Just me, but I'd take 12 goals over 2....

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There's absolutely no guarantee he'll do that again, he's at the stage now where age will catch up with him very quickly, if it hasn't already. Stead will score more than 2 next season as well.

If he's going to be brought in as second choice then it's a good move, however if he's instead of McCarthy/Bellamy etc then it's a terrible move.

It was no big deal when the Riverside was renamed the Walkersteel stand. I don't see the difference, it's just what we have to do.

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Have to? Why? I can't see how we could possibly earn more than a couple of million for doing, we're certainly not going to get the kind of money that will make any long term impact.

What will make a long term impact is getting attendences back up...and re-naming the stadium is hardly a way of doing that, is it?

and british sea power!

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Oh, Larsen B....

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....is a bit of a crap song, and I love BSP (see my signature). In fact, the second album is a bit of a stinker.

Better do something on topic too...£3 million is a waste, half that and we'd have a good signing. We're not a club who should be spending that kind of money on a player we'll see no return on unless he's several levels above the rest...and Sav isn't that, hence why his career has extended to the dizzy heights of Leicester and Birmingham.

Once the legs go he'll be useless, he doesn't have the brain to compensate.

Good luck Steady, I know you'll be baging 20 goals a season in....

As soon as Sunderland are relegated.

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But Kuqi is good enough for us?

Something wrong with your logic somewhere.

No links at the moment because it's only just being reported on Sky Sports News, but it's been completed for £1.8 million.

If we get McCarthy and Phillips then I won't mind him going, but we really need to pull something out of the bag.

I wish him all the best, we'd probably be in Division One now if it wasn't for him.

Edit: Sorry...I see it's already been reported, just delete/merge this if the mod's see fit.

Oh come on...you don't honestly believe Man Utd have suddenly shown interest in Park purely for his football ability do you?

There's no doubt he's a good player, if he's to have any impact on ManUre's revenue then he'll have to be playing on a regular basis and Park is good enough to do that...but it's too much of a coincidence that they're going for a player they don't really need at a time when they're looking to make large increases in revenue to cover the debt.

just as nobody cared in Korea or Japan when Sun Jihai went to City.

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I can't remember the exact figure, but when Man City played Everton there was a huge amount of people watching the game in China because of Li Tie and Sun Jihai.

I am certain Glazer will want to squeeze more money from the Asian market by marketing Park over there, it may even link with his efforts to get an independent TV deal.

Edit: After a little research, I found this;

something like 400,000,000 tuned in to watch City v Everton

No interest indeed...

Another plus point for Firefox...you hardly get any spyware on your computer from browsing. Use Firefox for a week and do a spyware scan, then do the same with IE.

Like Glenn said, that 'gimmicks' comment is nonsense, unless you include performance, security and features as 'gimmicks'.

That may be too much technical information for many of us to take in.

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ok then.....

paying a few more bob for 20GB of storage is pretty pointless to me. that ok?

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I've got over 20GB of music so it seems completey justified...what do looks matter anyway? Only t***s show them off for their looks.

Personally I like the look of them anyway;

Sorry to say but without serious changes to that Hammers side they are guaranteed relegation fodder.Zamora looks half decent but the rest are nothing more than average at best.

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That's a bit harsh, Matthew Etherington for one is definitely Premiership class, Nigel Reo Coker has a big future too, I expect him to do well next season. Anton Ferdinand seems to be progressing well too so if they could get an experienced centre half alongside him I could see them being fairly solid.

I think this years lot could be the best for a while, Mick McCarthy is a top manager and will get the best out of what he has, if he can get in a few quality players then I expect them to be a well organised team with the ability to cause upsets.

Wigan reportedly have £40 million to spend and seem to favour attacking football, the problem they might have is attracting players to the club because they'll probably be the least fashionable of the lot. Still, I wouldn't put it past them to sign a few good players and stay up, similar to when Al Fayed bought Fulham's survival.

West Ham will probably depend the most upon how much money they get to spend. Alan Pardew has demanded that they don't finance their debts with the extra money and that it's given to him to spend. If he gets enough then I can see them staying up too, they'll find it relatively easy to attract players that are better than what they have because of their history and location.

None of that bodes well for us of course, makes it that more important that we get it right in the transfer market this summer...and the early signs aren't promising.

Stead is the best striker at the club, alright that doesn't say much but we shouldn't be selling someone of his age. We were being offered around £1 million for Dickov in January from Birmingham weren't we? He should go first because of his age.

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Rubbish for every goal Stead has scored Dickov has scored 5! Playing Stead all season would have seen us visiting tTurf next year.

What are you on Le Chuck?

Maybe I should have said 'potentially'...but the stats argument is wearing thin now.

Is that how scouts work? Get a list of scorers, pick the highest and buy him? Maybe that's we ended up paying £7 million for Grabbi.

Stead HAS ability, and a lot of it. I can't understand why we'd want to let go a 21 year old with obvious potential for £1.5 million. His goalscoring record last season was poor to say the least...but you can't deny he was extremely unlucky on many occassions. For all this 'poor finishing' talk, he strikes the ball extremely well and, with some more upper body strength, could be a useful threat in the air.

