The College Dropout

Do you get payed directly by Big Sam? The effort is appreciated HTT. But I doubt anyone read the whole thing thoroughly. Why the total lack of belief in Martins? He has a better chance of working in a 433 than Owen and even Viduka. Why sign Viduka when you know he'll struggle to play in your preffered formation? You do know by the time he left Chelsea, Mourinho was playing a 442? I think you've created a hypothesis for something that is being done completely randomly. I call it the "Lost" effect. Wing it as much as you like and someone will draw logical conclusions to what you did. Owen on the right of an attacking 3? Seriously? Anyway I hope your right and Sam is as clever as he tries to be.

On that subject, did you see Agbonlahor's interview? I think he's possibly the most boring, monotone lad on the planet. You'd think someone had just died rather than him scoring the winner in a local derby. You shouldn't be so harsh on the lad. He is a brummie after all. No seriously the accent makes him sound x10 worse.

He must've been told to do that. He was sat right in front of them. Did a decent job tbh. Better than Barton and no worse than Emre.

Nice to see we can come up with excuses for him already.

I'll put mine up. It's pretty nice if i say so myself.

Yeah I heard this during the Fiorentina match (good players). Very sad news. RIP

If Owen doesn't fit. Don't play him. If your unsure about Viduka/Geremi in the short and medium term, don't sign them. It's the whole changing the fullbacks that makes me think Sam is as clueless as me. You sign 2 players yet you play 2 players in their wrong positions instead. It's like he has no plan or no idea of what he wants. And to add insult to injury the football is dire.

if he has to play square pegs in round holes - for now with the players he has - then playing zoggy wide right and Martins wide left is by far a better option than playing Milner, IMO, until we buy a player to replace Solano. I'm not sure NE5 - I like milner. I just think the quality of football is so poor that his choice of wingers is almost immaterial. We never play them into the game, we hardly ever have the full backs overlapping and we always seem to get the ball to the half way line and then punt it up top - almost always from Rozy or a full back. The two first choice wingers at the minute (Jimmy and Zog) have very different qualities and the Zog has it in him to beat a man and whip in a cracking cross, whereas Milner's a bit more of a battler who can cut it but neither of them will make any impact until we get the ball to their feet and have some movement around them. It's all a bit static at the minute which makes his decision to drop Beye/Enrique even more baffling to me. At least they seem able to overlap and get back into position when needed. Don't think he fancies Martins to much either I don't think Viduka is suited to a 4-3-3 either. Not a battering ram type player.

Barton's "challenge" was unnecessarily malicious. Violent intentions for no reasons. Should get a ban.

Sam hasn't helped by not being able to decide the back-four for a consistent period of time. Even rafa can manage that.

No one passed it well today. We're not talking about everyone else though, we're talking about Smith and his distribution was poor which put us under continued pressure. Barton was infinetly more guilty then Smith, who had a decent game today. Broke up lots of play and saved a shot off the line. He was asked to do a job and did it adequately. Barton looked totally off the pace, especially in the first half. Caught on the ball, misplaced passes, generally slow at everything and also managing to be a total prick at the same time and could've gotten sent off on another day. Smith was certainly more effective.

Couldn't disagree more with that. I'm surprised at you making this comment, tbh. A natural midfielder playing in their strongest position is going to do everything a midfielder should be doing better than a striker playing in midfield. Can you explain your logic behind the idea that a striker playing in midfield should score goals from midfield? I think it's obvious that an entirely different set of attributes are needed to score goals as a midfielder compared to a striker. Your right in many aspects. I don't even remember him being in the box very many times at all. He's certainly not an attacking midfielder when he plays.

Yeah he does kind of remind me of Scott Parker. Some of it good (bravery) some of it.... not so much (sometimes dodgy passing). I think he's a decent player and did his job pretty well today. Certainly played better than Emre.

Why are you thinking about minor things like performances?

