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Troubadour

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  1. Troubadour
    This is a really good idea, if it comes together. Players like Pacheco, Bruna and even some of the younger English lads - Darby, Amoo or Ecclestone - need competitive football at a decent standard. Belgium's probably the same, for the most part, as the lower half of the Championship and the top part of league one - the sort of teams that'd beat us in the FA Cup, say - with a couple of pretty good sides (Standard, Anderlecht etc). It's more technical, though, and it gives them chance to get out of the reserves and sharpen their games. Arsenal and United do it (though I think United have stopped now) and even if it doesn't bring bucketloads of players into our first team, it will give us more chance of selling on young players for decent fees, thus paying for the academy and giving us more money to spend on senior players.
  2. Troubadour
    Yeah, fucking Wools.
  3. Troubadour
    And I like asking annoying questions. Just have to hope it thaws out by next week, and that the police and local authorities are happy with the transport links. I would have sued the council if I'd slipped and fell, to be fair.
  4. Troubadour
    Is it definitely off tonight lads?
  5. Troubadour
    No more idea than you, but my good friend Google Translate tells me that As think it's 1.5m euros for an initial loan.
  6. Troubadour
    You'd get a good couple of years out of him, definitely, but - if we're really honest - he probably isn't much of an upgrade on Riera. Quicker, but just as inconsistent. Tamudo's 31 or 32. Wikipedia has the answer. He's not great, and he wouldn't leave Spain, but if he did, he'd do us as back-up. Canales is a good player, though. Centre mid or centre back. That one would not surprise me at all, though Real are in for him.
  7. Troubadour
    With a get out for all concerned, if you will.
  8. Troubadour
    Cracking player, Petrov. Quite old now, though, and he'd want massive wages if he's on a free. Funnily enough, there's an article in As today saying there are 87 players in La Liga whose contracts are up in the summer. Sergio Canales and Raul Tamudo for two, both of whom we could do worse than. There's a fair few here, too - Petrov, Adam Johnson, that sort of thing. Assuming Rafa or whoever takes over if he goes gets a decent crack at wages, the vast nuclear abortion that is our financial outlook may not stop us adding a bit more quality in depth this summer.
  9. Troubadour
    Good player, but still don't remember us ever being defensively solid under any manager until Hyypia and Henchoz, who, when they arrived, hardly filled me with confidence, and I suspect I wasn't alone. Shows what I know. Don't know how to double quote, but £1m seems about right for a loan fee for six months. Contract up in the summer, though, so if it goes well it'd be a fair guess that we'll be seeing him for longer.
  10. Troubadour
    Heggem was the single greatest wing-back football has ever seen. He was just a useless full-back and a useless winger. Kvarme did really well in Spain, didn't he? He did arrive at a time when Maldini and Baresi could have turned out for us and been shit within a month. Don't know why it was, but we didn't have a decent centre back in the 90s between Hansen and Hyypia.
  11. Troubadour
    Do you reckon he does that at the point of climax? "Goooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooool," deep breath, "Goooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooool." I would, if it wasn't for the smoking.
  12. Troubadour
    He's also our only out-and-out, natural winger, so when he plays, regardless of how well he plays, he creates space for others by hugging the touchline, which prevents us being so narrow.
  13. Troubadour
    As doesn't say he will take a pay cut, it says Liverpool will sign Rodriguez IF he takes a pay cut. Hence the lack of quotes in the Mail.
  14. Troubadour
    Yeah, the one in As did. Big Guillem, on the other hand, said 2.5m a year. It's not fair to dismiss an entire article as being wrong just because one fact is wide of the mark, but UEM's right - it's sometimes worth taking Balague with a pinch of salt because there can be an alternative agenda behind what he's writing.
  15. Troubadour
    Maxi's on a lot more than 2.5m euros a year.
  16. Troubadour
    Dossena's not good enough, sadly, but his attitude seems to be spot on. He played against Fiorentina because it was on TV in Italy and therefore boosted his profile (he played well that night, too, to be fair) and he played against Portsmouth because Riera's injured, Babel's Babel and Benayoun has been way below par for a month. You may as well play Babel from the bench instead of someone like Pacheco, on the grounds that he does, occasionally, produce something spectacular. They'll both go in January, though, because they need to play to get to the World Cup. Degen and Voronin may take more shifting.
  17. Troubadour
    I'd take 0-0 now, but we're too bad defensively and they're too good offensively for it to happen. They're not a great side, but there's not many more effective teams in the league. They'll miss Ashley Young, but I'd have thought less than we miss Mascherano.