If it happened again for another season then maybe luck couldn't be to blame, but at his age and with the potential ability he's got, he's worth perservering with for another season.

you have got to hand it too hughes he is not afraid off making big decisions,1st parkes is shown the door and now he put's STEAD on the transfer list,he certianly does not let the grass grow under his feet.

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Why do you have to hand it to him? Two wrong decisions, how big they were doesn't matter.

Stead is the best striker at the club, alright that doesn't say much but we shouldn't be selling someone of his age. We were being offered around £1 million for Dickov in January from Birmingham weren't we? He should go first because of his age.

As this seems to be a Savage/Brum thread...

Birmingham chairman David Sullivan has threatened legal action against Crystal Palace chairman Simon Jordan. (The Sun)

Does anyone have any idea what that's about? Maybe because they won't let them have Andy Johnson back...bless.

Is there anything like the iTrip for other mp3 players like iRiver or Creative ones?

ragged against juve ...cheated chelsea and a gerrard dive....SAME OLD SCOUSERS ALWAYS CHEATING........

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If Benittez pulls the team together to outsmart AC, this could be one of the most remarkable achievements ever by a manager of a British club.

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And yet again another boing final - as with most Cup finals - nowadays teams don't seem to go out to try and win, more containing the opposition with the object of snatching a goal.

Personally I have lost interest in most of European games due to the structure of the competitions.

Problem is, its also an element that is creeping into the domestic game which is stagnating the game as we know it.

Lets just hope it turns out to be opposite to what I have said above and is a 'showpiece' final as it should be.

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Amazing night, domestic football will never serve up something like that...like it or not, the Champions League has proven itself as the best competition in Europe.

Well done Liverpool.

Few pictures available clicky here

Also got a couple of video clips including a part of the speech at the end, but someome technical will have to tell me how to make them available ...

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http://www.rapidshare.de/

You can use that site to host them, it's all fairly straight-forward. Click browse, choose your file then paste the address it gives you into here (at least I think that's all, I haven't used it for a while).

1. Arsenal

2. Manchester United

3. Chelsea

4. Newcastle

5. Liverpool

6. Aston Villa

7. Middlesbrough

8. Birmingham City

9. Charlton Athletic

10. Tottenham Hotspur

11. Fulham

12. Southampton

13. Portsmouth

14. Manchester City

15. Blackburn Rovers

16. West Bromwich Albion

17. Everton

18. Crystal Palace

19. Bolton Wanderers

20. Norwich City

Quite happy with mine...go ours spot on and 2/3 for relegation. Bolton, Everton and Newcastle were way off but the rest wasn't too bad.

Good news that McEveley is back in, I thought he was very unlucky to be dropped and frozen out considering other defenders weren't making less mistakes than him. If he can put in a good performance today then he could save us a bit in the transfer market, I wouldn't want Matteo lining up on the left next season.

Suprised that Thommo came into the centre instead of Tugay but if he can find his form then it will be a good move. Not sure what all the fuss over Douglas is about, he probably won't figure in the game.

Still feel like we're going to get beat though.

Works fine for me too but a 670k picture in a sig is ridiculous.

Can't see that happening in the short term. Long term the likes of Manure, Chelsea and  Arsenal may well go and form a European Super League - well that's a shocker - I'll get the door. See ya!

To be fair to Arsenal, Wenger has said that keeping collective television rights is important for the Premiership as past leagues that have attempted such ventures have gone tits up (I think that was the phrase he used). As much as people hate their antics on the field...off it they're the only remaining club in England who can challenge at the highest level without extensive marketing and soul-selling or by attracting a rich investor...at least until Liverpool sort themselves out domestically.

I'm not sure how much Chelsea would push such a deal either...he may not love Chelsea itself but I believe Abramovich does love football and just wanted to be the owner of the best team in the World, I don't think he'll want to become an enemy of the game to make an extra few millions that wouldn't make a difference to his wallet.

Glazer, on the other hand, does seem to be the sole enemy. He is in this purely for profit and will probably explore every realistic avenue to achieve that. It's extremely difficult to see where this one is going to go...hopefully the extra money can be made from milking more money from foreign markets so that he won't need to fight the league for television rights...however, I can't see any way he can make enough money from increased merchandising/ticket prices alone to pay the interest and turn enough profit to make the venutre worthwhile.

The over-optimistic theory could be that, in his old age, Glazer is just feeling extra generous and has decided to buy his son (who appears to be the only geniune Man Utd fan in all of this) his favourite football team.

0-0.

Team:

Friedel

Neill Nelsen Amoruso Mokeona Todd McEverley Matteo Flitcroft Savage Johansson

Yeah, very funny.

We all know Nissa can't play left back.

Saw this...made me laugh so I thought I'd stick in here:

But...we didn't win...did we?

Cracking effort by Reid at the end, I thought that had gone in.

Would have liked to have seen us go 4-4-2 earlier, we looked as though we were going to nick it had the game gone on for a little while longer.

Ah crap...well, we can't win now...we don't do 2 goals away from home.