The Telegraph says they have now bid £15 million plus £2 million depending on his success at Liverpool , si potentially £17 million altogether .

This is the final offer Liverpool have said .

Martin O'Neill has denied receiving a new bid however. Gareth Barry has also been told not to turn up for training.

I seriously hope we can move along now and don't bid for him. I understand that there is some rule the Champions League registration must follow, which probably explains why we are bidding for players from within the Premiership. The rules are:

At least 4 players who are 'homegrown by club' (as defined as spending at least 3 seasons at the club before the age of 21). At least 8 players who are 'homegrown by country' (as defined as spending at least 3 seasons at any club in the country before the age of 21).

You could register 8 homegrown club players and you would pass both rules, and for each homegrown space you cannot fill you the max number of players you can register in your squad goes down by one.

We had exactly eight last season: Gerrard, Carragher, Crouch, Pennant, Finnan, Kewell, Martin and Darby. So if Crouch and Kewell leaves as expected we would be down by two. But 15m pounds for Gareth Barry is still over the top.

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Other news, Insua signs new three year deal. Hope to see more of him next season.

Supposedly offering Sebastian Leto (who has done nothing at all this season, due to injuries and some stories about passport issues) + cash to Espanyol for Alberto Riera.

make it 91M and you have a deal

That Riera deal sounds quite good. Leto hasn't done anything to show promise for the first team.

NOOOOO!!! Not Riera....I'm sorry but I'm just not covinced by him. I still think (maybe hope) that Riera is just a smoke screen for Silva but we'll have to see.

I hope that there is some truth in the Robbie Keane rumours as I feel we should have signed him when we were first linked 2 seasons ago. He works so hard for teh cause, weighs in with a decent amount of goals and could play off Torres brilliantly. Fingers crossed on this one.

Barry I feel we will sign but I think we'll pay over the odds for him which is very unfortunate when we could probably sign Xavi for less but hey ho that's the English transfer market for you.

But Degen, Dossena, Barry, Silva and Keane with a backup keeper seems like a realistic set of signings to me and would fill the positions we need. Obviously the sales of Crouch, Alonso and various other squad boys would have to be made before we could sign all of these but I think it is possible and that these signings would/could and should make us stronger.

Here's hoping!

Oh and PPPLLLLEEEEAAAASSSSEEEE somebody sign Andrei Voronin!!! No offence to the long haired lummox but for gods sake his attacking makes Titus Bramble seem like a competent defender!

C'mon, he's not that bad. He's good backup to have for our backup striker who's backup to the guy who's backup for Torres.

LOL!!! Your in danger of getting my back up!

Yeah every side needs its average players as cover, except perhaps Chelsea.

lol, oh i 100% agree. He tries i suppose but he is a player that must leave. It depresses me just seeing him on the bench, poor lad.

I'd rather play him than that other Ukrainian striker.

Rebrov?

Him as well.

Yes,Turkish giants Galatasaray Istanbul signs with the- wizard of oz- Harry Kewell.

What do you think about this transfer?

More like The Wizard That Was.

Good bye.

Actually he is still quite good, do you think we would have made it out of the Group Stage of CL last season if it wasn't for his return?

Also he is playing brilliant football for Australia, almost at his Leeds best at times.

I respect him as a player, and feel sorry for him. He was a very good player, but unfortunately suffered severely from injuries, through no fault of his own.

I wish him good luck and hope he can find some form again.

I think we would've got through the group stages without him. We won 8-0, 4-1, and 4-0 in our last three games to dig us out of the whole we were in. Without him i'm sure we still would've won those 3 games comfortably.

He had a hand in alot of goals you must admit. I think if we beat Barnsley he would have stayed as that was his very last appearance and then 4 weeks after that he pulled a muscle after Voronin hacked him down at training

It looks certain that he will be shipped to Galatasaray.

Lets hope somebody reminds Rafa to put the 'Fragile' sticker on him before sending him to FedEx.

What's the difference between giving Crouch + £5m-£10m and giving Spurs £20m but just selling Crouch elsewhere? We can definitely get money for him as well - i seem to recall one Harry Redknapp saying "their valuation is too high. If it were £10m, then we could start talking" (or words to that effect, it was a while ago). So that's Keane down to £10m... then use all of Rick Parry's bargaining skills to try and lower the price by a few mil (albeit the most likely scenario would probably mean he'd end up getting us paying £11m instead)...

As for Barry, it is becoming a farce. I wanted Barry and £14m was what i thought he'd leave for - £17m-£18m is a monstrous inflation of his actual value. Let's not forget that is the price we paid for Mascherano around February, a man who's regarded as one of, if not the, best defensive midfielders in the world, and is 3 or 4 years younger. The "oh he's English so we'll double our his fee" principle really, really grates on me.

For the first time this summer i think we should just tell Martin O'Neill to [beep!] off and withdraw our interest of Barry altogether. Then, even though i've said he should perhaps leave, we should use all our man management skills to persuade Alonso that he has a future at the club, and keep him. Then we use the £17m-ish money from Barry on a quality left-winger, get Robbie Keane in, get Gerrard on the f*cking right, tell him to shut up and do what he's told, build the side more around Alonso, who is stiffled by playing so deep i think, he owns people when allowed to move forward like Gerrard does, and you have something like this:


-------------------------------------------------Torres--------------------------
----------------------------Keane-----------------------------------------------

---------Silva------------------------------------------------------Gerrard-----
-------------------------------------------------Alonso--------------------------

-------------------------Mascherano--------------------------------------------

-------Dossena-------Agger/Skrtel---------Carragher----------Arbeloa-----

--------------------------------------Reina--------------------------------------


That sextet in midfield/attack, when all on form, would be devestating. DEVESTATING. To me, that would EASILY be able to compete with United, Chelsea and Arsenal.

Mind you, it won't happen. We won't buy Silva i don't think, we won't play 4-4-2 i don't think, Gerrard would never allow himself to be pushed out onto the right i don't think, and Keane is still a long-shot i think.

Hmm. Still, we should axe the Barry move, sadly, and show more faith in Alonso. He had more license to go forward in his earlier seasons and it showed. I've made a bit of a U-turn on Alonso, annoyingly when he's certain to leave.

I do wonder whether we'll sign Barry if Villa continue to be tw*ts about his price. £18m i heard they want. Will we pay that?