innocent and that's the end of it.never was about racism,just players losing their heads..both of them!common sense prevails..quite surprised by that

still no news on our most important position which needs strengthening, mainly at RB. hmm..wonder what's the plan

The best part of the Oscar signing – we’re effectively telling spurs ‘you lot could’ve robbed us off 45 million pounds last season for modric. Now you’re looking to peddle him to madrid at a 15 million pound ‘loss’ from his original value because you tried to prove a point. Good luck with that, and by the way we’re now robbing you off his intended replacement.’

Sincerely, R.A

p. s : don’t be surprised if it’s a 20 million pound loss in the end, Madrid has some cunning negotiators!

yup it has to be either one. if it comes down to those two, i have a slight preference for hulk as he's more versatile out on the right. cavani as far as i know is most effective as a CF?

even so, if we only end up with victor moses and a RB that would be just fine as well! so many competitions, i'd like some of our players like kakuta and lukaku to have at least some hope of being involved in our season. excited to see RDM's strategy on youth development, however minor.

now oscar's agent claims we've pulled out of negotiations. lol

i can only guess they either tried to increase the price at the very last minute, or its one of those complicated third party ownership thingies (which are notorious in brazil) where we've been asked to pay an additional 3 - 5 % of the total fee to another entity. awaiting more news!

Eh? Dang failed to notice the date. Thanks for the clarification. Awaiting official confirmation then!

finally! good job on getting the early pics..these are really rare

it's 9.35 bro. don't panic, its the one titled herbalife world football challenge 2012

epson, that one sure came out of nowhere. between him and debuchy, i think they're both full of potential. have to say i've watched more of azpilicueta and was impressed. it kind of explains why we've stepped back from debuchy.

the players who stood out for me were hazard, marin, josh, lukaku, de bruyne and essien. i really liked the look of KDB, the lad looks confident and hardworking. marin has this fantastic burst of acceleration and is already looking like a player who's not afraid to take on a man or two. hazard is pure class. knows how to control the tempo of the game and keeps things simple yet effective. but for his goals, lukaku was the one i was most impressed with. expertly finished and keeper had no chance with both. my vote is for him to stay and fight for his place! he's our plan B if our passing game can't break down those big buses. despite his blunder, josh did get our team going with a lovely assist for lukaku.

now the bad news is malouda seems to be staying put for another year. sigh. can we put him on the reserves bench of something?

haha yeah. albeit it's his less famous younger brother..will probably go to the reserves though.

certainly impressed with oscar. keeps things simple with immaculate technique. he has this knack of finding space in the middle of the field, without really running that much if anyone can pull up some statistics on his pass completion rate i'm pretty sure it's about 90%+ . he has a good awareness of the game but i would've love to see him add more range to his passing. it's no wonder spurs were looking at him as modric's replacement. now that they heard he's had a medical at SW6, suddenly levy has 'upped' their star player's price to 40 mill. don't think he's a happy camper atm

i agree with ichi, oscar just doesn't want all the hype that comes with officially signing on the dotted line. those complicated terms, swarming journos, official interviews, pictures, schedules, etc. it can get distracting especially as he's involved in a major tournament. it would make absolutely no sense for him to have a medical with us, with no real intention to sign. if he's flirting with other clubs believe me right after the medical he would've taken a short tour to white hart lane or something. besides, internacional would go BALLISTIC and would've reported us to FIFA by now if he didn't have permission to speak to us, never mind having a medical.

i see your point mate. he did remind me of josh at times with his style of play, and had our boy managed more starts with swansea last season, maybe oscar wouldn't even be in the picture right now. i was quite disappointed with how he was treated during his loan spell, it was either he didn't show enough in training or brendan rodgers just didn't see any point in risking his settled first 11. i have a feeling our management were 'hoping' brendan would give 'preferential treatment' to josh due to his obvious ex-chelsea connections but clearly they were wrong. i don't blame their coach though. he had no obligation to field him, and we do have a poor record of choosing where to park our players.

between willian and hulk i'd rather we go for the porto star. shakhtar's chairman is trying his best to extort money from us and if we're going to spend big, might as well go for the more talented of the two. however, having said that i'm wondering why we're not trying to hijack utd's bid for moura. he looked more lively than hulk within minutes of coming on, in addition to being the cheaper and much younger option. the only drawback is he'll be adding to our already growing list of 'small' players. in short, drogba's muscle still hasn't been replaced.

