Bombadil

There's nothing wrong with that, I'd love to see Geordie boy Lee Clark - who would literally crawl over broken glass to play for his hometown club - be given the opportunity to show us the passion he has for the club.

I hope this means that we are bringing someone in today.

It will be interesting to see what Oliver comes up with in today's Chronicle. Expect him to take PR spinning to a whole new level.

In an ideal world we'd bring someone in and keep hold of Milner because the squad is so thin, but I wouldn't be too arsed if Milner left.

Don't worry lads, Roeder will be watching them play for West Ham and if they're good enough for us, we will be in pole position to sign them in January.

Gol, you can add Ibrahimovic to your list.

I wonder why we're not in for Distin? Boro agreed a £5m fee for him the other week and seeing as we were supposedly prepared to pay that amount for Huth, you would think it would make sense to get Distin, who can play left-back too.

I agree with Craig. I've never seen Rossi play and loan signings can be a good thing, but taking on a kid from Man Utd for four months proves we're fucking desperate.

I imagine Shepherd and Roeder will be making right tits of themselves right now. "Hello, it's Glenn Roeder, could I speak to Keith Lamb please? What do you mean, I've got the wrong club? Oh all right, whatever, put me through to whoever is in charge, I'm sure you've got one or two players I'm interested in..."

He blatantly has no feel for the club.

Gravesen has officially signed for Celtic. Not bothered tbh.

Fifth striker! He'd be first choice for us...

He’ll probably Huth up front. Why Mourinho kept bringing him on to play as a striker is beyond me, he’s blatantly useless there.

Agree, said this before like. Should stick to that then we'd only need two strips instead of three. Won't happen for the reason you mention. 187435[/snapback] I'd like to think it won't happen because yellow and green looks dreadful.

Maybe they appear to ber never ending as he didn't have the operation it was clear he needed over the summer break. 187555[/snapback] Exactly. You just knew the injury was going to cause trouble again when Roeder announced in the papers that Shola would have another injection instead of an operation.

Two strikers, yeah right.

When the season ended, I was quite confident Roeder and Shepherd would make the most of this transfer window. What a shambles.

"We are in pole position and I expect at least three new players in by Thursday."

It's probably just Alan Oliver making up shit as usual, I wouldn't read too much into it.

To be fair, you're not giving him enough credit - he does like the odd chat about Islamic extremists and the sandal-wearing, Guardian-reading PC do-gooders that support them.

There's no way Martins was Roeder's top target IMO. I doubt he was even on the list until 2-3 weeks ago. Roeder spent half the transfer window explaining how important it was to get someone in with Premiership experience and how the club couldn't afford to take another expensive gamble à la Luque. He only changed his tune a few weeks ago when he admitted that he'd have to gamble anyway. The whole thing reminds me of the Luque deal last year. Let's just hope Martins will turn out to be better suited to English football than Luque. And let's hope Shola's injury isn't too bad, because if we end up playing Martins up front alongside Milner or Luque, I can see him having trouble to adapt.

I'm not too worried. He was the same last season when he started poorly and slowly, but was one of our best players in the second half of the season (after Roeder took over). He's obviously not the player he was though and N'Zogbia and Duff should be first choice on the wings. I still think that over the course of the whole season and in home games especially, he will prove to be a valuable player for us, provided we play with two strikers and a bit of movement up front.

Excellent.