tajjuk

Well for a start, Spurs, Liverpool and Napoli are not huge clubs. Huge clubs are Barcelona, Real Madrid Man Utd etc. If Napoli were a huge club they wouldn't be selling Cavani and they wouldn't be interested in Damiao. If Liverpool were a huge club Suarez wouldn't want to leave. Spurs, Liverpool and Napoli are the tier below, bigger than us no doubt but "a rich history of European football and challenging for trophies"?, Liverpool yes, but not recently, Spurs?, their last trophy was a League Cup in 2008, they haven't challenged for a major trophy for about 30 years. If some people are guilty of overstating our importance, you are guilty of the exact opposite, completely overstating other clubs positions. Modern footballers simply don't care about history anymore, they care about Money, playing in high profile leagues, playing in the champions league and more money. A player isn't going to join Spurs over us because they won the double in 1961, they are going to join Spurs because they will pay them more money and have a squad that has a better chance of qualifying for the Champions League. I bet if a Spurs target was also courted buy money rich newly promoted Monaco the player would probably consider going there. The original question to this thread was "Are we wasting our time going for unrealistic targets", I can't see anything that makes Damiao an unrealistic target. The only clubs linked with him before we starting making bids were Spurs who hadn't really made any offers for ages and Rubin Kazan, Napoli then cam late to the party but considering the amount of strikers linked to them we still have a decent chance. Good post Wes. Quite frankly if we have bid then the transfer is realistic options because we must have the money, the wages and there must be some interest in the players otherwise Cortese wouldn't bother.

Really, I doubt half the people here had even heard of him. If he's so good why hasn't he been snapped up by Barcelona or Real or Arsenal or Man Utd or Bayern or PSG etc? Until Napoli started bidding for every person that has ever scored a goal the only linked teams were Spurs and some Russian club. Considering Spurs have been linked for about 3 years but haven't bought him I'm not sure how anyone can claim we are wasting our time bidding for him. Rubin Kazan, Spurs and Napoli, it's not exactly the G14 is it. We've bid for Liverpool targets, were interested in Valencia players and we've bid for Inter players. Why should Napoli scare us off?

^Villa is 31 and came back last year from 8 months out due to a broken leg. Both of those factors will lower his price. That wasn't his only bad game, his finishing is far from clinical and he missed some absolute sitters on other days. He's still quite a raw player but far from 'gash' either. He has all the potential there to be a top class striker, you don't get many players his size with pace and the ability to run at people. He wouldn't move to us though, he's handed in a transfer request to go to Chelsea or Arsenal, if Chelsea get him though we should be all over Lukaku.

lol, so no one knows then. The most obvious player hasn't been linked with Napoli. Surely with Chelsea being linked with Rooney, Suarez, Cavani, Benteke etc. Torres isn't in Mourinho's plans, so another link up with Benitez?

So Napoli have bid for Damiao, Jackson, Gomez, Jovetic, Lewandowski, Osvaldo anyone I missed? If he prefers to go to Napoli thats expected but he doesn't seem to be their first, even second choice so you have to wonder whether they are actually interested.

Sinclair? Has been linked before would be available probably on loan with option to buy I record.

Is he essentially saying there that if they sell Cavani then the fans would expect a bigger name replacement than Damiao?

Realistically what we have to offer a player currently is an opportunity to the play in the Premier League and decent money, more than you will get from mid table/upper mid table clubs in the rest of Europe's top leagues. We also have more available cash than a lot of teams, so selling clubs are more willing to agree to our deals. Against Napoli we don't really hold many advantages bar the Premier League being a bigger pull than Serie A these days. They are a bigger club, have more fans, have Champions League football to offer and will have a pot of cash to spend from the Cavani sale. We might be able to financially bully say an Inter or a Valencia out of the running for a player but not Napoli.

Whilst I get your point, lets not over exaggerate here. 'Giants of European football' win more than two domestic titles and a UEFA Cup in their History. 4th best supported Italian club, but the main key they have is Champions League football. If they match our bid then he will go there no doubt but they seem to be focussing their efforts elsewhere so he isn't their priority target which may play into our favour.

surely Napoli have to sell Cavani first? Which hasn't happened.

Pretty sure Prem wise, average goals per game is higher than it was say 10 years ago. So statistically it's easier to score goals in the Premiership. Maybe the players that we think are good aren't as good as we think they are? To be fair Suarez isn't really that good of a finisher, Bale is a midfielder so only Van Persie out of the top goalscorers is an out and out striker as well. One striker formations seem to be in at the moment so maybe that is the cause, Strikers now have to be more complete all round players and play a different role for the team whereas strikers like Shearer, Fowler etc, where goalscoring focal points of their team.

According to that forum, Rob Moore owns the company that Modia works for. So they are both his agents.

I'm presuming that google translate has changed R$ to £? cos I don't think we are paying £52 million for him!

Several of them seem pretty convinced he wants to go t them. I'm pretty convinced he doesn't want to go to Cardiff or Saints but doesn't have many options. What I don't get is Cardiff are willing to stump up for the extra agents fees of around £1 million but not the extra to £500k to Celtic, whereas with us it's the other way round, we are willing to pay £12 million but not an extra £5-600k to the agent. In both cases it seems odd that both clubs are willing to pay £10-12 million for a player but aren't budging on around £600k. there must be more to it surely as otherwise Cardiff would just match our bid?

