Teasy

He's picking the players who are fit and available to play, who else should he pick in midfield instead of Barton or Butt? Who else instead of Owen or Smith?.. Carroll?, Ameobi? Big difference that would make..

Tbh, i have been asking myself if we'd have spanked quite as badly under Sam as we have been under KK these past few games. Would have been worse according to some on here as apparently we've been 'making progress' since he left. Progress in playing Football, not progress in limited every defeat to as few goals as possible, which was all Allardyce seemed to really care about..

Tbh, i have been asking myself if we'd have spanked quite as badly under Sam as we have been under KK these past few games. So what if we would have conceded less?, we need points not to try to stay up on goal difference. We never really had a chance of beating Arsenal, Manure or Villa. What we need to do more then anything is take our chance in the games we should win, at home against lower table opposition. If we went into the home games against Reading/Fulham ect with the same old "stop the opposition playing" s*** Allardyce forced us to play we'd come out of those games with few goals conceded as well, but even fewer points gained.. If we go into those games and try to play Football we have a good chance of winning some games.. Would I have preferred Keegan to play a more defensive formation against the best sides to try to scrape a draw and try to play Football against poorer sides? Yeah I would (though I bet if that happened we'd currently have people stupidly complaining that Keegan's no different to Allardyce). But one thing I certainly would never want is to have Allardyce still here so we can all feel great that Manure only beat us 3:0 instead of 5:1 while looking forward to going all out to try to scrape a draw against Reading at home

Lunacy. Lunacy for Celtic, I stand by Given but he's not worth as much as McGeady at the moment and Duff/Carr are both worthless (Carr's worth minus money IMO).

As far as I can see it could only look that way to people who don't know all the facts, or just don't want to see them. Lets see how Ashley and co treat there own choice as manager, then we can judge how different they are to the Halls/Shepherd in that respect. Good read overall though.

That doesn't explain why he played half the season in midfield. Allardyce..... that explains everything.

The reason Smith has played is simple, we've had no good striker to play in his place. Martins has been away and Viduka is a lazy fuckwit. We could have played Carroll or Ameobi yes, but neither of them are an obvious choice.

So Big Sam plays s*** football, loses some games and should be given time? KK comes in and loses to Man Utd and Arsenal and should be shown the door? Have a word. Home draws with Boro and Bolton? Do they not count? What about that miserable performance at Villa? At least with Allardyce we were grinding out results, the football may not have been good at times but we had a team of determined players who wanted to win. You can't say the same about the side now. Grinding out results?.. In the six games before Keegan came in we got two draws and four losses, exactly the same record as the Keegans first six games but against much worse teams.. There's no evidence what so ever that Allardyce would have done any better against any of the teams we've faced under Keegan (want to talk about drawing to Bolton?, what about drawing and losing the Derby?).

Don't know about that, he shuck the likes of Rooney off pretty easilly. Also he has looked pretty fast when he's needed to be, at the end of the day I can't remember anyone getting a yard on him other then Wallcott once in the game against Arsenal. Like others have said, he hasn't been amazing so far, but he's 21 playing his first few games in a new country. He's looked like a good lefback so far with the potential to be very good IMO.

I think one of the biggest problems Geremi had was being Allardyces captain. He'd obviously told Geremi to take every free kick, every throw (which always had to be long throws) and every corner. Which people got very sick of very fast.

You're spot on, not that it makes any difference.

Can't honestly see any club spending £12m on a player (Zog) who is reputedly unsettled and whose value is based more on potential than recent achievement and can't show off his potential because he's being played out of position. Being "unsettled" is a lot less effective when you've only recently signed a new 5 year contract. If he wants to go and another team wants him they'll have to pay far more then he's currently worth IMO, otherwise they can f*** off and he can rott in the reserves for all I care. Hopefully the management will see it similarly. True, the same could be said about Downing. Boro wanted c£12m, reputedly unsettled but no one paid the fee being asked so Downing signed a new contract. I'm not saying Newcastle should sell Zog for less than £12m if that's what they think he's worth. I just don't envisage anyone spending £12m to buy him. Fair enough, I doubt anyone would pay £12 million for N'Zogbia, he's certainly not worth that on current form. It all comes down to wether anyone wants him badly enough, if they do we have him on a long term deal and don't need to sell, which means they'll have to pay well over the odds.