  18. Troubadour
    And we are how many points off bottom? It's a weird season, and the really frustrating thing is that if we'd done what we did last season this year, we'd have walked the league. It looks like 80 will be enough to get the title this year. We aren't in the title race, obviously, but there is merit to the argument that it's more like the Championship this season than usual, in that a few wins in a row (say three or four) and suddenly your entire outlook changes. Arsenal were down in the scrap for third and fourth three weeks ago, they won a couple and now they're in the thick of the title race. The problem is that we may have let too much ground slip if the teams around us start winning regularly, as City look like they will until February, because the fixtures have been kind to them. We have the easiest run-in of the four going for fourth, so we just need to keep pace until then. But just as it's not unrealistic that we'll finish 10th, it's also not unrealistic that we'll finish within about 10 points of whoever wins it. It's just frustrating that this is the easiest Premier League to win for years, and we've fucked it up.
  19. Troubadour
    It says Espanyol are paying Newells 400,000 euros to take him on loan for the rest of this season, but then he will join Liverpool next season (ie 2010/11). Liverpool have apparently agreed to send our young Cameroonian international Has Kaidho on loan to Espanyol in exchange for next season. Interestingly, I have no idea who he is. Do we have any young Cameroonian internationals in our squad?
  20. Troubadour
    We've decided that last season genuinely didn't happen, then? It was all some sort of feverish dream, was it? Like we all fell into a collective coma after the Chelsea semi in 2008 and then woke up and found ourselves 2-0 down at home to Villa? I knew we wouldn't win 4-1 at Old Trafford! Or beat Real 4-0, or Villa 5-0. What a delusional idiot I am, thinking we finished second last year. In that case, player of the last four months has been Reina, followed by Mascherano and, in terms of effort, if not quality, Lucas. If we're not being all hysterical and we're including the period of January-July in the term "2009", probably has to be Yossi, then Torres, then Reina. And just to clarify: I'm not saying all should be forgiven because we finished second last year, or even that that's what we should be aiming for. Just that to come on here nowadays you'd think we'd been in eighth since 2004, rather than since Saturday. Perspective appears to be very old-fashioned.
  21. Troubadour
    This is brilliant. Well done. Fabio Capello was at Great Ormond Street Hospital on Sky the other day, pointing at the sick kids and that, and he asked one of them who their favourite player was, and the kid went: "Well, in England terms, I'd have to say James Milner." Capello just went: "Eheheheyyyyyyyy, Meelner?" That sums it up for me.
  22. Troubadour
    If you're £500 in debt, and the bailiffs come round, and want their money back, you can either give them the telly, or you can give them £500 in cash. Makes no bones. On a much more complicated level, I think it's the same principle with us. If Liverpool is worth £500m all in, the bank don't care whether that's in cash or in assets, which in this case are the players, the stadium and Rafa's fancy new coat with upturned lapels. I'm not turning this into a thread on net spend or sale of the club, because SoS message is far more immediate and far more important, but the idea that we can sell players to alleviate debt is wrong. It just means your debt decreases to the same extent as the value of the overall asset, whereas the point of it all is to have less debt and the same, or more, value. The problem is that we won't be given money to buy more players, or increase the wage bill, and therefore won't be able to compete. I'm not saying the Americans are great or anything, it's just that they provide us with more than enough sticks to beat them with without scaring ourselves into new ones, and to an extent it weakens the argument when they're accused of things that aren't right.
  23. Troubadour
    It also wilfully ignores the fact that the entire base amount (£17m) is deducted from the club's budget for this year. The club has, effectively, come to terms with the fact that that amount has been paid. Suggesting he should be referred to as a £5m signing is misguided and misleading, no matter how you play about with the figures. All transfers are structured so that payments are spread out, over two years for domestic ones, and as many as you like for ones involving foreign teams.
  24. Troubadour
    Looks like you're sorted if Al plays - sorry for the late pull-out, but wouldn't be able to guarantee I could make it until quite late in the day. Condolences to Ste, too.
  25. Troubadour
    We're only level with them in the betting here. I'm guessing bwin in Spain and Italy or whatever have different odds that are more, er, representative of reality outside the stupid bubble the England football team exists in here. Still, looking at the draw, there's no way they won't finish top of that group, then it's Serbia, Ghana or Australia (a bit of a toss up, that) in the last 16. While England have failed to beat every single decent side they've played under Capello, they're too good not to get through any of those, then probably play France or Mexico in the quarters. Again, can't see them losing to either of them, so it'll be a last-gasp defeat by Brazil in the semis. The only two possible hiccups in that are if the Germans don't win their group, which is possible, or if the French sack their manager and get someone competent in charge. Highlight of the draw, though, was the panel of experimental lobotomy patients the BBC put up to comment on it, a world where France count as a left-field pick and no actual analysis of any of the teams in the tournament is possible beyond saying that Spain have some good players, Brazil look strong and Portugal are better than Switzerland, because nobody employed on the television to talk about football knows anything about football outside of the Premier League, and they're all far too fucking lazy to attempt to do any research. I'm going to watch this entire tournament on mute.
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