Petrov to Espanyol

That's the spirit, JAH.

TRR - that's true though.

"I ring Big Sam and he talks to me in depth for an hour about football matters because he's not in the least bit busy."

That's quite a ridiculous quote.

Is that a snippet from Garty's latest dream diary?

That bit would never go into a secret diary article. Big Sam's always busy.

Of course he is, last I heard he was giving Seth Macfarlane some tips on how to host an Oscars ceremony. I just wondered if perhaps Garty had a weird dream after a few too many cups of herbal with some cheese and crackers.

Get shut of Eagles as well, and we might just start improving

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....is possibly the worst comment I've seen on here. He's our top scorer, and leads the league in assists. But yeah, but he's got a stupid haircut, and tries the occasional trick that doesn't come off, so let's all just decide he's no good

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In the 64 league games since Eagles pounced down onto our club we have won 18, drawn 14 and lost a whooping 32. During that time we've scored 85 goals but conceded 117!!

Is this a coincidence?

Yes.

Yes because Eagles is not a defender, has played a fair proportion of those games "in the hole" and a large number of those games have featured Zat Knight in defence which is the bigger problem.

You can reasonably expect your wingers to "support" the defence, not do their damn job for them!

I'll be sorry to see Petrov go if this is confirmed because IMO on his day he's a very fine winger and knows where the goal is BUT I do take the point about his lack of consistency and his occasional apparent lack of willingness to track back and tackle.

However, given the state of our defence I firmly believe we need to sort that out pronto and that 25K a week would be a very nice chunk of change to invest in the wages of a good centre back to partner Wheater who I think is decent while Zat Knight is a dead loss. At this level 25K a week might even be enough to bring in TWO decent defenders and we do desperately need them.

Our midfield is still weakened by injuries but even when everyone is back we lack a truly defensive CM who can tackle with some bite, partly down to the loss of NRC and Fab Muamba but both of them were gone before the summer started and it was another area that in retrospect Owen should have addressed then. Perhaps with the money Petrov's transfer would free up in wages Dougie will be able to address at least the defensive issue if not both. I understand we also have some promising players coming through the reserves and the academy so maybe it's time we gave some of them a shot.

To sum up; yes Petrov is a class player and an asset on a good day but his good days seem to be a bit too far apart for comfort and at his age if he can get himself one last payday in sunny Spain while freeing up money for us to invest in areas where we;re weak then I for one say good deal and good luck to him.