas Bendtner, Dickson Dokowe and Jamal Fyfield.World Coach of the Year for Men's Football: David Moyes, Avram Grant and Andre Villas-Boas.Haha quality!

Ronaldo truly deserved to win this year! But wow he's really emotional about it, didn't expect that.

BBC Sport ‏@BBCSport10m Chelsea midfielder Kevin de Bruyne is expected to complete a £16m move to German club Wolfsburg in the next 48 hours via @BenSmithBBC I guess £16m is decent if we can get Matic for ~25m

Crazy game!

Wouldn't be suprised if he got himself a hat-trick today.