Lighthouse

Always makes me sad when I see people laughing about Gazza's antics. Everyone likes a few drinks and a laugh but nobody really seemed to care about his mental health back then. Shearer has a point; if only he'd gone to Utd and played under Fergie, maybe he'd have a bit more self discipline.

But then, how do we know any of us truly exist???

Can't see it. People will say we can pay him more wages because the transfer fee was so low but it's not that simple. If we pay Austin £100k, Fonte will want it took, so will VVD, Bertrand, Mané, Forster. Suddenly we'll have doubled our wage bill over one player.

I will openly confess to not being a 'proper' England fan. Given choice, I would prefer them to win any given game or tournament but that's about as far as it goes. If this was as good as England could hope to achieve then I would be happy enough but it isn't. England's record in major tournaments would be pretty good for a country like Ukraine or Paraguay but not for the supposed biggest, richest league in the world.

Makes them look ambitious in the eyes of other potential transfer targets. An interesting strategy which could help them punch above their weight in the transfer window, though they will end up paying inflated fees.

Apathy mainly. I'd support England a lot more if I thought I was watching the best England team possible but I'm not. Instead all we get is the same big names from the same big clubs, shoe-horned into positions and formations which don't suit them, by managers who are too scared to drop them. If there's one situation which sums up England for me it's Calum Chambers. Had a solid yet unspectacular season at Saints, nobody was talking about him playing for England. Then he signs for Arsenal, plays two games and bang! Straight in the squad. It's the same every tournament. We have Wilshere and Henderson in the squad instead of Drinkwater. Sterling instead of Townsend, Rashford instead of Defoe. To top it all, we've got Wayne sodding Rooney. Will he be on the bench this summer? Like feck he will, he'll be putting in average uninspired performances in as a holding midfielder or left winger, whilst the media fawn over him being our top scorer of all time (against Belarus and Montenegro). I just can't get in any way excited about a team with such blatantly obvious flaws, which I know will under-perform.

As above, I'd have taken DD at the expense of Henderson. No surprise our lads are going but I don't expect either to feature, barring injury.

Chambers wanted to go to Arsenal, how is that any different or better? All those achievements were attained simply by the fact that he is at Arsenal, rather than displaying outstanding talent. Medals and trophies don't make you a good player. Eric Djemba Djemba and Francis Jeffers have won the Premier League, whilst Callum McManaman has an FA Cup medal. 10 Champions League games... Kind of sounds alright until you realise that actual means coming on in the 88th minute against teams like Zagreb and Olympiakos.

I don't see why that means we should expect more.

We got about £12m but your point stand. I reckon we'll get about £15m for Victor.

Why would we want that? Who is in the 50%? Even with those two added, I can only think of Berty to make it three in total.

Chambers when he was at Southampton or Chambers who spent last season coming off the bench in the 87th minute?

No thanks. If anything he's gone backwards since he left here, whilst we've moved on. The problem with buggering off to sit on the bench at a big club.

A few posters, myself included, thought Januzaj could be on the radar a while back. Surely Mourinho, the Grim Reaper of youth academies, would make a move away more likely for players like him. Could be one of those 'not big enough for a big club' players we sometimes go for, like Bertrand, Romeu or Cork.

Beautiful plumage, 'ey squire!

Depends how you're looking at it. Are we talking about how much of a positive impact they had when they joined, or how good they went on to be? For example I would say Ramirez was quite a good signing at the time. He provided some real quality in midfield, even if it was very inconsistent. He chipped in with a few goals and assists that first year and probably gave the team a psychological lift, knowing we had some international talent in the squad. Conversely, Morgan was a very poor signing at the time, making very little impact and costing money we didn't have at the time. However he went on to be an excellent player, albeit it a good 4 or 5 years after he joined. For me, if we're talking about positive impact; Lambert, Pahars, Fonte, Niemi and Killer Negative or little impact; Osvaldo, Bernard, Davenport, McCann, Euell For negative impact, I'm not including players we took a punt on at relatively low cost. To that extent I omitted players like Arias, Juanmi or Sarmiento and included players we genuinely expected a first team impact from.

Decent game for RB but it'd be biased to say he was anything astonishing. Bit of a goof from Fraser before the first goal but did alright. Doubt Hart will be out the team any time soon, so it doesn't matter too much. He's England's new Tim Flowers basically.

Reminded me of that Pahars goal against Everton.

8 seconds in and Tyldesley is trying to plug Britain's Got Talent. Now I'm annoyed already.

I'm sure some of the big clubs would jet off on tours of SE Asia or the USA but that would be their choice and would give others a competitive advantage by having a proper break. Most likely clubs like Saints would do some fair weather training, somewhere like Dubai or the Canaries. For the sake of playing Devil's advocate; supposing you were in a position of power at one of the big clubs, hovering around 3rd-5th and chasing CL football. If your competitors were having a break, would you really want to be flying your squad halfway to play in exhibition matches?

I would make the League Cup U21 only (even the final) but the winner gets a place in next season's EL. Would provide some decent motivation for clubs to develop their youth systems. FA Cup - Scrap 'Cup weekends' as they're just boring for everyone who's not still involved. Just rearrange League games for midweek. - CL place for the winner - Scrap replays - Scrap extra time, straight to pens. Worked well in the JPT. - 1 semi at Old Trafford, the other at the Emirates. Use common sense when deciding which is which, i.e. if 2 Northern teams get drawn against each other, they play at OT.

Koeman; I just like him a lot more and I don't honestly think JM could do a better job than Ron, with the resources we have. Plus JM has a history of everything turning sour after 2 years.

Skacel and Saganowski I always thought were decent players, poorly managed. I never really perceived a lack of effort from either of them, especially Saga who ran his arse off in a lot of game. His permanent contract coincided with Burley losing the plot. I remember needing a goal once and Burley sent Saga on with 90 seconds of injury time remaining. Osvaldo and Gaston go without saying. I'll add Adam Hammill to the list, was expecting him to be a big player, on loan from Liverpool.

Seems relatively sensible to me, one last big pay cheque before he retires. You could argue he has already earned more money than he will ever need but if someone offers him even more, good on him. Take it. He hasn't exactly gone to the Winston Bogarde school of picking up easy money at the expense of actual game time. He has won the League in 12 of the last 13 years (he came second at Milan in 2011/12)

Davis would have done at Rangers.