James

Very impressed with Soares, he looks absolute class.

Not sure how quickly we will move to identify new targets, by all accounts we assumed he was signing. Big test for the club now - must be well behind in our pre season planning with only 2-3 weeks before our first competitive game.

At the very least it sounds like we've been taken for a ride here either by Toby or Athletico. All pointed to us being able to complete the deal but looks like Spurs are going wrap this up. Hope we haven't banked on keeping him and now we are well behind in our pre season plans. We need reinforcements pronto as our defence for the opening games looks quite weak and inexperienced. Only one of our first choice back 5 will be available! Our departures this year are shaping up to be as significant as last year despite Reed saying we were well prepared etc. Lot of work to do now just to make the team as good as it was last year. Just hope we didn't try and be clever and get him on the cheap on a technicality and it blew up in our faces. Much too risky a game to play with such an important player.

Agreed, this is what will happen IMO.

They won't hand us the player, but it sounds as though they've been pretty difficult to deal with. My guess is the club is seeking to do a deal with Atletico at a price which is less than £11.5m but more than the originally agreed £7m in return for us not taking this to the courts etc. Our hand has been shown at a key time just as Spurs looked to have agreed a deal. As St. Chalet says, why give away millions you don't have to when you believe you have a deal in place at a cheaper price? My prediction is that we meet in the middle with them.

Exactly and in any event if the contract was in Spanish and translated into English then the contract would say which language (English or Spanish) prevailed in the event of any conflict. It's therefore unlikely that anything 'lost in translation' would have caused this.

Talk about old news...this was reported weeks ago! Just shows how journos will use anything for a new story.

Agreed. Absolute nonsense.

He has behaved honourably in getting his head down and having a great season for us when told to stay. However, its true that he finds it remarkably easy to talk about leaving whenever he goes to France and is interviewed which is mildly disappointing.

Yes, but even a fully firing JRod didn't set the world alight playing down the middle. My big worry is if Graz is injured for any length of time and we have to rely on a combo of Long, Mane, JRod or Juanmi playing as the central striker for a considerable period then we could struggle. We would have to change the way we play so hopefully Koeman has a contingency as none of our other options have shown they have the ability to replace Pelle through the middle on a long term basis. As for Gallagher, it's a nice thought, but a club with our level of ambition shouldn't be relying on a kid that has one Premier League goal to his name as back up for our main striker. That said, we have to trust that the club know what they are doing (although we all saw we were short of a back up keeper last summer and that came back to bite us when FF got injured).

Surely they could just buy Luis back if they sold Toby anyway? I'm not too sure this will pan out: 1) its in the Daily Star and 2) as others have said, his main motivation seems to be first team football which he is in no way guaranteed at Chelsea.

Yet Mile Jedinak is 7th and nobody is after him...

Perhaps that's why Plymouth are in League Two...someone ought to let them know they should change their historic shirt colour.

This is the point which is being missed on this thread. Excellent season or not you expect maximum effort from the players in each game as a fan (especially when you travel a long way and part with your hard earned to go and watch). Those on here are attacking those who dare to criticize just because we have had a good season. I don't think anyone is saying we haven't but the approach and attitude on display in the Leicester game was very poor and is deserving of criticism no matter what position we were in. The fact is, most of the players earn more in a week than most in the crowd do in a year. When you're giving up time and money to support you expect effort and commitment, the majority of the team were lacking that on Saturday.

He does describe the game I saw. The lack of interest from the players was completely evident and its worth pointing out. Excellent season yes, but it doesn't make it ok to turn in a performance like that in front of paying fans. I don't mind losing but the manner of the performance was unacceptable no matter who you are. I watched Palace v Man U in the pub after the game and saw a team with even less to play for than us giving it a right good go.

Worst performance that I have seen. Thanks for dismissing an opinion as "a load of rubbish" though. Which 2015 performance in your opinion was worse? We didn't create a meaningful chance against a team that have been very poor this year (I acknowledge that they've been in very good form recently). Did you actually go to the game? If so, I'd be very interested to know which 2015 performance was worse than that. Only one I can think of is WBA away but at least we created a couple of chances in that game that Pelle fluffed.

Will have to play an awful lot better and actually but in a passionate performance to beat a pretty vibrant villa side. With Gazza in goal we will realistically concede and given our paucity of attacking threat I can't see anything other than a defeat here. Only thing which might change it is if villa rest players for the cup.

What is a disgrace is the fact that 3000 fans paid £35 a head to watch an awful awful performance. It was a throw back to the gutless performances of the dark wilderness years imo, really shocking to see. The worst performance I've seen in a long long time. I wouldn't mind but it didn't even look as though the players were trying/cared really. We conceded two sloppy goals from missed challenges and general incompetence. Vic and Fonte promised us a reaction but what we got was even worse than Sunderland. I do slightly worry that Ron isn't able to motivate the team as effectively as he might. Something has gone badly wrong, hope they figure out what it is over the summer as this is relegation form at the moment and could cause a hangover to next season especially if we have the distraction of qualifying for Europe by default.

Davis is and has been utter garbage for weeks. No knee jerk just facts. Cost us v Spurs and will now cost us v Leicester.

****ing pathetic from Davis.

Gazza starting equals inevitable defeat. He is just awful. How have we allowed ourselves to be in this position?!

Of course not, but as we found out last summer player power is king. If Toby genuinely wants to stay with us and we put our money where our mouths are then we might be able to do a deal. It'll be a long summer but I'm confident we can keep him.

Looks like dodgy info.

This would be a massive boost. Spurs is our most important game left, if he has a chance of playing then he should IMO.