labibs

I'd like to see us sign some players with potential. You would obviously take Tomkins, but I don't know if he would come and WHam would want huge money for him (I don't think they would sell for less than £7-8m) I think Zaha would be decent, if he was a reasonable price. Has talent but very inconsistent. Reminds me a bit of Ashley Young when he was at Watford. Whose the lad at Brum, Redmond? All speculative until we get a) get promoted (if we do!) b) know who else comes up c) have an idea of what our budget is. Cortese might chuck some serious cash around to get us established in the league.

Already nervous about the game tomorrow. Going to be pretty tense in the away stand! Think Reading and WHam will both win, so we really need three points. I'd be surprised if we kept a clean sheet (Peterborough have goals in them) so will need to score a few. 1st goal absolutely crucial.

I have O2 broadband and have never had a problem with it. No loss of service and relatively fast speeds. Can't speak for how your connection may be in terms of speed (as mentioned above, dependent distance from the exchange) but based on my experience, would recommend them.

Moses would be a brilliant signing. I doubt we'd get him (as if Wigan go down and he is available, bigger clubs than us would come in for him) but he's shown some real promise in the prem this year IMO. Pace, strength and good dribbling ability. Would be a decent side with him on the right wing and Adam on the left.

I am astonished they signed him at all, given the financial situation they were in (well obviously not that astonished because it is Pompey after all). The Barnsley boss was right, how can you have any sympathy for them when they had financial trouble, but still went out and signed Lawrence, Kitson, Halford etc all on prem wages. It's ludicrous. I don't want them to go out of business, but relegation down to L1 is the least they deserve IMO.

You cannot be serious about wanting Shearer to be involved. On what basis? Getting Newcastle relegated? Talking rubbish on MOTD every week? Never having heard of Hatem Ben Arfa before he signed for Newcastle?

I see your point, but if we are making bids for players like Hooper and they are being rejected / the players don't want to sign for us, what more can we do? Say we went out and bought 2 CBs to cover for Fonte and Hooiveld, what do we do when those two come back to full fitness?

Ha, one of Kieron's tradesmarks I'm afraid! Good article as ever. Nice to have some independent assessment of where we are on the money side.

Errr... Celtic fairly obviously? We will not be signing Gary Hooper. We will not be signing anyone like Hoillet or Rodallega. All of these player will have premiership clubs after them which will be much more attractive draws than us. Commons I could see making sense, hopefully on loan with a view to a permanent deal. Can play in a few different position and would create some nice competition for places in the squad. He has a decent Championship goalscoring record as well. I have no information as to his character, whether he would fit in here etc. Nor do I know anything about his injury record or what kind of wages he is on / would want. I imagine he wouldn't come cheap though. The only thing I would add on it is that our deals tend to be kept very quiet, so open speculation (in a national paper nonetheless) is unlikely to come to anything. The Don likes to do his deals in private!

Why are people talking about £6m for Maynard? With him only having 6 months left on his contract it's a buyer's market. What chairman would sanction £6m for a player you can have for free in 6 months? If he goes anywhere I would imagine it would be to the premier league, for around £2m max. I could see Newcastle, Wigan, QPR all being interested, maybe even Everton if they could shift someone out to pay for him. All of these clubs are a bigger draw than us at the moment (Wigan as it would get him media exposure for a bigger move if the went down), so I don't think we'll see him here. I think Adkins clearly likes Sharp, so if he can be persuaded to come here, I think he would be the one we may sign. Then again, we do quite well at keeping our transfer stuff under wraps these days, so we'll likely bring in someone nobody has mentioned!

He would be a brilliant signing, but we wouldn't get near him for £3m. I suspect Celtic would want £5-7m before they would even consider selling, maybe even more than that.

City's owner is minted and essentially bankrolls the club. The loss of say £2.5m from Maynard they may get from selling in Jan, is more than offset than the potential loss in finances that they would get should they drop into L1 (with no guarantees that they would come straight back either). I think, I remember football finance bogger 'the Swiss Ramble' doing a blog post on their finances a few months back. Basically unless silly money is offered, 6 months of Maynard's goals are worth more to City than any fee they would likely get for him in January. FWIW I think Maynard is a quality player who has the potential to do a job in the prem. His goals to appearances record at City is very, very good. I do worry about him fitting in with our team ethic, should we sign him though. He also has a bit of a history with injury problems. I'm sure NA is looking at the striker situation and will make the right decision for us moving forwards in Jan.

