S-Clarke

The articles I saw a few months ago were talking of £20-25m, which would be horrible. Their stance may have changed now.

I guess the negativity around Winks is a little more subdued because we signed Lavia, so he won't be our only midfield signing. Plus, whilst he's pretty average, it's easy to say that he's better than Diallo and certainly has more experience at this level than Diallo. My only concern would be the fee. The priority, in my eyes, needs to be a striker - that's where our budget needs to go. If we spend £20m on Winks and miss out on a striker then we've done it wrong.

It's a half way house at the moment, parts are being privatised by stealth and parts aren't. Nothing is joined up in the middle. If we're going to privitaise it then just do it, that's my view. I'm not precious about 'my NHS' or bollocks like that, all I know is from being on both the inside and the outside is that it's currently not working. The 'public' ownership of the NHS is actually making it worse, as like Turkish said above it encourages entitlement. Not just from patients, but also those who work in it. I have worked with people who have left the NHS and went into the private sector, they lasted a matter of months before they came crawling back to the NHS and into another cushy job. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying all NHS jobs are cushy at all - there are some amazing people that work in the NHS, but there is a hidden cohort of absolute nobodies who are paid extortionate amounts for doing very little.

The NHS is a bit of a sore subject for me, as I'm very close to it and have been for almost 15/16 years. To cut a long story short, there is way, way, way too much middle management. Back in 2012 the Torries abolished 'PCT's to do away with middle management, but actually the extreme opposite happened. - PCT's were abolished. The staff who were part of PCT's moved into CCG's (clinical commissioning groups), CSU's (pointless organisations that provided support to CCG's), NHS England, NHS Property Services. In most cases in 2013, when this all kicked off, there were at least 6/7 CCG's per region. So from single PCT's with single boards of directors, you ended up with 10+ additional organisations per region each with their own levels of directorship and management. Absolute nonsense. - Guess what's happening now? CCG's are being abolished and are moving into what is being called an 'ICB' (integrated care board). In all purposes this is just a new name for a PCT, as they've brought all the CCG's and local authority services back under a single organisation per region. I don't know if this latest re organisation will work or not, but there's still a hell of a lot of nonsense in the NHS before you even get to the 'care' side of it. I know people clamor for money needing to be spent on the NHS, but a lot don't realise how much is wasted on middle management nonsense and re-organisations. Taking a tiny thing into isolation from a few years ago, 'NHS England' put pressure on all the CCG's to ensure 'Patient Wifi' was available at all GP Practices. This lead to lots of organisations such as Daisy, Virgin Media, BT etc smelling the $$$$ and offering massively overpriced solutions to the NHS which they paid for, and are now struggling to get out of the contracts as they're not fit for purpose - and no one uses them. Who'd have thought it, patients use their own mobile data when in GP practices...not patient wifi! So, there's a lot of money that goes into the NHS. Lots and lots and lots of waste, until the waste is sorted the and the nonsense 'looking after themselves' middle management is done away with then there shouldn't be anymore money pumped in, as it never gets to where it needs to as there are too many hoops for it to cross.

You always seem to get the completely wrong end of the stick.

Theo isn't fit? Who'd have thought it.

Leicester are looking to reunite that 9-0 defense aren't they? Bertrand - Vestergaard - Bednarek. Can we throw in Valery as part of the deal? Then they have the set.

Do we often announce kids leaving? Wouldn't be unusual for this to have already happened and the first we'd know about it would be Chelsea's or Newcastle's U18 team sheet next season.

Potentially another club out of the race for Broja?

I can only assume that in the striker position we're looking for someone more proven, so with those sorts of transfers you need to wait for all sorts to fall into place with regards the selling clubs replacements/or the clubs waiting for other teams to show an interest etc. All sorts of things need to happen. And in relation to Delap, if it's him we are also interested in, he's still away on holiday after the U19 Euro's I believe. Man City prob want a look at him.

He had one season hitting those sorts of levels in the Championship, but he benefited from being able to bully defenders a bit at that level and make space for himself.

We were interested in him as well, at the time we were also interested in Jay. I think Leiecter at the time (under Sven) were a bit more flashy with their cash and got him in the end, although to say he flopped would be an understatement. We bide our time and got Jay the following summer and reaped the rewards on that one.

Or Brett Ormerod! Those types of players are priceless. They often get pelters for their lack of goals, but they do bring a lot to the team 'IF' they are partnered with the right player. If they're not then the pressure builds on them and people point the finger at them, but at the end of the day that's unfair as it was never their game.

Ah yes, I know the one you mean. Liam Fontaine, really highly rated at the time. Never progressed though, ended up pissing around in the SPL for the last 8 years. Not sure if he's retired now.

I get this is a strange thing to say, but I don't think people should base Adam's influence on just goals. He'll never score loads of goals, it's just the way it is. He's not a clinical finisher and I don't see that ever changing. What he does bring to the attack is power, strength and legs. He stretches defenses and can create space for other players to run into. He works his absolute arse off which is priceless when we base most of our game on counter pressing. This is why it's absolutely critical to find a player who can work with Adams and be the 'goal scorer' in that partnership, someone who can take advantage of the space he creates through his unselfish running. Adams can still be an influential member of the team, but relying on him for goal scoring will lead us to the Championship rather swiftly.

Something like that, I remember him being quite upset by the situation (and Cov too). Bit of a Cortese special that one.

Amar Jemal. Cue meltdowns on that one Eliott Ward - another set of meltdowns. John Halls - weird one, I think he'd even had his medical.

Oh yeah, good shout on Perisic, keep forgetting they signed him. So yeah....can't see anything in the Spurs stuff being a goer. The £10-15m 'offers' from Everton were laughable, we're not bundled into a corner as he still has 3 years on his contract. Feels like agents playing the media here.

I think their priority is Djed Spence for £20m. Unless they seem him as a LB...as they've put Sergio Regulion up for sale weirdly.

I'd imagine it's something like that. Look at Ronaldo as another example, missed the first day of pre-season due to 'personal family reasons', but we all know why it was. Low and behold he still isn't there. Sometimes I wish clubs would just be honest with their fans and stop trying to fluff up stories.

Oh yeah, he was back in the form last year for Lyon. Just didn't quite happen for him the year before, it was a weird one (i think that put off the big clubs, as he was touted to all of those before that move)

Last year of his contract, some potential cheapness to be had here. A few years ago this guy was on the cusp of being an elite striker, but it never quite happened for whatever reason. Had a miserable time in spain. On his day he is deadly though.

As other's have said, the only reason is because Villa already have multiple number 10's. Why would they need him? They're paying bucket loads for their existing ones as well, so they're not going to become bench players overnight.

I don't think he's over rated at all, all we have to compare him against is Bednarek and Stephens - so by default he's class. Technically he's a very good player, he smells danger and always seems to be in the right place at the right time. He tailed off last season and I'm sure both himself and the club want to understand why that is, but when he was on it he was unbeatable against the best teams in this league. The guy is our best CB and we need to be building a defence around his sorts, not Bednarek.

I don't think Chelsea really know what they're doing at the moment, I said the other day that the club just feels a little chaotic. Their new owner desperate to make a point, but he's never done football before and it's kinda showing.