tajjuk

Stripes are Stripes, it's red and white striped. It's not plain red is it? therefore it's not a Liverpool kit. Our kit - Liverpool Kit - Don't even look vaguely similar, they aren't even the same colour. People are too fussy.

Yep this one for me as well. Crouch could have scored at the other end, people debating whether he should have run into the corner. Knew as soon as that goal went in that we were down.

I don't think there is anything to worry about, Ramirez is clearly very talented and also still very young, loads of players excel domestically but not internationally, you only have to look at England for that. He will also need time to adapt, new country, new league, new teamates, new language, new climate etc. I suspect we will build the team around him, he is probably technically and talent wise better than anyone else in the team at the moment. If we play to his strengths and get him in the right positions I think he can be a huge success. It's something that international managers continue to fail to do, ask Lionel Messi.

Wow, sorry for wanting the club to become bigger, and thinking that it's good that we are getting more overseas fans. Seriously come back from the 1970s, football is a business these days, looking glassy eyed at the 'good old days; won't change that so how about embrace the positives.

Worth it? He got to play for England, some people would give their arm for that, it's hardly a chore and I can't see how it can in anyway be detrimental unless you got massively injured in your England appearance. Zamora, If I'm correct he was 29 when he got capped in 2010, off the back of a scoring record of 8 goals in 27 games. His top flight record for Fulham is 20 goals in 91 appearances, before his first cap he had a 28 goals in 157 premier league games! Hardly 'proven' at the top level. Defoe is also clearly not really wanted by any England manager, he is pretty much always a sub, pretty much always gets taken off when he starts, he;s not even valued that much by any premiership manager. It's just that we don't have many options. BTW Kevin Davies was 33 and 200 days when he made his England debut.

I like it, but probably going to buy the away one as I like that even more! People are obviously very fussy it seems, it's also still red and white striped.

I think they mean 47 million, that would be more realistic figure. Good to see though that we are getting more exposure on the world stage, part of the strategy of building up the club must be improving overseas marketing. Most overseas people will have been watching Utd but that exposure gives the opportunity to gain new fans in the long term, plus signing players from the likes of Japan and Zambia opens up potential connections with those countries. This also might sound silly but I think we play in a good colour for overseas audiences, some massive teams (like Utd, Livepool) play in red and is it not a lucky colour in Asia? One of the reasons Cardiff changed colours?

Personally I think he will come straight in, but you can't judge him against the UAE. I think our scouting team, have been watching him for while, he was part of a very poor VVV team so probably had to defend under pressure pretty much all the time so that will stand him in good stead. Whilst the Dutch league isn't the same standard as the premier league, players from that league have always been good technical players and plenty of pace, there also seems to be a massive gap between the top teams and the rest so I'm confident he has defended against quality attackers probably a lot more than Jos and Fonte have. Out of which player you could drop, well a case could be made for either. I don't think from the 3 games so far that either of our centre-backs has even played a 7/10 game. Yes they have played two games against some of the best attackers in the league but that doesn't excuse individual errors. Hooiveld has given away two penalties so far. The first he was probably unlucky, doubt that would have been given if the game had been at St. Mary's, seemed a very big club, home decision to me. The other though was a horror show and showed a complete lack of composure and thought. Fonte, seems to have got better from the first game, I find it odd that someone has attributed blame to him for the first RVP goal, Clyne slipped, he was marking RVP, had he not slipped (even though he did get under the ball and was poorly positioned) RVP wouldn;t have scored because Clyne would have got across to him to make a very difficult shot near impossible. However Fonte did slice a clearance under no pressure and then failed to mark the only guy who looked like scoring for utd at a corner. Add in the mistake at Wigan as well. He was also less reliable in the championship than Hooiveld. Individual errors when under pressure have nothing to do with the quality of the opposition. They will lead to goals at any level, I think with Hoooiveld and Fonte they will continue to make these errors, it's just choosing the one that will make less.

