dan-likes-trees

Doesn't look like he'll be sold unless he forces a move through. Worth a massive amount to the club in terms of marketing. I suspect Levy will want to keep him, and if we get Soldado to go with Paulinho and Shadli (and Arsenal don't get, for example, Suarez) I don't see why we shouldn't finish in the top four and get the champions league money next year. That money plus the global marketing he's doing for spurs and he's worth it. You'd think that even if he didn't have quite the season he did Real would still choke up 60m for him or so. That said I would like to see what AVB would do with on a Football Manager-style spending spree of 90 million or something... It would be nice if they'd sort it out!! Don't fancy another summer of checking the transfer rumors every few hours in case something's happened!

Haha, nice to have you back in the thread Goaf, great snaps as per norm! And id that an OMD I see? Recently splashed out on that hunk of a camera myself..

Don't think I've said yet but a big bloody congratulations to Zell!!! Honestly didn't think anyone was getting near Eights for the next like 3 seasons. (Also, pleased that mighty Winston dominated them at home. Hope for the future). Weird dvs. Jumps where I didn't expect them and no jump where I did. +10 overall with a lot of visibles.. will just about do. My oldies are getting progressively less golden too. Still about three seasons from staking a claim at winning the elite league. Urgh, a year real time.

Rog fed crew r in too

Only in the sense that I can't see us spending another 20-25m right now without shifting a couple of players. I'd like to keep him, good impact sub, and flog Ade, but the latter is only likely to go to some mad overseas team who would pay his hefty wages. Next season is going to be immense in any case!

Benteke was the one player I really wanted since the end of the season. Some sort of Defoe plus say 10-15m might be a good deal for both teams - Hopefully Vertongen and Moussa have put in some good words about us when they've been during international breaks... Not to sound as manically optimistic as Dazzy but if we do get Benteke (and having already signed Paulinho) then one more decent winger and our team will be looking really great.. (That said if we buy Benteke on top of Paulhinho that'll already be an outlay of £40m+, I'll be a bit concerned they'll be buys pre-empting a bale sale) Sometimes I think I definitely prefer all the stupid transfer gubbins and rumors to the actual football

Cheers Jay, that post was exactly what I was after. Will pick up Player of Games or Use of Weapons when I get a chance and get going on it. Will probs just stick with the one for now - I'm not so good at binge-reading on one author (though might swallow my words if they turn out to be addictive!). Just finished Game of Thrones 3.B. Loved it, though in my estimation the show is so good that not much is lost from just watching it. Got Feast for Crows lined up but I'll probably leave it a bit given that it's an absolute hunk of a tome, can't be bothered to start it..

I believe 'made (or assembled) in America' is a big thing, marketing-wise, in general in the states at the moment. Apple are running a similar line quite prominently in the iphone 5 print adds, judging by one i noticed in the evening standard today. Anyway, this is annoying, just when i was finally, finally about to pick up a nexus. The Moto X is to be the new google big one as they now own motorolo, right? I am so in.

... I'VE RUINED EVERYTHING

C'MON YELLOW SUB!!!! What a team. I'm a yellow supporter through and though this season. To the extent that I'm neglecting my own tactics and keep losing.

Being annoying and bumping this thread... As loads of people on here have one - Is everyone still happy with their Nexus 4's? Still worth getting or do people reckon there's better stuff on the market? I'm looking to spend about 20 quid a month contract - or get the nexus 4 and a giff gaff rolling contract. Alternatives are Xperia SP or Huwai P2. Both pretty similar, bit smaller but potentially look a little nicer.

I look at my team and look at Zell's team and feel alright about winston. And then I look at Winston's league position and Yellow Sub's league position and feel very inferior as a manager.

Has anyone had a chance to play this yet? I'm considering going out to buy it in a bit but I think maybe I should wait a few weeks and get it cheaper. I wasn't mad about Uncharted, so I'd be interested to hear how similar it is to that...

On this note, I feel like this would be an good time to finally read some of his sci-fi - today I saw a bunch of old editions of his in a charity shop on the cheap and I'm planning to go back and buy one or two - any suggestions from anyone on which to start with? I knoq Jay and a couple others on here are fans. also just finished this.. it was great

The three of us! Might make for a good one. Get questions about each other in the alliance etc. You can DM Rog as he's now on the forum, the bloody champ (tennis champ not xpert champ, sadly). Anyway Ell's gone and thrown the toys out the pram after I THRASHED him earlier. So talking point: do you consider 4-5-1 a defensive formation? Or just a good one?

