Tommok

Alternatively we might sacrifice our chances of winning the Reserves league by putting a few of the better ones amongst the 7 first team subs. 7 subs gives Rafa all sorts of rotation possibilities!

Esp if Bentley is deemed to be worth £17M

still not sure our squad can accomodate Barry plus Alonso plus the other centre mid options. Benayoun at least offers something a little different and unless we get a really decent offer for him (£8M and upwards), I'd keep him. Not sure Rafa agrees tho as Yossi's name is cropping up more and more as a potential sale.

I think it would be a mistake to sell him for £6M - he offers something that few of our squad do - can create something out of nothing and as such can deffo do a job from the bench.

Carra (and Finnan for that matter) suffered from being overplayed out of necessity and (both) should prosper from getting more of a rest if the alternatives can stay fit.

what is it with the weird collars on our shirts - look terrible.

Will be interesting to see who out of Pacheco, N'gog and Nemeth will break through into the first team first.

To be honest fans can forgive these things pretty easily though - i'm sure it would only take a couple of carefully worded press statements followed by a couple of decent performances on the pitch and the villa fans will be OK with him again.

I'm very too now

Man, there's some tetchy feckers on here.

OK I'm going to sound like a div but two points: 1) what exactly was the deal with Itandje's warm-up - that has entirely passed me by? 2) what tune is Kvarme's song supposed to go to? Thanks

yeah the "my dad's a baggage handler at the airport and saw.." brigade are going to have a field day

That was great fun reading through that - will be even more fun to go on there when the deal is complete in the next couple of days and watch the back-tracking and slating of Keane. Quite a few are saying they don't mind Keane going as Berbatov is the better player - it will be funny as f*** when they sell him too

This comment will always have a special place in my heart as it triggered arguably the most ridiculous post in internet forum history from Kaizer - and signalled the beginning of the end for him on here

Guardian's Rumour Mill linking us with Aguero. Can't see that happening though.

I'd like to say one of the strikers - Nemeth most likely of the two - however I suspect Insua will get the most time on the pitch out of those you mentioned. Guess it depends on who else we sign this summer.

By 'finalised' - does that mean we'll sign him or it will be confirmed that we won't?

I agree on the issue/appearances point. I suppose that conversely if one of the other centre mids gets injured Xabi could get a fair bit of playing time and may flourish and find his form of a couple of seasons ago and thus hold his value (assuming around £16.5M is his current worth). Surpised that more teams weren't/aren't interested in him at the moment anyway though.

I also think the deal for Barry will go ahead and for around £15M but I suspect that Alonso will stay as there do not appear to be any other suitors for him. I can see that while Mascherano and Lucas are away at the olympics, there will be an argument for having both Barry and Alonso but after that we're going to have a lot of world class centre mids battling for a place!

To be fair the rumours have generally always been that Alonso wanted to stay in fact I think he came out and said that on more than one occasion too. It did seem very likley that he was going to go to Juve at one point and so he was hardly going to say anything disparaging about them, but generally he has also intimated his ideal scenario would be for him to stay here.

I agree to a point but there's no way you should be held to ransom and pay way over the odds because a player has come out and said they want to play for you and you don't want to put them in a difficult position with their club if they stay. In reality once a player is vocal about wanting a move, it generally happens and Villa will more than likely sell to us at around the price we have already offered, we just have to sit tight. Not sure if Keane will be quite as vocal as Barry has been but if he is, the chances are that we will secure that signing too providing we can afford a realistic price. Does strike me as interesting that Alonso is being vocal about wanting to stay put - that says as much about our club as Barry's comments and is a great advert for the club to new players.

Although it was a bit high, at the time he started his loan £10M wasn't quite as unrealistic as it now seems though to be fair. His value has dropped due to the inconsistency of his performances this season and some howling mistakes. Villa should never agreed to £10M at the time of the loan deal though to be honest. The fact they apparently paid us £2M to loan him for a year seems steep too.

Has he?? I would have been interested to see the explannation given for that!

Thank goodness for that. If Bentley is 'worth' £17M then Pennant, admittedly an inferior player, should fetch at least £6M. Be surprised if Rafa would allow him to be sold for too much of a loss.

True but broadly speaking anything from £25M upwards is probably out of our reach anyway.