Boro want £12M for Downing. Petrov, proven international and La Liga veteran cost £4.7M. It's not difficult to see what's wrong with this country. How Southgate can keep a straight face asking for that amount and how we persist in mugging ourselves off with paying it is beyond me.

So far, we've been linked to several players, with ITK's and the press alike, sharing the whorage. I'm gonna place the little faith I have left on Tottenham signing one or two players 'OUT OF THE BLUE'. In other words, players nobody who claims to be an insider has knowledge about.

I'm pretty sure, Berbatov came out of nowhere. Never remember reading anyone claiming to know we were after him - although the Bulgarian media picked up on the story, us lot over here didn't get a sniff of it. Obviously, the position this time will be a midfielder or defender rather than another striker (if you believe the press and forums, 'Fred' is on his way).

Gunter was 'out of the blue'. You'd just expect the quality would be as near to world-class as possible, because once we lost Berbatov we won't have a player of that type of quality in the squad.

Replace 'hope' with 'expect'.