Thanks boss! Glad my poetics are appreciated. Yeah love the effort that everyone puts in, the reports are always great. Sorted out our alliance at last! Introducing... Dan-likes-trees of Winston Roger Federer of RF Crew Lukr of Rossers Rovers Together they are Valyrian Steelers Inter - we're in for a group interview with our alliance once you get through your list!

Macedon 800BC (ulcer) Gardens around the Headingley arena: Supporters wait in anticipation of the match, pass by stalls which offer pre-match fruit. Distant, the roar of digital lions. The numbers are Raw Moneyball, a reality: contemporary fictional football runs in accord to the Brad Pitt model of team management Applications to the Football Econ Economy MA at the Football Econ Academy are oversubscribed The team blackboard is a dropdown menu. I have the total and complete attention of my players as I switch out Goodison tinkering in favour of a more defensively minded 4-5-1 Can I risk this delicate forward line? (The players quiver at the very movement of my fingertips) Perhaps a false nine, in this most decisive of games... (Is this what it is, to play a higher power?) My fingers drip digital ink. For what we all crave is total control responsibility in our, and only our superior hands Here, numbers are our liquids. We gorge ourselves on 9s and 14s - the refined fruity taste of a 27:11 on our palettes, contrasted on rare occasion by the unusual, distinctive scent of the 19:8. (It smells like econ) The looping soundbyte of the crowd on matchday is the very air that we breath - But wait! (Is the very passivity - This feeling of total, all-consuming powerlessness that being a supporter entails - paramount to the overriding purpose of football? Is the undeserved, autonomous pain suffered in fact a vital method of acclimatization to the disappointments, The arbitrary and randomised unfairness of adult life?) Only supporters of The Eights know little of defeat They felt the weight of it once, two seasons past Yet still they taste it It clings in the back of the mouth, An ulca which gently nags. The pain from an old wound. Threatens to flare up at times of stress - Manifesting into an unfortunate lump of flegm, of course! I spit it out. Might compatibility between fictional players define the weeks ahead? Could tempestuous faux-personalities skewer the very heart of what we call ‘teamwork’, opening gaping rifts in the strongest that the league may have to offer, rifts into which goals will pour forth? To be berated at the hands of Gary Neville’s Sky Computer Gadget screen Subjected to the humiliation of endlessly enjoyed .gifs from the following morning’s Soccer Saturday to an anecdote recounted by an ageing AC Jimbob during the Guardian football Pod on a slow week on an international break in 2017? (I bask in the warm glow of the whitened screen of my squad selector) All at once the screen deadens to black, this comforting glow stolen from me, snatched from in front of my eyes With haste I attempt to gather my lifeline pressure! (midfield strong enough?) the cable, through which my vital energy runs jammed back in time yet here the age old anxiety reappears... This momentous achievement This grandiose project, perfection, precision, product of our hours, I feel it’s true nature. fleeting, temporal. Our confluence of imagination and the precision of logic (mitigated with a touch of wit?) this simulacra, Whisper it. Baudrillard would have a field day if he knew! Egan would sit us down, put on the kettle and have some words, hoping the steam from the toasty brew would be sufficient to snap awake our synapses, bring us back to Lived Reality But it is too late. New neurological pathways forged The nodal structures of our brains irreversibly changed Modified in order to allow us to process, to absorb, to feel these complex streams of data Xpert is our ‘reality’ (for Now) Was this ever the dream? Did the Greeks pause their games under the sun in Macedon - tracing diagrams in the sand to illustrate the ideal way to react an opposing team who had switched to a 5-3-2 with wingbacks? Did Romans discuss the place of a 20-6 in the current footballing climate? Perhaps attempted calculations on each hypothesies, tallied on the wretched abacus? (If only we had an Amstrad! Cried a frustrated Caeser) Is there to be, in the future, an even more advanced form of weekly simulated football management, of which we are currently entirely oblivious? One hypothetical prospect too far for me. When I am working on my tactics, I never think about beauty. I think only how to win the game. But when I have finished if the tactics are not beautiful I know they are wrong.

