Maverick

Your rivals are still Spurs/ Arsenal and will continue to be till you break into the top 4. Not sure on what basis you are blowing your own trumpet about being title rivals, you may have bought Yaya and Silva but you haven't addressed your defensive woes. Also I dont see a leader in your ranks, a leader that would have got you through the tough times at the fag end of the season where you dropped points which you should have not. I still dont see your side will be close to us or your neighbours come May next year.

I agree to that completely, a move to any other English club apart from Utd will be a step backwards. I am sure Fergie would not want Joey given he has the likes of Valencia, Nani, Giggs and Obertan to choose from.

I dont see how he has f***ed up anything, his marriage is on rocks but the media has no business stalking his personal life and whom he is hanging with. Even if they do they are wrong to be portraying him as the bad guy everytime. Ashley is a tough lad and he has been through tougher times in life, if he does leave I would be gutted and worried because Yuri is nowhere as good as Ashley is.

He dint have a smashing season for Bremen besides its not an easy task to get into the Bayern lineup today with the likes of Bastian, Van Bommel, Ribery and Robben currently running the show. I am not too sure whether Bremen will have a good Champions League campaign, that will have a bearing on the price tag.. So there are many angles attached to it, if he is coming between 10 - 15 mil as you claim I'd go ahead. But right now I think his price tag is hovering near the 20 million mark.

I honestly do not think any of them warrant the price tag that Fergie landed up paying them. Nani and Anderson are good players but Utd have seen better attacking options in their glory days. I agree with you that at the end of the day modern football today is a squad game and not a team game as it was earlier. A club with depth is likely to edge out one that may have a stronger playing 11.

It would make sense to go for Ozil in Jan/ the next summer window, the world cup frenzy would have settled down and his price should be more close to reality than whats been quoted in the various source. Also it would be good to see how he copes with the pressure and observe his performances in the domestic league.

Its just not youth that can win you trophies, if that was the case and by your logic Arsenal would be the title contenders for the last 3 seasons. Its the quality/ class that a team posseses and that to me was the difference between us and United last season. They missed Rooney at the end of the season and it was pretty evident that Berbatov was one of the biggets blunders that Fergie had committed. Fergie too has not bought in smartly for the past few years - none of Berbatov, Nani, Anderson, Valenica can be deemed as successful purchases. So its not entirely true that Fergie's transfer policy should be the benchmark.

Good to see the lads going through their drills, cant wait for the 17th.

Quite strange that you think him to be weak physically, his role at Blackburn was that of a lone striker and most of the times he was either chasing the ball or looking to hold up the ball. In that role he pretty much exhibited that he was up for the physical aspect of the english game. Infact he was quite impressive in the little partnership he had developed with Dunn in the early part of the season.

Dint we turn down an offer a few weeks back? I recall reading that somewhere.

Last time we got a young squad player was by the name Steve Sidwell, we all know what happened to him. An experienced swuad player always comes in handy - Belleti is the best example.

I really dont think its such a bad competition with City, the ones with ambition will always choose us ahead of City. For example I am relieved we lost the race to sign someone like Robinho, this also helps us in getting some of their talented younger lot like Sturridge.

One is close to breaking into the first team and the other a yougster breaking into the reserves, very unfair to compare the two.

Clearly Stoch beats him in those aspects :), makes me wonder what Kazim is good at in that case.

Always good to start a campaign at home, would be nice to see Di Matteo back at the bridge. October and December looks like the two months where we have tricky away trips.

The major difference being Sidwell never had the experience of playing for big club/ playing at the highest level like Champions league which Yossi does.

Well lets keep the short memories aside for a moment. You expect the club to pay him insane amounts for minimal contribution like he has done for the past season ? As far as Malouda is concerned he was out for pretty much the whole of first season and I believe he had a good second season (great in the later half under Hiddink). But if Carlo is currently playing Kalou ahead of Joey that to me is an ample indication of the level at which Joey is playing. We've been having this debate for a while now, lets face it that Joey doesn't look like the player that he once was.

Di Santo is a year or two younger and already has a taste of the premiership, I'd rather give him a run than buy someone like Carroll.

Will always remember the screamer against Tottenham and the goal in the dying minutes against Stoke. Thanks for the memories Juliano.

None of them have had a patch that Joey is undergoing currently. Malouda has just had a blinder this season and the previous was a good one as well barring the injury. Kalou has got us 8 to 10 goals almost every year and that to me is good enough for a 3rd/ 4th striker. So yeah I'd like to think we did treat Joey in the similar manner that we have done with the other players, if not better. The sad part is we never saw the Joey of 05/06 and dare I say he doesn't look like repeating those performance again.

Never read anything on those lines, can you share a link where he has explicitly said that ?

Not surprised at all, expect some of the Inter players (like Milito) to follow him at Real.

I am pretty sure Capello would not have the b@#@s to drop him, if his decision of sacking JT as the skipper is anything to go by. Giving Rio the captaincy was the biiggest blunder that Capello could have done, we will watch the consequences very soon.

I'll agree to the statement that the league is not the same as it was a few years back but to say the quality has gone down is BS to an extent. The fact is the mid table teams (Spurs, City and Villa) have beaten the top 4 at some point this season and that has taken away the sense of invincibility. Classical example of the Quality being intact is Everton, 5th place for the past couple of seasons and now just about making it to the top half. If anything the league has just got more interesting with the emergence of teams like Villa, Spurs and City.

We'll never know whether he is really that injury prone or is rushed back early everytime he is injured. With the likes of Drogba, Anelka sharing the workload I do believe his fitness levels will go up if he were to join us.