The walters step over

Depends how Carroll is doing I would imagine.. I think Torres staying another six months would've benefited everyone. We get to see how he'd link up with Suarez, Chelsea wouldn't have had the distraction of having to talk about his form every press conference and if he'd left this window we still would've gotten £40m (ish) for him. We could've looked at a wide range of strikers but If Carroll was still a target then he'd have cost a lot less meaning that there wouldn't be so much pressure on his shoulders and we probably wouldn't have had to spend so much on Henderson because Carrolls fee wouldn't have been used to drive Jordans price up. I think Torres is far from finished - he's not as good as he was but I'd put money on him doing well for Chelsea this year - they've brought in a lot of creativity and it looks as though the attack will be based around feeding him the ball in dangerous areas. It wouldn't surprise me to see him near the top of the goalscoring chart come May.

I'd say the opposite has happened, there's been far more "he's a bottler, and shyte anyway" on here and it happens pretty much every time we sell someone. The whole "ducks out of tackles" thing baffles me - he's not supposed to be a destroyer, his game is about quick simple passing and weighing in with a few goals. Has anyone mentioned mentioned Downings ability to put his foot in since he signed? Because I haven't seen any, and nor should i because Downing is in the team to create, the same as Meireles was. He was decent for us and helped us win a few games and it looks like we've made our money back on him, I don't have any problem with him requesting a transfer because it will have saved us money from having to pay any loyalty clauses. We already have Maxi and Shelvey to take his place and have a decent amount to spend in Jan so I really don't see what the problem is.

Easily our best i'd say, I don't get why a load of people are slagging Raul off, he helped change the Arsenal game and showed glimpses of what he could do if given a run - saying that If he wanted to go though then I'm fine with him being sold. I also think Commolli deserves a bit of praise, how many times under Parry did we have players that contributed nothing to the squad except drain us of millions every year? Within two windows he's managed to do deals that'll save us a fortune this year. At the start of January the board would've had three aims: lower the age of the squad, improve it's quality and get rid of the deadwood draining the wage budget - we've managed to do all of that in one window and imo we've filled the holes in the squad and now we'll just be looking for that one or two top quality players to go straight into the team. When we paid over the odds for Carroll I was a bit worried about where we were heading financially but this window shows we have people in charge that actually know what they're doing - it's very confusing..

I'm surprised Joe Cole hasn't joined Spurs, the way Redknapp was going on about him I assumed he had a contract agreed and was just waiting untill deadline day to make sure we didn't ask for a fee.

You might be right about needing to sell before we can buy but I can see merit in us selling/releasing a few players now to bring in funds so that on Jan 1st we have enough in the pot to do some quick business. There'll be some quality players available that will be cup-tied and I don't think it's unreasonable to think that Commolli and kenny might be thinking that there'll be opportunities for us to push to the front of the queue for players like Hazard (or maybe someone like Higuian if he's not getting many games). As for Meireles, we don't seem to have been actively trying to get clubs interested in him so I don't believe that he's not rated - more that Chelseas' bid has given Kenny and Commolli something to think about. He's a (presumably) high earning player that we can sell for a good amount without disrupting the squad too much.

I've always felt that wasn't picked up enough, especially 12 months later when his team was in the exact same position of getting to the final and struggling in the league.

I've no interest in twitter/facebook so I genuinely don't know, so please humour me - is there any benefit to having loads of followers on twitter (besides ego)? As for transfers, it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if Cole has a deal in place with Spurs and 'Arrys leaving it as late as possible to try to mess with our plans.

The thing with Benayoun (or Bellamy) is that he'd obviously be signed for the short term,specifically this season. We've got a great chance of qualifying for next years CL and if we do that then we can look at younger,better quality players and let Yossi play out the last year or so of his deal as a bit part player.

If Cole goes then bringing in Benayoun on less money would make sense imo - add Rauls transfer fee to a 6 months worth of Coles wages and in Jan we'd have a decent amount to go after any striker that's just been knocked out of the CL.

RVP and Suarez would be feckin' ace together.

They won't sack him, and if they do they need their heads examined. Wenger spends a lot on wages nicking kids from other clubs but the money he's made for them over the last ten years or so has basically built their stadium. If he goes who would they replace him with?

How long has he got left - 3 years? Even if we gave him a £2m payoff we'd still save around £10m on his wages. The "free" transfers we've signed over the last ten years have cost us fecking millions..

