Cartman

No it's not.

I'd take a straight swap but City would have to drop the buy back option, it's a deal breaker as far as I'm concerned.

No we aren't. We don't sign players that old or with his injury record.

Marcos Llorente will almost certainly be part of Real Madrid's squad next season as backup to Casemiro, doubt he will be going anywhere. If we want an Alavés player we should get their goalkeeper Fernando Pacheco who was one of their best players along with Llorente and Theo Hernández. Way better than Forster.

As if a hubcap thieving meth injecting lowlife would know that. And so what if he does, it's not like we haven't rejected transfer requests in the past, means **** all. And if we do sell him it will be to Chelsea, not you.

You scouse ****s really are thick as **** aren't you? You aren't facing any action only because we wouldn't benefit from it. Instead we are holding the threat over your perms to keep you away from our players. We are blackmailing you.

Because it's not true is it? He's not Van Dijk, he's not someone we can't replace with an equally capable player. Bertrand is just not important enough to justify taking the same stance that we would, and probably are taking, with Van Dijk. Van Dijk is a world class CB, Bertrand is just a good LB. If we say Bertrand is not for sale and then sell him, as it is likely City will offer us more than we deem him worth, than every time we say that we won't sell a player it will just come off as bluster and BS, rather than a genuine stance as it likely is with Van Dijk. The fact that he will an England international and homegrown only makes his sale more likely as it increases his market value but not his worth to us. And he will be 28 by the start of the season, so 29 by the start of the 2018/19 season. This summer is probably where he is at peak market value and we might not have anyone interested next summer, at least not at the sort of price we would get this summer. More importantly though, Van Dijk is unlikely to be pleased at the prospect of being forced to stay. While I am far from against keeping him when he would rather be elsewhere, it is perhaps a good idea to keep the number of players in such circumstances to a minimum and only do it when you really, really have to.

Who cares what he thinks. And where on earth is Cedric going? And don't say Juventus because it's bo!!ocks.

Except in this case saying that we don't intend to sell would be absolute bo!!ocks, whereas in Van Dijk's case we almost certainly mean it, Bertrand is replaceable, Van Dijk is not. Bertrand is 2 years older and plays in a more physically demanding position, so will likely start to decline much sooner and we would also be taking advantage of City's need for more homegrown players, when we already have more than enough of them. On another note, one of our best options to replace Bertrand happens to be a former player of Pellegrino's: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicol%C3%A1s_Tagliafico

There is nothing in this. A Portuguese sports daily (they make things up a lot) wrote that a few days ago and now it's just bouncing around the media echo chamber. Juventus are being linked with every right back under the sun so the Portuguese media figured they would jump in to fill the pages. Danilo and Darmian are the strong links.

Why apologise? Former Spanish colony but received massive Italian immigration during the late 19th century and early 20th. Read more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Argentines

That's because you are translating pilgrim to spanish. Like most argentinian names, Pellegrino is italian.

Bill Belichick? That bit of my post was entirely because of him:lol:. I can't name any other now or in the recent past although I think I would be right in saying that it was more common decades ago? Basically teams realised that a separation of the GM/Head Coach roles was more effective and it gradually became standard practice across all team sports on both sides of the Atlantic. Except british football which is ridiculously stubborn in it's romantic attachment to how things should be done the way they always have been. Management, tactics, physical preparation, kickoff times, stadium design, boot colour, anything, if it's not how it was in the 60s then it shoudn't be how it is now or at the very least you will have some people moaning endlessly. Sometimes there is merit in their arguments but most of the time it's just some sort of bizarre extreme conservatism that seems unique to football in this country, most of these same people won't usually cling so hard to traditions in other matters.

Are some of our more mouth breathing fans going to have it in for Pellegrino almost from the start like they did with Puel? 55 points and the cup final ("the" not "a", there is only one cup in Spain) with a newly promoted club, can you imagine the press in this country if Dyche had done that with Burnley? He would be hailed as the second coming of Brian Clough. Give the guy a chance if he is hired, a proper chance not getting on his and the team's back after 5 seconds. Besides, he was Sevilla's second choice after Berizzo, the same club that hired Emery and Sampaoli in succession, so I will trust their, and Les' judgement.

This notion that no one good will want to come here to "just" be a head coach subordinate to a DoF is bizarre. Most coaches in continental europe have never known any other way of working and in fact would not welcome the extra responsibility of dealing with things they have never dealt with before, distracting them from what they are truly good at. It makes no sense, you could hire the best coach in the world but if you then give him responsibility over recruitment of players or staff, not only might he not be very good at that but he could be spending that time on actual coaching, planning sessions for the whole team or individual players to improve them, analysis of opponents, any number of things. And european coaches know this and often want nothing to do with what they consider to be a DoF's responsibility. The "full control over all football matters" british manager is the real anomaly, on the continent it is very rare. American sports also have a General Manager/Head Coach separation of responsibilities with very few exceptions.

You could be on to something, not a bad suggestion at all.

So De Boer (hell no), Pellegrino or unnamed third guy. History would suggest the unnamed third guy will be the one. Paulo Sousa is without a club which is also a strong historical indicator. Wonder if we will be willing to look a little further than usual. http://thesefootballtimes.co/2017/01/17/is-marcelo-gallardo-the-next-great-argentine-manager/ http://the18.com/soccer-news/marcelo-gallardo-river-plate-manager-replace-diego-simeone-atletico-madrid-la-liga-europe-next-big-thing And bring Driussi with him.

Why would we hire an old man well past his sell by date? Experience is extremely overrated, coaches generally achieve their biggest successes in the first few years of their careers, usually in their 40s, when they are more inovative rather than set in their ways. LVG's peak was 20 years ago and his achievements then are utterly irrelevant to the present.

As far as I am aware, Les would be staying on in his current role as a condition of the takeover and hiring and firing the head coach is his responsibility. They would have to replace Les in order to bring in their own handpicked coach. We are not run like a traditional (backward) english club, there won't be any "bringing their own man in" who in turn "brings his own players in" nonsense.

http://sportwitness.co.uk/latest-claims-italy-suggest-liverpool-got-wrong-transfer-window/

Some so called itk said vvd to Liverpool was done and naturally the scousers all put money on it and caused the betting to be suspended. Between them and Everton... what the hell is wrong with the inhabitants of that city?

At most six months, could be sooner. His agent said he would assess his options when he returns from holiday and that going abroad was a possibility. A certainty I would say, Leverkusen is one of the better jobs in Germany after Bayern and Dortmund so by rejecting them it would seem that he is not interested in another Bundesliga job.

Have you seen Fonte playing lately? On this season's form he would be our 4th choice. Virgil's injury cost us the league cup final because guess what, we only have one CB at his level, Fonte's sale didn't have anything to do with it. 8m for a player in clear decline, throwing is toys out of the pram because we wanted a big last contract and now inferior to our other CB was a good deal, another Lambert like sale. And we got Gabbi, it was a very good window. It was the summer that we messed up.

What mistakes? We botched last summer but I don't see any mistakes having been made in January.

Where does this Schär stuff come from? It's strange for a player who made just 3 league starts this season for a Hoffenheim team who play with 3 CB to be mentioned on here so much. He's not very good. Semedo looked promising last season but has gone backwards. A year ago he was a CB who had a good all round game but was particularly prone to making idiotic fouls which could be put down to inexperience, and that we would grow out of it. Far form growing out of it, it just got worse and because of it he has often lost his place in the team. Right now Stephens is clearly better than him, which would have been unlikely a year ago.