americanscouser

you ever seen when Kobe Bryant met Lionel Messi? he's one of the 3 best basketball players in the world. everyone knows who he is, so it ain't like they are bowing to some no mark

it will all work out. but the key thing is that carroll hasn't been handed a place in the team, he has to earn it like everyone else. he'll either figure it out or he'll be replaced. we won't get 35 million for him, but we'd get something of value so it doesn't matter. he deserves a season in this team to prove himself. if at the end of the season he hasn't kicked on, then its worth a discussion

not to cause more worry, but if torres has a clause, my guess is pepe has a clause in his contract too. not good if true

if he is going to go anywhere, especially in the prem, i'm kind of happy its chelsea. they are on the downward slope.

i meant a direct parallel between baseball and football, but you are spot on about the mancs.

just a quick note. the red sox picking up gonzalez is in large part related to FSW's long spoken about desire/focus on youth development. gonzalez was acquired for 3 youth players and then signed to that massive contract. it is fairly common for top teams to sacrifice youth for established players but their scouting and youth development system goes a long ways towards financing these kinds of acquisitions. i don't think a direct parallel can be drawn but i can see us selling a lot of youngsters to fund transfer dealings in the future along with the ones that make it through.

He just finished writing his memoir.

i'm certainly not fawning either but to be fair the team has gotten better consistently over the past few years. they went in one direction, didn't succeed, they fired the coach and they've had crennel for a period of time and have been getting more successful as the team grew. the other part being left out is how, as you point out, you can get good quickly, but also how if you make a few wrong decisions you can be completely screwed for an extended period of time.

i'm not a lerner fan or anything, but you can't compare NFL football to proper football for the simple reasons of drafts, trades and a salary cap. they built the team from scratch through an expansion draft. imagine if liverpool were to start tomorrow as a club and they could only take the 18th best player from every team in the prem. how good would that team be? sports in the states in a salary cap environment is like sports nowhere else in the world. the salary cap structure for sport lends itself to parity in the league. money doesn't dictate the best team because each team has roughly the same amount.

its been reported here in the states that Villa have just signed American keeper Brad Guzan (the same fella they tried to sign in the january but who couldn't get a work permit). so that shuts the window that Carson could possibly go to villa.

because 10 million cash in hand right now is different from getting it over 3 years time. it still adds up to the same amount but if for example a club wanted more money up front for a player as opposed to it being in equal installments over a numbers years (to say pay off some debt or meet a creditors time limit?) then its a much different proposition to what you are suggesting. its certainly not the be all end all, but it can be an asset in certain situations.

don't think rafa is silly enough to spend all the money though. he'll leave a few quid lying around for the winter window just in case of injury etc. can't guarantee you can sell in january.

i think the value of the bid might be interesting. if they buy him for 16 million pounds, some would say that its a decent fee. but if the bid is for 12 million pounds, i'd be interested to know the structure of the payments. would rafa be willing to sell for less if it meant he got most of it up front with an eye towards putting that towards villa? i know nothing of course, but its an angle that bears looking at when it happens.

the day xabi goes will be a sad day for me as a fan of his. there are very few players i've seen in game today who can hit the types of longer passes that he does with the pace and accuracy he does it with. others have argued the merits of those qualities etc and i'm not here to argue them. i'm just speaking as an admirer of a very cultured footballer. and as someone who makes the most out of all the physical qualities (or lack thereof) that he has. in today's day an age of athlete "footballers", its refreshing to see someone who is slow, slightly unathletic etc able to play the game at such a high level because of the obvious quality of thought that he has but also the refined skill of being able to do pretty much whatever he wants with the ball at any given time. i just feel a tinge of sadness at seeing him go. all the above not withstanding, i go back to quotes by rafa, and most recently from torres, about how the premier league lacks tactics and is more about the physical attributes and lots of long balls. to me this seems like a transfer in 2 parts. barry for the league and xabi for the european games. i honestly think rafa would have kept both players. to me, if the villa rumours are true, i think rafa realized he had an opportunity to add a world class player to his team and the only way to do it was to sacrifice from the one area of strength in his squad to do it. in one sense rafa is being ruthless in that virtually no one is untouchable, but in the other i think if you had a quiet word with rafa and asked him if he wanted to sell, he'd probably say no. much like with momo, i'll now watch juve games on the tv with much more interest as i've always tended to follow our truly good ex players when they move on just to see how their games change or improve after they've left us. to date i think rafa has had a decent record of moving players out when he deems them surplus to requirements.

i think a formation with say masch, lucas and gerrard in the middle could easily be shaped more towards the chelsea version than the one we currently have been playing. we were surprisingly rigid in our formation with 2 holding players, though i think that was more to do with the fact that we pushed our one wing player very high up the pitch. if we played with stay at home fullbacks i could see the above formation being used, if we play with attacking ones, i could see us using 4-2-3-1 with kuyt tucking in and creating space out wide for an overlapping fullback. that fullback has been the thing missing from our team in our current system