The walters step over

We need to be careful with Sterling,let him develop at his own pace . Owen could've been an incredible player but was played far too much by Houllier and ended up knackered by his mid '20s - i know a lot will say "so what, he's a tw*t etc,etc" but he wasn't able to improve as a player from the age of 18 because he was always being rushed back to take pressure of Ged and the team. If Sterling appears in half of this seasons games then we can be happy, he could be a hell of a player for us for years top come but he needs to be looked after.

You'd imagine Adam and Spearing would be the likely ones to go. Whether they agree to leave is another matter.

The £20m transfer fund for BR has been flagged up by Barrett a few times this summer. The £10m for kenny and his staff was again widely reported, including in the Echo - again, these figures may be wrong, but they make sense if you take in the average wages for a Premier league manager.

Which is fair enough, I don't know what's going on behind the scenes and tbh, I wouldn't know who was good at identifying young talent or not so any names mentioned haven't really meant anything to me. What I do think though is that we can only go off what we know FSg have done. They've changed managers twice since they took over which would've cost a lot of money to do - imo, they wouldn't have bothered doing that if they couldn't really be arsed where we finish as long as we're in the Prem year on year. They spent a lot of money last year on players to improve our position. It didn't work so they sacked the clubs biggest legend, again I don't see why they would bother doing that and the hassle it entails if they didn't genuinely believe that it was what they needed to do to improve the squad/team. Assuming BR has a budget of £20m (which has been widely reported, esp. by Barrett who seems to be clued up) when you add on the cost of Kenny and his staff going, along with Commolli and the hiring of BR and staff then they've spent well over £30m (and if it's true it cost £10m to pay off Kenny and his staff then we're probably looking at £35m+). Which other club in our position has spent that sort of money to try to improve? Everyones got their own opinion on whether their decisions to hire/fire who they have have been the right ones but I honestly don't think they can be called on the money spent trying to improve the situation. They could get an overdraft and have a big splurge on players but what if it didn't work?What would we do then and perhaps more importantly how much do people think we should be spending every year?

Everybody wants us to win titles. I was a teenager last time we won it, and believe it or not when Kenny left and we missed out under Moran/Souness me and the lads I used to go with were not really that disappointed because "we'll just win it next year instead" - that's how spoiled with success we used to be and it's hurt watching us on the downward slide. I can't speak for anyone else that defends (if that's what you want to call it) FSG on here but my view is,I think,one of realism. FSG were clear that they weren't able/willing to do what City/Chelsea have done. They said they would increase revenues and that money would be used on the team to hopefully bring success, personally I think they've pretty much done that. If Carroll had turned out to be the monster we wanted, with Adam pulling the strings and Downing bombing down the wing then we could've added a couple of players as the finishing touches this summer. Unfortunately, it didn't happen and I don't want to see us gambling money we have to borrow in the hope that this years transfers will work out better. Newcastle and Spurs have shown that you don't need to get yourself in hock to spend £50m a year on transfers. You need a good manager and a system that can identify bargains. Unless there's a billionnaire out there willing to take on Chelsea, City and utd (and there weren't any when we were for sale for 5 or so years) I don't see what the alternatives are.

Could it just be that the bill we need to pay is the transfer fee for his replacement? We paid the £35m in one go didn't we (or have I got that wrong?). Wouldn't that mean we had £35m in cash, spent it but now need to raise X to pay for player Y and one of the ways to do that is to sell Carroll for whatever someone will pay for him? Genuine question,btw, i've very little idea as to how these things work.

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But we've got to be realistic in where we want to go and the time it'll take to get there. We were on the brink less than 2 years ago and Broughton had to give assurances that we could afford to fulfill the seasons fixtures. G+H seemed to be doing the same as the Glazers in taking money out of the club, the difference being that we hardly had any to begin with. It just seems to me as though a lot of people are saying "yes, I know it was bad but .." without taking into account what an effect it had on us. Besides FSG who was in for us? Evans went hard on a Chinese bid but there's no way of knowing whether they would have been spoofers like the Hollywood producers lot, disasters like the Venkeys or if they'd have piled in money like Mansour. FSG said from the first minute that they weren't able to pump in hundreds of millions for transfers and let's be honest, a lot of fans reaction to that was "good, as long as we're run well and the money we make goes back into transfers then that's all we're asking for". They didn't siphon off the Torres money for themselves like the Glazers, which ordinarily isn't something to applaud - "thanks for not ripping us off lads" - but if they were short term asset strip, make our money and feck off types then we wouldn't have spent the amounts we have done. Not only on players but on changing staff off the pitch. For a club that haven't been playing CL football these last few years we've spent more than most clubs in Europe but we could never hope to compete with City/Chelsea/Utd in the market without seriously gambling with our future and as fans we have to realise it'll take time because let's be honest,what's the alternative?

If we use the money well then we'll just have to take the hit, I suppose..Carroll may go there and score loads but he could also upset the balance of their team. I can see him being on their bench an awful lot - I don't see how he plays instead of Cisse or Ba.

I think he's alright tbh. The problem is that we need a hell of a lot better than "alright" for first team regulars.

