Benwell Lad

Hopefully he is finally learning, the whole interview was good apart from him calling them United. Yup, and even more galling when our legendary Geordie ex centre forward does it on MOTD.

Certainly were. Been a long, long time.

One of the mackems that used to post on here seems suitably pissed off http://www.readytogo.net/smb/threads/free-ticket-pisstake.844707/ Interesting thread that. Our old jaw wiring correspondent tries to raise the issues of fans pissed off at buying season tickets and are regularly surrounded by freebies. It gets to page 8 before they start arranging to meet up for fights Wasn't Masterplan/Wearside/Wireside the jaw-wirer? Randy Savage was the other started-out-okay-but-reverted-to-type mackem poster Aye sorry, I'm confusing my halfwit macum imposters.

One of the mackems that used to post on here seems suitably pissed off http://www.readytogo.net/smb/threads/free-ticket-pisstake.844707/ Interesting thread that. Our old jaw wiring correspondent tries to raise the issues of fans pissed off at buying season tickets and are regularly surrounded by freebies. It gets to page 8 before they start arranging to meet up for fights

Shola will probably be our NEXT manager of the month.

No chance we'll go down marra. By end of December we'll have played 19 really hard games and in second half of season we have 19 really easy games while all the other relegation candidates have really tough fixtures. FTM.

Mick been in to congratulate him yet?

Been too long now like. Really need to see this footballing god tearing someone's defence to shreds again.

Good post, great point. Other teams may have the bounce to look forward to.

Yes - suspended for this game. Missus wanted a shopping trip this weekend.

tbh, based on quality, any PL club's "shadow" team, i.e. the best XI not getting a regular start, should and probably would hammer a poor Conference team. That's not to say that surprises don't happen and it's not that long ago that Mansfield (then a very good Conference side) gave a strong Liverpool team a very good game.

The last set of accounts they released showed they made an average of just under £16 per seat in gate reciepts which was the lowest in the league (we made £26). It'll be far less than that for them this season as they have flooded their games with cheap and free ticket offers to try to maintain a 40k average. Love it when you go on their site and they're all patting each other on the back because of their crowds. Of course you're going to get decent crowds when you're giving tickets away left, right and centre and heavily discounting 1000's of others. In fact they should be ashamed that despite all that they still have the most empty seats in the league. And only likely to be getting worse in the near future. I said ages ago they should have moved into the Darlo Arena and kept the SoS for the music gigs and the Newcastle match They even dished out loads of free tickets to local schools and government offices in the week leading up to the match against us when they realised there was no chance of it selling out. So its only Take That and Coldplay who can fill out Sunderland's "football" stadium now. How sad.

Not picking on Benwell Lad, but Referees always look better when they are not refereeing your team. Objectivity goes out the window when your team is involved. Yeah I agree, that is true

Tuesday they were celebrating a Palace win which sent them to the bottom of the league and getting beat last night was a great performance It's like a throw back to the Howard Wilkinson "we're not in a relegation battle" days. The place is just one massive fucking lunatic asylum.

On the surface 3-4 against Chelsea doesn't sound too bad but it seems a lot of macums are saying they were pretty awful and had some individual shockers. Like you say their goals seem to come from bounces around the box which land on someones toe rather than anything worked. It's doesn't bode well for them and they are below Palace because they are the worst team in the league. They really miss Mignolet too.

All those chances and near misses they had last night will no doubt be going in on Saturday.

Imagine someone had told you pre-season, or after a couple of games, that come December Bardsley would be their top scorer

We just need to get over this as it was coming sometime. If there's a single positive to be taken out of it, and I'm scraping the barrel here, maybe a reality check isn't a bad thing as certain parties may have been starting to get a wee bit ahead of themselves. We laboured and over elaborated at times when we should have moved the ball and Krul was very poor for two of the goals. Webb is a joke, nuff said. I find Swansea's brand of football pretty boring, it's good to see the game played properly but the old Wimbledon team were more exciting to watch than the sterile Swans.

It is one of football's great mysteries how the white Uriah Rennie that is Webb manages to con enough people into believing that he is a top referee. Following hard on the heels of a thoroughly incompetent display from an unfit looking Phil Dowd on Saturday it is embarrassing that the supposed "world's greatest league" has these guys in charge of matches. I recently watched a Bundesliga match and once again was really impressed with the standard of officiating. The ref looked strong and fit for a start, and managed to remain in complete control making all the big decisions quickly and correctly. As we have now reached the stage where most of the managers and players come from abroad maybe we should start recruiting some competent officials from foreign leagues.

Yup.

The last set of accounts they released showed they made an average of just under £16 per seat in gate reciepts which was the lowest in the league (we made £26). It'll be far less than that for them this season as they have flooded their games with cheap and free ticket offers to try to maintain a 40k average. Love it when you go on their site and they're all patting each other on the back because of their crowds. Of course you're going to get decent crowds when you're giving tickets away left, right and centre and heavily discounting 1000's of others. In fact they should be ashamed that despite all that they still have the most empty seats in the league. And only likely to be getting worse in the near future. I said ages ago they should have moved into the Darlo Arena and kept the SoS for the music gigs and the Newcastle match

not height though!! That was some leap on Saturday then, from a standing position against an Albion defender who ran before jumping. Thoroughly deserving of the praise which is coming his way.

Ah knaa.....you have to play them home AND away as well, AND there's a referee!

Ticket schemes can be clever marketing and free tickets to worthy causes commendable, but they just smack of desperation, almost appearing to try and foist tickets on often unwilling recipients.

2 X 10 pound tickets per season ticket holder for Chelsea tonight plus the usual foisting of free tickets on schools and colleges. Free tickets falling out of the sky like autumn leaves for the Southampton game. They are putting themselves in direct competition with the Northern League for supporters. Scabby dogs. Apart from holding the title for most empty seats in the PL they must have just about the lowest gate receipts too.