Foxtrot

Great start! Kuyt and Gerrard combining well, forcing the first save by the Unirea keeper.

Erm - where do we start...

Just turned the Sunderland Stoke game on just notice a certain K. Jones playing. I guess we won't be signing him then. Which makes this a decent transfer window, I guess.

Hope he's better defensively than Insua. And on better form than Insua currently is. (If the Greek mk II indeed is signing.)

BBC: 1801: Two deals we keep being told have been wrapped up are Vasilis Torosidis from Olympiakos to Liverpool and Asmir Begovic from Portsmouth to Stoke City.

What, no signings?

Rodellaga gives gingers a good name?

When was the last time we got a penalty for hand ball? Must be years running now!

Hmm. It smells September. Did we sign anyone today?

Have been away since page 172, and can't go through them all. Can anybody give me a resume about the talk since thursday. Cheers!

Haven't seen it mentioned here, but talk is intensifying on other sites that Rafa would be considering Beckham. GBH says so on TIA - don't know how reliable he is, but seems to be taken seriously over there.

Me too. It works: I'm tentatively happy.

Well Silva's on hols now himself. And slightly crocked. So waiting for the medical till he's back? And announcement of the deal first after a medical?

I would assume it to be when training starts for the the Confed Cup contingency. When are they due back from their summer hols, BTW? If it is a done deal, wouldn't expect it to be announced before then.

Spot on!

Robben injures himself often by falling down easy.

Thanks yet again GW for the summary. Today's twist to the Mascherano saga: in the Mirror, Maddock writes that Mascher is looking for wage parity with the top earners. If it's true that his contract is low in comparison with the other "spine" players, then he should be offered better terms double quick. I don't know if Maddock is his money's worth thou, but he doesn't come across as being among the worst.

They might want him now. And Reina just might want to play there. I know it's a dodgy source, but it's getting me jittery, this talk. More so than Masch being linked with a move.

The Times' list on Benitez signings got me thinking: 2009 IN (1) Victor Palsson (Aarhus GF, £384,000) OUT (3) Robbie Keane (Tottenham Hotspur, £16m); Sami Hyypia (Bayer Leverkusen, free), J Hobbs (Leicester City, £150,000). Spent £0.384m; recouped £16m; net spend (-£15.766m) The money generated from the Keane sale could (and should) be added to the 20M + the amount of money generated through sales. In that case Benitez could have 20M + 16M for Keane to start with, plus an additional 20M for the probable sales of Dossena, Babel and Arbeloa. So without even entertaining ideas of selling Xabi or Masch, we could actually have a kitty of some 55M. Suddenly the Villa/Silva pipe dreams become somewhat more plausible.

:applause:

Defensively dodgier, deffo. But he seems to play higher up field nowadays, linking up with the offensive players. Or is it just me not having noticed it before?

What did they do?

I think the only way we could afford Villa is that he says we are the only team he'd go to, pretty much like Torres did. And if he'd want to join us that much, it'd be because he really wants to play for Rafa and/or with Torres, and then he'd obviously be more than happy to settle for that role.

Luke S. Walker?