Useless is an understatement mate, looked as though he never wanted to be there. Emry Huws and Drury? Never heard of them mate. I wouldn't mind giving Coulibaly a run, the kid looks like he could be a massive star in the future from what I've read and seen.
is Coulibaly in the squad? Where is the correct EL squad? He doesn't qualify for the b-list does he? So if he's not in the squad then he ain't gonna play. Unless my basic knowledge of the EL is wrong, which it well could be!
I think you are right, would need to be in the squad, as not been with us for 2 years. Not even been an adult for 2 year!
Coulibaly doesn't qualify for a B place, but it's hard to tell who's actually in the squad, as the UEFA site clearly has it wrong. Just looked again though and it's been updated, but still doesn't look right. http://www.uefa.com/uefaeuropaleague/season=2012/clubs/club=1652/index.html No Friedel? Possible, I guess. I'm going to hope for some returns from injury and go for: Gomes; Corluka, Dawson, Bassong, Rose; Lennon, Huddlestone, Livermore, Townsend; Dos Santos, Pavlyucheko. Bench of Cudicini, Walker, Kaboul, Nicholson, Carroll, Falque, Kane.
Fair comments PNP, but Corluka is useless as a CB in the Prem as he can't/won't head the ball. It ****s me off big time that a big lump like him hasn't learnt how to head the ball. Hudd has similar problems at CB, as for Walker, I'll wait and see. Probably in the EL, Corluka and Hudd could play CB adequately, against some teams anyway. But, for the Prem and domestic cups we have 5 decent CBs, two of whom are injury-prone, so effectively we only have 3 reliable ones. It only takes one injury as has happened to Daws, (and, IIRC, he missed a lot of last season) and we're in trouble. Not just injuries, BTW. CBs are very prone to suspensions, Kaboul being a classic example. Incidentally, Hudd is another with big question marks against his fitness, so it's pointless relying on him either. Our CB list isn't enough I think, as is likely to be shown by the next 3 games. Maybe we'll get aWAY WITH WITH IT, MAYBE WE WON'T. If we don't, then it galls me that we have someone who can play there, and who's on low wages, Caulker, helping out Swansea, not us. I stress I do understand there good points to loaning out players like Caulker. However, if we don't beat Pool and Stoke, and we end up going out of the EL at the group stage, I'll be questioning if the good points outweigh the bad points.
How often would Caulker have played for us so far, though? I agree that we need to weigh things up, but surely his progress as a player is better suited by this loan? We might've been better off either bringing someone else in as cover. Onouha seems to be way, way down in the pecking order at Man City or maybe Tomkins from West Ham?
Now this is why we should have just payed the money for Cahill,i know it was alot but we wouldn´t be in this mess now and we knew we needed another CB. With Gallas/King always iffy then why wait until January when it could be to late,and by no means certain that we´ll get him.Oh well if we had got him we wouldn´t be having this debate about a lack of CBs´so atleast that´s something.I surpose the good thing is a draw is a decent result(well with the players we have available).Would love to see Coulibaly play,but as has been said not sure if eligable.
I don't think that we'd have got Cahill, even if we'd have agreed to Bolton's terms, Pat. I believe that another side would've matched our bid and given him better personal terms, if we'd have had a bid accepted. The clubs around us are happy to wait 12 months to potentially pick him up for nothing. They wouldn't want to see him sign for us, though. Chelsea in particular would've done whatever they could to stop it, in my opinion.
PNP if we believe Harry,Cahill was our number 1 target on TDD so we must have thought we had a good chance or why waste the valuable time(we could have gone for someone else).Also it didn´t look like anyone else was trying to hard to get him after Arsenal failed.I get your point about Chelsea coming in for him,but would they have had time.Also it´s been said in the press!!!! that we are going for him in January,now that would seem a complete waste of time if other so-called bigger clubs come for him.
Redknapp and Levy may have believed that Cahill was attainable, but I don't think that he was. He stayed at the Reebok, so we'll never know if another club was monitoring our efforts. I think that he'll get snapped up on a pre-contract in January and then Bolton will be offered a fairly small amount for the last 6 months of his contract. Given the clubs that seem to be interested in him, I'd suggest that we've got very little chance of signing him.
Fair comments again PNP. Caulker would probably have only played against Hearts once so far, maybe twice. But now he would play v PAOK probably both times and Stoke in the CC. He would get plenty of game time in the UEFA, and if the CC run continues in that too. I appreciate the counter argument, but we are short at CB, and we had a player on low wages and no fee who could have filled that gap in Caulker. There are as you say other ways to fill that gap, but we didn't take them. Similar arguments for Smith and Naughton, though Naughton's wages are considerably higher I guess, but still nowhere the 'big earners' lge. As ever Harry, Danny & co will be judged by results, the next few may not be pretty. Then again, they may be brilliant, we'll see.
Tomkins would've been a smart signing, I reckon. Trouble is we'd probably have needed to shift Bassong on. I know we're having a few problems in defence at the moment but it still hasn't meant that last resort Bassong has had to play in an important game.
Not necessarily, SF. If we'd have brought in senior cover for Assou-Ekotto, who could also double-up as a centre-back (Figueroa from Wigan?) and allowed Rose to go out on loan again, then we'd have had much better depth. We could still do some business in January, of course, but that might be a little late or unnecessary. We'll see, I guess.
There's no point signing someone that in all liklihood, we're only going to want for a season. Also, keeping Rose in the first team for a full season, making sure he gets regular football through the Europa as well as anyother chances that fall his way, will be great for his development. We do have good depth already, the trouble is we have Corluka, Dawson, Gallas and Rose all injured at the sametime. With Walker, Kaboul, King, Bassong and Benny the only ones left fit does leave us in a slightly precarious situation but as we've seen with Bassong, it's important for a defender to be playing regularly, otherwise they're useless.
Hi LDL, unfortunately there's a problem. We don't have all those players available, we have shipped Caulker and Khumalo out. Gallas and King are high risk injury players, there is no realistic chance whatsoever of those two playing together on a regular basis. I've no idea how many first team games have elapsed since Gallas joined us, but I will guarantee King and Gallas have not played together more than 20% of those games, and in reality it may be as low as 2%. Corluka and Hudd aren't up to it at Prem level, plus Hudd has long term injury issues too. So in fact all those numbers are reduced to three 'normally fit' (tho Daws has had a couple of periods of long absences) and reliable CBs. Now Daws is injured again, and we're in big trouble. Had we had Caulker, who cost nowt and is on low wages, we could cope, but we haven't. There are good reasons why he is on loan, but those reasons may not be looking so good after Stoke on Tuesday. Leaving aside the glory of winning trophies, which is what I and most/all Spurs want to see, Cup runs = cash, one televised Carling Cup game would pay all Caulker's wages and expenses for a year. An EL run to the semi-finals, for example, would mint it in for us.
Just having one of King and Gallas fit is plenty when paired with any of our other centre backs to form a solid defence. Charlie plays regularly for Croatia at centre back and I see no reason why he couldn't do a job for us. I agree that keeping Caulker or Khumalo would've been a good idea but I think we're well equipped to compete in the PL and lets face it, no one really cares about the League Cup or Europa.
F*cking stupid rules. If a player is contracted to your club he shouldn't need to be registered for certain competitions. Understandably to have a minimum number of home grown players, I agree with that, but bar that, everyone else should be elligible if there under contract.