Yeah, got this through the letterbox yesterday. Only had an hour or so on it, but loving it so far. Pretty much going to be my entire wkd as missus is away!

I have to work quite a lot of evenings in my role, but I do get TOIL for it (which I am more than happy with). There is no chance however, of me getting a pay rise, a bonus or any sort of promotion (unless it's a dead man's shoes situation), so there is definitely less of an incentive to be seen to 'put in the extra hours'. Were I in your situation, I would focus on making sure everything you are asked to do is delivered on time and is done well. Do that for a good few months and bosses will tend to go easy on you, as they know you will deliver. The good bosses I have worked under were much more concerned with getting results, rather than how those results were achieved.

I guess because you have to start somewhere and July 2011 makes sense. If you wanted total realism, then you would have to not include any transfers etc that didn't take place before July 2011 and that would be silly. I'll give this a download tnt. One point MLG, are values completely irrelevant? Surely they have an impact on the amount at which Chairmen will accept an offer for a player, regardless of if you want to sell them or not? (e.g. the 'too good to turn' situation. In last year's game, NC accepted £1.5m for Lallana from Wolves and there was nothing I could do about it)

IMO Pearce would be a terrible appointment. Our U-21 side still relies on strength and pace and being bigger than the other lads in order to get results and a large part of that is down to him.

I think he is the clear front runner and is only his court case that could prevent him being given the job. I want him to be appointed to finally shut up all the people who moan about the England Manager needing to have passion and to 'understand the english way of playing (4-4-2, long ball, get stuck in...) etc. 'Arry will be appointed, he'll play all the 'triffic old boys (Lampard, Gerrard etc) and then when we get knocked out by the first decent side we play against (like we normally do) all of those arguments will fall by the wayside and we can properly look to restructure our national team set-up to make us competitive, much like Germany have done recently and are now reaping the benefits of.

Would be a waste of the wages. Where would he play? If we sign anyone (even on loan) I would expect it to be a striker or a centreback. We're well stocked in all other positions. Agree about the O'Driscoll thing. He worked miracles to make that club competitive in the NPC on a shoestring. Then he has the legs taken from under him this season by losing Sharp in the first game of the season. Suddenly Saunders comes in and money is found for the likes of Chimbonda and Ilunga. Really hope O'Driscoll gets another NPC job and shows Doncaster what they are missing.

I definitely think he would get on the bench. Recently, we have only had De Ridder as an attacking 'game-changing' sub. The rest our defensive cover or midfield replacements. Having the option of putting another forward on (particularly someone who hassles defences like Barnard) would be useful IMO.

Yep somewhat pointless stat. The owners could have a £100bn personal fortune, but if they don't put that money into the club, what does it mean? The guy at Spurs (lewis?) has been there for ages and has a couple of billion, but it's not like they have done a Man City is it?

I think back to our relegation season (to L1) and if you had told me then that someone like Chaplow wouldn't have got into our starting XI, I would have laughed you out of town! I think he's one of our few players with a real bit of bite to him, he's a hardworking, tenacious midfielder and sometimes that is exactly what we will need. Delighted he is part of the squad here.

Sorry gents, been crazy at work this week, not had a chance to look at this meeting much. Only had one bet all week, but at least it won! (invincible hero) Not very original picks for me today: 14:05 Red Duke 14:35 Zero Money 15:10 I think Sea Moon will win, but I've had a few quid on Masked Marvel e/w 17:25 Picture Editor Good luck all

Apparently it is Seaborne. Thrown out of Junk by the bouncers and smashed his head on the pavement outside. Didn't realise it was life threatening. I hope he is okay.

Delfouneso's attitude is very poor. As soon as he played a few times for Villa, he thought he had made it. I can't see him wanting to drop out of the prem or take any sort of wage cut. I think he has the potential to be another Puncheon, albeit on much higher wages. Chris Martin is a good shout actually, if he get's frozen at Norwich, he is eaxctly the kind of young player with potential who could do a job here. If Afobe is nowhere near the team at Arsenal (which I imagine he isn't), he's another one who could do a decent job for us. It's that or 3-4 carling cup games for him otherwise. I agree with some above, if we do get a loan, I would like it to be a young, hungry player, keen to make a name here and with the potential to progress. The likes A. Johnson I don't think would fit in with the mentality that Adkins is trying to foster in the club

The 'Poznan was f*cking cringeworthy. Agree support was brilliant today. You're right about RL, was well marshalled and ineffective today