Tbh,the idea of getting into an internet argument with someone I'll never meet over someone that couldn't give a toss whether either of us dies tomorrow is such a depressing thought that I'm not going to bother. However, o.k. Spurs were in for him. Doesn't change the fact that we bought an injured player for a ridiculously inflated fee.It doesn't change the fact that to get the best of him we needed to regularly supply him with crosses into the box and the player we bought to do that we then played on the right hand side which negated the whole crosses into the box thing that he was bought for.

That's a very kind way of looking at it but I've got to disagree. We signed Suarez to play with Torres, you could've easily had said "we sold Torres for £50m and signed Carroll and Henderson with the money" imo that would be nearer to the truth. Carroll has shown that when he can be ar*ed he can be a good battering ram type of player but why did we have to pay so much, and why did we need to bring him in there and then? We were very unlikely to get CL football, there was no chance of us going down. We had enough to cover the strikers position and even if you want to say we didn't, Carroll came to us with an injury which meant that we were never going to see him at his best for those 4 months anyway. There wasn't any other clubs after him pushing the price up and yet we still paid £35m for a player that the management knew wouldn't be able to produce his best until the start of the next season. To top it all, to get the best out of Carroll we knew we needed to get in a regular supply of crosses so we blow £20m on Downing and then play him largely on the right nullifying both his and Carrolls strengths in one fell swoop. The spending last year was one big balls up, not least because having spent £35m on Carroll every club we approached for players that summer used him as a yardstick for the fees of their players.

Sums up my thoughts. We'll lose a few more this season but you could lose 7 or 8 and still be in contention for the top four.

If anyone expects us to win every single game then they're either 12 years old, or haven't seen much of us over the last three years. Without wanting to do the amateur mind reader bit it does look as though the last few weeks have affected Agger, hopefully he'll settle down after the window closes (if he's still here). The immediate problem is that Carra (probably) comes into the team next week - playing a high pressing game with him in the team just isn't going to work, he was looking past it for the majority of last season and has today has carried on that form. As others have said, Kelly looks nervous, which isn't very comforting seeing as how we're playing W.Brom. Hopefully Enrique will be back for the City game because against them a back four of Johnson,Carra,Skrtel and Kelly petrifies me tbh. Looking for positives, it might sound ridiculous but a showing like todays might actually do some good in the long run. If there are transfers being held up for whatever reason then today will have shown BR the work that needs to be done on the squad/team and the next couple of weeks may well see us being more proactive in the market then he possibly thought he would be before this game.

After 45 mins of the league season? Jesus wept. Not trying to be a superfan or moralising or anything but if this is how people are going to react after every little set back then it's gonna be a long season..

They'll spend the first ten games running into the same spaces, Rooney then gets moved to the left,gets the hump and disrupts the dressing room. In January he gets shipped out to PSG for a record fee that the Glazers pocket (after giving Fergie his slice) leaving Ferguson to tell the fans why it's actually a good thing he only has £5m to spend on a replacement. On February 1st RVP's legs fall off leaving Utd struggling for goals, they miss out on CL football on the last day of the season and begin the slow but inevitable slide to insolvency. This leads to a 30 point deduction for next year, demoralised and adrift Utd finish in their lowest position for 40 years and the country is in shock as they're relegated - this shock continues as the club follows it up with two further relegations in three years and bankruptcy, the Glazers sell Old Trafford to a supermarket chain and all playing staff have to go part time. ..OR, they'll lose seven games but batter everyone outside the top six home and away and walk the league whilst City try to win the CL for the first time.

Johnny Barnes is my favourite ever player but he's being a bit selective with his memories. I even remember Graham Taylor on the radio ages ago talking about it. There's probably been loads of legends that have played for us that would've ideally liked to play somewhere else and hopefully Sahin will be another one.

He said it in his Echo column when Owen signed for them the other year.

Don't really want to get into an argument but it is true that he wanted to sign for Arsenal or if not go to Italy. It was reported for ages in the press that he wanted to stay down south and in his press conference those were the first questions he was asked.

Again the question has to asked: If FSG are so"hell bent"on selling the players to bring in cash (and presumably the theory goes that they're pocketing it themselves,or else why bother?) why have they just spent somewhere in the region of £15m plus to change management staff? Keep Kenny, give him the £15m and tell him he can't have a penny more and hey presto FSG save themselves/the club a packet with the added bonus of having to go through the hassle of hiring someone else. Not to mention the amounts spent under Kenny when they could've easily told him that they were saving the Torres money until the summer in case they appoint someone else. It is. He was very open about it, in fact we were probably way down his list. He wanted to join Arsenal, or if that didn't happen then he wanted to go to Italy. Another example is Rushie, he had an agreement with Ferguson to join Utd from Juve until Kenny came in at the last minute,iirc everyone thought the press conference was going to announce the signing of Gary Pallister and then Rush walked through the door. If Sahin joins us then I couldn't care less whether we're second,third or tenth choice for him.

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It always amazes me when you have details like "he's given Arsenal until Mon" - who would tell him that? The only people that would know are the player,his agent and the Arsenal and it just seems something someone would write to try to validate their info.

Desailley,Petit,Evra,Keane,Vidic,Owen,Pallister,Ronaldo (or did we turn him down?) spring to mind.

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