Our wage structure is one of several reasons we lose too many first team players each summer. Theo is the only attacker we have left with any pedigree AT ALL in this league, and is well underpaid relative to his peers. Swallow the pill, give him the cash and a 4 year contract.

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I can see what you are saying but Rex is right. Liverpool are willing to pay him those wages so that's what he is worth in the capitalist market. What you think doesn't come into it

It's not that easy though, you have bring everyone else up to the right level, that's a complete change to our wage bracket.. which I am not opposed to but its not just a matter of bumping Theo up, and if we were going to do that, we should have done it with RvP or Song even. Theo isn't worth changing our policy for especially right now, he is going to be sitting on the bench more than before in the coming years

It cuts both ways as we are all too aware. Our wage structure makes us underpay genuine stars like VP and overpay shitsters so we cannot get rid of them as nobody else will pay them that high

You got to take circumstance into account though. Ade was worth that to City at that time when they were loaded with petrol-dollars but their trophy cabinet consisted of a hoover and a Blue carpet (old joke i know!). Now he is so worthless to them they are apparently paying some of his wages to keep him away from them.
If we pay Theo £75k, then that's what he is worth whether you and i think he is a 2-bob player or not

Re-read your previous post and realise that now. Apologies

Gervinho played quite well against the weaker teams in preseason. I can understand why we've given him another shot now, even if I've always believed that he has too many flaws to be effective against better teams.

I always maintained we should have signed the out of favour Ben Arfa instead of Gervinho in the summer of 2011. It was the perfect time to snap him up for peanuts. Now he has emerged as their best player and will probably be sold soon to a big club for big money.

Has to be one of the most pointless signings ever. He pisses me off no end. I have just about had with this guy, diaby and to an extent Wenger.

Yep. Diaby has replaced Song in our midfield and we have two clean sheets in two games. Makes sense why you have had it with him.

Diaby had a poor match on the weekend - but even more laughable is the idea that Song's "positional indiscipline" would've caused us to concede against that useless Stoke attack.

More likely Song would've helped us score a fucking goal.

My point was, and is, that the criticism of Diaby after two games is at least as much OTT as what I just wrote there.

Fact is that the only real difference in 'defensive' personnel from what we saw a lot of last season is the Song/Diaby switch. At least defensively it is difficult to argue that we don't look more solid and have a better team shape. Diaby certainly has a part in that.

Personally I think he had a strong game defensively against Stoke, especially in challenging Crouch aerially. He was completely rubbish on the ball though, I don't deny that at all.

I remember thinking that after about half an hour or so, Diaby's attempts at winning the long ball up against Crouch were poor. In fact, I remember thinking his whole game was poor after about half an hour.

He didn't win every challenge with Crouch, far from it, but he made it a lot harder for Crouch to find a team mate with his flick ons. How many times did Crouch find a team mate? Without checking any stats, my eyes told me that it was very seldom. Usually one of Crouch's strong points, and in no small way did it disturb one of Stoke's 'normal' routes at attacking.

Ricky, I think you said Diaby was having a decent game at half time?

He has attributes that help and there is also no denying that his passing and awareness are extremely poor. That said, he surprised me with his pass to an overlapping Gibbs in the box.

He is a very unfortunate bloke, injuries really haven't allowed him to develop aspects that become better with game time.

These were his first 2 starts in god only knows how long. Let's see how he does after a few games because i agree with Rex, without hinting at comparisons with Song, his presence does help.

Doesn't matter anyway. Until he breaks down, which for all we know could be today, he is an automatic starter.