There were people saying we could get relegated back when Allardyce was here. The only reason more people have now cottoned on to the possibility of relegation is because we're much closer to the end of the season. Its staring people in the face now, where as before it was far enough way to stay in denial. As a Football team we've gone forward since Allardyce left, fortunately for Allardyce he got out just before this run of tough games came along. So we were definitely going down under Allardyce were we? I dont know whether the team would have picked up more points against Bolton and Boro but i do think we would have conceded less in the other matches. I think the goals against and defending in general makes me feel like we have gone backwards. We're no more definitely going down now then we were then. The only difference between now and then is that now the possibility of relegation is more imminent. We may have conceded less against Manure and Arse with Allardyce here (or maybe we wouldn't have, see Portsmouth, Blackburn ect). We may have been beaten by Boro and Bolton (or maybe not). What I do believe, and being thrashed by Manure and Villa hasn't changed this belief, is that we have a much better chance of getting results against the beatable teams (such as Reading and Fulham at home) without Allardyce. Playing the lower teams at there own game was always a suicidal tactic and managed to give Derby half the points they currently have this season.

There were people saying we could get relegated back when Allardyce was here. The only reason more people have now cottoned on to the possibility of relegation is because we're much closer to the end of the season. Its staring people in the face now, where as before it was far enough way to stay in denial. As a Football team we've gone forward since Allardyce left, fortunately for Allardyce he got out just before this run of tough games came along.

Can't honestly see any club spending £12m on a player (Zog) who is reputedly unsettled and whose value is based more on potential than recent achievement and can't show off his potential because he's being played out of position. Being "unsettled" is a lot less effective when you've only recently signed a new 5 year contract. If he wants to go and another team wants him they'll have to pay far more then he's currently worth IMO, otherwise they can f*** off and he can rott in the reserves for all I care. Hopefully the management will see it similarly.

Ah well, sell the Zog for £12 million and spend that money on McGeady.

I don't think any club that's relegated from the Premiership after years of being Premiership regulars is ever really in a stable condition. They inevitable lose lots of players, cut costs and rebuild. Exactly what we'd do, if anything it could actually be the catalyst to stabalise us, though obviously I'd prefer to keep trying to do that in the Premiership

I was talking more about staying up after promotion rather then coming straight back up. Though personally I think we'd still be way ahead of the likes of West Brom and Ipswich ect when it comes to attracting players. What I really am wondering about most is why do you think we'd be "more like Leeds or Southampton than West Ham or Blackburn". What do the likes of West Ham or Blackburn have that this club doesn't?

Why would he have to drop a decent player? I assume he means relatively decent

I honestly didn't believe all the crap about how stupid and impatient some of our fans were. I thought everyone could see that Keegans first several games, overall, were an impossible job. I thought that people would write those games off and give him a chance. Granted its a small minority who aren't, but what happens if we lose to Blackburn and Liverpool?, how many will jump on the bandwagon then? I just can't believe some of the s*** I'm reading, and hearing from some of the so called fans of this club, impatient, unrealistic, petulant idiots.

There are reasonable critisisms and then there are silly overzealous ones, I don't recall to many reasonable critisisms being jumped on as if it equates to wanting Keegan out.

Just a question, should we play those match with a bit of prudence and try to sneak a point or should we play "attacking football" and everyone knows got hammered was the only result? We haven't played all out attack, we just haven't played all out defence either. The way I see it we'd be beaten either way.

Ramos doing well over a period of 29 games with a team that finished 5th the season before compared to Keegan not doing well over a period of 6 games (4 against the top 5) with a team that finished 13th the season before is proof of something?.. I hope you're not in the police force.. I'd fear for the innocent if you were.

I never wanted him back. And tbf we have been pummeled 4 times since he arrived. Absolutely raped. No we haven't we weren't pummeled in the first game against Arsenal, also while we were beaten quite easily in the second we were hardly raped, and this is away twice to the top team in the league. Away to Villa, who are now 4th, we were pummeled in the end, Manure, second best in the league also pummeled us. What sort of chance is that to give a manager before jumping on his back with histerical ramblings about how he's useless at everything? Its complete bollocks, when Keegan arrived we had an extremely bad team that's been trained for the past 8 months to boot the ball as high and long as possible, they're confidence was lower then a Smoggy prostitute. Yet apparently some people here expected the same team to go out, play Football, and not get beaten comfortably by 4 of the top 4-5 sides in the league in Keegans first 6 games! No manager in the world could achieve that you fucking maniacs!

Six games, three against Arsenal and Manure and one against fifth place Villa and some of you are at it already with "Keegans useless, the worlds over".. you make me f****** sick you bunch of pointless whiners! (not all of you obviously, just the whiners)