Loll at Flink's embarrassing error. But Happy Birthday Brova! The lads over at Winston are saying they miss ya, but I've implemented a ban on any chit chat Ell / Elites related (asides from what a rubbish team they are)..

What abouut meeeeeeee? ill have 12 if so. Thought you said i was in it to win it last page, but ignore me if im mistaken.

loll. cant believe you got 4 mill for danlikesflink! The name must have added a couple of million. erm Hands off. he's ours!

Truly embarrassing start to the season for me. Rumor mill has it that Archie has handed in a transfer request, wants to move to a good team to see out his career. @Haden that first post was truely terrific. Great work Rodger says Speaking of which - hadven't asked him but whoever wanted Rodger in their allience - he's ours. Winston - Rodger Federer Crew - Rossers Rovers. Name currently undecided

At least the Vermaleon being worse than Vertonghen was on the money, quite significantly. On the note of ydays debate - http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2013/may/23/uefa-champions-league-europa-league - Uefa to offer Champions League place to Europa League winners - Other plans being considered include whether to award a fifth Champions League place to clubs in the big European leagues and to expand the number of Europa League places on offer. Also teams who win the Champions League or Europa League but finish outside the qualifying places in their domestic campaign will no longer usurp one of their league rivals to take up their place the following season. - The new rules are expected to be ratified by the Uefa Congress in London on Friday and will apply from 2014-15. Dunno what I think about the above. 5 teams is definitely be a money thing, and makes the competition needlessly big. Flink won't be happy. And Europa winners getting a place belittles the competition a bit. But at the same time makes some degree of sense.

Going to guess you didn't play in one of the most important matches of the premier league season to a 40,000+ crowd. It's impossible to 'worry about the rest afterwards' when there's a massive crowd who are fully aware of what's going on elsewhere. Going to point you toward the City game last season (who of course eventually won - though relevantly that was only once QPR had heard they were safe from relegation - during play!). They were clearly immensely nervey for most of the game, the pressure having been put on by the early rooney goal in the United match. There's no way that game would have played out as it did if it had stayed at 0 - 0 in the United match. Case study 2 would be a couple of weeks ago with Watford's last game in the championship. The players clearly knew what had happened in the Hull game, packed everyone forward to get the goal that would then have seen them promoted, and Leeds broke up the other end and scored. In terms of pressure, hearing that Spurs had scored would have been like going from 0-0 to 1-0 down. How could it not affect the mentality of players to some degree? Think we'll have to disagree. Bit harsh, he properly dived literally like two times over a year ago and he's had multiple yellow cards for going down from fouls since. He's more of less completely cut it out now, but if anything he's getting booked more. Plus most of the time when people say it looks theatrical it's just because he's a massive lank. As a tall person I'm pretty sure I couldn't be tripped over running at high speed without it looking a bit ridiculous. The rest I agree with. I'm putting the 1-0 loss at home to Fulham as the vital game - easy points dropped, as was the case last year against Aston Villa. Naff.

I mean lets just for the moment ignore that the first penalty that wasn't given was in the first half, and that shockingly the players probably would have heard from someone at half time that Spurs were one nil up. Clearly they wouldn't have been 'none the wiser', as I'm sure you realise. And of course the mentality would have been affected - there's suddenly twice as much pressure to get a goal in a then-relatively-short space of time. (As I said Arsenal still could have won) So lets take the second half one - I mean we are in 2013 not the 80s - the entire crowd would have known, as every other person has access to a smartphone with the BBC news feed. Reckon the players might notice a weird shift in atmosphere? Or any of the coaching staff making it clear that they now definitely needed a goal? They're not a bunch of oblivious idiots. Please. Yeah, heard that one. Really bizarre. But there we go.

Really though? The side / back views look like a rugby tackle, nowhere near the ball! It's a joke that it's the same ref who came to Spurs training ground and had a word with Bale about diving earlier this year. Can't be giving a yellow for that when you're halfway down the pitch. And don't get me started on the blatant handball by in the box by Cuellar in the second half. Could easily have panned out differently at Newcastle if we'd been given the penalty, pile on the pressure etc. Of course equally Arsenal could have won anyway but, you know. #notoverit Word on the grapevine / bbc sport is that Bale's signing a new contract with a 50m release clause that activates next summer. Given the reason a lot of Spurs fans wanted champs league was to stop Bale leaving this summer, I'm happy enough with that.