S-Clarke

I look at Porto's model in recent seasons, and whilst it's not using their academy like we do, their transfer profit is extraordinary. They bring in players like Fernando and Mangala for small fee's, then sell them on for a combined 50m. Same with James Rodriguez, Jackson Martinez. Then they just dip into the South American market and get the next talent for a couple of seasons. Falcao started out there too. Benefit they have is they don't have the work permit wranglings to worry about, so they have first dibs on those talented South American's.

Gylfi Sigorrdson maybe, but then he's done the ''big club move'' thing, so they may be safe with him for a bit longer. If that Montero fella keeps improving, he could be worth a decent amount. Shelvey will probably, at some point, command a £15m-£20m fee, because he's english.

At the end of the day, as with Morgan this year, Lallana before, if they have seasons of that level which get the big clubs sniffing, then it means that as a club we've had a really good season - so we're in a much stronger position to replace with as close as the same level as possible. I've accepted our position, it's not really ever going to change. As long as the top clubs are interested in our players, then we're doing something right.

Just read up on it, minor operation apparently. Doesn't sound serious as the Mexico coach is just saying about ''not risking him straining it''.

I'd be quite happy with Hector Moreno myself.

There's plenty more defenders out there other than Ogbonna and Toby. To be honest, I feel we've dodged a bullet with Ogbonna anyway, he was a bit of a comedy-act at Juve this season.

He did say he'd been in the gym during his rehab and has bulked up. I'm sure Les said as much as well.

If he comes back and hits 15-20 goals next season, and gets back into the England fold, I would expect him to go. Won't be cheap mind you, but there would be big clubs sniffing.

[video=youtube;be-4MefL-F8]

West Ham are still seemingly throwing money in all directions, without any real strategy They've now been ''turned down'' by Carlos Vella after agreeing to pay his £22m fee.

I would say that Gaston has had 1 too many opportunities here, but he would probably offer more/the same as Elia and Djuricic did - so not against keeping him, if he's happy being part of a squad. I still don't believe English football is suited to his talents in anyway, but if we don't get a worthwhile bid this summer, then we might as well keep him.

It's phased over the period of the contract, isn't it? So this £4.5b deal (or whatever it is) will be phased to all clubs over the length of the contract, until it's renegotiated again. Just imagine if you gave West Ham all that money in one hit, Jack Sullivan would have an orgasm.

Depends really on the club, but in most cases you do see structured deals whereby it staggered over a few seasons, and added with goal scoring/international and appearance clauses before it hits a certain fee. I imagine only the likes of City, Utd, Madrid etc will buy outright straight up. So that's why when you see we purchased Osvaldo for £14m (or whatever it was). We probably only paid about £4m down payment when we bought him.

Yes, I thought that. It makes a nice change to read his responses when he's seen a game live.

I say we just keep doing it our way, have a bit of fun a long the way. Every now and then we'll surprise everyone, and maybe one time we'll get lucky and break in. We're not going to get there through spending zillions though, if we do it will be via our own patient way.

Which is staggered, not just in one hit. I think what was alluded to above is that the transfers we've made in recent years, such as Lovren, Wanyama, Osvaldo, Gaston - they were all structured based, so we still had to pay off a lot of those deals as well. I'm sure I read that we had to send a fair bit of money Lyons way after Lovren went, not just from remaining fee's, but also a sell on%.

Weird.

If only it was as simple as that. You've got wages to take into account, signing on fee's, and I imagine we've used some of it towards the facilities as well. So, we're probably level - or close to it. We haven't got this bottomless pit because of last summer, we reinvested pretty much all of that.

Yeah, came out last night. Let's get this done and dusted so we can move on, before all our top targets are elsewhere.

I think we'll see bigger bids going in once Morgan has gone. I think we need the cash from that sale to be able to afford ''top level'' buys, which is fair enough.

I never thought I'd ever read that as a reply to an Alpine post.

lol wtf

Need to get this done and dusted as soon as possible tbh.

I think we were just doing things by the book, we did the same with Djuricic as well. The come 30th June...bang.

Toby wasn't our player anyway, nothing to report.