S-Clarke

He's come on leaps and bounds under Ralph. Ralph is a manager who appreciates his technical ability and his tactical awareness, he's a very clever player in a football brain sense. He is very much what you'd call a teachers pet kind of player, but he's perfect at putting Ralphs game into action ( when the press, how to be positionally etc). He's not that strong, he's not that quick, but he's learnt to read the game very well and he's agile enough on the ball to be able to receive and pass quite quickly, whilst retaining the tempo. Towards the end of last season he was dictating games for us and that's something I've not seen him do before. It looks like he's grown with the captaincy and this will hopefully allow him to flourish even more. There have been comments from people in the past that he's 'not established' himself as a set starter, but without question - for me - he's one of the first names on the team sheet nowdays. He's certainly our most technically gifted midfielder in my opinion, he can play in the pivot now or he can play in a 3 to the right hand side quite adept. Very good player for a (Good) manager to have in the squad. How Mark Hughes treated him says everything about his management and awareness of football. Good news all round this one.

Guly was a top bloke, but if we were being truly honest he wasn't a PL player I don't think. We needed to evolve the side, which is what we did. Never will forget his contribution though, absolutely loved the years with Guly and co. For some reason he did divide opinion in the area I used to sit, never understood why.

I think most of us shared his frustrations at the time, especially during the first half of the season! He was sent out on loan pretty sharpish once we got Jay in though. We did have Jay, Mayuka (whoops) and Lambo as our options though - he would have found it tough. We didn't really play with two up that often in the PL.

Very highly rated apparently. I saw an article ages ago (we were linked a few months back too) and he was looked at as being the 'new' Cavani (maybe that's because he's Uruguayann). Got a low release clause as Almeria weren't promoted I don't think. Big clubs like Napoli, Dortmund and Roma have sniffed/are sniffing as well as Wolfsburg, and they're no mugs when it comes to identifying talent.

It's been off all evening for me, pretty dreadful all be told. Can anything be done, or is this just a 'forum' problem? and the lack of development of it makes a fix unlikely? How about trying another forum? XenForo, MyBB, Flarum, or go totally old school with phpBB..!

There's a lot of shite in the media like this. Honestly, they've described him as a positive/forwarding thinking midfielder, someone they haven't had since Eriksen and now someone who gets fans off their seats. Spurs fans are going to be completely bewildered when they see him. Maybe the media are just having a huge troll-fest with Spurs fans? Would be funny.

Do you mean Chris Woods from Burnley? Agree, not our sort of signing in playing style.

Don't leave that there! So, truth around the Bedernek rumours then?

I think he's been quite a challenge for Ralph, in a tactical sense and a physical sense. He's got a very unique body type, lots of upper body strength and lots of power in movement. Because of that he needs to look after himself a lot more than other players, something I don't believe he has been too good at (hence the injuries and strains etc). It's probably Ralph's call. If he feels he's now getting somewhere with him, he may want to keep him. If he's still as frustrating as ever to coach, he may feel like it's worth letting him go and using that money to replace him with the Arsenal lad.

LD sports are a dodgy company and have been from day.dot. Some sort of vehicle, linked with Lander Sports, which is linked with Gao. Money movement etc. This article isn't saying they're dodgy, no, but I think everyone can see they are dodgy.

They probably paid us year 1, but I doubt there was ever any intention or substantial finance to fund year 2 and 3. They were a fake company, so I can't see where it would have come from. We were duped by our own owner.

My hope and dream is that this is now the beginning of the end of any Chinese influence at our football club. This entire sponsorship and Gao's ownership of us needs to be investigated by the authorities. He owns us for reasons for his benefit, not for us. It needs to be looked into, as it stinks and has done from the start.

It was all fake anyway, so no real loss.

I didn't ever know where they were getting their money from anyway. They probably knew their entire sham was unsustainable, there was probably some very corrupt reason behind this deal. My hunch is involving some sort of money flowing between countries, hidden inside a sponsorship deal. They did what they needed in year 1, faked it all, and now they can 'break clause'. Gao probably knew every single thing about it, It was probably in his benefit. Lots of guesses and assumptions there for sure, but it always stunk of a corrupt relationship for reasons not benefiting our club.

Apart from the fact he's got 131 goals in 394 games as a winger! He missed a sitter, but he is a pretty lethal finisher from the wide areas in pretty much 9/10 games. They lost this due to Pep's total tactical overthinking in the first half. I don't know why some coaches worry so much about the oppo, just play to your own strengths and believe in your own philosophy. Yes, plan for their strengths, but don't abandon your entire identity to try and nullify them. They abandoned everything in the first half. So weird.

This was an absolute disaster from the word go. It wasn't a valid company from the off, they tried to create content on their website which was a direct copy of our OS. I have no idea what their purpose as a company was, what they do, what they offer. There were lots of lies and made up bullshit in their pages as well. The must suss and horrific sponsorship deal we've ever had. We'll probably lose out financially due to this as well, but good riddens to dodgy as hell crap. Hopefully Gao follows, as i'm sure he was involved heavily in getting this deal over the line in the first place.

Looked at the options a bit more myself earlier, including the instalment plan. Wouldn't be able to afford the two initial payments atm (they'd both come out in August now too, so double whammy in one month). I think that counts me out for this year unfortunately. Certainly not adding to a credit card in this current climate.

Anyway, yeah, we shouldn't buy Butland.

Given that they spent £30m on former Middlesbrough Championship player, Martin Braithwaite, I'm sure we have a chance.

And he's only gone and scored. Barca need to sort their shit out, that club is run like a circus.

Coutinho is playing against his parent club? Who the hell is on the Barca board negotiating that sort of deal...? That's bizarre. Didn't a similar thing happen at Monaco a few years ago with Morientes? Vaguely remember similar.

Stoke fans will be happy to see the back of him if their forums are anything to go by, happy to take 3m. There has been talk of him going to Leeds for 8m and some fans are ready to drive him there. He's certainly lost his way, looks very similar to Hart and Forster to me. That's why we'd be daft to go near given the situation we have with Forster.

What the hell was up with Pique there, has he been told not to defend?

Really isn't any tactical thinking there! Just give it to Messi and let him run seems to be the approach. They have some great players in De Jong, Griezmann etc and they just struggle because there's seemingly no tactical shape or manager philosophy for them to adapt.

Why do Barca have a habit of appointing these random coaches these days? You'd think a club of their fame and standing could attract any manager in the entire world. This isn't the first time they've had someone not really known who failed - Martino was another, a few years ago. They had Valverde too, not massively high profile and he failed too.