Deluded would be assuming that Brazilian = Amazing and World Class without looking into it further.

No, but nor do I subscribe to the belief that Brazil are suddenly going to win the World Cup and Spain's reign of domination is over. It has never really been that important of a tournament. I also think it's important to point out Damiao didn't play in it, he's achieved most of his caps for Brazil in a period where Brazil have been below their previous high levels. Where have I suggested Damiao isn't better than Lambert? Not sure where you have got that from. If the confederations cup is such a marker should we not be buying Fred considering he scored 5 goals in it and was joint top scorer? As I said above Damiao has only played once for Brazil in 2013, and he didn't play in the Confederations Cup. Therefore the Confederations Cup has no relevance when discussing Damiao. Over the period he has gained his caps Brazil have been a below their high standards and they are not blessed with World Class strikers if Jo is getting a game.

That was still ranked way higher than Brazil was before the Confederations cup and managed to get a draw in Brazil recently. The standard of the Brazilian national team is not as it once was, and a lot of players have been capped in recent years. Damiao is a decent player and would be an amazing signing but everyone going "OMG he must be amazing cos he plays for Brazil" isn't really correct, Jo even got game time in the confederations cup and he was a total flop. Fred is their current first choice striker and he's hardly world class. Hulk is not a striker, he plays out wide. He's also overrated and Zenit spent a stupid amount of money on him. Do you think Jo, he who was an £18 million flop for Man City is better than Lambert cos he plays for Brazil? He's was their backup Striker in the Confederations cup. Their main striker Fred was released on a free by Lyon a few years ago. I didn't say he wasn't good enough for us, at no point have I said that. I actually said he would be an amazing signing so please learn to read. What I said is people shouldn't get carried away because he plays for Brazil, he isn't Neymar and he isn't Ronaldo. If he was there is no way we would be buying him.

Statistically Morgan was one of the best performing defensive midfielders in all of Europe's top 5 leagues. It's definitely our strongest position so in theory the most difficult are to challenge for a first team place. Saying that I would imagine he would start ahead of Cork.

I do but the other one counts as well to my point, difficult to compare club and international football. Damiao playing with Oscar, Neymar, Hulk, Paulinho etc. Is different to Damiao potentially playing with Lallana, Puncheon and Lambert.

I don't remember us getting an invite to the Copa America? Average for the high standards of Brazil, they were ranked 22nd in the World behind Ghana, Denmark, Bosnia and Greece before the Copa America. Think they have gone up to 9th now.

The badge is on in a stupid place on that shirt, looks weird. Even Claudio Yacob puffing his chest out hasn't compensated. All Adidas kits, especially the ones for the Premier League teams look pretty rubbish IMO and they have been very lazy with the designs using simple templates. I'm really non-plussed about the whole thing it doesn't really change much. I'll probably buy the away kit as I like it. If people want to really protest against it follow Mario Gotze's lead -

Well technically that is Fred, Damiao has only played once for Brazil in 2013. Neymar is a much much better player, but yeh I get your point. He's played 16 times for Brazil and has done well in the Copa Libertadores both of which count as the highest levels in my book. For us he would be an outstanding signing and a real transfer coup. I just don't want people to get carried away if he signs. He isn't Neymar or Ronaldo. In reputation terms (not ability) I'd say he's Brazil's Danny Wellbeck, i.e. a young striker establishing himself in the Brazil team. Also Brazil were pretty average before the Copa America.

There is no real answer to this question. All you can say is he hasn't played in the Premier League. So unless you only want us to buy premier league players your question is fairly pointless. He has 16 caps for Brazil, 6 for Brazil U23s, has played 72 in Brazil's top flight and 19 times in the Copa Libertadores which is South America's Champions League equivalent. He is about to turn 24, and is 6' 2". Ask this guy more about him https://twitter.com/Cynegeticus or Tim Vickery - https://twitter.com/Tim_Vickery As not many of us watch Brazilian Football so can only go on reputation, rumours, videos and the odd international game we have watched.

No, for a start he doesn't post pictures of stadiums in every other post. He also isn't responsible for just one club, he's Brazilian and lives there. He watches a lot of Brazilian football, it's obviously just an opinion but thought I'd share considering he'll have seen a lot more of him than anyone here. Tweet him if you want and ask him directly- https://twitter.com/Cynegeticus From what I have seen of him I probably agree, in the Olympics he was excellent. He's got pace, is good in the air, can run at people and has the ability to do something out of nothing. He wouldn't be playing up front for Brazil if he didn't have something about him. don't expect a World Class striker though. if we can get him used to the league and get some consistency out of him he'll be a fantastic buy.

BTW, the Head Brazilian Researcher for FM who watches a shed load of Brazilian football said Damiao is inconsistent and can go missing in games, other games he can be unplayable. He thinks he's probably not good enough for a champions league/title challenging team because of this which is probably why Spurs have stalled on this deal for so long.