NAMING RIGHTS THREAD: Liverpool really won't win the Premiership 2010-2011

Bent to Villa? For £24m?? Presumably means Ashley is on his way?

Liverpool manager Kenny Dalglish has not spoken to the club's owners about bringing new players in during the January transfer window.
The Anfield outfit, who are 13th in the Premier League, drew 2-2 with Merseyside rivals Everton on Sunday.
But with only two weeks until the transfer window closes, Dalglish said: "There's nothing been discussed regarding players or otherwise.

AN AUDIENCE WITH POSTPONED
Posted on: Wed 20 Oct 2010
Tomorrow's An Audience With event has been postponed until Thursday 4 November with discounted ticket prices now available.

Carlo Cudicini, Peter 'The Cat' Bonetti, Eddie Niedzwiecki and Kevin Hitchcock will all field questions from fans on everything Chelsea when they take part in the evening of fun next month.

Taking place inside Frankie's Sports Bar and Grill, the evening kicks off at 6.30pm when fans can sit down to a complimentary dinner and free drink.

Hosted by former Blue Jason Cundy, the event now costs £15 a ticket and promises to be an evening of Chelsea-related stories told by some of the men who know the club best.

£18m is the figure I'm seeing. £24m for Bent would be ridiculous, Sunderland should snap their arm off if that's the real offer.

that was reduced from £35 a ticket xp

£18m for bent is still stupid

£18m still seems o_0

sunderland should get rid anyway

xp anyone eaten at 'Frankie's Sports Bar & Grill'? £15 a ticket w/dinner & drink is pretty fair on its own, four players in for free turns it into the Ibra-to-Barca of events imo

not sure i'm all that scandalized by the fee? proven goalscorer and villa are in too tight a spot to be taking hopeful punts. not like suarez or llorente or whoever are going to come and fit in straight away.

am surprised lerner's shook to this degree after holding firm with o'neill though. and that benty can really be bothered this much.

this isn't a couple years ago, £18m is a fucking huge amount again - when was the last time someone other than chelsea or city spend as much on a player? gyan was 13m i guess. and considering they were trying to convince benzema, bent is a bit of a step down..

yeah and how much is relegation gonna cost?

lol benzema would never go to villa, what are you on.

Darren Bent would be a better signing for Villa than Benzema.

For a guy who's consistently been one of the three most prolific top flight goalscorers for five seasons, £18 million isn't that dumb, especially if it stops Villa fans having to put up with Heskey falling over and Agbonlahor running really fast for no real purpose as a strikeforce.

played w/ houllier at lyon - its not an absurd idea

and to think after makoun i was thinking villa could look p sweet in the long term. just the same 'lets spend a shit load on not very good englishers' mentality

it's absurd to think madrid will sell/loan their only #9 for the rest of the season in january, however shit he is

bent is great if you have some creativity around him. which would be great if he was... at spurs right now.

Yeah, Redknapp does love a Bent transfer deal.

apparently a certain twitchy dorset-based manager is also paying for a rent boy from california to trample on him while wearing stiletto heels and then do a poop on him

The real Houllier is back, the one who spent £11mn on Heskey a decade ago. The mind boggles.

You wouldn't say Heskey had ever been a bad buy, though?

If Bent, who is from Cambridgeshire, hopes that his ambitions of establishing himself in the England side may be better served by moving nearer to London, Niall Quinn, Sunderland's chairman, knows that £18m is far too good an offer to turn down.

Quinn frequently recounts the story of how Bob Murray, his predecessor at Sunderland, turned down a £16m bid for Kevin Phillips only to sell the striker to Southampton for £3m less than two years later. He has vowed not to repeat the same mistake.

who the fuck was that from?

Does that Cambridgeshire gobbet have some significance in the article that's pulled from?

god

Kevin Phillips scored something like 30 goals in 2000 and football clubs would throw money at anything back then. It could have been from anyone.

probably leeds tho

cambridgeshire is a typical nonsequitur from louise taylor

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2011/jan/17/darren-bent-aston-villa-sunderland/print

Hah, yes, probably Leeds.

Louise Taylor is probably the worst broadsheet footballer writer, Dan Jones excluded.

http://www.twohundredpercent.net/?p=10602

Ratzinger, who is thought to be an adherent of Catholicism, is originally from Germany

she's still way better than the execrable mcnulty

am surprised lerner's shook to this degree after holding firm with o'neill though. and that benty can really be bothered this much.

― r|t|c, Monday, 17 January 2011 13:58 (4 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I'm assuming that the extra £6million on top of the 18 is in a brown envelope.

According to the Telegraph, the Bent bid is 24m and it's been accepted

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/teams/sunderland/8264262/Sunderland-accept-astonishing-24m-bid-from-Aston-Villa-for-Darren-Bent.html

Hahaha, that article reads like an attempt to squeeze in as many bewildering interlocked narratives as possible. It needs to be recast as the most frightening diagram of all time.

