No clearance yet for Bryan Oviedo

We are very poor in our player management, what with the Gosling debacle etc. We seem to be able to loan players out pretty quickly however.

Our squad really is small!! Oviedo cannot be counted yet and who knows how long it will take to get him match fit. In the meantime, Barkley is loaned out and will possibly be back before the Oviedo situation is resolved.

But hopefully it will be alright on the night, to quote Denis Norden (remember him).

Just be patient, we've bought him, he's registered and is waiting for his visa and maybe those for his family.

"A player must have player for his country in at least 75% of its competitive A team matches of which he was available for selection, during the two years preceding the date of the application

The player’s country must be at or above 70th place in the official FIFA world rankings when averaged over the two years preceding the date of the application"

According to fifa.com they're ranked 66 (down 4 places) - not sure about over two years. According to Wikipedia he's played 17 times for his country and according to soccerbase.com they've played 36 times in that time, but I don't know for which of those he was fit for.

I am still astounded that he has clearly influenced two of his International counterparts to join us immediately prior to apparently announcing his planned departure. Did that have any impact? Well, clearly not on the visa application but perhaps on Oviedo's desire to fight for it to go through. Personally, I am concerned at how things are progressing but I believe a win tomorrow night will shift a lot of people's fears. All of this unsettlement on the back of an unexpected loss two weeks ago is not helping.

Jimmy, unless you can back up your belief that he has agreed to join Utd with some form of proof, do us all a favour and keep that sort of shite to yourself.

Unless, of course, you have a Degree in Sarcasm....;-)

Ask my missus...

A classic, unthinking Mail-style vent there.

Actually I'm a little confused now - is the problem they're 'coming over here and taking all our jobs' or they're coming here and NOT taking our jobs?

Funny, I saw a documentary about a year ago, featuring feckless, pale-faced, live-in-their-trackies, British unemployed, moaning about the Poles/Latvians "takin' all our jobs" etc blah.

The feller making the documentary took them to a (local) job centre where there WAS jobs.

(admittedly they were not £300,000 per year jobs, but those jobs are rarely available to those who spent every single day at school, squeezing the boils on the back of their necks while daydreaming about being a fucking rapper)

They almost shat themselves and ALL refused.

"Well...it ain't wurf it innit...only a few squids more van ver dole" (or some such barely intelligible gibberish)

Ian, if you want to be a xenophobe/racist fine, knock yourself out (I understand few have their opinions changed on TW).

But get your facts straight re where your income tax goes - exactly who gets their housing paid for and who is useless to 'our' economy.

(or are you fine paying for spongers as long as they're decent, not hard-working, British spongers?)

Keep in mind (despite what the Mail and Express might tell you) it's not likely to be the Polish plumber who spends all day spark-out on his sofa, eating Monster Munch, rutting, tattooing his pit-bull, kipping and/or watching (or appearing on) Jeremy fucking Kyle.

I am dumbfounded at the eccentricities of our board when it comes to spending money. We can transfer out pretty quickly with the exception of Yobo and loan out in a heartbeat... but we seem to be really poor at handling incomings.

We have 18 squad members not counting Oviedo which makes it as small as ever. Now we loan out Barkley when Gibson is injured and out for October. By the time Gibson is fit enough to play Barkley will be back???

In the meantime we cannot drop anyone who is out of form and hope that Jelavic is available after leaving goodison on crutches. Brinkmanship of the first magnitude.

We are as naive as any non league club when it comes to transfers. Maybe we should employ Rednapp as a consultant to deal with our ins and outs.

When it comes to extracting good money for marginal players we are generally useless because the likes of Fenerbahce know they can play the waiting game. We are pushovers and incapable of playing hardball because we need the sale.

When negotiating to bring in players you are normally going to be in the weaker position, with the exception of free agents or players from clubs that are even more desperate for cash than we are.

A car with two young lads was entering from the Stanley Park side and one of the attendants shouts to the other who was inside the parking lot ''DSS?'. The one on the inside shouted back ''OK'' and in they came.

I watched the two lads come out of the car and give the attendants a thumbs up and walk off as large as life.

DSS my arse - they were perfectly ablebodied and were taking the piss.

Everyone else had to pay but these two with their 'attendant' cronies were let in Scot free.

SPONGERS!!!