UK Summer transfer window - gossip, rumours and facts

I take your point and clearly you would know a lot more about West Ham than I would, but wasn't their spending less a case of splashing out once they got promoted, and more a case of maintaining premiership-level spending as soon as they got relegated, in the hope that they would bounce straight back up?

Arsenal fancy being a force next season huh?

Do they want all three- Torres, Rooney and Higuain? Or is it a case of one of the above? What then happens to Podolski and Giroud?

Torres and rooney wont happen.....it better not

Oh FFS!! Steve McLown has joined QPR as an assistant to Harry Redknapp. Next season, League One, here we come!

Just out of interest LG, what is your issue with McLaren?  I haven't followed his career closely but it seems to me that he did (very) badly with the England team, and pretty well before and since then (if you excuse Notthingham Forest, which seemed a massive clusterfuck at the time) is pretty good.  He especially did very well with Twente.

It seems like if a manager cannot get the England team to win the world cup, they are shit, no matter what else they have done in their career.  Sven is absolutely mullered by England fans as an absolute joke, but (whatever you think of the guy) his CV was impressive until he started taking mickey mouse jobs for the cash and fanny.

Off the top of my head, Nolan was the only premier league quality player we bought in when we went down, and we only held on to the others because no one wanted them.  Rob Green wanted to leave, but I spoke to (former West Ham keeper) Alan Parkes after our first game in the Championship and he said that we weren't asking for lots of money for him, but no one wanted him.  Think it was the same for Carlton Cole, while our best player from the relegations season (Scott Parker) left.  If I look at the starting line up for a game in Sept after the transfer window had closed, I don't think there are many you would say were proper premier league quality:

Away to Millwall

• 01 Green
• 03 McCartney
• 05 Tomkins (Reid - 30' )
• 15 Faye
• 17 O'Brien
• 18 Faubert
• 04 Nolan
• 14 Taylor (Bentley - 59' )
• 16 Noble Booked
• 22 Lansbury (Baldock - 74' )
• 09 Cole Booked

NUFC in dissaray. Losing players to the likes of Swansea. Kineear bing himself. Relegation this year is looming

McClaren's first spell with Twente went well. His second effort didn't. Middlesbro was a failure, England

Didn't he get the England job on the back of doing well at Middlesbrough? 

A quick wiki search:

Won the league cup. 

Qualified for Europe for the first time in their history. 

Reached the last 16 of the UEFA cup. 

Finished 7th in EPL - best finish since 1975. 

Reached UEFA cup final - first English manager to reach the final since 1984. 

A couple of FA cup semifinals. 

Failure?

Yeah, McLaren has been tainted by his failure to qualify for EURO 2008 with England, but he doesn't really deserve the bad press he gets, his club managerial career has been pretty decent.

Boro was his first job as manager as well, so very impressive. 

Not often mentioned that he was also assistant at ManU from 1999 - 2001. That's a pretty successful period in their history, they won the league every year that he was there, including the treble in his first season. 

Suarez to Arsenal?! Sounds like porkies

yeah well tired of Arsenal being linked to every Tom , Dick and Harry

odds on Wenger spends 5/8's of FA , be a right dag. 

Anelka to WBA

maybe now Odenw can go to Brown Bags Harry

you'd have to fancy Arsenal to score some goals next season with Suarez, Rooney, Torres and Higuian up front (and Giroud, Poldolski and Walcott on the bench).

Anelka lookin pretty chuffed to be at his 12th club;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v37suDoylik&feature=youtu.be

I heard a rumour that Alonso is keen on a move to Chelsea.....as a Liverpool fan I'd be gutted.

Benteke hands in transfer request....Strikers moving everywhere

West Ham want Downing?! Any truth to that one Frankie?

Paper talk at the moment, but I would be happy with it if it was somewhere around 6m, and the wages were decent.  I think that he is a good player - not worth the 16m and 80k per week Liverpool paid, but a very good player for a club striving for mid table.

What a lot of money Kenny Dalgleish spent with no benefit. Wonder how much this has damaged Liverpool.

West Ham recruiting pretty hard.

Winny's spot is safe I would have thought.

Semi-related. I have to say that Swansea are recruiting very well in the window. Shelvey and Bony two pretty handy attacking players. They could do well again this year.

I can't see West Ham recruiting any more CBs at the moment. More likely Wingers and another striker according to twitter gossip.

Norwich doing well in the window too....Ricky Van Wolfswinkel and Fer. Interesting that Fer failed a medical at Everton in January though. Wonder if he was injured at the time or if there is something more sinister to it?

Rumours that ManU have returned to Barca with a 26m bid for fabregas, after missing out on thiago.

It would seem very stupid for Barca to sell both of them, with xavi now probably looking to pass on the reins over the next 1-2 seasons

Cesc would rather stay on the bench and take a pay cut rather than play for Man U.

He loves Barca, was their most used player last season, and Xavi is starting to wind down.

He has everything he wants, and until Barca don't want him, he will stay. End of

Ubergunner, please e-mail me. Wish to chat to you about QPR jersies as BB....Here

been away for a bit, so not really keeping this thread updated.  So it appears that Chelsea will do Man Utd a massive favour by taking Rooney (and his 200k per week wages) off their hands, which personally I think is mental.  Even more mental is the news that Wigan have slapped a 20m price tag on James McCarthy.

Standard Rooney, Fabregas, Suarez gossip today, but this is interesting:

Paul Lambert is on a mission to slash £1million a month off Aston Villa's wage bill...

For a club that finished, what 16th last season, this will mean getting rid of approximately 250k per week and not replacing them at all.I would guess that the average player at Villa would be on somewhere around 50k per week, so this means getting rid of 5 players.  Even if we say Bent is on 80k per week, it still means getting rid of him and 3 other high earners, and not replacing them at all.  The squad was paper-thin last season, so it will be a hell of a struggle for them this one.

I've put it on two other threads so why not here too!

http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/liverpool-reject-improved-40m-bid-5271074

for the love of god i hope arsenal dont sign suarez, but i wish they would sign some one. 

So apparently, Real have offered a bumper package of £51m cash plus Angel Di Maria and Fabio Coentrao for Bale, making the deal worth £95m.  Wowsers.  If this happens (and papertalk is that the offer was rejected) surely Spurs will then buy a striker?

In bigger news, Carlton Cole is ready to turn his back on the Premier League and join French club St Etienne.  Poor lad struggled with English so god knows how he will pick french up (although the french league would suit his "falling over every 16 seconds" technique.

In news that probably less than 6,000 people globally care about, CRYSTAL PALACE (their caps, not mine) are prepared to throw Marouane Chamakh a Premier League lifeline.

Di Maria was considered a shocking diver in Spain, so I am not sure how he would be considered in the UK - probably about the same as Bale.

cue all the YF cleanshirts coming on here and saying that Guzan was reckless in the challenge above and Bale was right to throw himself to ground