BlueStar

Last year the bonus points were based on stats like goals, assists etc which meant they were weighted heavily in favour of forwards and attacking midfeilders and pretty much always were added onto the players who already got the lions share of the points in that game. This year I'm led to believe it's instead decided by a panel of people who were at the game. Better way of doing it imho, but like the Guests of Collingwood Insurance, they're always going to make decisions you disagree with.

Depends what you mean, if "Sticking up for the club" means saying we're getting there, in five years time we're gonna be contenders, it's going to come good in the end etc it just makes us look deluded when from the outside looking in we look very ordinary and are not showing much potential. As for only writing this stuff now, doesn't he write all the time? How do you know he was against the appointment at the time if he didn't give his views on it then?

I'm willing to be patient if it means long term success, but the problem I have is that the reason we are losing some of these games isn't down to things like not having a good enough squad, needing to work on fitness, moulding the team etc. There are games we have had every right to win. Now you don't always win the games you have a right to, but the way we've gone into some of them has not even given us a fighting chance. There's a difference between not beating a team because we're just not there yet, we're in a transitional phase, we don't have the players to give them a decent game etc and not winning a game because we didn't utilise what was available to us in the slightest. It's easy to look at a list of results and say that they're fine because you'd expect not to win these games when we're starting a "five year plan". I'd never go into Liverpool at home thinking we should take the points even at the hight of the Keegan years. But what catches in the throat is not the zero points but the squandered potential in the manner we achieved them and the fact it had little to do with the understandable handicap of our 'rebuilding' effort.

Can the five year plan not include attempting to beat teams from the bottom third this season? Or would that make the wheels come off the whole thing?

Makes some excellent points in an entertaining style, backed up by his experience of years of being a genuine, loyal fan. Can actually be bothered to read his long articles. His pieces are clearly op-ed, which is something people seem to be missing the point of if they're making the redundant whine of it being slanted or opinionated. Trying to be "fair and balanced" and "impartial" is what makes some people's articles read like they were written as English homework...

And gets kicked in the heed for his trouble. Never looked like he was going to score.

Well we're the only club I've read about using heart monitors in training.

Shit, was watching the Scottish scorescene thing and they were getting an update from their reporter just as it happened. Then later they said he'd had a seizure but had regained conciousness later and it sounded like he might be OK and they were mainly talking about what an amazing game it had been. Terrible that.

He's not been great like, but the same can be said of a lot of our team and he's not had any utter mares. His main role at this time can be to fill the LB shirt, do a job and free up N'Zogbia to make us look like we might score, if he adapts to the game and comes good it would be a bonus.

He's not used to the premiership yet apparently. How he's going to get Premiership experience sitting on the bench or in the stands however I dunno. But yeah, if we're going to waste N'Zogbia at left back we might as well sell him to Arsenal where he can be a cracking attacking player and use the money to buy an actual left back.

Yeah, just like Keegan did. Keegan had a season at championship level before taking on the top flight, which is at least what Shearer needs.

Out of the cup thanks to some Liverpool fan from Wycome who got 71 points. Why couldn't I get some useless Swedish twat like my lass? Ah well, the pub cup is where the money is. That and my work league, especially now the guy who was running away with it had Knight and Cole in his team this week so got a big helping of minus points

Exactly. If you have to actually sit through the matches and see us waste that potential week after week it's more difficult to be positive than if you just look at the league table and think "Hmm, 10th. That's not bad. And we played well against xxxx on Sky the other week."

A state of the club caused by being too patient with managers who were clearly taking us in the wrong direction unfortunately... Spot on. Any manager that doesn't turn us into a top 6 team within a few months should be sacked. Fuck continuity, stability, development, team rebuilding and planning for the future. We demand success now. Spot on, that's exactly what people were saying. The only two possibilities are being a top six club or playing awful football against abysmal opposition, fielding a team that look unmotivated and unsure of what they're doing and making Souness style selection and substitution decisions. I'm not saying we should sack him now but neither should we let this go on for another year with no hint of improvement, plough loads of money into his long term plan and then say "Ah well, maybe he was wrong for it after all. Next." Backing lame duck managers with too much time and far too much money is what got us in to this situation. If Sam wants to be trusted and backed with his long term plan he needs to show that he knows what he's doing very soon. No-one's demanding trophies or top six finishes. I don't think it's greedy or impatient to want to look like we have the slightest chance or interest in picking up points from games against piss-poor opposition or wanting toget the best out of the players we have available on the day.

A state of the club caused by being too patient with managers who were clearly taking us in the wrong direction unfortunately...

Other mid-table and lower teams can confidently expect a result against us at the moment.

It was hit well, it wasn't right in the corner by any means though.

Statto Sam hasn't been looking at it that way though, he's been referring to the more positive sounding "unbeaten in four games" stat.

On the plus side, the fact we've given them more than half their points this season means they've got more of a chance of beating the mackems record-breaking point total.

Crap game, the fight outside the Gate afterwards was entertaining though.

Sigh. How about you give it a go, ey Sam? Go on, humour us. Play Zog on the left and Milner on the right for a few matches. Se what happens.

They must have made a fortune from Barbie, they should have gone for a bigger club.

"Presenting himself to police" sounds like another sexual offence to me.

I like to see us take the odd risk by buying promising 17 year olds, rather than paying millions for them 10 years later when Man U have already got the best out of them...

My stupid bets £2 on Milner to score and Newcastle to win @ 9/1 £2 on Martins to scrore from outside the box @ 14/1 £2 on Zog last scorer @ 16/1 £4 on Newcastle to score first and fail to win @ 4/1