"My client can kick a ball into a skip from quite far away" - English football off-season and transfer speculation thread 2009

I'm sure there's a more exciting place to start than with the news that Steve Bruce is about to take the Sunderland job, but you can only work with what's put in front of you, so here we go. Talk amongst yourselves.

Strong rumours that Tony Adams is about to take over at Barcelona.

http://cache.daylife.com/imageserve/042LfuYgJ92Q3/610x.jpg

thread needed a big image to last all summer long.

Meanwhile, fingers crossed for https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2f0RZSWKaII

(That might be a bad video but Serbian league looks a bit shit btw.)

Props to RTC for the thread title by the way.

jesus, fanmade football highlight reels are the most embarrassing

C'mon, the backing track and credits are good.

BREAKING NEWS - BENITEZ JOINS BIRMINGHAM

and stands about the same chance of winning the league too

cannot get over magilton to qpr

Steve Bruce confirmed as Sunnerlunn gaffer

The Magilton thing... I still have much love for Jim from his time at Saints, but his major achievement at Ipswich was keeping things steady, which, when you've had the amount of investment they had last season, doesn't really suggest he's going to push QPR forward to the extent that their board would want. It's not to say that Jim hasn't got a future in management or anything like that, but this really seems like quite a bad match.

Several Ipswich fans I know reckon Magilton was the worst manager in the league last season, for the amount of money spent. Hysterical perhaps, but I doubt he'd be anything of an improvement at QPR.

so many better matches for keane have come up since ipswich job

still want him for sheffield united

feel like he and chris morgan would get on

Transfers - June 2009
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/8076956.stm

so far

3 June

Christian Benitez [Santos Laguna - Birmingham City] Undisclosed
Jamie Clarke [Rotherham - Lincoln] Free

2 June

Gareth Barry [Aston Villa - Manchester City] £12m
Nathan Dyer [Southampton - Swansea] £400,000
Lee Fowler [Forest Green - Kettering] Free
*Paul Heckingbottom [Bradford - Mansfield] Free
David Lucas [Leeds - Swindon] Free
Carl Tremarco [Wrexham - Macclesfield]

1 June

*Mark Allott [Oldham - Tranmere]
Lee Steele [Northwich Victoria - Oxford City] Free

Panathinaikos Want Real Madrid Winger Royston Drenthe – Report
http://bit.ly/CjgGH

how much would Real Madrid want for Drenthe? will any Premier League clubs come in for him?

2 years ago Drenthe was the outstanding player of the euro under 21 tournament

NO-ONE OUTMANOEUVRES OXFORD CITY

Liverpool captain Steven Gerrard has pleaded with the club to bring Newcastle striker Michael Owen back to Anfield. (Daily Express)

lol

lol @ fowler going back to pool that one time

Drenthe? He should go for about £7m. That said, he's in a long list of potentially great players you'd want yr team to buy in the Real Madrid fire sale: Original Diarra, van Nistelrooy, Saviola, Metzelder, Guti, van der Vaart, maybe worth taking a gamble on de la Red as well...

i really feel for Saviola. Great player languishing on benches. At Barcelona they would hardly play him and then whenever he got a game or came off the bench he played well or scored a goal. Now getting even less playing time at Madrid seemingly.

Spurs have usually signed 17 players by now, what's going on?

re: Drenthe? He should go for about £7m.

I will order one Royston Drenthe for Pompey then

fantasy transfer targets, ha some of these valuations are on the bonkers low side, in most cases double them

Newcastle United's £31m Championship-Winning Lineup | Bleacher Report
http://bit.ly/2mQ8D

The players suggested are: Kyle Naughton Sheffield United £1.75m RB, Daniel Fox Coventry £1.5m LB, Leandro Grimi SP Lisbon £1.5m LB, Mark Beevers Wednesday £1m CB, David Wheater Boro £4m CB, Andrew Surman Soton £1.5m MF, Miles Addiston Derby £1.5m MF, Andrew Driver Hearts £1.25m LW, Fabian Delph Leeds £5m MF, Jordi Gomez Espanyol £2m MF, Steven Hunt Reading £2.5m LW, Sean Scammell £1m Palalce CF, Kevin Doyle Reading £3m CF, Jermaine Beckford Leeds £2m CF, Simon Cox Swindon £2m CF ...

And to think I thought relegation would be the reality check Newcastle fans needed...