I think that is frankly a ridiculous statement, playing for your country is a massive honour regardless of how many minutes you get. There is no way that Kevin Davies is anything other than proud to have been capped by his country. Rickie would be no different, you only have to see the article in this thread, for a player who has worked his way up from the lower leagues to get ANY time in an England shirt would be massive honour for him. The MLT and Beattie situations were different, MLT was amongst the best players of his generation, the England team should have been built around him, he couldn't have done a lot more to be an England regular and it's no wonder he was miffed. Beattie just wasn't good enough, he had one 'hot' season in a team that was punching above it's weight. The inclusion of the likes of Zamora and Davies, shows that this could be a possibility. Also i don't know why anyone is bringing age into this, Defoe will be the same age as RL in a month. Also Ashley Cole is 32. Steven Gerrard is also 32. John Terry is 32. Lampard is 34. Carrick is 31. We don't have an abundance of players to be fussy over ages. A good point was also made in the earlier thread about Pirlo and Scholes. Older players can have massive impacts. Possible England forwards from the top flight:- Rooney (26) - 27 goals last year, 0 this year, injured. Defoe (29) - 11 goals last year, 1 so far this year, not a regular for club. Carroll (24) - 4 goals last year, 0 this year, injured. Bent (28 ) - 9 goals last year, 0 this year, Wellbeck (21) - 9 goals last year, O this year, not a regular for club (only 18 league goals ever) Zamora (31) - 7 last year, 2 this year. Crouch (31) - 10 last year, 1 this year. Graham (27) - 12 last year, 1 this year. Sturridge (23) - 11 last year, 0 this year, not a regular for club Holt (31) - 15 last year. (injured?) Walcott (23!) - 8 last year, 0 this year. Have I missed anyone? Slim pickings there, not an abundance of youth either with quite a few that are very injury prone (bent).

No club has an infinite amount of money not even Man CIty, at the same time we don't know how much the budget (even if we had a specifc one) was, personally I think if a quality centre back was available for a decent price then we would have bought him. I just don't go with this we had X amount and we spent Y amount one player, therefore we had X - Y left to spend on other players and this wasn't enough. I think we made bids for players we thought would improve the defence, such as Curtis Davies, but then these clubs came back either saying no or saying they wanted £15 million (just look at Middlesborugh fans valuation of Rhys Williams) so we didn't pursue those targets. Whereas with Ramirez I think we made an enquiry, quickly cottoned that Bologna needed the money and that they would accept a valuation close to what we thought he was worth, saw it as a great opportunity to sign a player a club of our stature doesn't usually get. Get a new left back was obviously high up the list, we had one almost signed and bids for several others. "I base this on 3 games, one of which was Wigan to whom we conceded 2 goals at home. And apart from 2 of the worst pens I have ever seen, the goals against column would have been 2 higher." I made a post the other day that highlighted that 9 clubs conceded more than 3 goals to either Man Utd or Man City and they all stayed up, none of those clubs scored 2 goals either. So has is it "inevitable" that we will concede goals against other teams? Seems a bit unfair to write off our defence as not good enough based on 3 games, let alone that two of those games were against the best two teams in the league. Wigan maybe, but then we conceded one goal on the counter, were unlucky not to score one ourselves and then conceded a late one chasing the game. There is more to it than just the fact be conceded two goals at home to wigan.

100% agree, was worried about him but he has been brilliant, a refreshing change especially to the likes of ITV's horrific Man Utd bias or the Liverpool bias on BBC.

Why exactly? Is there an endless supply of quality defenders that want to play for us and are value for money? We could have made 40 bids for defenders and 3 bids for attacking players, just because the attacking ones resulted in transfers doesn't mean that priority wasn't given to defence. "The last part is bizarre. This site is full of assumptions, speculation, conjecture, just like you just trying to infer that priority was given defensive strengthening." I'm not trying to infer anything, I'm just showing a different possibility, you are trying to infer that priority wasn't given to defensive signings and use this as a basis to criticise the club, you base this train of thought on essentially the fact that you think that we didn't sign enough players in those positions, even though we have signed a GK, RB, CB, CM, AM, WINGER, STR. 3 defensive signings, 1 Midfield signing and 3 attacking signings, as well as you know nothing of what bids we made. The other poster is essentially saying we should question the club's transfer policy in this based on IF we get relegated and IF our relegation is caused by bad defenders. 35 games before we can answer any of those questions. That's too many assumptions and IFs in my opinion to form a valid point.

