The Weekend ITK Discussion Thread - 23/24 July 2011

metinks that was BEN.

ealingspur said:

metinks that was BEN.

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good work Ben.... the rest seem to be a waste of time imo.. Seem to go by twitter stuff etc, anyone could read that then post to mod that they have a member of family who is with an agent.. so on.

yeah POTL is probably just a master of twitter....right..............

mw828 said:

yeah POTL is probably just a master of twitter....right..............

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blue and yellow?? :grin:

gibbospurs said:

good work Ben.... the rest seem to be a waste of time imo.. Seem to go by twitter stuff etc, anyone could read that then post to mod that they have a member of family who is with an agent.. so on.

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mate give it a rest for your own sake. if you keep knocking it, you will get banned, and you're the only who suffers.

I'm not saying I agree or disagree with you. I'm just saying that you're frustrations will screw you over, no one else.

ealingspur said:

mate give it a rest for your own sake. if you keep knocking it, you will get banned, and you're the only who suffers.

I'm not saying I agree or disagree with you. I'm just saying that you're frustrations will screw you over, no one else.

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yeah i know... sorry, to everyone tonight. been well pissed off with this club and not the supporters. we all want our glossy players. thing is we could get them if we really wanted. dont think we really do tho. COYS. sorry peeps.. And i do love this site... missis dont.

our owners or board will not allow us to spend big this year because we will not get near the big 4. man city have made sure of that. why spend massive to finish 5th or 6th when we have a squad to to that already. modric will be sold towards the end of the window!! missing champions l is 20m- we will go back to the days of above mid table until the new stadium is sorted. we punched above last year but the same was thought of whilst acheiving. Hence not a massive signing in jan. DL cant balance the books on 1 season in the top comp. and seems to be not that conf that we will clinch it again very soon. i love spurs but that is prettty much how we are going, Levy... prove me wrong.!!

My friends tells me 2 from RM.
and then see my sig...
but if we sign Robben that will be top notch indeed.
However Podolski has been mentioned by Freund.
Forlan is a goer too

ackie said:

My friends tells me 2 from RM.
and then see my sig...
but if we sign Robben that will be top notch indeed.
However Podolski has been mentioned by Freund.
Forlan is a goer too

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i was just about to kill myself. actually podalski, i may well still.:grin:

ackie said:

My friends tells me 2 from RM.
and then see my sig...
but if we sign Robben that will be top notch indeed.
However Podolski has been mentioned by Freund.
Forlan is a goer too

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do you think we are maybe happy with 5th for a few seasons??

kcmei said:

The itk who mentioned that we gonna sign that ivorycoast kid and Ceballos deserve some credit and are more reliable in my books

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Archibald is your man in regards to Ceballos

Ben is the one who called Soli.

rawhide said:

I didn't know there were degrees of dead!

I thought it was 0% dead (alive) or 100% dead (er, um, dead).

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You've obviously never seen the Princess Bride. If you had, then you'd realise that Miracle Max, who is ITK on the subject of dead, claims that there is a Grey area where you can be 'mostly' dead, which is, at least, partially alive.

The percentages escape me though.

long 5mil bid from us . . .

what? mr finding forever?

hans said:

long 5mil bid from us . . .

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I hope so he's only going to get better and is well worth a punt but is certainly not ready to be a regular starter for us yet.

gibbospurs said:

do you think we are maybe happy with 5th for a few seasons??

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what are you on mate?! why on earth would we be happy with that?!

I was going to say Id want whatever your smoking but you can keep that sh*t for yourself.

5mil bid for who?

venablesphil said:

"We have all been looking for THE Man. Now it seems we've found him. And in German, if you please."

Should we be making something of the fact that A sentence has been started with the word and, also the word and has a captail. Is it a gramatical error or is it a clue? German for and is 'und'.

No idea though, probally on the complete wrong track!