Haha yeah Boro are really likely to let David Wheater go for £4m.

how are Newcastle's finances?

apparently Shearer wants 20 million to rebuild the squad in the championship AFTER the big time charlies are off loaded

iirc Ashley paid off most of their debt but then gave them an interest free loan of like 50m+ (that should get sorted in any takeover I guess). Biggest problem is that every player currently at the club is a giant waste still on Premiership wages.

Jermaine Beckford would only cost £2m??

i think the Shearer strategy is to off-load up to 10 big time charlies, bring in about 8 players that can compete in the top 2 of the championship - a massive turnaround of players.

Mind you in the summer of 2002 redknapp did something similar at Pompey, virtually built a new team that gelled and achieved promotion as champions.

But that ought to be much harder at Newcastle where the wages are so big and the players so poor. Weren't they bleating mid-season about Owen being out-of-contract now? Stroke of luck there.

Chelsea making heroically insane bid to hijack Kaka deal. Go Roman you crazy guy who looks like the inflatable pilot from Airplane.

Eboue don't break my heart

Kaka's too saintlike for this. I want him at Queen's Park or St Pauli instead

http://www.smh.com.au/ffximage/2007/12/18/kaka_narrowweb__300x420,0.jpg

"But seriously, my career will not be complete until I have gubbed Dumbarton home and away"

*Everything* about Eboue is unclear.

Meanwhile, Owly is providing the Шутки...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvsHvUNJoJ

why the lolz at owen back to Liverpool? for the tiny amount they'd have to pay for him I think he could be a good signing. they need another striker and what better place for him to rediscover some form?

definitely worth a punt imo

I wouldn't want to bother with Owen even on a Pay-to-Play at this point in time, he's either not bothered or born to break hearts. Might make sense at a club the size of Liverpool where you wouldn't care too much even if he couldn't make the first team.

How is he not bothered? He's had one bad run of form for Newcastle after years of scoring regularly whenever he's fit. And they're woeful also, with a good team behind him who knows how he could do? Plus who says he can't be in way better shape at a bigger side too? He'd be a good person to have on the bench in games that are looking like 0-0s, for any of the top four.

I feel like his decision to go to Newcastle in the first place was lazy and purely money-motivated. As I say, he might make sense at a top 4 club, but I wouldn't want him in the squad at a lower team. Whether regular injuries are always wholly down to bad luck or whether some players just stop being that into staying fit is debatable I think.

How much say did he have about going to Newcastle though? The way I remember it, Real were considering selling him back to Liverpool cut-price, before Newcastle blew that out the water by meeting the buy-out clause in full

i think Owen wanted out of Real really. they'd won fuck all in his time there but his record was pretty good considering.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2009/may/22/michael-owen-harry-pearson

And it is certainly true that in recent years he has never been quite able to keep a note of polite peevishness out of his voice. So that most of the time he sounds like a junior executive complaining to the receptionist at his conference hotel that the provision of UHT milk cartons with the in-room tea and coffee making facilities is wholly inadequate.

^^ troof bruv

Christian Benitez [Santos Laguna - Birmingham City] Undisclosed

Birmingham got promoted, right? This could be a good pick up for them, he has played very well with Santos.

I found it on ustream but the commentary's in el foreign.

Haha, and of course Villa scores

COVENTRY City have agreed an undisclosed fee with Portsmouth for defender Martin Cranie
http://www.ccfc.co.uk/page/NewsDetail/0,,10269~1752076,00.html

It's like a new signing:

Arsenal centre forward Nicklas Bendtner has changed his squad number for the new season.

The Dane caught up with Arsenal.com to explain why he decided on the switch and give a personal offer to fans who had bought his shirt through Club outlets this summer.

“The new season’s almost here, and along with the rest of the players I’m really excited and believe it can be a really special one for everyone associated with the Club." said Bendtner.

"Before it starts I wanted to change my squad number from 26 which I’ve obviously had for a number of seasons now. I chose to move to 52 because it’s a special number to me personally, and I hope that it brings me good luck for the new season.

"I appreciate that a good number of fans have bought their kits for 2009/10 already with names and numbers printed up so I’d like to personally cover the cost of replacing anyone’s shirt that has my previous number. It means a lot to see supporters wearing your name and number, and I want to ensure people aren’t inconvenienced by the change."

dobule the number double the goal tally this season, i am calling it

Maybe it stands for how many millions of pounds Citeh will pay for him next summer.

