stevegrant

Irene, here's a little tip for you, to save you bombarding me and the moderators with constant automated messages about posts you're reporting that disagree with you: There is a fundamental difference between what is insulting, and what is simply somebody either disagreeing or questioning what you are saying. This is a forum, a place for discussion. People will have different opinions. Many people like to base their opinions on facts - facts are things that are proven to be true and can be backed up by evidence. Forums tend to be quite insular places, where anybody new immediately arouses suspicion, especially when they come on here saying "I guarantee Boruc won't be here when the transfer window closes" without showing any evidence or even expanding on why that might be the case or where he might realistically go. So rather than constantly hitting that "report post" button for someone calling you out on something you've failed to back up, how about you provide us with some actual evidence?

Erm...

The unseeded teams are "pre-drawn" into positions within the draw, which rather detracts from it a little bit, IMO. They should do it like UEFA did for the Champions League and Europa League draws last week: one pot of seeds, one pot of non-seeds, one empty pot; pick one from each pot and place into the empty one, then pick which is at home and away. Much fairer and more interesting, IMO. Anyway, draw numbers: SEEDED: 1. AFC Bournemouth 2. Aston Villa 3. Bolton Wanderers 4. Brighton & Hove Albion 5. Burnley 6. Crystal Palace 7. Derby County 8. Fulham 9. Leeds United 10. Leicester City 11. Manchester United 12. Middlesbrough 13. Newcastle United 14. Norwich City 15. Nottingham Forest 16. Queens Park Rangers 17. Reading 18. Southampton 19. Stoke City 20. Sunderland 21. Swansea City 22. Watford 23. West Bromwich Albion 24. West Ham United 25. Cardiff City (if they beat Coventry tonight) or Sheffield Wednesday (if Cardiff lose to Coventry) UNSEEDED: Birmingham City Bradford City Brentford Burton Albion Charlton Athletic Crawley Town Crewe Alexandra Doncaster Rovers Gillingham Huddersfield Town Leyton Orient Millwall Milton Keynes Dons Northampton Town Oxford United Port Vale Portsmouth Preston North End Rotherham United S****horpe United Shrewsbury Town Swindon Town Walsall Sheffield United or Mansfield Town (playing tonight) Sheffield Wednesday or Coventry City (Coventry play Cardiff tonight, if Cardiff win, Sheffield Wednesday are unseeded).

Wickham is also widely known for being a disruptive influence. While nobody came out of the England U21 squad with much credit last summer in the tournament in Israel, Wickham was singled out as being an especially despicable scrote.

Ryan Bertrand has never played for West Brom

What rumours, the one you just made up?

Who knows until they've actually played some proper games for us? Nobody thought there would be any resale value in Lambert and yet we sold him for at least 4 times what we paid for him when we were in the third division. Resale value is given far too much consideration in the game these days, IMO, as it's pretty much the only thing that football clubs take a long-term view on, and yet it's utterly impossible to predict. We have a need for certain types of forward player, as identified by the manager, and we've gone out and signed players who fit those profiles in order for the team to succeed. Job done, in that regard. For every player that loses value as they get older, there will be many more who gain value over the same period.

We've got value out of the signings we've made so far, spending a few million more than Football Manager players' valuation of ONE player is hardly the end of the ****ing world.

Not if you're going to be paying him £40k a week to lay on the treatment table. That would be £2m per year for the duration of his contract.

You make entirely contradictory points. First you bemoan that we've not made "great" signings, and then say that if we signed Vlaar (who hasn't stood out in a woeful Villa team in the last 2 years), and either Belhanda or Sinclair (who is basically a former footballer) we'd have done a good job.

Yarmolenko isn't a striker.

It's Euros, as far as I can tell, so around £4.8m.

It's clear that Koeman has identified the "type" of forward he wants to sign, someone with a burst of pace, busy, a pain in the arse for defenders. I assume there aren't any strikers of that type available or deemed suitable from the Eredivisie, the market that Koeman knows best, so he's looked domestically instead. The scouting system and analysts have presumably given him a list of players who have the attributes he is looking for, which is why we've been linked with Javier Hernandez for ages, and with it becoming clear that he has no interest in joining us, we've moved onto another option. The price, when taken in isolation, is high, but when you think that Leicester paid £7m+ for Leonardo Ulloa, who looked a bit "meh" even in the Championship, Fulham paid £11m for an unfit Ross McCormack and Forest £5m for Assombolonga who hasn't scored a goal above League One in his career, in order to get PL experience it's going to cost north of £10m. Long only joined Hull in January for £7.5m, so from their perspective he's tied to a long contract and they don't really need to sell, which pushes the price up. I've absolutely no problem with us paying a bit over the odds to get the right player for the system Koeman wants to play. On the subject of Fraizer Campbell, he's very injury-prone. In his entire career (signed a pro contract at Man United in 2007), he has only started 68 Premier League games, scoring 13 goals.

Fair to say we can move on from this one, I reckon

Proof if ever it were needed that a fool and his money are easily parted.

Yeah, OS article says it's an initial allocation but we can get more if the demand is there.

Yeah, I thought it was a bit odd that only a week ago they were something like £70k short, and yet they (presumably, haven't seen any confirmation) reached their target. These sort of things tend to work on a law of diminishing returns, so there's a big rush of donations to begin with, and it gradually slows down after the early rush and publicity.

I don't think that's ever been in any doubt, tbf I'm pleased they're looking into some sort of solution like this, although I personally would have gone down the route Fulham started using last season where you can add credit to your season ticket card and there's a separate "VIP" queue for those using those cards rather than cash, but still giving people the option of using cash. I wouldn't be in favour of the Bundesliga option where you have to buy a separate card for food/drink purchases, which is a massive pain in the arse for people who are only there for one game.

I disagree. I think the vast majority have said we need another keeper, if only to put pressure on Boruc, and it's always best - where possible - to sign someone who is better than you already have, to introduce competition for places and improve the overall level of the squad. For me, Forster is probably as good as Boruc (some attributes will be better, others less so, but all can be worked on), and absolutely better than both Gazzaniga and Davis. If you only buy someone to be a backup, you get into the situation we were in in 2005 where we had a bloated squad, no competition for places and stagnation. All of the players we've signed so far (with the possible exception of Taider, not seen enough of him to have any idea, really) are better than what we currently have in those positions.

By the sound of it, that'll be happening pretty soon as well.

Mills is a tricky one. He played in the 1982 World Cup, but didn't sign for us until November and wasn't picked for any of the three internationals (2 of which were qualifiers) in between.

Shilton certainly qualifies, that was 1982. Anyone more recent?

A question I put out on Twitter as well, who was the last current England international we signed? By "current" I mean currently being picked in the squad.