Made me think of Khumalo who is 27 now and is never going to be first team material.

Strong links tonight to Ben Davies, Lovren and Schneiderlin.

Rumoured £8m for Davies, Lovren seems to be keen to opt for us over others so he can stay working with Pochettino. Schneiderlin is anybody's guess but if we are in for him perhaps the rumours of Sandro to Napoli have some legs.

With only 2 weeks of the world cup left, we're going to be hearing more information about transfers and pre-season soon. Certainly looking forward to that!

I think we may see more goings than comings. We have 15 midfielders listed in the current First Team squad, even with Livermore gone.

One of Holtby or Siggy will definitely go. We could easily dispose of Bentaleb too. Benny might go to QPR full time and there is probably more..

Swansea want Sigurdsson which is good because we obviously have interest in Davies and Bony. Dawson is likely to join Hull unless he wants to stay in the South in which case QPR is the most likely option. They may also test the water with regard to Lennon.

Sticking point with Lovren at the moment is the fee, if Soton won't budge then Savic and or Astori could be options. From the amount of links we're seeing we are obviously looking at various options but seem to be in no hurry to conclude deals.

I recognise that fella who scored for Mexico ..

We're good judges of talent i see .. heh

The Premiership can be quite brutal on young talent if they don't instantly start delivering on the field.

Looks like LB Ben Davies from Swansea might actually happen amid all the player transfer rumours that have surfaced. Remy Loic has again been linked with us, It seems like a weekly event now. I suspect his agent might be trying to force Arsenal's hand.

I think you're right regarding Remy. But then it kind of makes me want him even less if he's working this hard to secure a move to Ars*nal. And not just because it's "them" either, more because if he did come to us, it would clearly be because he felt he had no other option.

I'd rather we sign players who actually want to play for us, rather than those who think "Meh, they'll do..".

I saw the stuff about Davies as well which sounds good. It sounds like he'll be a decent upgrade on Rose as well.

I'm seeing a LOT of stuff about Esteban Cambiasso coming to us on a free as well. Bit strange considering he's turning 34 soon and also with how many midfielders we currently have on the books.

Maybe the thinking is that his age and experience could help the younger players around him ?

Re. Esteban Cambiasso - Yes I'd be very surprised if we signed a +30 year year old. The transfer policy has been towards bringing in younger players and shipping out the older ones. Our oldest players excluding goalkeepers, are Ade, Dawson and Benni all 30, and two of those could be leaving soon.

Yeah I suppose it could just be the usual 'generating interest' approach again, especially since I've just read an article that claims a whole host of clubs are supposed to be after him.

Transfer window officially open from today so time to get the lucky pants out again .. heh

If Cambiasso comes in it can only to be to add experience. I'm guessing he's a mate of Pochettinos and maybe he's got one eye on him joining the coaching team at some point.

The Davies deal looks like it'll be completed soon, our other priorities are a CB and a striker with Soldado the favourite to be offloaded subject to us receiving an appropriate offer.

Despite all the links which include many realistic upgrades on current squad members, I doubt we'll bring in more than 3-4 at most with more leaving.

This is the only real thing that makes any sense regarding him.

I also don't think we're going to see that much of an influx either, but some decent upgrades will certainly be welcome. Davies does look to be a promising start.

Apparently we have agreed a fee with Hull for Dawson.

I do think it's somewhat inevitable that Daws will be leaving during this window and I'll certainly be sad to see him go.

I guess there's a possibility that he might turn down the move and accept something akin to a part-time role at the club with a view to becoming a coach but he may well still want to regular football.

Obviously he's got, and always had, his limitations, but he's very much up there as one of the best defenders we've had.

More rumours today that we want Davies, Vorm and Bony from Swansea. Also we are negotiating the sale of Sandro to Napoli for around €20m which seems quite cheap to me considering the influence he has around the place.

Dawson will be the makeweight for a new CB coming in, just hope now we are also looking to flog Lennon as well.

Liverpool have signed youngster Kevin Stewart after we released him recently. I assume our former Academy manager Alex Inglethorpe had a big hand in this.

Stewart is a versatile defender who can play anywhere across the back and was a sterling performer for our youth team. I'm sort of surprised his career stalled with us.

Luke Shaw's transfer to Man U for £30m has caused Swansea to up their valuation of Ben Davies, putting on hold his transfer to us. He may prove too expensive unless we can throw in a player exchange as well.

Meanwhile Dawson apparently is reluctant to leave the club to join Hull despite us agreeing a deal.

Not surprised to hear Daws is reluctant to go. He likely sees this as a similar situation to when a fee was agreed with QPR and he came back to become a first team regular under AVB.

I see Iago Falque has confirmed he's coming back to the club after one of his many loan spells. I wonder if he'll get a chance under MP ?.

The Squawka stats comparison between him and Townsend makes for some interesting reading.

Falque

Townsend

Rather amazingly, Townsend has a 97% failure rate on shots. Admittedly, Falque's isn't much better at 84%, but I can't see the harm in at least having a proper look at him.

we should not be selling soldado

I wonder how many of the players Pochettino will take on the Summer tour? There's 30 first teamer's currently listed plus he may want to look at a few youngsters as well.

One way or another there needs to be a cull before the start of the season.

That's actually 1 goal in 33 (approx) for Townsend versus 1 goal in 6 (approx) for Falque!

Announced today which youngsters will be leaving the Club. General thought is that there are no surprises, all are decent enough players but those who watch the Academy teams regularly suggest there are even better prospects coming through.

On Stewart who joined Liverpool it's thought again that he's a decent enough player but we have better prospects. He did a loan spell at Crewe last season and did "ok" but they didn't seek to extend his loan. He was offered a contract by Sheffield United but by that time it's likely that Inglethorpe had been in touch with him. He joins another exSpur in Laurence Vigouroux in 'pools development squad. Suggests Inglethorpe is trying to increase the number of home grown players at the scousers. Overall opinion of Stewart is that he'll be a solid if unspectacular Championship/League 1 player.

He divides opinion and I have to admit that last season he did make some huge errors but I really don't want to see Dawson leave