Why is 52 so special I wonder? Is it like 1952, the year Denmark declared independence from Norway or something like that?

The year Denmark won two Olympic gold medals in canoeing?

It is the age Nicklas plans on living until.

http://arsenal.theoffside.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/05/bendtner.jpg

52 - the number of goals he wants to score in his professional career.

52 - the number of weeks rosicky will be out injured in the year 2009

52 - Nicklas' memories of the Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy aren't as good as he thought they were.

52 - Combined age of the Arsenal first team.

# August 29 1952 – John Cage's 4' 33" premieres in Woodstock, New York.

Maybe 'bentner52' is his Facebook password and he keeps forgetting it.

Also: Arsenal's Denilson to sue the BBC.

Ho ho, they changed the photo.

we need a fitting image to close this thread upon

http://images.icnetwork.co.uk/upl/nechronical/apr2009/6/0/alan-shearer-and-michael-owen-20062602.jpg

More like "Northern Cock" amirite?

"My client can crash his car into a lamp post with quite a lot of alcohol in his bloodstream" more like.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/beds/bucks/herts/8200015.stm

http://www.goal.com/en-india/news/137/england/2009/08/13/1438786/i-can-manage-newcastle-united-david-ginola

Steven "cheating bastard" Taylor to Everton?

Damien "deflection" Duff to Wolves or Fulham?

This is from Holy Moly but still...

I started a fake football website this week where I've written fictional news articles ala The Onion. Anyway I wrote a clearly fake article about Nicolas Anelka's upcoming autobiography 'It's not me. It's everyone else' which has gone down a storm. So much so that 5,000 people read it on my website today.

Anyway a lot of people have read it and reproduced it around the web. It spread particularly on African and Scandanavian websites. Anyway tonight someone sent me a link to the Charity Shield today where a Finnish commentator, believing my article was real, tells people on live TV that Anelka left Arsenal because he claims in his autobiography (which I flipping wrote) that Vieira struck him round the face with his penis after Arsenal played Fulham.

My Finnish friend Vix translated:-

"The commentator says how in an autobiography that Anelka wrote he told of a time when him and Vieira didn't get on. There was some goal that Anelka missed and Vieira took the piss. After the game Viera hit Anelka with his bits down below! Apparently this is all exclusive from his tell-all autobiography..."

People are idiots.

Hahaha!

Finland, eh?

Reminds me, we're going to have a FAPWAF when Tuomas is in London, right?

FAPWAF?

Fancy A Penis Wave At Face

That or Fancy A Pint With A Finn

same diff.

Guys I think he meant it to stand for "fancy a pint with a finn".

xp doh!!!

Sturridge has gone to Chelsea

doh!!!

Nice image, Onimo! xps ffs

Anybody acually remember whether Tuomas has any interest in football, at all?
;)

Football too bourgeois for him

Until McCarthy gets replaced by Paul Ince sometime mid-October

now that someone has said this, i really can't see how it can't happen.

― darragh✧✧✧@nebbm✧✧✧.c✧✧ (darraghmac), 01 July 2009 11:01 (3 months ago) Bookmark

yet another failed prediction ;_;

does this still work? transfer talk on the other thread seems to be frowned upon.

got tickets for Wolves at Hull, it'll be so sweet if we've signed Hunt the week before

3m for a trying little bugger like him that can still put in a decent cross- not bad, that,

last time I checked the Express and Star we might've upped the bid a little, but he'd be a great buy for us I think.

Course if City sell him it'll be proof that they're fucked and they know they are.

to lose money on him is ridiculous from their point of view though, he's been pretty successful i thought?

Their best player since he's been there, perhaps excepting Jimmy B's all too brief cameo. I think Hunt staying or going will be an indicator of just how bad their wage bill/finances are.

well it look slike he's going alright, but the fee is disputed- hull claiming 7m, wolves saying 'yeah, if it makes you feel better then fine we'll say that'

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-1383830/David-Bentley-escapes-punishment-Birmingham-Wolves-show.html

@TomHock1: Hold on, Cambridge United's half-time entertainment is fans kicking a ball into a skip. The excitement just went up a level #swfc

@TomHock1: BREAKING NEWS: No one got the ball into the skip #swfc

where is pinefox? is he in some sort of academic summer school?

― djmartian, Wednesday, July 29, 2009 12:51 PM (7 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

semesters thinking