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If your knowledge and application of grammar exists purely in weird 1950s idylls long since passed to the dustbin of popular usage, yes. Otherwise, if you use contemporary or plain English then I would suggest that you read nothing into starting sentences with "And", "But" or even "Because". Go on. Try it. You might even like it. :up:

Good attempt at a solution, though. Always worth looking at grammatical or structural elements of the sentence.

gibbospurs said:

But nobody ever says if the names are right or not? its a pointless exercise.

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I think we've already agreed to definitely share every solution at the end of the window or when a player is no longer on our radar/signed. The only exception, I guess, would be if there was the likelihood of a deal being completed in the next window and the info/source was still sensitive.

So, not a pointless exercise. :up:

RuskyM said:

The greatly irritating thing with cryptics is that you can edit them to suit whatever you want.

Blue & Yellow might as well be the colours of Pjanic's bedsheets for all it matters.

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Not decent cryptics. Like a crossword clue, it works on several levels.

strader said:

it wil be good to know who the Home of the swan is considring we are not getting him.

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This will be shared if and when the deal goes through.

spurslenny said:

Ok, if you can't beat them.......


THE man, found in Germany.

My guess is that the 'In Germany' bit is not necessarily the country 'Germany' but the word 'Germany' itself.

So, the man in 'Germany' could be 'Germany'

Rearrange the highlighted letters and you have....

G.Y.A.N

Go figure.

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See, that's an excellent solution that works intelligently and makes total sense...

...apart from the fact that the clue was "German" not "Germany". It's almost as if the cryptic was deliberately and carefully formulated. :wink:

mil1lion said:

Cryptic clues are completely pointless. It's just a way for people to have a little fun guessing who it is and wasting some time during the transfer window. Even if you guess it right you still don't know that it's right because the ITK never reveal it, well not until that transfer happens at least. So really what is the point? We still don't know the answer on who it is until the transfer happens. You might aswell not even read the cryptic and just wait for the transfer to happen.

If anyone can come up with a good reason for a cryptic clue i'd love to hear it. It may be fun for some to play along too, I do sometimes when i'm bored, but it doesn't serve any true purpose as far as knowing who we're signing. If we signed Rossi tomorrow we'd all be completely surprised. We might think "well that's your blue and yellow then" but we still didn't really know, so it's no different than finding out when the deal is confirmed on the Official Site.

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There's the fun thing, but what hasn't been mentioned - even by Rob in his one-man defence that would put Ironside to shame - is that cryptics are used at a particular stage, ie very early on.

Cryptics are there to protect sources. They are only pointless if the player is already mentioned widely by ITK and media outlets.

For example, if The Goat posted:

"The Space Station was laid out v. cold on the canvas"

and then people worked out that "Mir" + ["knockout" = "KO"] (and Bosnia = a cold place, & v = Vucinic) = Mirko = Vucinic, then that's all very tidy but it would be bloody ludicrous as we are all talking about him already. There's no need to protect anything. It's just being deliberately difficult.

Cryptics are used to share an update that has either not been known to the forums or barely been mentioned.

And - this is the crucial bit - hence, not many of them are likely to happen. Discussions may easily breakdown or the player might be speaking with other clubs. As things progress, the chances of other ITK and the media picking up and running something increases.

So, cryptics are actually far less reason to get excited than 'regular' ITK - even if you can work out who the words are talking about.


I thought this was all common knowledge, but happy to remind/inform newbies.

fatpiranha said:

The problem with every 'cryptic clue' i've ever seen on a football forum is that they simply aren't cryptic clues, which actually conform to a strict set of standard rules and conventions. When you solve a true cryptic clue there is no confusion about whether or not you have the right answer. What people call 'cryptic clues' on football forums are just vague hints that may apply to any number of possible answers and share no similarities with the real thing.

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That's true of some but rest assured, not of The Goats. I'm sure he won't mind me saying that they're not exactly up there with The Times Crossword but they serve and some are even impressive given he is a farmyard animal. Chances are, if you're not 100% certain you have the answer, you probably don't.

with Cryptic itks like the majority of itks you might as well be reading a football rumour column in Chinese.

apparently ozil has taken diarra's squad number in madrid.