madras

exactly how i see it. especially the bit about shitting it after taking the lead as i see it that we can't handle pressure as opposed to it being a tactic or plan to sit back after taking a lead.

it's a feature of our play, one that can't be taught, players either have it or don't and that is nouse. gary speed, scott sellars and olly bernard all had it, the ability to cover effectivly, to position themselves somewhere that they could cover for defender should he move forward. not dropping directly into that position but somewhere they can get to that positiion should we lose possession and the other player is caught out. we have players who are technically very good on the ball, few have much ability off it.

That's crazy. we've had to do it befeore in the 70's i'm fiarly sure, or some club had to wear our away kit. (no, i'm not thinking of the sheff wed game whe both teams had to wear their away kits)

nope. You do realise we are talking about our first season back into the premier league don't you? yes, thats the bit about when he came back, covering the time before pardew came.

aye, started around the time he was out for ages after having his jaw broke and many making a choice between first team goal scoring centre forward or currently out injured centre half. he got a lot worse during his time out in the way our players usually get a lot better when out injured. the defence of andy carroll being our very own small scale di canio moment. Not really. Williamson was pretty assured during that spell and showed more composure than Saylor did pre-Pardew. Of course Saylor improved a lot after Pardew came in but that shouldn't take away from the decent albeit short-lived partnership of Colo and Williamson. first part of the championship season taylor was our best centre half, till colo got up to speed. then when he came back from injury he was very good and better than williamson.

Schooner ? It should be a Wellington.

but also dropped off him to let him lay the ball off with his head a few times. best of both worlds for him.

well that place looks lovely, so welcoming and unique, think I may make it my local.

i realise it's an everton thing towards liverpool but "outraged by everything, ashamed by nothing" is very apt for them.

aye, started around the time he was out for ages after having his jaw broke and many making a choice between first team goal scoring centre forward or currently out injured centre half. he got a lot worse during his time out in the way our players usually get a lot better when out injured. the defence of andy carroll being our very own small scale di canio moment.

it was sissoko and gouffran i was referring to and they put a foot in if the balls near them, do little chasing down and take up poor positions when out of possession, 3 of our front 4 (first line of defence)offer very little resisitance. from the little i saw of sissoko for toulouse he was a much more dynamic player now he's only involved when we have the ball, not sure if the game is just too quick for him at the moment but i certainly want to see him deeper, alongside cabaye as soon (hopefully) as we are safe. I know it was, and I'm in agreement on Moussa. Gouffran does a lot more (effective) defensive work than you're suggesting, though. I don't see it now, he did in his first couple of games (eager to impress ?) but not so much since then.

Absolutely, the Colo-Williamson was our best partnership by quite a distance in the 2010/11 season. Williamson's weaknesses have been completely exposed now mind which is a shame. nope.

it was sissoko and gouffran i was referring to and they put a foot in if the balls near them, do little chasing down and take up poor positions when out of possession, 3 of our front 4 (first line of defence)offer very little resisitance. from the little i saw of sissoko for toulouse he was a much more dynamic player now he's only involved when we have the ball, not sure if the game is just too quick for him at the moment but i certainly want to see him deeper, alongside cabaye as soon (hopefully) as we are safe.

since january we've been set up basically as a 4-2-3-1, two attacking minded full backs, sissoko,gouffran and jonas (2 of which do very little defensivly) playing off cisse. i'd hardly call that "set up defensively" if anything it's a lack of defensive thinking when they have possession that leads to that situation.

Now he's prepared to talk about it. Some journo will no doubt ask...... " what did you mean by 'I'm a fascist, not a racist ' ? If taken out of context, in what context did you mean it ? "

Decency still exists on the SMB. That's a cracking post, has to be the best post ever made on there. Don't agree. People seriously needs to separate football from politics. What is a football club? What is politics? I've explained the reasoning behind this. A football club is driven like it's a company and not a political party. No one cares, if you are black, white, olive, pale, socialist, conservative, communist when it comes down to football. It's not the 50's or 60's anymore. I'm aware that there is politics in terms of company politics or what you want to call it, but that isn't the same typ of politics being discussed here. What is being discussed here is that a man who has a political view that hasn't interefered with his job is being considered as a disgrace to football. I think it's rather more a disgrace that they have signed a league one manager who clearly has had tons of problems at past clubs. But has he let his fascist view get in the way of his job as a football manager? I can't find any evidence of that. I'm not defending Di Canio, he should know more as an human being. But claiming he's a disgrace while we as a club have signed some thugs in the past and gotten away with it. Come sunday and they beat Chelsea no one is going to care if he's a fascist or not. Football is as fickle of a game as politics and it's pathetic at times. That's a massive assumption. Core beliefs influence everything we do and say, all the time, whether we're at work or not. No, a massive assumption is to suggest that his belief has any effect/impact on the world and the way we live. People need to try and get a larger perspective of things. we have seen people comparing fascism to new labour on RTG (and thats in all seriousness), defending his salute and making excuses for his beliefs, so yes, I'd say his beliefs have that sort of effect. I fear itr may be you that needs the larger perspective. nowhere near the level it's now at. Pathetic. It's the internet man. Are you seriously telling me to get a wider perspective on how the world works by looking on RTG? Get the f*** out of here man If you live through the internet fair enough, if you haven't seen the world from other perspective than fair enough, but don't tell me you've been to places and seen stuff and can compare that to what a bunch of kids are saying on RTG. Would you start ignoring your best friend if he one day said he sympathized with some facist ideas? Their race policy not being one of them? ok then, mackems i work with with, i also happen to spend some of my working day in sundreland, i think thats a wide enough perspective when they are the subject under discussion. would i stop ignoring my best friend if he revealed hiself to be a fascist ? I probably would yes.

nowhere near the level it's now at.

