"We've momentum and we can't afford to lose it tbh"- The '13-'14 summer transfer window thread for PL and beyond

if you write drama instead, look bacuna nger

Bacuna top

Aston Villa's new signing spent his last holiday in Azerbaijan!

Baku?

Nakhchivan.

OMG Royston Drenthe is going to Reading!

Will miss his keek.com films about finding a rastafarian barber and buying a telly for his aunt in Vladikavkaz

Hope in the medical at Reading it comes up that Drenthe is addicted to smoking shisha pens, and that he will bite your head off if you dare insinuate it might not be very healthy for you.

http://www.avfc.co.uk/javaImages/80/34/0,,10265~12006528,00.jpg

aw look at his lil face

In possibly the most boring transfer news ever, John Obi Mikel has apparently agreed to join Galatasaray

wonder if united put a sell-on in there

i seem to not be bored by that transfer anyhow, fairly unexpected imo

guess he never really won jose over. weird player really

nice that he still gets to hear the cl music though

Pellegrini has officially gone to City

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BMvuRYwCUAEG6gi.jpg

PRE-SEASON: WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE

(we've signed Dejan Lovren)

That's quite a coup. He was meant to be going to Liverpool a few days ago.

yeah he's meant to be excellent from what i've read

oh lol sorry i think i just mean jibe's big ligue 1 transferpost

it all becomes one blur of recieved opinion

um i would not say dejan lovren is excellent. i think i might have mentioned him in passing because of a prank lyon fans did when they flooded an online poll for a spanish newspaper asking who barca should get to strengthen their defense and they managed to vote him first. anyways lovren came to lyon with some promise then was played just about everywhere in the back four so took some time to get his bearings. he's capable of rather good things, though don't expect a lightning quick defender. his main issue is that sometimes he'll do something extremely stupid, usually at the worst time possible, earning him a red card and gifting the opposing team a penalty kick. overall a decent player, i enjoyed him, seems like a nice guy, even though he has enraged me on more than one occasion.

mignolet huh

pretty shabby kicking and distribution for a reina replacement in a brendan side

Is that on? I don't know much about him, though he seems okay. I feel like Lloris is raising the bar for keepers though, with his speed & kicking & so forth.

Cabaye has passed a medical at Monaco according to L'Equipe

xp idk, big clubs who expect to play on the front foot generally tend to think twice about signing shot stoppers who look like heroes endlessly rescuing crap defences

mignolet is awesome at that tho tbf

Would that mean Reina to Barca as a sure thing? wtf are they doing tbh, he hardly represents an upgrade on Valdes. For a team so well run in most every other area, I find Barca's transfer policy a little baffling. Is everyone at that club just diametrically opposed to the concept of having centre backs in your team?

Idk about Mignolet at Liverpool; as has been noted above, has he got the technical chops to be sweeping up for a "modern" Rodgers team? Though call me a bluff old traditionalist, but for myself I must admit that I still like a goalkeeper who's 6"3, bosses the area on high balls and is good in 1-on-1s, so it could prove to be a good signing regardless.

xpost - find this a bit of an odd one really. I'm aware that both Cabaye and Tiote's stock have fallen a bit this year from last (same as every other Newcastle player rly) but I'd have thought that Newcastle would have moved heaven and earth to keep a Cabaye / Tiote / Sissoko midfield together, on paper at least that's a fucking ferocious looking midfield. Unless of course Cabaye has been agitating for this move, which seems kinda likely I suppose. Wonder what wages he'll be on? Monaco fast becoming the mercenary force par excellence in the European game

newcastle denying it

he's def off if it is the reported £23m on the table

reina will break forward into midfield, busquets will drop even deeper from third cb into goal

tactics bitches

Oh k wow, hadn't realised that it was such a big offer, tho with Monaco obvs shouldn't have expected anything else. Yeah, tbf I'd bite their arm off up to the shoulder if I was the Newcastle big-wigs.

xpost

(this will have been enabled by jonathan wilson remortgaging his house 47 times to bung platini into officially legislating rush goalies)

Koscielny has been linked with Barca a lot this week.

fools, don't they know arsenal now have the financial might to buy barca seven times over

Do Barca only watch one team or something?

shot stoppers who look like heroes endlessly rescuing crap defences

The career of Artur Boruc in a nutshell

Arsenal the barca equiv of 'handy for the shops'

Isco just scored a cracker for Spain U21. Has City signed him yet?

http://www.101greatgoals.com/gvideos/golazo-isco-spain-u21s-2-0-v-norway-u21/

toepoke, sorry

Are we dignifying the Confederations Cup with its own thread? Kind of like the old school encyclopaedic feel of this thread tbh.

yeah keep it in here imo

I'm not actually watching, just thought it should be asked. Someone might've had a clever title but been too shy to volunteer.

i forgot it was on, now i'm listening to Shearer and wishing i'd forgot it was on

Nothing that guy doesn't know about Brazil v Japan.

Honda's out-of-contract this summer. Quality player imo.

Spurs supposedly interested in Paulinho. Marginally cheaper than Guarin. He does look impressive.

Lovely goal.

argh that was appalling defending for italy u21's goal

u really couldnt get a better example of how not to play three at the back

jon northcroft of the times today reporting that spurs "lead the race" for mccarthy, will pay up to 15m, and "are making signing english or british players a priority"

Aw man, how many times does that strategy have to fail?

well yeah quite. idk just seemed odd that the article should run so pointedly contrary to evidence/rumour

Lewandowski's advisor, Cezary Kucharski, has responded by accusing Dortmund of reneging on a deal to allow the forward to leave ahead of his contract's final year if offered a €25m fee in May. Kucharski argues that moving within the Bundesliga is the safest and most lucrative option.

“We don't want to change league,” Kucharski told Polish magazine Pilka Nozna. “Robert knows the Bundesliga and is perfectly fluent in German, so it's a low-risk transfer. But the most important thing is that he is well known in Germany. Robert can become the best paid player in the world while playing in Bundesliga; specifically in Bayern, which is incomparably bigger than Borussia. In Spain his commercial potential would be behind Messi and Ronaldo. In England maybe a bit higher. At City he would earn more on the pitch in the next season, but not much more. But after a year or two at Bayern he can be undisputed number one.

“Robert was never respected in Borussia. When we talked about extending his contract and I didn't agree a raise to €2m a year, I was told that we had exuberant expectations. Blaszczykowski and Piszczek's managers apparently agreed to such offers because they were convinced that with just a year of such money they would be set for life in Poland. I didn't check if this story was true, nor did I argue that Robert plays a different position and is younger than both, I just said he'd rather see his future in Monaco - he wants to buy a house there.”

yeesh

Fair point xxp, you can't really see avb pitching a tent outside the Britannia to be first into Hughes' castoffs. Linked with Erik Lamela instead today, good player imo.

i have no idea what to expect from avb this summer tbh

He's a curio alright. This Baldini fella's the first time I can recall a manager pitching for a Director of Football.