Assumptions:- "finite budget" - we have no evidence of this, for all we know the board will pay any amount they deem is value for money based on each target. Goes back to my point about Ramirez seeming good value at £12 million, and Rhys Williams at the same price not. "I would say priority should have been the oft quoted LB\CB\GK positions." - again how do you know it wasn't. One of our first signings was a Right Back, we were linked with a bid for Buttner (a left backl) and Dann (a centre back) far before any talk of Ramirez. I also at no point think that club has been thinking of replacing Kelvin, all the keepers we have looked at signing have been young keepers, like Butland, so replacements in the future for Kelvin, not this season. "we are inevitably going to concede.", based on our performance against two of the best attacks in Europe and without our new defender? "If we do get relegated this season and it is because we let in too many goals, I think you would seriously have to question Adkins / Cortese and their strategy for this year, or at lest hope they learn a lesson for the future" - again more assumptions, lot of ifs there.

That is my point, if no 'world-class CB' was available why would you give up the chance to sign 'world-class attacking player'? The squad needs improving, the squad has been improved. I suppose what I am getting at is this:- We spent £12-15m on Ramirez, the OP is suggesting whether it would have been better to spend elsewhere, specifically in defence, a recognised (by fans and manager) weakness area. Well working on the assumption that we didn't have any other budget left (and I think that's a big assumption considering our other reported bids) who do you buy? I can;t think of any 'world class' centre backs that would have come to us? A few for about half the price were mentioned - Curtis Davies, Huth, Rhys Williams, Dawson, but it seems that £6 million for one of them wasn't enough. So £9 million on Dawson (plus higher wages than Ramirez), £12 million for Rhys Williams? OR Gaston Ramirez? who would you have signed?

No. In my opinion and I believe the clubs, the only priority was to improve the squad. I believe they tried to do that in all areas but were only successful in some. Would people have been happier if we hadn't have signed Ramirez (i.e the prolonged transfer negotiations collapsed) and then signed a few average defenders?

Asier del Horno, former Chelsea and Bilbao and Spain defender, think he is only 31. Is a left back. Agree though some of these frees would be cheap cover/competition if they are physically up to it. Any from:- Del Piero zambrotta Gordon Boruc Del Horno Would add to the squad and provide experience in positions we need to at least january.

Why has Delgado been brought into this conversation? Bit tenuous really, only link i can see is that Delgado and Ramirez are both from South America. Ramirez is much younger, has top flight experience in a top european league, plays in a different position, and was wanted by clubs a lot bigger than us. Oh and he probably doesn't have a career threatening injury either. It's a safe bet to say he is better signing than Delgado. Incidentally for all the "our defence needs serious investment talk". We played Man U and Many City and conceded 3 goals in each game. Villa (twice), Swansea, Norwich (twice), Utd (hah!) Spurs, Arsenal, Wigan, Fulham all conceded more than 3 goals against Man Utd or Man City last year AND in all those games none managed to score 2 goals AND all stayed up. The only real concern was our performance at home against Wigan where we didn't take our chances and create enough (plus conceded a late silly goal chasing the game).

Yes but point is even without Ramirez it still would be sh*te if there weren't any suitable replacements. I'm delighted with Ramirez at £12 million, I think it's a great signing. I would have been horrified if we had not bought him and instead spent £12 million on Rhys Williams or Michael Dawson. Bids went in for defenders whilst we were negotiating the Ramirez deal, that's enough for me to suggest that funds weren't being diverted from defensive signings to the Ramirez deal like the OP is suggesting.

