Spider Jerusalem

No need to get so defensive, I'm not having a pop, just skimmed through a few pages in my laziness (think you've under-rated Nolan as well btw ). I am mostly happy with the players that we've bought over the past 18 months though, as I said in one of the transfer window threads the under the current restrictions the club seems to be attracting more of the type of player who wants to be on the field for us rather than the likes of Marcelino, Babayaro and Luque who would avoid matches for months on end with hair-strain and only came here for the money that was on offer. I wasn't happy, and still not to be honest, that we didn't spend a bigger chunk of the Andy Carroll money than the £5.5 - £6.5 that we did over the transfer windows this year, but glad that we didn't go mental and spunk the lot on some bad purchases like Alan Smith where we can't shift him because of his insane wages. If Graham Carr can keep up his record and we get 1 or 2 in January of the same ilk that he managed to spot in the past then we should be more than comfortable this year.

Nobody is denying we've bought some shit in the past, but you can mostly see a connection between who was manager at the time and the players they bought in respect to how good they were / well they did. There are a couple of ommissions from your list though:- Jan 2009 - Kevin Nolan - Not the most mobile player but instrumental in getting us up and keeping us up Jan 2009 - Ryan Taylor - Bought as back up squad player. Not great, possibly average but has scored a few. Jan 2009 - Haris Vuckic - One of the brightest youngsters at the club. Yet to be given a real go in the team. As for your ratings I'd say there are a couple of post promotion signings that you have rated a bit highly on your scale. Jan 2010 - Danny Simpson - First choice RB for the club because he's better than James Perch. Jan 2011 - Hatem Ben Arfa - A disasterous first season for us due to an awful injury, but let's face it, he's played barely more than two full matches worth of time in the League so far and we don't know whether he's capable of living up to that short time on the pitch or standing up to another crunching tackle that some clogger tries to smash him with. Potentially our next Peter Beardsley but also equally potentially our next Albert Luque. Aug 2011 - Gabriel Obertan - First choice RW for the club mostly because he's the only RW at the club. Hasn't looked great so far when starting matches but after several years of non-playing for Man U definitely needs time to get into the swing of the Premier League. As somebody has mentioned earlier, this is all well and good at the moment seven matches into the season, and with hindsight slating past players for being injury prone, shite, gutless, but looking back a few years from here there is a good chance we could be saying the same for this current group of lads.

This is one of the reasons why, as much as it pains me, I have to agree with Ronaldo in the case of Capello. He should really have been dumped as soon as his term as manager had been deemed as finite as it had already come to an end. We should have learned our lesson when Eriksson had been the victim of entrapment by the English press and would leave 'after the next tournament' as his commitment to the role was already over and going into that tournament named a squad that would have been termed as industrial sabotage in any other walk of life when he named a forward line consisting of two broken players, a trainee and Peter Crouch.

This s*** needs to be dropped ASAP. Why are Poland in seed 1 there? Hosts along with Ukraine.

That's the Daily Mail website you're looking at. They don't recognise countries in Europe that we haven't had major wars with (one of them undeservedly in thier eyes) and still regard this as Yugoslavian territory. I'm just amazed (and quite impressed at the same time for them) that they managed to think of another European team that shared four letters in thier name to be honest.

That sums it up rather nicely. The player has had had a good season so far and is building on from when looked decent when he took the opportunity when it came his way before picking up the injury last year.

Decent first half performance but what a difference half time made. The positives for me were Krul is really building up his confidence, Tiote didn't do anything stupid to play himself into trouble and get booked, Obertan made some good runs although he should have done better when he recieved the ball and Ba and Best seem to be continuing to build up a bit of a partnership up front. However Pardew made reactionary substitutions rather than tactical when he should have, and the personnel brought on was baffling. Marveux must have killed Pardews cat, unless he really is that deluded to think that Lovenkrands offers anything at all at this level. Another good three points though, and that should be just under the half way point for safety this season.

nah man- they only claim to be better on paper now.... whatever the fuck that even means. Isn't that the modern day equivalent of the gag that went a round in the 80s - 'The Scottish football team - world class on paper, shit on grass'.

I'm going for a middling team at home for a change, and guessing Blackburn at St James'. So Man City away it will be judging from my last few years predictions...

Maybe the next one. Nope - won't get the chance.

Gomez to save the next pen....

I'd hazard a guess that it's most likely money paid out to external companies to do signs etc. with the money paid in two installments. Fell free to shoot that theory down though as it's a complete guess....

Of course we would, it's been St James' Park for more than 100 years and all that we have known. It may be more acceptable if we actually sold the naming rights instead of giving them away and paying for the privilege to a scumbag who now just seems to be taking the piss out of the fans with every move that he makes.

All of the current Premier League ones 'new' stadiums though, and never really had any other name to cling to. Yep, only three (Britannia, Reebok and DW/JJB) are over ten years old. Which is why I said 'new'. Reebok and DW / JJB have always been sponsored by those companies and have never had any other name attributed to them in the world outside of thier own fanbase. Brittania, not sure about but not particularly bothered to be quite honest...

All of the current Premier League ones 'new' stadiums though, and never really had any other name to cling to.

