Remodez

Rodgers is nothing more than a con man. He's failed at every job he's had and he got lucky at Swansea as everything there was already in place before he came along. He barely had to make any changes in fact. Says the right things and gets people to lap it up but really he's tactically inept. A poor man's AVB. Although that said I still think Liverpool will be just fine, too many poor/average teams this season for them to be in any real trouble regardless of who is in charge.

Pato has gone to Corinthians for £12m, For that price, and considering he's still only 23, I would have liked it if we signed him.

Should hopefully get it sooner rather than later given the current improvement in our defence. Agree with whoever said it would be brushed under the carpet though.

http://www.sporcle.com/games/Cestrian/pricing_out_everton Fun little game. I got 30 right, missed out a few obvious ones though.

Naturally the decision is always down to the player but the way the laws in Spain work tend to favour the clubs, added to the fact that Falcao doesn't seem desperate to leave I would say it gives them a huge advantage. Assuming we did give Falcao the money to buy out his clause, which is £50m? I can't remember right now, let's say £50m as it sounds about right. Like you've already mentioned, there's taxes that need to be paid if we were to buy out his contract. So Falcao would have to pay taxes on top of £50m we gave him due to the fact that it is now reconsigned as income and needs to be taxed as such, the transfer fee plus tax would roughly be £65m (I know Javi's transfer fee plus tax was roughly around €55m so I'm using the same basis) and then there's the third party to deal with who are even more shady. In total we could be shelling out something like £70m, once you add it all up, just to sign him and not to mention the amount of wages he would be on. I'm not comfortable with that myself.

In Spain you are allowed to buy out your own clause and give the money to the Spanish FA, that's what he did. If I recall correctly he only had a year or so on his current deal before moving to Bayern, I think so it can't have been that much. Not even sure how they calculate it, but I doubt he would have done it if it amounted to a lot.

I got mixed up, nevermind.

Wish I could give you a romantic tale of how I bleed blue when the doctors prodded me (Reading that again sounds dodgy) but it's simply not that way. Grew up in Portugal, didn't really like or follow football. Would watch the odd Porto game (My local team back then) now and again but nothing major. Wasn't until I moved to England and that I really started to get into football, was a neutral until 1997 when I noticed Zola destroying Man United. Kept my eye on him and really, it just escalated from there. Not ashamed to admit that, to me, Zola was Chelsea. He represented everything about the club and I looked up to him as a real idol, there were other things as well such as the amount of Portuguese players and coaches Chelsea had over the years (The little Porto and Chelsea affiliation makes me happy) and the fact that some of my favourites players ever have played for Chelsea, such as Le Saux, Babayaro, etc even before I started to support Chelsea but if there's one thing that really moulded me into a supporter then it was Zola.

Of course, don't get me wrong, I will be amongst those doing a merry jig if we did end up signing him as I've wanted him since he pretty much stepped foot at Porto but I just don't think we will find it so easy to convince Athletico to sell in Jan.

I must have edited that post like 10 times. Juventus have debts. All they need to do is win Serie A (Don't even have to win it to be honest, even so it's looking likely, but it's best if they do so that they have money to buy new strikers) and put up a good showing in the CL. Atletico are the same, finish in the top 3 and a good showing in the Europa league and they will be perfectly fine, at least for the following year anyway. Like RFC said, if they do all that and then sell Falcao they benefit much more than they would if they sold him now. I'm pessimistic, I don't see them doing us any favours. Why would they, I don't recall us having a good relationship with them. I would probably be more optimistic if Falcao had made more of a noise about leaving but he hasn't as far as I'm aware and really, do you blame him? He has no real reason to right now.

Safe to say that every buyout clause contract in Spain applies only to Spanish clubs, just like it does for every other country. Mata had a buyout clause of €60m, we didn't go in and slap that amount on the table. Slightly different I know as Valencia had debts but they were under no pressure to sell Mata. Only difference is that Spain made things more complicated than necessary by having two sorts of buyout clauses, which is just stupid quite frankly as they both serve the same purpose. Only reason I can think of why it's been allowed is that they both serve as a way of protecting the club that don't want to sell the player and/or extracting more money from the bidding club. It's why it's generally much more straight forward when dealing with other teams, Spanish finances are just all over the place. Even Italians aren't so ominous about buyout clauses. Although you do get the odd circumstances included into the buy out clauses as well such as Kagawa's move to United, his clause let him leave Dortmund on the cheap if the team that was bidding were playing in the CL. But yeah, basically no team is obligated to sell because a foreign team meets the buyout clause, it's just in most cases the club simply can't afford not to accept the buy out clause amount.

Everyone really. I'll just say Piazon cause he could easily have faded when he came on with the game well and truly won but stepped up and helped the team get more goals.

^ Wouldn't have had the clean sheet though.

Equally good at left back too.

Valencia has been dreadful this season. Think his little receiving the ball, waiting a few seconds, shimming and smashing in a low cross routine has been found out. Welbeck would honestly be a much better choice, although I think Kagawa is coming back soon.

Felt the same way when I've been watching Marquinhos for Roma, only 18 years old and already one of the best CB's in Serie A.

Not even Perez is that stupid. Jose will be given the chance to win the CL, as that's really their main aim this season after Jose won them their first league title in a while.

Makes me laugh when I see Modric playing for Real. No idea why they spent that much on him when they already had Granero who was just as good.

You guys are either massively underrating Moutinho or massively overrating KDB. Moutinho isn't "marginally" better than KDB, he's better by quite some distance. Everything KDB can do Moutinho can do much better. I agree that it would be better to focus on KDB as he has the potential to be much better than Moutinho but right now there's no doubt who's the better player.

No width and players who can't cross (In Mata's case, shouldn't be crossing as he's much better use elsewhere), even Falcao would struggle. We don't have the players for it and really it's not worth even attempting just for the sake of Torres.

Suarez should get a standing ovation at Zenit.

Wouldn't go that far, lets not forget that they still have Kagawa and Vidic who will be back by then. I wouldn't be surprised to see United win, almost expecting it in fact.

Porto v Malaga should be a very entertaining match.

Oscar for me. I already knew all about Hazard and figured that out of all our new signings he would find it much easier to settle in than the others but the way Oscar has put in so many consistent performances and slotted in so easily in multiple positions really impressed me. Rarely has a bad game, could do with more assists but that doesn't matter as his link up play with the front 3 is fantastic. Hazard and Azpi would be next for me, I'm glad they are both settling in well especially Azpi as I was dying for us to sign him when everyone was still overrating Debuchy.

Not so sure about that myself, Robbie definitely had his favourites. Got to the stage were I was worried that we would lose both Romeu and Sturridge as he never played them, not just talking about starts either as there were long periods when they were unused subs. I don't think he's exempt from blame as he eventually had the guts to drop Torres, if he truly rated Danny then he would have stood his ground and played him more often.