Hmmmmmm, so maybe Harry has been working on this all along only to say to Levy at 4pm on transfer day.

"Danny, Van Der vaat was supposed to go to Munich for £18 million and the transfer has just fallen through, i have been told that we can get him by £8 Million as they are having a fire sale, but i need a reply in 5 minutes as he needs to get the next flight to london"

Danny Levy in a moment of panic nods and Harry walks away smiling.

I wonder how much we are paying wages wise.

Harry said that Levy phoned him to suggest it.

£8m seems a decent price for a senior Dutch international, especially in a market where that can just about buy you a Bebe or two thirds of a Gyan, but surely it is only a good price when you are buying a player for a position you actually need to fill? Where Van Der Vaart plays is perhaps the position are strongest in so it could easily be construed as £8m out of the budget for buying, well a decent central defender in the next window or two.

Will he do well in England? I'm not so sure. He likes to take his time on the ball and in the areas he plays there's not much time nor many touches to be had before someone is on top of you. It's hard to imagine at his age that he can change his game, but we'll see.

I see that Jerome Aliadiere is currently unattached and unwanted.

File alongside Bobby Barnes (and indeed his son Giles), Matt Oakley and Richie Humphries in my own personal 'This Kid Is Going To Be Some Player' drawer of career disappointment.

I'm still hopeful about David Ball.

Giles Barnes might still make something of his career if he ever manages to stay fit for a while. He's still only 22.

Pele had played in two World Cups by time he was that age.

Tony, your expectations are crushing the life out of him! Let him breathe...

Danny Levy in a moment of panic nods and Harry walks away smiling.

I wonder how much we are paying wages wise.

That's the big question. His wages are the reason that he's so cheap. Unwanted players at a big club are little more than a burden that must be gotten rid of. I think a better way of putting a value on a player you are selling is adding the wages you don't pay in which case real madrid effectively got £8 million and say the £4 million a year for each of the last three years of his contract. Whereas spurs should value the signing of him at 8 million and 4 years of his wages.

He's a good player with many fine qualities and spurs can always do with more of those. Whether or not he'll adapt is a different matter entirely. It'll take him a while, but spurs have spent 8 million in worse ways. I mean harry tried to sign ryan fucking babel.

Oh, and if there was an 18 million bid from bayern munich as harry claims, then Real madrid never heard about it.

"It is absolutely false that Real Madrid received a 21 million euro offer from Bayern Munich for Van der Vaart. In fact, the German team never showed an interest to sign the player, so the allegations made in England have greatly surprised us."

The Awesome Berbaslug!!! wrote:
Danny Levy in a moment of panic nods and Harry walks away smiling.

I wonder how much we are paying wages wise.

That's the big question. His wages are the reason that he's so cheap. Unwanted players at a big club are little more than a burden that must be gotten rid of. I think a better way of putting a value on a player you are selling is adding the wages you don't pay in which case real madrid effectively got £8 million and say the £4 million a year for each of the last three years of his contract. Whereas spurs should value the signing of him at 8 million and 4 years of his wages.

He's a good player with many fine qualities and spurs can always do with more of those. Whether or not he'll adapt is a different matter entirely. It'll take him a while, but spurs have spent 8 million in worse ways. I mean harry tried to sign ryan fucking babel.

I cannot disagree with any of that and would rather VDV that Babel, both of whom i saw as promising youngsters at Ajax.

VDV reminded me of Joe Cole and Babel I thought had pace and no brain.

I am not nervous about the money we spent if he does not work out, we should be able to sell him easily to a Bundesliga or Serie A side for £10 Million or so.

What worries me is how many games he will take to adapt to his teammates and the premiership (if he does at all) and our results during that time.

In addition to this, the personel and formation changes needed to accommodate him might not strengthen the team overral.

I'm worried about all the fart jokes Lawro will be lining up.

Giles Barnes came on a a sub against Sunderland a few weeks back for WBA and was quite impressive.....itd be interesting to see what he's like when fit and up against a proper team.

Going back to Bebe, he doesn't feature in Man U's 25 man CL squad even though apparently there are only 24 players included.

As someone in The Observer points out this morning, if Rednkapp had made this deal the media scrutiny would be far stronger.

bebe is in the champions league squad, not that it really means much either way. it is a very unusual transfer though, but not much more unusual than the signing of chris smalling, which I find equally amazing in it's own sweet way.

Tottenham's new signing appears to be a bit of a drama queen

meanwhile (daily mail alert) this headline shows the value of bullying the media. basically the daily mail have written a shitload of articles not really questioning the details of the deal to sign bebe, but instead wrote a load of articles attacking bebe himself, they piled on the champions league announcement and added in that he'd been dropped from yet another man utd reserve game because he was nowhere near the standard required of a player, and had insider quotes. Unfortunately not only was bebe in the champions league squad but he was missing from the reserve game because he was training with the portuguese u-21 squad. So ferguson banned the daily mail from old trafford, and now they're writing these articles presenting bebe's performance in that game as being amazing.

Now I watched this game thanks to the miracle of the internet and bebe was ok. The goal is a terrible mistake by the keeper, and he missed one decent chance when the ball was cut back a bit far behind him, and another chance when the ball was fired across the goal.

His overall performance was ok. He's one of the biggest wingers i've seen in a while but needs to use his size more. You can see that he has a decent amount of talent, but he lacks the consistency of touch that marks out a top player. Maybe all of that will come but the fee still looks very high, but it will be at least a season before he's ready for first team football, if ever.

Georgeous George wrote:
Harry Truscott wrote:
Seyi Olofinjana, what does the panel think?

Eh? Where's that come from? I've heard diddly squat about him leaving us. I hope you're paying cash.

If he is, i will be quite miffed. He's been criminally underused, and would be a great asset in this league. Having said that, with Ashbee back to fitness, Cairney, Bostock, etc, maybe his chances here could be limited.

Who knows, if you're paying enough, the readys might fund Jimmy Bullard's wage rise, and if he plays, and stays fit*, you're all in trouble.


*Clutch those straws, George.

So, Seyi Olofinjana (on a season's loan from Hull City to Cardiff City) evaded his marker Anthony Gerrard (on a season's loan from Cardiff City to Hull City) at a free-kick to score Cardiff City's crucial opener in their 2-0 defeat of Hull City today. Rum do, eh?

Fucking, fucking, meh!

Did you go, my Welsh friend? Were we as dangerous as Graham Norton armed with a feather duster, as our local radio station made us out to be?

No, family commitments and a surprising number of games chalked up already meant I gave my ST to my brother to sample a game at Leckwith for the first time.

The reports from our end were similar though, Hull didn't seem to stretch our injury-hit line-up much. Worried about Leicester on Tuesday though.

The Awesome Berbaslug!!! wrote:
Tottenham's new signing appears to be a bit of a drama queen

Not as bad as I thought it would be after reading about it. Certainly an improvement on refusing to take to the field for Ajax after Ronald Koeman named him on the left-wing instead of centre-midfield.