S-Clarke

The same back 4 that's played in most games this year.

If we don't cause that Villa defense problems, then there is something wrong with us! They are tosh. Their attack is handy, and will cause us problems I'd guess, but we've got to work that back 4. Awful.

Tancredi Palmeri on Twitter: "Liverpool contacted Bologna for Ramirez. Still in stand-by the bid from Southampton" all you need to do is swap the names and clubs around, nothing is different.

They're losing, and look pretty pathetic at the back it has to be said - as usual.

All we really need to do here is bump up the Gaston Ramirez signing thread, and rename it to Astori. All the content from the agents and the media is exactly the same. I get a massive sense of deja vu every time I read this thread.

Count yourself shot. Seriously though, we do need to stay up - that's for sure. But I think we're clever enough not to put ourselves in the **** fi we do go down. To be honest, if we do get these players then NA will have to forget how to manage in the 2nd half of the season for us to go down. It would a joke if we went down with the players we could have. But I'm confident that we'll have a 2nd half of the season to remember, I'll stick by that.

Yep, pretty much. Said we wanted ''big signings'', and was also commenting that he wanted sexy which he was using to reason the story about NA being on his way out. Could still be true...but he's doing a good job so far. (Some will disagree, but that's another argument)

Nothing is really unrealstic with us these days. In a normal world, players like Fonte, Papa Waigo, Guly should be out of reach for a League 1 club - we had no right to sign any of those and it would have looked totally unrealistic -but it happened. Exactly the same with Ramirez, this guy was being linked with some of the best clubs in Europe and is such a coveted talent, but we did it. We have ambition and we have the clout to back that up. The vision for European football looked a bit far fetched, and it does obviously at the moment, but if we're targeting players like this - and getting them, we will end up in and around that shakeup at some point.

I think it's obviously aided because of NC's background, he obviously has built up a lot of Italian based contacts from previous times. But this is also a great time to be looking into Italy. It's not a great league anymore, you only have to look at some of the great names that have left there over the last 18months to realize that it isn't the force it once was. Matches are riddled with racism, match fixing, gambling. It's not an attractive league really, and it's why all the big players are moving away. Obviously money helps, as Italy doesn't have any at the moment - even some of the biggest clubs in Europe (Inter/ AC) are struggling financially big time, which is why players like Ibrahimovich and Thiago Silva left for the French league, which says alot - that wouldn't have happened a few years back. We're targeting ''top players'' at clubs at a similar level to us (I'm refering to Astori and Ramirez btw!), which is a clever tactic because at best those players will just be making a sideways step in order to make a bigger step in the future. In some ways some of these players will use us as a stepping stone, that has to be expected, but as a fan you pay to go and watch likes like Ramirez and Coutinho play for your club in your city. Enjoy it whilst we can.

Pretty much.

That's just amazing, Inter Milan fans, yep Inter Milan, are asking us to keep our mits off of one of their best young players. Who on earth saw this as a possibility a few years back? Our rise is incredible really when you think about it. A lot of thanks to ML, for sure.

Their owners want to make a statement though, they want to get the fans back on their side. It's fair to say that they've ****ed a fair few off after their dealings over the last month. Their chairman is pretty vocal at the best of times via twitter etc, and is a known admirer of Sharp as a player. According to one of their fans, he's actually publicly said in one of the hospitality lounges that they will do all they can to sign him now.

Don't you start...

I give up to be honest, you can't reason with a clear moron. For what it's worth I don't believe he's a troll, he's a genuine fan. But he's a moron.

After spending over £30m in the summer, whilst breaking our transfer record TWICE, that is one of the most stupid things you've ever said. There is being tight fisted (i.e a 90k budget for Fuller) and there is being sensible with what we have, using it wisely and not being taken to the cleaners by clubs and agents. For some reason you seem keen for us to overpay just to get it done quickly, which is a good method for ensuring we enter financial meltdown in the near future. And I'd bet your bottom dollar that if that did happen, you'd be the first to moan about the lack of financial management.

The fact of the matter is that if we were winning most weeks, you wouldn't hear from Alpine. That's been proven quite a lot. He seemed to go very quite during a decent spell recently. He'll use the reason that there's not much to talk about when we're winning, well there is, just not many negative things to talk about. Which is all he seems to want to talk about. I feel sorry for him really, very depressed.

They've earned my trust.

Do you know what will fix everything? Alpine as Charmian, Dalek as manager. There will never be any more defeats, we will sign players within minuites and we will establish ourselves as a top 4 club. It's very easy apparently.

You said exactly the same about the Ramirez deal, almost word for word.

This season we have had an uncanny knack of conceding goals at ****, **** times. I.E just before half time, just at the start of the 2nd half, in the last minuite of the game! Could be down to concentration, lack of fitness early on in the season. But it's improved recently, can't deny that. We're a pretty solid shape these days. Don't read too much into our defensive performance against Chelsea, they were just irresistible for a spell and there was nothing we could have ever done to prevent it. Sometimes you just have to hold your hands up and admit that the oppo are just on a different planet.

Not the sort of player I want us to sign, yet. I think he's going to be pretty good, but we'll just be having a deja vu moment if we signed him now.

tbf I've seen instances where players have been stretched off, and are then playing again the next weekend. I know it was a knee injury he sustained, but no idea on what. Could have been a strain, or a twist and nothing major at all.

tbf I've actually seen him live on Sky earlier last year, very, very, very good.

We have done a couple of those this year, but we've often cocked it up and it's ended up us being on the defensive as the team break out at us.

I don't think anyone is disagreeing with what you say at all, buty it just seems like you're assuming that our interest in this guy means that we're not working on signing CB's or other positions. As has been said many times, clubs work on multiple deals for multiple players over multiple weeks. All this assuming is just based on media leaks, that's it. The club haven't told us who they're after.