Give your head a fuckin shake man. The QPR performance was shit. No getting away from it, we were awful.....going forward. The football under AP in my opinion has been refreshingly good. Better than CH and JFK. Possibly better than KK's second stint to. We have been far more organised defensively since AP arrived but still conceded goals late on. This season we are again better defensively and that shows in the fact we have only conceded once. At Home. We are solid away, we are more resolute and it seems we can set games out too. Back end of last season we played some nice attacking football whilst missing a key striker and Barfa. This season we have been solid, organised and have shown glimpses of whats to come once Ben Arfa, Cabaye, Obertan, Mavreaux, Jonas and Tiote find an understanding and are fully settled. Goals will come from Ba, he has a good record in the PL, so does Best. That there should be our 1st choice pairing until Barfa is un and running. Im confident that with a little bit of patience we will only see the side get better and better over the next few months. Cabaye and Ben Arfa are going to provide guile and flair through the middle. Tiote will be an anchorman covering ground and chasing everythin. I'd like to see Marveux as a regular on the left and Jonas a chance to impress/improve on the right. Obertan off the bench for an impact in the second half. The two upront are hungry and have a good mix between them. Power, Arial ability, a bit of skill and a good PL record. Im also looking forward to seeing what sort of impact Santon will have at LB. I think he could forge a quality understanding with Marveaux on the left. I'd think....hope AP's first team would look like this once everyone is fit. ---Krul--- Simpson---S.Taylor---Coloccini ©---Santon Cabaye---Tiote Jonas--------Ben Arfa-----Marveaux ---Ba--- Bench: Harper, Williamson, R.Taylor, Gosling, Obertan, Shola and Best. That side could have us in the top 6 at christmas. I have confidence in AP, Carver and Stone. Do you not think it's you that needs to 'give your head a fucking shake'. I've highlighted two segments the first of which can be attributed to something that is nothing more than luck. EVERY match this season so far we been torn apart by the opposition and they haven't had players capable of putting the ball into the net. QPR, fucking QPR, had 3 chances cleared off the line as well as a number of gilt edged chances that most teams in this league will put away. For being organised, the team barely look like they know each other when they get on the field, and seem incapable of passing the ball to another man wearing the same shirt. In terms of football played, it's been fucking abysmal at best, long ball shit trying to get dead ball opportunities and hoping our appalling right-back cover (oh sorry current first place left-back) will be able to smash it in from a resulting free kick. We're hinging all of our bets on a player that is now recovering from a year out from two serious impact injuries to play in a league where he is going to take a number of high impact challenges and we don't know if he's going to be able to withstand it, never mind be able to perform to the high standards he did for two and a half matches last year. Pick your best 11 all you want, but actually getting those players fit and available at the same time is another thing, and one that we've been incapable of doing for a long time.

I'm fucking delighted with the points. We'll need them when the luck runs out we end up in a downward spiral of humpings to go with the abysmal 'football'.

At least I had the decency to use the players we'd had available in our last fixture, and then included the list of injured / unavailable players and mentioned the fact that they'd displace a couple of the team that started that match - you've chosen a team that was down to the bare bones on the very last day of the season and decided to misrepresent that as the top choice first team. The simple facts are that the squad is still bereft of proven quality once you get past the first 11, backed up with a reserve squad of mostly cheap misfits and development players.

You've got Jonas covering both wings by the way... I honestly cannot see how either of you can say that the bench is noticably strenghtened tough as the only real difference there is the addition of either Obertan or Marveux. One player added to a list of dubious quality and that's if we can ever get that first team out fit and playing together and then we get Smith, Guthrie or development players on the bench. We had Ba on the bench as well. A bit of an upgrade on Kuqi don't you think? In this example that was posted I think that you'll find that Ba is in the starting 11. An upgrade on Kuqi, but so were our other misfit forwards last season, but an upgrade on Andy Carroll?

You've got Jonas covering both wings by the way... I honestly cannot see how either of you can say that the bench is noticably strenghtened tough as the only real difference there is the addition of either Obertan or Marveux. One player added to a list of dubious quality and that's if we can ever get that first team out fit and playing together and then we get Smith, Guthrie or development players on the bench.

Really? Here's the team from the last match. Krul, Simpson, Ryan Taylor, Steven Taylor, Coloccini, Cabaye, Tiote, Obertan, Best, Lovenkrands, Gutierrez Soderberg, Ba, Vuckic, Smith, Marveaux, Sammy Ameobi, Ferguson Sorry, but that bench doesn't look too strong to me as we've got 4 development players on there that have yet to prove themselves up to the level required (one of which hasn't had a 1st team game for that matter), a player coming back from a serious injury, a striker who is looking out of shape and Alan Smith, who actually got time on the field. Of course that team would have had Ben Arfa, Santon, Shoala, Williamson and Harper in if they were fit / available, but then Ben Arfa and Santon would be in the starting 11 in place of Lovenkrands and Ryan Taylor. The transfer business over the summer did nothing to strengthen the squad, and it is still uncertain whether the players are adequate replacements for those leaving, never mind an improvment.

This is just an exercise for the Chron to 'prove' that it's standing up to the current regime after the failings in the transfer window and the anger being targetted at them for writing nothing but powderpuff articles. As Bluestar said earlier in the thread, has there been any indication from the club that they are expecting this list of questions, whether they'll actually answer them or just file them under bin?

I'm not too bothered if the hypothetical striker is an upgrade on Ba (taking him as the example as he is allegedly our best striker at the minute) - I would have been happy with another stiker that was an upgrade in replacement for Shola, Lovenkrands or Ranger as the former have had too much time on the field already this season and will accrue many more before the next window opens.

It was at the time when we were particularly shit as well, and nobody wanted to join in with the 'You Suck' chants. Miserable bastards!

Wasn't the Woodgate transfer prior to the English FA signing up to the madness of transfer windows?