You GO for a win, but a draw would still be welcome. This isn't going 1-0 up and being fairly happy if it ended 1-1. When you set out to draw.. your likely to loose 1-0. With our lack of pace upfront, setting counter attacks are also very difficult. Your missing the point, what he says infront of the cameras and to the team are two completely different things. elaborate please He means, Sam tells the media that we are going for a draw. But tells the players to attack and go for the win. The players then proceed to play defensively, hoping for a draw. Logical conclusion me thinks. Bunch of retards on this board, it's common talk from most managers, they hardly ever come out and say we should win especially in away games because that's setting them up for criticism straight away if it doesn't come off. You have no point to your sentiments. BS said (at least against Reading) we'd go there looking for a draw and perhaps nick a goal. We played exactly like that. You can't argue with that. Perhaps if he said that and we had given Reading a real game, looked threatening, created chances then you would have a point. But you don't. So shut up. It's about attitude not the result. He could come out and say we're going to win 3-0 every game if that makes people feel better, does that show ambition then? He's being realistic, he said we'd go to Reading (who aren't a bad side at home) and try get a result, we played s***... get over it, i'm sure if we went for it and conceded heavily then it would be "s*** tactics again, too attacking leaving ourselves exposed at back" Allardyce is trying to get results the best way he knows how.. but of course attitude is more important than results isn't it? wrong, so you shut up He can say whatever he likes, that doesn't show ambition. Playing like you want to win does. Your talking with a vast amount of ifs and maybes. When you play crap football repeatedly (like we have) the results will inevitably catch. I hope you understand this simple little concept. Sam's idea of trying to get a result is attempting to thwart the opposition and play defensively. This hasn't worked. It's small club mentality in its purist form. Reading are a decent team, Derby aren't. Both have weak defenses and we rarely troubled either. Portsmouth (or even Everton) didn't to SJP with the mentality we take to teams whose aim is to avoid relegation. Your acting as if these tactics have ever looked like working on any kind of consistent basis for us.

The first 3 would probably win most of those long balls we pump. Drogba would offer us the ball over the top.

I can usually accept results such as this, but the way we set out to play the match was pathetic. Thats the problem. That's what people are ignoring. I want to see us improve under Big Sam. I want to see good tactics/team selection something that tells me we are building for the greater good. We looked pathetic. Out-played for large sections of the game by an inferior team. If performances reversed, we had our captain miss 2 very good chances, had one cleared off the line, got the ball down and played, looked balanced in midfield and got sucker punched by a fortuitous goal i would be a lot happier.

You GO for a win, but a draw would still be welcome. This isn't going 1-0 up and being fairly happy if it ended 1-1. When you set out to draw.. your likely to loose 1-0. With our lack of pace upfront, setting counter attacks are also very difficult. Your missing the point, what he says infront of the cameras and to the team are two completely different things. elaborate please He means, Sam tells the media that we are going for a draw. But tells the players to attack and go for the win. The players then proceed to play defensively, hoping for a draw. Logical conclusion me thinks. Bunch of retards on this board, it's common talk from most managers, they hardly ever come out and say we should win especially in away games because that's setting them up for criticism straight away if it doesn't come off. You have no point to your sentiments. BS said (at least against Reading) we'd go there looking for a draw and perhaps nick a goal. We played exactly like that. You can't argue with that. Perhaps if he said that and we had given Reading a real game, looked threatening, created chances then you would have a point. But you don't. So shut up. It's about attitude not the result.

Looked good at right back but pretty dodgy in the middle. He had a harder time dealing with Jones than Faye.

Just like everyone gives Smith a chance? To be honest for £6m you'd like to something from his first 3 games that would give you hope, so far nothing, only a ridiculous challenge at the end of the first half today. Smith has been doing it for years though tbf. Are you honestly saying Barton looks exactly the same for us as he has for City for the past few years? To be honest I haven't really watched him at City so I'm just going on so far what I've seen of him in black & white. If we use this way to judge players we might aswell sell Owen for £1m in January as he hasnt looked too special recently. Tbf. I think we all agree that Owen's legs have gone and he needs good service to do anything at all.... we sort of expect some of these seemingly lethargic looking performances. Barton just looks totally off-the-boil at the moment. Don't think he's match sharp yet.

Aye, will there be any repercussions? The alphabet boys are watching......

Bellamy was under 25 when he had his biggest injuries. Didn't Bellers have the same knee injury as Owen or was that Shearer? Or all three? Either way Shearer and Owen lost alot of pace after their long-time injuries.

You GO for a win, but a draw would still be welcome. This isn't going 1-0 up and being fairly happy if it ended 1-1. When you set out to draw.. your likely to loose 1-0. With our lack of pace upfront, setting counter attacks are also very difficult. Your missing the point, what he says infront of the cameras and to the team are two completely different things. elaborate please He means, Sam tells the media that we are going for a draw. But tells the players to attack and go for the win. The players then proceed to play defensively, hoping for a draw. Logical conclusion me thinks.

For a lanky one, Roze is shite in the air.

Newcastle didn't have a poor defence when Keegan was manager. It was our worst part of the team though. The answer wasn't setting up defensively aiming for the draw away from home.