Agree with this, I'd see him as an alternative to Suarez rather than a starter - if he was good enough to be a regular for us then he would have been played more often at City. He'd be a good option from the bench but imo he wasn't quite good enough when he was here the first time and he won't have improved since he left. Let him have cameos when Suarez needs resting, he'll score half a dozen goals and then next summer when we qualify for the CL we can shake his hand, send him on his way and buy Higuian.

If they really want him they'll just offer him double what we do, to him and to his agents. With Toure to come back you wouldn't think they would be in much need of him but if they see us as a threat they could make a move. The more I think about this the more my guess is that Coates will join City on mega bucks, his agents will make millions and we will get Cahill for a more reasonable fee,ie less than £10m, with N'Gog as a make weight.

Good old Rick, I think we're still the only "top four" club to have lost one of their best players to a Bosman, then followed it up nicely by letting a £20m plus player get to his final year, selling him for peanuts and forgetting to put a buy back clause in the deal... As for Cahill, if I were Bolton I'd want to do a deal this week. It would be a big risk having your CB going into the last few games of the season knowing that the only thing that stood between him and a big money move was if he got injured.

Putting in confirmed bids for other centre backs would be a decent way of trying to force Cahills price down.

Can't agree with this at all.. Johnny Barnes was very vocal about wanting to sign for Arsenal instead of us, then after a couple of years of playing for us he wanted to join Milan and it took a massive pay rise (10k a week alledgedly!) for him to sign a new deal with us. He ended up playing here for about 10 years and being brilliant,imo only Gerrards been better over the last 25 years. There will have been loads of players that have only joined us because their preferred move didn't come off and then gone on to do great things for us - we're not in a position to be sniffy about anyone that could improve us.

I like him as well, we've played TWO games. He's a young kid that's at the biggest club he will ever play for and to me it looks like he's trying very hard to not do anything wrong. It's an easy thing to say but if fans had had their way Lucas would've been f*cked off after six months and he was a rated a hell of a lot higher than Henderson. I look at it that he's been bought for the long term and along with Shelvey is being looked on as a replacement for when Gerrards' legs go - if he does anything this year, it's a bonus.

But we know that Kuyt isn't going to start beating players or playing killer passes. Kuyt gets a lot of leeway when it comes to him losing the ball and moves breaking down at his feet due to his hard work - which is fair enough and I'm not knocking that - but imo if we've paid so much for Henderson we have to show faith that he can change tight matches like this.

This exchange about us is just unbelievable..! Bill :"When was the last sale of a major football club?" Barry:"Liverpool" Simon: "Blackburn" Bill:"you would want Blackburn..?" Barry:"Liverpool" Bill:"No,no Liverpool weren't sold, they took over the debt." Barry:"They were sold...now they're showing ambition." Bill:"I'm not arguing with you if you call that buying a football club. Blackburn, well I wouldn't want a Blackburn.." If I were a Blue I'd be going mad over that, he sounds deluded.

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Agree with you on this, it's all about viewing figures and imo City haven't got the supporter base to give them enough muscle to stand up against Uefa. Neutral viewers might tune in to see what the fuss is with them once or twice but they don't have enough fans dotted around the world for the t.v. companies to help fight their corner. In some ways Man City are the ideal club for Uefa to take a stand against, I'd expect them to cave in to club that guarantees huge viewing figures but I can honestly see them thinking that City are the ideal candidates for them to set an example to the rest of European football.

I can see the thinking behind it though, if Flanagan has impressed pre -season then starting him sends out the message to the kids to work hard and you will get rewarded. Hopefully that leads to a knock on with the senior players not taking their places for granted and in turn working harder themselves. Be interesting to see what happens with Flanagan next week because in theory, if he's good enough to start the first game of the seasonn then he's good enough to play at Arsenal and one poor game shouldn't really change that.

Houllier, he did give a reason that I've forgotten but iirc it was something to do with the player taking a knock to win the penalty and not getting proper treatment because he was rushing to take the kick - something like that anyway.. As for Arsenal, we could go 4-3-3 with Henderson,Lucas and Adam as a tight three, Downing left-ish with kuyt and Suarez swapping roles so we can get power and pace in attack. Probably won't line up like that but in my head this formation has a bit of everything with the added bonus of Carroll coming on for the last twenty if needed.