Today's Banter: Bolton wish to keep Guthrie, Carson to Villa deal on hold, Gerrard wins style awards - thanks Carra & more

Danny Guthrie has impressed Bolton to the point that they are interested in keeping him on permanently, but according to manager Gary Megson, they have yet to speak to the 20-year-old about his intentions nor have they initiated talks with LFC. Due to the central midfield clutter, it is understood that Guthrie is available at the right price. If I had to take guess at his valuation, considering his age and the fact that he is not only already a regular starter in a Premiership side, but an obvious contributor to their better form, I'd say £5-7m. What do you think?

It appears that our club is waiting for a better run of form from Scott Carson to continue talks with Martin O'Neill about a transfer fee. Certainly Villa wanted to get it done shortly following his fiasco in the net for England so they could play off the negative press and low-ball us, but his first match back with the Birmingham club, he was phenomenal at Ewood, shutting down Blackburn, and he wasn't half-bad versus Arsenal last weekend. I hope we don't budge on the £10m asking price, there are a few other clubs interested in him including the aforementioned Gunners.

Steven Gerrard added two more awards to his ever growing list of accolades, but I get the feeling these are more likely to be used as paperweights instead of making their way into the trophy case. Our skipper won 'gongs' for Most Stylish Sporting Star and Icon from the inaugural 107.6 Juice FM Liverpool Style Awards at Sefton Park Palm House. In his acceptance speech, he had a go at Jamie Carragher and the awards themselves: “I would like to thank Jamie Carragher for this award.... If it wasn’t for him badgering me about my dress sense and hair cut then I wouldn’t be standing before you today. So ‘thank you Jamie’.”

Finally, two articles worth reading is one by Tony Barrett in the Liverpool Echo about Lucas and another at the FIFA site on Fernando Torres. The former tells how the Brazilian is learning from Gerrard and talks about his progression and role in the side in general while the latter brings up some interesting points about our world class Spanish striker. It talks of how his move to Liverpool has 'freed' him from the pressure of 'his iconic status with the Atletico fans' that also prevented him 'from leading anything resembling a normal life in Madrid.' Also, it brings up the fact that, at the age of 23, he already has 45 caps for Spain. That's just ridiculous and gives him a realistic chance at breaking records in that regard as well as total carreer goals (he has 15 now, Raúl scored the most at 44).

Kids watch and some other tidbits in the works. Cheers.