Baggio

Depends if he wants to advance his career as he's never going to get the managers job there. McClaren done the same when he left Man Utd for Boro.

The only player signed in the last 2 years that I'd say we got lucky with was Tiote and even he was an International that played in the World Cup. The likes of Cabaye, Ben Arfa, Cisse, Ba and Santon are all well known in the previous country they played in, all are Internationals, some of them playing in top teams in their division with CL experience. We've still got the likes of Perch, Gosling, Marveaux and Obertan that haven't worked out that well so far so it's not a case of everyone fitting in straight away.

Not me, I don't remember reading that on here either.

Goes along with the article where Llambias was interviewed that says the club will be looking at making a £10 million profit for this season. Should pay for a new right back at least.

The echo claiming we are close to a deal for the French right back and that apardew hopes all of the players we're interested in have awful tournaments this summer http://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/sport/football/newcastle/9703526.Pardew_to_finalise_transfer_plans_as_he_prepares_for__difficult_campaign_/

It will be interesting to see if Villa still go for Guthrie.

I was just looking at the French league to see how Montpellier are getting on in trying to win the league (only need a point btw) and noticed how many teams are in the last day relegation fight. 12th place is still only 2 points above the relegation zone! Talk about tight.

Villa are a mess at Tue moment but still a big enough draw for someone pike Lambert or Rodgers. Learner threw money at MON and realised it was unsustainable so now they are on a major down scaling project since they're losing a fortune, they've got an average squad there now too.

He's got another 3 year's on his contract so he won't be going anywhere for a pay cut. I predict a short lived career on talksport when he retires followed by a colomn in the daily sport.

Pardew has said the coaches get together with the video analysts and work out the best way of approaching teams from there, what their weaknesses are and the best way to set up etc. He's not simply a motivator that sends his teams out to play 4-3-3 every game and as you say in games like Chelsea we've benefited from that, it just fails spectacularly sometimes.

It's only 5 league games to be fair, our biggest problem was the amount of goals we shipped in those away fixtures which did the damage to our goal difference. Pardew is making the right noises about needing new bodies at the back so hopefully that can get sorted, I think it's fair to say that Simpson and Williamson are not the standard that's needed if we want to stay in and around Tue European places.

Isn't that just down to winning games and getting the feel good factor back? The same could have been said for us when we went down, we were much happier with the squad that was winning most weeks despite losing the likes of Bassong, Beye and Martins who would have walked into Tue side.

That's how it works

He said Ben Arfa and others haven't looked as good in a 4-4-2 and that it doesn't suit our personnel. So if he just meant Ben Arfa then why not say that rather than trying to exaggerate the problem?

Which other personnel? Considering we've just finished the season in 5th and we've gone with this 4-3-3 around 2 months at the end.

Bolton down! Liverpool losing to Swansea!

2-2!!!

Their home record in the league before this one was P18 W17 D1

Unless Bolton blow the lead the twats! 2-2

Man City blowing it or Barton getting relegated... Win-win situation this one

Barton getting relegated as it stands.

Defoe's bit on the side. http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showbiz/4312774/Alexandra-Burke-dumps-Jermain-Defoe-after-he-cheats-again.html

Linked with Martin Olsson from Blackburn. http://m.mirror.co.uk/article?id=830163/

He's not totally bad, you did feel he wanted the club to be as successful as possible he just didn't have much of a clue how to go about it once Freddie Fletcher (former Rangers man) left, after making a complete mess of sacking and replacing Bobby Robson he had no idea how to turn it around so threw money the club didn't have at trying to fix it which left us up against it financially. He also had scams like buying a warehouse off the club cheap and then renting it back, I can't remember the figues but it was something like he purchased it for £300k from the club and was renting it back at £100k a year. So to summarise he took over a club that was 2nd in the league, one of the best teams around and £40 million in the bank from the float and left a decade later when we were 13th, had a shit squad on massive wages, had mortgaged everything we could and was hemorrhaging money. But we did have 3 good years under Sir Bobby to be fair to him, until he started selling players behind his back and undermined him by telling everyone he wouldn't get his contract renewed with 12 months still to run.