S-Clarke

they did have a good acadamy (and probably still do), bringing through the likes of Johnson, Onouha, Richards, Wiess etc... but i think they can kind of see their work being sidelined, with the first team just being assembled from europes best.

To me it looks like NC is trying to model us on barca. We'll never be as big or as famous, but we're following the same methods they have followed for years.

We're going to be in such a good position in a couple of years once this structure bears fruit. I know i'm probably not the only one that's been frustrated at clubs like Wolves getting good players like Kightly from nowhere....and we're left with the ryan smith's of the world. that will be totally different now, we'll be one of the first clubs in the queue for the best young talent.

the article states that we'll have to come to an agreement with the greek club too. Similar to what happened with the Punchon deal (as his mk don's loan was cut short)

http://www.soccer365.com/english_premiership/story_26510195119.php another link, this was from y/day. (it's good that they still class us in the premiership section of their site!)

tbf since the end of the season, this forum has been crying out for a classic speculation thread like this. makes things more interesting.

cheers. not sure what to make of this - obviously some contact has been made and pard's did say we appointed a few european scouts last summer, so we're obviously aware of players avaliability.

i'm sure it doesn't work like that. Agents will make a player aware that a club is poised to make a bid. clubs usually sound out an agent prior to making an official bid (ok, it may be classed as tapping up but it happens everywhere)

i may be being blind, but can you post a link to the Portuguese reports? i cannot find a thing other than the tribal football story.

The Adu link does seem too good to be true, but then so did the link to Lambert/Fonte..... NC's contacts do seem to stretch far into europe though...

We need 2 RB's, both of equal quality. Francis was one of the best players in their team on the last day of the season IMO.

shame, we missed out on a goodun there. i guess we're aiming higher than him

It's a great story and still shows that success can be achieved without having to spend great sums of money. Looking back on it now, it really does make a bit of a mockery of burley's efforts.

according to Meridan, Pardew is being considered/linked to the new managers job. The best they will be able to do is promote from within.

good replacement for papa/antonio if true, if i remember he's full of pace?

We’ve gone past the days of putting square pegs in round holes. The signing of Dickson is simply adding to the squad and creating competition, I don't see a problem with this. At the moment I don't believe Mills is good enough defensively for a title winning team (which is what we're aspiring to be). I think a loan at a lower L1 or a top L2 team would do wonders for him. When he came into the team at the expense of Harding around Christmas time, we struggled. I'm not saying it was mainly down to him, but it kind of showed up the real lack of squad depth we had. This signing will go towards fixing that, it's not replacing Harding at all and will not mean other positions are ignored.

Akinfenwa was quite possibly the fattest professional footballer i have ever seen.

i just re-watched it, and it's better than that. He picked the ball up in their half, ran past Saga, Hammond, Thomson and skinned james before putting a peach of a ball into the box. ok - thomson/james and saga weren't the hardest players to beat - but it's still a cracking run by the lad.

the main problem is that they are managed by a total pillock, in karl robinson. and he's useless in management terms too.

Sounds like he's L1's version of Bale.

if harding is injured all we have is Mills. no disrespect to Mills, but he's not the perfect player. This is all about squad depth and squad options, and it's good that we're in a position to be able to add to the squad with good players, rather than filling it with average cover players.

He never got a chance at Wolves, he was signed at a cut price as a squad player, nothing more - which is a shame, because i feel he could have offered something. If he was promoted to the prem with us and was settled in the team, i think he'd have much more impact.

He looks outstanding at the mo. not sure if that's good for us or not!

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wow, that's one hell of a bump