Moneyball won't win the Premiership 2012-13

Vertonghen's distribution is excellent, he might come to resemble something like a deep-lying playmaker.

Wait, a hoy hoy... How the hell do you think Sandro should be in the first team?

Also, Aaron Lennon seems to have slowed down a lot in the past couple of years. I think we need something new on the right side.

I read today we're linked with a goalkeeper from... France or something. I still think Friedel is our best choice for one more year. How could he not be? AFAICT he did well last year.

yeah, Hugo Lloris. He's kind of a big deal

Slow Lloris jokes.

oh. Seems like it's a done deal anyway. Don't see how you'd be displeased with that, as long as it doesn't come at the expense of a few more outfield signings

utd bid 5m for him, the cheeky cunts

dembele has been playing in central midfield and winning lots of plaudits for his tackling, possession, and dribbling. still not a great passer maybe, but he was the best option for deep playmaker of all the names linked with spurs, outside of moutinho who was way too expensive.

we'll be bidding 30m in a couple of years no doubt

i posted this on the spurs thread, but here are some stats on dembele vs utd in comparison with spurs cms from last weekend
http://news.5minstokickoff.com/index.php/moussa-dembele-still-totes-awesome/

speaking of belgians and utd, i thought utd were gonna buy steven defour, has he been any good for porto?

It was Defour that Fergie sent that weird love letter a few years back wasn't it?

yeah, when he was injured iirc

I saw him for Porto once or twice last season, he didn't stand out and I don't believe he's an automatic starter. Their regular midfield now is Fernando, Moutinho, Lucho Gonzalez iirc.

Porto incidentally have a new Colombian forward whose career matches : goals scored record is 169 (154), so watch out.

Dembele can be the playmaker in midfield then. Fine. I watched 0 minutes of Fulham last season (despite being a Jol Out fan) so I don't know what I'd be looking at. I like the look of this Dembele chap. I mean I like his hair.

What's left is to sort out these Defoe to QPR/Macclesfield/Bognor Regis/Abu Dhabi rumours. I think he's gotta go. I have been a very happy man to have Jermain Defoe at our club for so long but, like Aaron Lennon, we need to start making room for new people, and we need to start looking at a younger and, dare I say, more international team right now. Defoe and Lennon are Martin Jol-era players. Think about how long ago that was in Spurs years.

maybe it was just those individual matches but MD resembled a Ramires type much more than a Modric. Which is fine but it will be a big change and you'll have to hope avb's distinct fast pace game pulls off. the first thing chelsea did this summer was buy a bunch of playmaking types like hazard and oscar)

Crikey, Walcott actually probably is leaving then? For some reason I had this filed under 'things that might happen next year'.

I don't really agree with that Dembele article. Livermore isn't intended to be a Modric or anyone replacement, he's an obvious stopgap/player in development. Dembele is no more of a Luka replacement than Livermore, from what I can se e he's a box-to-box type rather than a playmaker.

Assuming Spurs don't make any more midfield signings then it'll be one or two DMs with Dembele and/or Siggurdsson bombing up and down. What that loses in vision and guile it makes up in urgency from central positions. To put that into context we had to rely on Jenas for that a couple of years back.

Also how long has Dembele actually been has good as in that United game? Signing a player on the basis of a few eyecatching performances, dunno could be a Palacios situation.

he ripped liverpool to bits at craven cottage last year. take from that what you will/won't.

Spurs are, rather ludicrously, being linked to moves for Dzagoev and Moutinho as well as Dembele this morning, possibly with VdV getting shipped out.

are we sure we wanna spend this week here rather than the transfer speculation thread

"I am a bit surprised, but I am delighted to have been given the opportunity by QPR to come to London, learn English and play in the Premier League," Cesar told Sportv News.

"It all started during my summer vacation, when Inter suggested that I reduce my salary. No player in my situation would have done that - I am not a hypocrite and I can talk openly about this."

"It became a tough situation for both parties. I then spoke to my representative and I thought this was a good choice."

i, er... no yeah ok fair dos big man

130k per week on goalies. Can any club anywhere match that? Actually Casillas is probably on more than that I guess.

Sterling work here from the club who renewed Kieron Dyer's contract for another year.

hey now, 40 mins and an assist vs walsall from super kieron yday is pure value

loving this downing at left back madness. why don't we just see if he can play in goals?

Assuming Jose Enrique isn't injured or anything so they're basically telling Downing not to expect to be on the pitch any time soon.

i guess, tho enrique was woeful in the final few months of last season.

hmmm

http://www.givemefootball.com/premier-league/wayne-rooney-fears-manchester-united-axe?state=7d970a59d050438e90532ece672663ce

hmmmm indeed

But should the former-Everton forward become available next year every major European team would surely be interested in securing the services of the United star.

Haven't we had this discussion before, back before Fergie had even replaced him?

can sunderland raise the funds??

Playing with big club players like Ricky Carvalho, Julio Cesar and SWP

Lucas out for 3 months

Was wondering who'd be significantly improved by Rooney for £40m.

argh Lucas

have woken from my nap to the news that lucas is out for 3 months. :(

this walcott staying or going thing is weird. He can do what he likes, just 'cos the club say, or the press anyway, that 'ooh he hasn't signed his deal so we'll sell him in the next 48 hrs' doesn't mean he has to just accept that. Pretty sure they can't physically stop him leaving for nothing in 12 months if it takes his fancy.

fields of salmon, wb etc but that's some serious concentrated wrongness in that post re: lennon, sandro

i mean, i try to lurk but i couldn't let that shit pass

aha!

god bless all here

http://www.newstalk.ie/programmes/all/offtheball/

anyway, get thee to podcasts and sample the john giles fireside chats segment, tho rly it's all vg stuff, do yr footy ears a favour

real talk

football sucks. its all about the money these days. not like in the old days.

Trinity Mirror's Sunday Sun has suffered a sales decline of more than 20% in the first six months of the year, with the publisher blaming the circulation drop on the paper's local team, Newcastle United, doing too well in the Premier League last season.

The Magpies' strong end to the season saw more of their matches during the run-in switched from Saturday to Sunday for broadcast on Sky Sports.

Just three of Newcastle's last 11 Premier League games were on a Saturday, robbing the Sunday Sun of a day of readers digesting match reports, comment and analysis.

wb dmac obv

wb darragh. i trust you are in the fantasy league?

football sucks. its all about the money these days. not like in the old days.

Robert Smith (of The Cure) trotted out this line in this weeks issue of Hot Press when asked about QPR's chances in the Prem this season.

he has been saying that since like 1995 tbf