In a word NO For me one of the biggest problems after the FA cup final highs of 2003 was the lack of investment in 'quality'. We bought players but arguably only maybe Kevin Phillips and Crouch improved the squad, but we didn't sign a lot of players. Surely the 'mantra' for player recruitment should be - 'improves the squad' + 'is value for money' = attempt to sign. We were linked with plenty of CBs and LBs in the window, we tried to get Buttner, who the obviously thought would be better than Fox and a good value, it didn't go through for whatever reason. We were linked with the likes of Curtis Davies, Rhys Williams, Dawson, Huth etc. for about £6 million, all of whom would have been better than what we had and good value at that price. However look at Williams, Borough fans were talking £12-14 million, what if we made the bid and Middlesbrough came back with that price, would you have been happy with Rhys Williams at £12 million because he covers a position we need? Simply you don't know who we went for and how much money we offered, or how much budget we had left. There isn't an endless list of top quality centre backs out there who will come play for a newly promoted team. Half the teams in the premiership are struggling with defenders in my opinion. Look at Agger and Skrtel for pool, even Vidic and Ferdinand where severely troubled yesterday by what is effectively a championship attack. Full backs are even harder to come by, we have signed a very promising one. How many quality left backs are there in the premiership? We have signed a 21 year old, full international, who is highly rated by most 'experts' in the game, who has a two full seasons of top flight football experience and has impressed against the likes Juventus, Milan and Inter and scored goals in one of the most defensive leagues in the world. A player who was wanted by Champs league teams and you are moaning that we signed him? (A similarly 'rated; player in Pastore went to PSG from Palermo for close to £30 million, £12 million seems a steal) One quality player can make a huge difference between success and failure, look at RVP, Arsenal would not be in the Champions League without him. Give Ramirez a chance before you write him off.

Have to say the reaction to the substitutions is over the top, we didn't loose that game because of the subs. Subs where needed, and Lambert, Lallana and Punch were all candidates due to the work rates they had put in. However changing all 3 was probably an error, we needed some fresh legs in the middle and had Cork been on the bench then I would have imagined he would have come on. I would have also like to have seen Lee come on instead of Guly, we all know Guly has qualities but work rate and defensive awareness are not amongst them, Lee would have continued the good hassling work that Lallana did on the left hand side and might have got out to stop the cross for the last goal. Also Jay Rod should have gone up the middle. What cost us the game was poor defensive positioning and marking. The entire back 5 were to blame:- - Clyne was probably the best of the bunch but his slip was costly and really was an unprofessional mistake, as Jamie Redknapp said at half time, you go on the pitch beforehand, test out the ground and choose the most suitable boots/stud, even I do this at Sunday league level. Even with the slip though is positioning is generally poor and most times he gets out jail because he has the pace to recover. I liken him a lot to Micah Richards. - Fonte seems to be getting most of the stick here, again his marking is poor and he seems to make rash/pressurised decisions as he gets more tired. I thought for most of the game he was generally tidy and efficient, but as we see, when it gets to the last 10-15 minutes he seems knackered and his decisions/reactions reflect this. Fitness issue or just can;t quite keep up with the pace of the prem? - Hooiveld, again looked ok and coped for most of the game, but at times looks clumsy and rushed. Whilst KD caused the penalty situation the tackle was an absolute horror show, there was no need to make a tackle like that in the box with RVP facing away from goal. - Fox, well what to be said, just doesn't look up to it, wasn't sure when to be forward or back, seemed a lot more nervous in possession than anyone else and was reluctant to close down Valencia (fear of being beaten easily?). We have no other options and I can't see Shaw doing any worse so it might be worth giving him a go. - Kelvin, not really at fault for any of the goals but for me a top class keeper might have saved the 1st and 3rd (straight down the middle), he again looks nervous not holding shots and his distribution put us in trouble twice. Whilst I think it is good that we are trying to build form the back, if Kelvin is up to it then we should keep it simple. Overall though the worrying thing for me about the defence is the lack of leadership and co-ordination, all the players seem to be nervous and are worrying about their own game, at times they all look like they are defending as if they are own their own. Hopefully Yoshida has some leadership comm skills and is confident enough in his own ability that this will rub off on the other players. The positives:- - The formation looked good with the right players in the right positions. Lallana wide looked good, Lambert showed he can lead the line on his own, Puncheon has a new lease of life, with Mayuka and Ramirez to settle in I am confident we cna cause trouble to any defence in this league. - The midfield 3 were excellent, with Cork to come back as well we are well served here. JWP is going to be a top player and deserves to keep his spot. Morgan oozed class.