fast lane

Who wants to be reminded of Nyarko? Lol. Vitesse having financial problems is a new one for me, and seriously doubt it. The Georgian owner is a mate of Abramovic, as said before, and is loaded, tho not as much as his Russian chum. Chelski have too many players for their own good, if you can loan them out to a mate of your's, it seems like a shoe in. I've seem Pliazon play for Vitesse (another chelsea loanee) he looks like quite a talent.

Surprising one this, we have never loaned players abroad before. Other English clubs do it more often, I can remember Chris Eagles (for manure) doing well at NEC Nijmegen. As said before, Chelsea have loaned several players out to Vitesse Arnhem. Pliazon has looked the real Mccoy there. I hope FJ can make progress. I'll be watching, that's if he can get a game.. Don't forget there are 6 Chelsea players there..

Very true, Jelavic and Kone have been toothless in the main this season, so having him is an improvement. We need a goal scorer, he showed last season at the Baggies that he can do that.

Mixed feelings here. It was inevitable Marouane Fellaini was going to leave, as we got twice as much for him as we paid for him. No idea if anything goes to Standard Liege. Leighton Baines is staying, but will he sign a new contract? Or walk out for free? I like the signing of Lukaku, he was good at the Baggies last year. I did see him playing for the Belgian national team the other week. Benteke was more impressive up front, maybe a bad day? Not too keen on paying another lot of money for a Wigan player. Can only hope he'll come good. Would much rather have preferred Fernando. I've never liked Barry much, but City are (allegedly) paying most of his astronomical wages, and maybe he can do a good job, with Gibson being injury prone.

Not happy with only two points out of two games. That said, we haven't played badly, if we keep this up, we should be getting more points. And I hope that's against the top teams too.

I would love to see them working well together.

I'll go for the NEC home one too.

He's not happy though. Firstly because of not getting to play (or getting a move yet..) And secondly because his place in the Dutch national team looks to have gone. Last year the Feyenoord pairing of Bruno Martins Indi & Stefan de Vrij played in central defence. This season it looks like the PSV duo of Jeffrey Bruma & Karim Rekik (City loanee who's coming good) are to take over. Either way, the chance of him playing in next year's World Cup are slim.

Marca have reported that Madrid are going to buy Gareth Bale for 99m. Spurs were planning to buy Willian with part of that money. It's anyone's guess what happens now.

I thought Fellaini played well, mainly very tidy on the ball, bar a couple of bad passes (straight to a Frenchman), he covered a lot of ground, so you can say say he's in good shape. Was less impressed with Mirallas, especially the one miss. Despite it finishing 0-0, still a good game, the French had several young midfielders start for the first time. Both teams had difficulty in finishing, Belgium looked more dangerous when Benteke came on for Lukaku, if they both overcome this, they can go far in next year's World Cup.

I know, as exciting as it is, his time with us is limited, but I hope it can have a lasting impression. Like improving Ross Barkey's insight for one.

It has to be a home win. I'm coming over for this one, and till now I've only seen us win at home (And lose over here) My brother's coming over as well, he's a Spurs fan, and has (mee too) only seen them win too. Something will have to give.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Show Your Bones

It was James Vaughan who scored the third goal. And a very good one it was too, with Victor Anichebe lobbing the ball over a defender to put him free diagonally in front of goal. He duly strolled it home. It was Jack Rodwell's debut, as a 16 year old (!), away in an European match. It must have been very humiliating for Louis van Gaal. I made a post about this on NSNO, and mailed it to friends and family. They all thought it was too. I managed to not know what the score was at Wembley on Sunday, and saw an half hour summary on the pay channel I'm subscribed to yesterday at 17.00. Excellent, of course. It was pretty difficult avoiding the score, a mate sent a mail with the heading Everton (it was probably more likely to be good news than bad, but of course I couldn't open it), and in the library in Alkmaar yesterday, I read The Times from front to back (usually I do it the other way around) and stopped at Andy Robson'sexcellent daily Bridge article. I turned over the next page half, and could see Ferguson doing his crazy dance. That looed like being good news too (it was of course when Riley refused to give them the penalty). So all in all very good news, in a very good weekend. Don't think we'll have much of a chance against Chelsea, this time, the 120 minutes at Wembley will have taken a lot out of our players. I'll be very happy with a draw.

