I intend to take this with the good grace that Liverpool fans taught me... They're **** anyway and you only signed them because you offered the £200k a week more than we did.
We've nicked so many players off 'Pool over the years that I think it's only fair that we let them buy a few, now. Let's face it, they've got quite a pot to spend, what with what they're going to get from Real for Goofy, and we cannot hope or expect to be able to compete with that, any more than 'Pool had a chance of competing with us when we had the Bale money. I'd like Lallana to stay at Saints or move to us, but I won't be massively upset if he ends up at 'Pool. I believe that 'Pool is going to be massively weakened after Goofy goes, whoever they bring in, and with the humiliations they are going to suffer in the CL, I cannot imagine that Klanfield is going to be a fun place to be at, this time next year.
This post stinks of bitterness, well stinks of HIAG. I did read a post of yours smewhere saying you would love to sign Lallana (or along those lines). If given the choice whether to sign for a club that had a couple of years of medicore success but are now put back in their place - or signing for the runners up of the league and a team that are straight in the group stages of the CL, it's a no brainer. So you'll end with another load of brainless signings that the TOP clubs don't want How about signing someone like Torres, he'd get on well with Loldado. I'm sure they would be a formidable partnership.
We've not attempted to sign Lallana, Skylarker. We've already got about a million players in his position. We've got too many, if anything. We didn't take players that the top clubs wanted, anyway. We simply couldn't. Liverpool, on the other hand...
And Paulinho, who's at the World Cup with Brazil, while Coutinho watches it on TV in Merseyside. He may have been misused by certain ex-managers at WHL, but it certainly hasn't made him a bad player. We've got more midfielders than we can currently field in two sides. It's a bit silly.
We definitely won't be getting Lallana because when a player is involved that both Spurs and Liverpool want, we always end up with the average ones. We laugh about beating Liverpool to a player, but the reality is that we're the ones with egg on our face nearly every time! Spurm, did you not see my post about the guy called "Balic"? That's about as close to Ball-itch as you're gonna get!
Grant Hall will join Birmingham City on loan for the next campaign. He was one of our Swindon Hotspur loanees last season and moves up the pyramid.
We've got nine central midfielders who are full internationals, to be exact. In order of squad number: Paulinho, Holtby, Capoue, Dembele, Sigurdsson, Eriksen, Livermore, Sandro and Bentaleb. Add our youth players like Pritchard and Carroll and we could pick a whole side. It's too much.
22 years old and not featured for us since signing. Apparently he can't be recalled, so that'll make him 23 before he's got any chance of playing for us, which IMO, won't happen. why do we have so many "young" players like this? We all want to see the youth given a chance, but if he was good enough, he would have featured by now. IMO, youth players need to be good enough to play by the time they're 19 or 20, or otherwise they simply won't be of the caliber we need based on the ambitions the club has, as we'll just sign players who are already of the standard. You're either good, or you're not. It doesn't matter how old you are. Take Raheem Sterling as an example. 19 and has played for 2 seasons. We've got too many players in the development squad that we need to make some decisions over. I don't understand why they are with us. It'd be fine if we were a team down at the bottom of the table and we had to make-do due to financial restrictions, but we aren't one of those clubs.
if someone's playing in the lower leagues by the time they are 20, they are unlikely to be of premier league standard, in most cases IMO. - hence why no premier league club has snapped them up during their academy days!
Lallana, Fletcher, Lewandowski, Paulinho, Pedro, Flamini, Pirlo, Koscielny and countless others have all been of little note in their early career. Okay Pirlo wasn't exactly under the radar but he moved to Inter when he was hyped and didn't make it there. Sorry but I think it's rubbish to say that players can be written off if they aren't good enough to play in a top league by 20. It might well be that we don't see a future for Hall and the loan is just to get him in the shop window but I don't think you can write him off just based on his age and lack of chances in our team.
Lallana played 40 games in the championship as a 20yr old. Its not his fault his club weren't in the prem
Also don't forget Ian Wright didn't turn professional until 21. Then you have Lambert who never played premier league football until 30 and has now earned a move to Liverpool after holding his own in the premier league for two years. Luca Toni in Italy didn't do much in his early career.
Looking at Lamberts rise, his is the most impressive as he started with as a trainee in 1998 (at 16 with Blackpool), ended up getting released, playing in league 1/2 sides and he never made it to the championship until 2011. Now I bet when he was 21/22 people where telling him he wouldn't be good enough to play premier league football as he was probably struggling to make ends meet, hardly playing in the lower leagues, but whos laughing now.