Woah, that's amazing - it's so dense it's almost poetry already

Downing’s friendship with Chelsea captain John Terry has also, it’s believed, prompted the Premier League champions to register an interest in the winger.

that does read like a euphemism, though I presume it isn't

Does that Cambridgeshire gobbet have some significance in the article that's pulled from?

― Ismael Klata, Monday, January 17, 2011 3:28 PM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

family probably. and cambs is closer to london than sunderland. not sure of the non sequitur.

non sequitur ref was to nakhchivan

geography aside, i can't decide who's dumber: bent or lerner.

There can be no doubt Bent has scored a great number of goals at Sunderland and proven himself as a striker who can do the business over the course of a season. However Gerard Houllier and Randy Lerner will have known this is a transfer move which must pay dividends, if they are to avoid the wrath of the increasingly impatient Villa Park support. As for whether Bent can reproduce his fine form of recent seasons in claret and blue, only time will tell. But with money now far scarcer in the English Premier League, it's a gamble the powers that be at Villa simply cannot afford to lose.

sell-on clause might mean that spurs end up recouping the fee they paid to get bent/

Sunderland will not have wanted to lose Bent, a striker who has been on fine form for The Black Cats. However, they may have felt Villa's bid too good to turn down in increasingly austere times. For Villa, the move represents a gamble: Bent will score goals, but at what cost to the frugal transfer policy previously in place at Villa Park? The answer promises to be an exciting one - this is a drama to be played out arguably between now and the end of the season.

You'll all get bored of this sooner or later.

I wonder if Randy Lerner's just been sitting in front of a computer in mute fury since the week of O'Neill's departure, repeatedly refreshing newsnow, unshaven and wild-eyed, and just finally snapped, flung everything off the desk and bellowed down the phone at Faulkner to spunk an ungodly amount of money on a player, any player, as a gesture of humongous financial might.

(But one thing is for sure - whatever his private thoughts, if Bent does indeed score the goals that keep Aston Villa in the top flight, Lerner will be a happy man.)

...1. It boggles the mind that people who are paid so handsomely to 'analyse' sports consistently get the most obvious rules wrong. Efan Ekoku was moaning about the second yellow for Rafael for the rest of the match even though it was obvious he made contact and brought him down from behind. Why is Efan arguing this point? Because Rafael didn't mean to do it?! Sorry Efan, it isn't a handball call, where the intent actually matters. He made contact from behind, it is a foul and a bookable one at that. It doesn't matter how innocent he looks after the fact! The ref got it EXACTLY right, and without the benefit of hindsight. Efan then goes and excuses that cretin Rooney for shouting in the ref's face. Yet, the next game the announcers will be moaning about the lack of respect shown to refs and the Respect campaign, what a bunch of bollocks! It was the same last week, when Berbatov was fouled (a foul is when the opposing player makes contact with the man he's marking inside the box without getting the ball, no matter how hard or soft - this is basic rule of the game, in case you don't know it Efan), it doesn't matter that it was a 'soft' foul or if Agger had Terry-style rugby tackled him, it was a clear penalty. End of discussion.

2. How bad is Peter Crouch? The fact he is still starting and playing the whole game for Spurs is the clearest indication that their title credentials are not in place this season. I have never seen someone use (or misuse) their height so poorly. He was routinely beaten in the air by the centre-backs, including on the last throw in by Bale which was placed perfectly to his head. Watching Crouch use his height is like watching an OAP drive a Ferrari...it's maddening. Like the awful Gareth Barry on City, Crouch is the clear piece of the puzzle that needs upgrading before Spurs are taken seriously as title contenders...is it a coincidence both of them are still England regulars?

3. Third paragraph. What the hell has happened to Palacios? He was brilliant during his first season but now he resembles George Foreman during his last few fights when everyone started to just feel sorry for him. Why does he think he can shoot from 30 yards out? Time to ship him out to Birmingham while they are still clearly obsessed with signing the Spurs B team.

Justin, football fan

had to check it wasnt me had written this tbh

(a foul is when the opposing player makes contact with the man he's marking inside the box without getting the ball, no matter how hard or soft - this is basic rule of the game, in case you don't know it Efan)

This seems a little confused, though the general sentiment is pretty much yeah.

Liverpool Sign Bent

I wonder if Randy Lerner's just been sitting in front of a computer in mute fury since the week of O'Neill's departure, repeatedly refreshing newsnow, unshaven and wild-eyed, and just finally snapped, flung everything off the desk and bellowed down the phone at Faulkner to spunk an ungodly amount of money on a player, any player, as a gesture of humongous financial might.

― Sgt's Laughter (Sgt. Biscuits), Monday, January 17, 2011 10:55 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i can believe this to be 100% true.

Not sure I agree with 'Justin football fan'. While they might technically have both been fouls, you'd think the referees could use a certain amount of discretion. The Rafael one didn't seem worthy of a booking (though it was obviously a free-kick), and the penalty given to Berbatov was very generous (the kind you'd expect not to be given 95% of the time) and a less convincing one than the two penalty calls in the second half. You don't expect a free-kick, never mind a booking, every time there's any contact.

Bent Liverpool Sign! I get it!