Kate Bush - The Red Shoes

Portishead - Third

Thanks for the welcome, Aaron too. AZ were indeed very good this season, and that after the disastrous last season, and hardly spending any money in the summer. Getting Stijn Schaars and Marten Maartens back from injury was far more important. Those two midfielders were what the team was missing in the previous season, plus they got rid of some bad apples too, in the keeper Boy waterman, the defender (now at West Brom) Ryan Donk, and a couple of others. But getting Stijn Schaars back made the real difference, he is so influential, and Louis van Gaal has said of him that he was his most important buy. That's really saying something. Mounir El Hamdaoui has improved a lot, scoring for fun, but their best player is still Moussa Dembélé, who has started scoring more, making him even more important for the team. As for Louis van Gaal going to coach Belgium, you wish. He has stated, and has in his contract, that he'll only leave AZ for five teams to go to the World Cup next year, they are our country, Germany, Spain, England and Argentina. Normally nothing will come off it, but you never know. A lot can happen in football in a year. Next year the Champions League, it's vital to keep the team intact. Barcelona has already been sniffing around El Hamdaoui, and it's been rumoured that Dembélé is going to AS Roma, so lets hope nothing comes of these moves. Moussa Dembélé is a terrific playerm I've always been a fan, you could see his potential when he was still at Willem II. But I can't see him moving to Everton, and thats for one reason only, we can't afford him. AZ don't want to sell, and who can blame them, and will only do so for a very big sum of money.

His breaking a leg certainly does change things. As for Valencia, they are in major financial trouble. They are predicted to go bankrupt, with a new half-built stadium being the noose around theur necks, as well as squandering millions on other things, like Ronald Koeman's pay-off. Putting two and two together, Valencia will be putting up the sale of the century at the end of the season, with David Villa being the main prize. Manny could very well be up for a pittance, just about the only fee we can afford. And me, yes, I would love to have him back, even though we do seem to have several good central midfielders at the moment, like Mikel Arteta and Marouane Fellaini, as mentioned before, and not forgetting Leon Osman, Tim Cahill and Phil Neville as the defensive lynchpin. Will we have the makings of a decent squad then? Don't forget, we'll have more games to play next season, with the new Europa League almost being within our reach.

Well thanks again then.

Very good article. I've always been a fan of his. His quick brain and quick feet make him a special player. Asfor the comparison with Faddy, you are having a laugh, aren't you? They are so different as players, Faddy has very little football intelligence (great instinct though), is quite lazy, and generally quite useless, bar the odd wonder goal, a few times a season.

For me Steven Pienaar too.

Porcupine Tree - Fear Of A Blank Planet and before this: Deerhunter - Microcastle/Weird Era Continued and Agua de Annique - Air (excellent Dutch female singer, formerly of The Gathering)

Going to more of an uphill battle now. But we have to be optimistic, we can still do it.

I just joined this forum, because another Evertonian recomended it on Last FM (username fastlane01), where a new Everton group has been started under the name, you guessed it, Toffee Talk. I come from the Netherlands, and live 13 kms above Alkmaar, the town where the new Dutch champions, AZ, come from. I'm a fan of theirs too, but primarily I'm an Evertonian, having been born in England, in rural Lincolnshire to be precise. I used to be a member of NSNO (those of you who are also on there, will recognize my user name), before getting banned by some immature narcissistic bragger of an admin. And what did I do to deserve this? Well I had the nerve to laugh at him, and deservedly so, I would do it again. It used to be a great site, with some some very nice people on board, both male and female, who I have met in real life, and have had the pleasure of having drinks with. There were also some guys who knew their stuff, so it was a pleasure exchanging thoughts and ideas. I hope this site can be similar. But the NSNO site went downhill bigtime when this immature prat was made an admin. Perfectly normal threads disappeared (for no reason any normal person could think up, except him) and things started looking more and more like a schoolyard from hell, with bullying and namecalling being the order of the day, and he being the focal point in all this nonsense. He even had the nerve to threaten me, after I laughed at him the first time, so I laughed some more. His immature (very large) ego couldn't take this of course, so against all on rules on the site, he banned me. If I'd done something wrong, I should have got a warning, but then again I didn't. This all must have been very confusing for the poor kid. The reaction of the owner was a disappointment, I've met him in real life, and thought he was a good guy. He wanted me to come back and act as if nothing had happened. But that wasn't on. I would have thought an apology was in order, but this wasn't forthcoming. So no more NSNO for me, and I told him so, if I wasn't to get the apology. All this happened in February, and to be honest, I haven't missed it to this day, even though I'm still one of the major posters on that site, I think a little more than 18.000. That's quite a number. I don't think I'll reach that number on here, but you never know. What can I bring to this site? Well living in The Netherlands, I can offer more insight into Dutch football specifically, and European football in general (I'd seen Marouane Fellaini play several times, before we signed him, to give an example) As of now I'm wondering how to programme my VCR for the big match coming Sunday. A short while ago I subscribed to a Dutch pay channel, to see the Everton games, it sure beats watching a fuzzy stream, even though the commentary is a lot poorer. The difference in picture quality is immense, and well worth the 15 euro's a month I have to cough up. I'm not very good with technical things, but I'm sure it'll come ok for Sunday. I had already organized something else for that day, before we beat Villa in the last round, so I'm hoping I can get the best of both worlds (to quote a Robert Palmer classic) I think we have a good chance of reaching the final, but it's going to be a very tough match.