S-Clarke

Nope...going by this thread I thought they had, but I'm struggling to see anything other than ''Reading are linked''. Nothing concrete in this at all.

To be fair there is a total difference here. That design was thought up by people who only just had enough to pay the designers, it was never going to happen unless they got additional investment. I think it's fair to say that we're as best placed as we have ever been to see plans like this through, the upgrade to the training ground kind of implies that - and ok, this is a huge scale development, but I'd say there is genuine intent to make it happen unlike the Skates.

We all knew there were plans to improve the stadium, this confirms it. It also confirms that were are backed with some serious $$$.

That's a big statement from them, they have the $$$ then.

To be fair, we've been active than most teams already. Don't think anyone outside of the top 4 have closed a 'big' transfer as we did.

Yep, you're right. Will be interesting to see what they do this summer in terms of additions as wheelan has already said there will be money to spend.

I said that last year after they sold Nzogbia - but they did it again! They are guarenteed to be awful for the first few months, but bloody good in the final quarter of the season

Yep, that's the sort of signing as i'd class as exciting in Sky Sports terms. He's just not done it at Juventus for whatever reason and the club/his agent have been offering him around, I doubt many of the ''bigger'' clubs are too keen on taking a gamble so it leaves the middle half/bottom load of teams in the PL' and other european leagues. I imagine we'd have to pay a decent wedge in terms of a loan fee and a % of his wages, so I'd be inclined to say that would knock out quite a few of the bottom half premiership clubs. I might be talking rubbish and he's not the player we're interested in, but to be honest when Sky say an exciting deal I doubt it's someone from the NPC.

That's the first name that sprung into my head. For some reason I think his 'exciting' criteria equals a very talented forigen signing, who hasn't got his chance at a 'big club'.

To be fair, I'd fade out the customer number on that pic.

That DVD seems a nice touch.

Works for Sky, as their football reporter I think. Pretty solid source I'd have to say. Wonder who it is that he'd class as Exciting? Let the name guessing begin.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18495965#

''one or 2 new signings by the start of pre-season'' was what he said. There will be a couple more after that, I'm sure.

I don't have too much knowledge in this, but I just have the feeling that it's not as simple as that. He's got a basic wage applied to his contract which needs to be met wherever he is, surely? So we either pay 50% and the other club pay 50%, or we pay 0% and the other club pay 100%. I don't think you can just forfeit your contracted wage.

Footballer with fit missus shocker. She's a stunner though.

Clealry is us stopping the move in some way. I imagine it's financial and we don't want to help towards the wage, or we want some ridiculous loan fee. We acted the same with Puncheon for some reason, plenty of takers but we put a silly price on his head.

A bit more attractive than the £10+ figures that I was reading. It's still a hell of alot of money though, I think there are better wide players out in Europe who we could snare for that price (or less).

They're warming up for the predictable Adkins out threads in October and September, because I can promise you certain people will find it hard to adjust after winning every week, they won't realise that it's because we're up against world class players. The journey we've been on is amazing, but I HOPE people have some perspective at the start of next season and understand exactly where we've come from.

Link?

To be honest, it's an horrific start if we were looking to get points on the board early - but the way people are now saying we're struggle is odd, seeing as we were always going to have to play these teams at some point. To be honest, I'd rather we get those away games at City, Man Ure and Arsenal out of the way in the first month. Just imagine if our fixture list was turned upside down and our-run in is what our start is. I would be much more nervous about that.

Probably similar to what we paid for Rodriguez to be honest, there was a large sum of money set aside to get a ''big name'' striker - it's been set aside for the last 12 months it seems.

Can you turn those wages down though? Isn't it some sort of automatic clause that gets activated once the target is achieved? It's similar I guess to a player playing 10 games..and then gets an automatic renewall. It was probably all written into his contract when he signed in L1 and at that point, we probably though he'd be a first choice for us in time - and i imagine he fancied his chance too, but he's been a huge flop - let's be honest. I'm glad he didn't cost too much.

Babel clearly has talent if used in the right way, and played regularly - whcih he never really was at Liverpool, was always a bit-part player and could never get any consistency. I always thought that he'd do well at a smaller/middle premier league club where he would be a ''big fish''. Interesting if it happens.