Wullie

What's this sub rule change?

No, I'm BrianNUFC.

Absolutely.

Bloke's an absolute fucking cunt.

The club is in real trouble at the moment, again. Otter's summed it up pretty well.

He was an integral part of our promotion and anyone who gives him grief is a total cunt. Might as well go and give David Kelly or Gavin Peacock some stick too while you're at it.

Rather concerning.

On current form, playing off Ba against Arsenal?

Even I don't think we'll go down but it's not beyond the realms of possibility given how reliant we are on key players in areas without much quality behind them. A bad injury to either Colo, Tiote or Ba and I'd be worried, two of them are fucking off for a month as it is.

My main concern's not the performance or result but the line up and the bench. One game left in pre-season and we look nowhere near ready for a Premier League game in terms of personnel.

Don't be ridiculous.

Christ almighty.

Ridiculous straw man. Is there no middle ground between those two scenarios? If there are only three strikers on Earth better than what we've got, football really is fucked.

Yes it does matter, it would be nice to bring in a player for money because we think he will improve our side, like our competitors do, rather than bringing in players because they're cheap/free/injured with their quality being rather a distant second priority. Cabaye, Ba, Gosling, Ben Arfa, Gutierrez, Marveaux, it's all well and good extolling the virtues of these players on the field but we got them because they were all going way below their market value for one reason or another and not because we went out, scouted them and said "he's the one, get him". Nowt wrong with it individually, but you can't build success like that. We're taking a massive risk injury-wise for a start.

We need another, but we did buy a striker a month ago. Just saying. We didn't buy him.

Didn't sell anyone last summer I don't think but spent a few million on Tiote and Perch.

It's embarrassing that we've needed to buy a striker since we got promoted, even before Carroll proved himself, and we still don't have one a year later with pre-season nearly gone and two weeks to kick off.

Still the Enrique cash to come in yet...

Soon to be in profit over the summer period, fantastic news.

Still waiting on that list of 'Ashley apologists' btw. I'll assume you can't recall any. Next time you see a quote that suggests blind loyalty to the regime I'd appreciate it if you sent it to me in a PM, surely I won't be waiting long if the unrelenting support of Ashley and Llambias is so widespread. Anything Baggio posts for a kick off. Ian W technically, in as far as he'll try very hard to find a 'rational', 'nice' explanation on every single occasion something indefensible takes place, and then try to believe it in the name of optimism. OzzieMandias bobshed johnson293 apparently? I'm sure there are some others... there have been some recent converts, though. oldtype, for example. Stu's going through a bit of a crisis in faith last time I checked too. Further to this, I want to state the point that just because someone couches all their beliefs in pseudo-analytical terms - offering plenty of ifs, buts and ever-shifting conditions - it doesn't mean these aren't just attempts to camouflage a desire to blindly back one side over another, consciously or otherwise - so a lack of posts declaring a never ending loyalty to Llambias is irrelevant. The fact is plenty of people have changed their positions at some time or other over this issue, but a certain - increasingly exposed - hardcore don't and show no sign of doing so. And yes, 'this is just an unproveable statement that counts just as much for the Ashley haters'. Boo hoo. Pretending you believe and argue for nothing until/unless its 'proven' is intellectually cowardly and/or disingenuous.

The "wait and see" point has been and gone imo, most of our pre-season games have passed, we play Arsenal in less than two weeks time, it's simply not good enough with the money and time on our hands. Would we have signed a striker yet if we hadn't taken advantage of yet another odd contractual issue with Ba? Is Graham Carr's job as a scout or does he just ring round agents and try and find out who is about to fall off the back of a lorry?

Still waiting on that list of 'Ashley apologists' btw. I'll assume you can't recall any. Next time you see a quote that suggests blind loyalty to the regime I'd appreciate it if you sent it to me in a PM, surely I won't be waiting long if the unrelenting support of Ashley and Llambias is so widespread. Anything Baggio posts for a kick off.

Nut, you knew about that before he did. Said it before, he's Alan Oliver with a Twitter account.

I used to pretend to be Laurent Robert when I was younger like, but not like that.