The College Dropout

I reckon only Man Utd. can beat Chelsea or L'Pool in the CL. Barca aren't strong enough against those 2 but for some reason Barca might have too much for Manyoo.

This and the fact that Deco will need time to adapt to the EPL. He's also very weak.. weak players don't do well here.

Deco wouldn't be able to adapt. He's too small and fragile. Not worth the £15m being banded about.

Love how they've already got a banner proclaiming him so. I'd want to wait until he'd actually done something personally, maybe that's just me. Boro looked very good I must admit.

Voted FAB.

Gayer.

Aye he's shit. Smith should definitely be in the top 5.

I don't think another player in my lifetime will do what Maradona did in '86.

What a weak penalty decision.

Yes, it was Bobby that transformed our side. He was always going to sign a quick forward & direct winger (as the bids for Jeffers & Zenden prove) & build the teams attacks around Shearer. Our current squad is crap, I suggest you look at the league table if your not taking on board what is banded around here. I think you are underselling the value that Robert and Bellamy had to that side. How can you attribute it all down to SBR?? Surely by that measure you're saying we'd of had the same success had Zenden and Jeffers signed, even though both tunred out to be pap despite playing for decent managers. Ive had a look at the table, thanks and it only reiterates my point. Surely you arent actually suggesting that the position of the club in the league at the moment is actually an accurate assessment of the quality we have in our squad. Are you?? I think your undervaluing the squad & manager that Robert & Bellamy joined. As I have said SBR was going to get players in for his tactics, he understood what he had to do & the players he signed with the players we had it all worked out. As for Jeffers & Zenden we will never know will we. Of course the league is an accurate assessment there is no other way to asses the team. totally agree. Also the Premiership has improved since then. Speed, Lee, Dyer, Solano & Shearer very good players. We had the base of a good team.

Aye totally agree. Definetely a "big game player" whilst there are question marks over henry and Ronaldo (whether rightly or wrongly). He just never got the opportunities that a player of his calibre deserved. No doubt about Shearer.

Totally agree with Apisith. For Liverpool Gerrard always delivers when it matters something many great players have yet to achieve.

You had your Terry Butcher's and the "No nonsense" like in Maradona's day.

Nope.

That's fair enough. Shearer at his peak had more to his game than RVN but because of the different levels of success it wouldn't be an injustice to say RVN was better. For me the stage is very important.

Arsenal were dominated in that game against Chelsea though - not necessarily the best match to make Henry's case. Yeah it's not the best example but being a truly great player to me is about being the difference between drawing or loosing or winning or drawing. Henry made the difference in that game, his quick thinking and incisiveness got them a draw in a match they "deserved" to lose. Although I didn't make that clear in my post. Ronaldo is one of the reasons why Man Utd are so dominant in many matches but in the tighter games (mostly against the better teams) he hasn't made the difference. A few years ago you could say comfortably that Ronaldinho was the difference in one of those Chelsea/Barca CL matches. Or Kaka at old Trafford. Even Gerrard's 2nd half performance in Istanbul (although Hamann's introduction was as important). Christiano hasn't had a performance like that yet.

Bergkamp is a magnificent player but he wasn't as good as Henry when he was at his peak. I thought people stopped saying Henry didn't perform in the big matches when he scored 2 against Chelsea..

In the bigger matches Rooney is the inspirational one. He may not score but he dominates the match.

Nope. Terry looks injured as well. He's never been quick but he's looked very slow in recent weeks.

Well deserved, Rio's been immense this season and seems to be a natural leader. Mind, I wouldn't have had anything against it if either Terry or Gerrard would've been given the armband. Aye. I was thinking he was unfairly overlooked when the captain armband was available the last time. Ferdinand is more important to England than Terry or even Gerrard.

I think it looks precisely that, so its up to him to clarify. I take it you agree that we should be attempting to buy players of the calibre that Liverpool do then ? Why the hell would anyone WANT us to sell our best players? It's just nonsense mate. Of course we should be attempting to buy the best, but right now we simply cannot compete with the top clubs. Hence Keegan's comments in the article, which are spot on IMO. The Jenas point is that we bought an up and coming young player with potential, for an acceptable fee. He did well for a time, but needed to be sold for a variety of reasons. We then still made a good profit on him. That's far better than the alternative. Some people HAVE expressed this view. Point is we also have attempted to buy the best quality players possible, but the judgement of managers has been flawed more often than desirable. We also HAVE been down the road of buying young players with potential who look like they may improve ie Bramble, Ambrose, Viana, Bernard, Gavilan, Cort, Griffin, Lua Lua, Hamilton, Domi, Brady, Glass, and of course Jeanarse himself. So why is it insinuated such a path hasn't been done before, and its going to be successful ? The club needs immediate quality footballers, it ALWAYS does. It's no good ignoring the present, and deflecting attention from a reluctance to tackle the immediate future, and you shouldn't be taken in by it, because as I said, we HAVE been chased young players before and I've gave you recent examples that you should all be aware of. This football club needs BIG money spent on it in the summer, and I'm talking a lot more than micky mouse clubs like Blackburn, of who we should be snapping up their best players. Aye we should be looking to sign the likes of Bentley but even with a shitload of money that is still somewhat unlikely. We'll end up signing Luis Figo instead.

I think it looks precisely that, so its up to him to clarify. I take it you agree that we should be attempting to buy players of the calibre that Liverpool do then ? The original post is also cherry picking anyway, choosing a few players who "failed" proves nothing, paying the going rate is also what the top clubs do. If people really want the club to act 2nd rate, then they will get a 2nd rate club. I meant what Dave said. We have been paying top dollar for second rate players for a long time now. I want us to model our transfer policy more like Arsenal's or even Spurs not Liverpool who have wasted a shit-load of money for unspectacular players. We need to spot good young talent. Once a player reaches a certain status it'll be impossible to sign him when the top 4 target them.

do you mean my post Dave ? when do you see the likes of Liverpool having to sell their best players ? If you don't see NUFC being capable of challenging at that level, then its really no wonder I've been bashing my head against a brick wall defending people running the club that think we should be. Thats the point of MY post [with no desire to turn this post into a boardfest, but its a logical observation all the same] I didn't mean our best players. It's just that under Allardyce, Roeder and Souness we where signing players in their mid to late 20's.. their value diminishes istantly... when we need/want to sell them their value is rock bottom. We had Bellamy, Dyer & Jenas for a good number of years and we sold each one for atleast what they cost and it was a number of years before Dyer & Bellamy started getting extra large pay packets.

This is what gave us over-paid shit like Duff, Barton, Parker & Emre. I'd rather we look for youngsters like Jenas again. They might cost more than their worth but they'll be on much lower wages, more to prove and can be sold on for good money.