There was a clear lack of fluidity in our play vs PSG, especially in the first half. The introduction of marin and piazon made a lot of difference though. We looked somewhat out of ideas vs uncle lotti’s team compared to against seattle. Have to take into account the quality of players we were facing but I guess most of us expected better. Lukaku and kakuta had real off days and will have to do a lot better to impress Robbie. ‘Special mention’ to flomo who’s making a real case for us to just give him away for free and let his slot be taken by one of our young talents.

Marin even in pre-season is already looking like the best dribbler on the team and if hazard’s not careful he might just get upstaged. The latter still showcased his quality in the middle of course but I would prefer him much closer to goal, taking more shots and making a nuisance of himself further up the pitch. Piazon’s leveler was a delightful combination with ramires, and we should’ve won it in the end with that late flurry! Malouda with that shot straight at their keeper..sigh. I think in the next game we’ll begin to see what lineup RDM intends to go with for the season?

mmm did anyone actually check the guide? i scrolled through and they listed MLS All stars vs chelsea at 4.30 am on astro super sport HD

Programme summary - taken from their official site, and also scrolled through manually with my remote.

(L) International Football Friendly
Showing at 04:30 on Astro SuperSport HD
[LIVE]Club Friendly: AT & T MLS All Star vs Chelsea, live from PPL Park, Philadelphia.

not sure who's got the time spot on, but i'm getting up extra early for sahur, just in case!

JT charged by the FA...details to follow.hmm didn't know they're above the civil court.

have to admit, i was a bit disappointed as well. the first half was forgettable with like..zero shots on target? and in the second we battered them for the first 10-15 mins, then for some reason we dropped the tempo.it was also sad to see both lukaku and torres deprived of any decent service, and even worse we actually tried playing long balls to the latter in the second half. sheesh.

there was more proof today that ramires is NOT a right winger. shocking how anonymous he was throughout the match. lampard on the other hand, cannot start most games next season. to be fair to hazard he was fouled like nobody's business. which is why i'm a strong advocate of him playing further up the field, where he can scare the hell out of defenders. this lad is capable of winning dozens of penalties for us without a single dive and i hope robbie sees that.

marin tried to dribble too much and needs more minutes. apart from that i didn't like the idea of RDM giving even more time to players who don't have a future with us, namely malouda. give me a raw kakuta any day. flomo did nothing of note and just reminded us again that his time is up.

p.s : after watching another match today where oscar was very influential and grabbed a neat goal, RDM really has a job getting the lad to grips with the pace of the epl. some of the tricks he pulled today were a joy to watch and i see him replacing lampsy sooner rather than later.

not ignoring the fact that it's pre-season, just slightly 'alarmed' at our lack of fluency. don't forget this was basically a much, much weaker milan which lacked their stars in the form of thiago silva, ibra, robinho and pato. it was quite frankly their second string. we hammered them 3-0 iirc under carlo during pre-season in his first year in charge.

the failure to create clear goal-scoring chances was glaring and to make matters worse, gourlay has revealed roman accompanied the team on their tour. it won't take a mind-reader to know he's less than impressed. the good news though is spain have been knocked out of the olympics, and i really can't wait for the return of the juan and only mata! we've missed him real real bad, and looks like he'll be involved in the charity shield after all

sometimes i wish gourlay would just say something like "we're done spending. no more purchases for this transfer window."

then suddenly we snap up two more players, and he goes "haha i was just messing around with u mugs! lol!" in the next press conference. that would be nice. doesn't look like he's the type though

looked around on astro's online guide. can't find our match vs brighton anywhere. supposed to be 10pm malaysian time tomorrow

u watched the game? how'd the team play?

i watched part of the second half and can conclude that our performances have gotten progressively worse. again,the lack of clear cut chances created is very hard to ignore.i caught the 1st half highlights as well and brighton looked to be the more dangerous team. haih. the city game will reveal more i guess.but imo we looked most fluent vs LA galaxy in that 4-2 win during the second half even though we didn't add to our goal tally.iinm that midfield contained KDB,hazard and marin.

oops my bad it was seattle sounders!