Decency still exists on the SMB. That's a cracking post, has to be the best post ever made on there. Don't agree. People seriously needs to separate football from politics. What is a football club? What is politics? I've explained the reasoning behind this. A football club is driven like it's a company and not a political party. No one cares, if you are black, white, olive, pale, socialist, conservative, communist when it comes down to football. It's not the 50's or 60's anymore. I'm aware that there is politics in terms of company politics or what you want to call it, but that isn't the same typ of politics being discussed here. What is being discussed here is that a man who has a political view that hasn't interefered with his job is being considered as a disgrace to football. I think it's rather more a disgrace that they have signed a league one manager who clearly has had tons of problems at past clubs. But has he let his fascist view get in the way of his job as a football manager? I can't find any evidence of that. I'm not defending Di Canio, he should know more as an human being. But claiming he's a disgrace while we as a club have signed some thugs in the past and gotten away with it. Come sunday and they beat Chelsea no one is going to care if he's a fascist or not. Football is as fickle of a game as politics and it's pathetic at times. That's a massive assumption. Core beliefs influence everything we do and say, all the time, whether we're at work or not. No, a massive assumption is to suggest that his belief has any effect/impact on the world and the way we live. People need to try and get a larger perspective of things. we have seen people comparing fascism to new labour on RTG (and thats in all seriousness), defending his salute and making excuses for his beliefs, so yes, I'd say his beliefs have that sort of effect. I fear itr may be you that needs the larger perspective.

possibly that, possibly, like many who hold distasteful views, they've learned the best way to avoid challenges and questioning is to not let others speak. it could all have been cleared up today if he'd just said "no, I'm not a fascist" and came up with some excuse as to why he'd said it in the past, but he couldn't and that spoke volumes.

it's disturbing the way people will throw away everything they believe in, in order to protect something else, like the parent who denies their child can do any wrong despite what they witness. we've seen it before to a lesser degree, liverpool fans defence of suarez and to an even lesser degree the defence on here of andy carroll (ie doesn't matter what he does providing he's playing well for us) but this seems to be on a differing scale and I'm not 100% sure many of our fans wouldn't have reacted in a similar manner. disappointed but not at all surprised that a good few view things that way but a bit taken aback at how many. roles reveresed I wouldn't be going.

hull, boro, then I'd struggle.

ever been in a pub with cardiff fans ? you wouldn't want cardiff to come up!

Me too. He's also overrated and I get the impression we didn't do a very thorough character check on him (judging by a few stories I read in the French press). depending on whats in his contract and if he is on such a bumper wage, he may stay there should they get relegated as no-one may want to come anywhere near the wages and he may not want to take the pay cut (colo/enrique stylee)

i don't think they did last time, just the strategy didn't get what we wanted. it's not like we said "we aren't ineterested in buying anyone" just that the deals didn't come off. And totally coincidentally they ALL came off this January when we were in relegation trouble. Whatever. well I wouldn't say it was coincidence but if you want to think we could've got sissoko, gouffran and mapou last summer for the prices we did in january then thats up to you. i'm not denying and never have that we spent a little because we were in trouble but the overall strategy of exploiting clauses/contract endings (paying under market value) is still there and it's a damn sight easier to spend 1.5 mill on a player worth a lot more (sisssoko,gouffran) than an extra 1.5mill who may not (de jong, debuchy). for what it's worth had sissoko,gouffran and mapou been available at those prices last summer do you think we'd have bought them then ? Our procurement strategy is commendable there's no doubt or argument about that but failure to pay the market rate in summer for a fourth centre-back (for example) was inexcusable. IMO they would have thrown their procurement strategy out the window and paid over the odds in January for the players we bought, had the selling clubs quoted higher prices, because they had to - case in point being Sissoko, who would have been free/virtually free (agent fees etc), but we paid for - the principles of their procurement strategy were correctly overridden in January by necessity, as they ought to have been in the summer. However, they had rested on their laurels and penny-pinched to a dangerous degree after last season's achievements. They certainly deserve credit for realising the damage caused by the inactivity of the summer window and being very active in remedying it in the summer, we were like a f***ing whirlwind in January I genuinely couldn't keep up but even from a fiscal perspective, would we have had to spend the alleged £31m in January, had we paid an extra £15m in the summer? Three players who are at a first-team level, I wager, would have allowed us more rotation and prevented many of the injuries which have blighted this season IMO. sissoko isn't really a case in point. yes we would probably have got him for nothing in the summer and yes our predicament at the time lead to us spending a little to get him earlier but he's a player worth much, much more than we paid for him so there is no risk. do you think had he had 3yrs left on his contract we'd have paid up the necessary to get him, same with gouffran and mapou ?

That Dutch forward and Debuchy didn't sign in the Summer because we were sticking to a budget, at the same time Ashley had his bank balance improved by £11 million. maybe also sticking to the idea thast we wont spend more than we think a players worth ? (we have on occasion been known to pay the going rate)