Shearer9

Gerrard in the middle was the right choice though, especially with Crouch playing up front.

They're stupid if Dyer is the player that they break their wage structure for.

Amazing play from Drogba, probably should have been a penalty there if Cole hadn't scored.

I think its more of a reflection on how well Man Utd have done so far. Its true that players like Ferdinand, Vidic, Scholes, Giggs, Neville (hasn't he won this loads of times?), and Evra have all raised their games this season, but it doesn't make them the best in the prem. I think that Giggs has played some of the best football of his life this year, and deserves his spot, along with Ronaldo, but the rest of them are in there because ManUtd are back on top, simple as. I'd actually see Carrick in there before Evra, Ferdinand, Neville, Vidic, or Scholes, because he's clearly filled that midfield role similar to what Keane's, although he has made it his own. By the way, selection of Van der Saar really makes no sense, and its a really good point that Spectrum made earlier, about goalkeepers, because the likes of Van Der Saar, Cech, and to a lesser extent, Reina, Lehmann, and Howard aren't staring down the barrell every week knowing they will have to save their teams 3 or 4 goals to have a chance at victory.

Hasn't be been mostly injury free for the better part of 2 seasons now?

Isn't the felt stitched on instead of pressed? Some of the pressed letters from last year's shirt are already coming off on mine.

His tactical ineptidue reminds me a lot of Roeder. People say Newcastle is like England in many ways, and one of those is the pressure that the fans and local media put on the team and manager. I still think he'd want to do things like play favorites and not pick players based on form. Didn't he also need a lot of cash in order to guarantee club success in Italy?

Turf Toe

Kluivert in to save it for PSV....

I think the thing that gets overlooked in wages is what we pay the staff, and that's the one area I wouldn't mind breaking the bank to pay insane wages to get the right people in. Someone like Wenger is easily worth £10m a year to get coaching at Newcastle, yet we're content to waste money buying shite managers out of their contracts or signing on the cheap and easy option, rather than genuinely seeking the best manager and coaching staff. I'd love to see the club decide to take a sizeable portion of this new money coming in and use it on getting in the best possible manager, financial and marketing experts, coaching staff and director of football. It would be worth it to pay ludicrous wages to get those kind of people in.

The Football League is already really competitive, its the Premiership where the top 4 is nearly closed.

I don't think they'll work well together, but I think they can flourish in the same team at the same time. Just depends on how our midfield ends up working.

Charlton: Scott Carson, Darren Bent, Dennis Rommedahl West Ham: Neill, Ashton, Boa Morte, Benayoun, Tevez Watford: Maybe Marlon King as a 4th striker

FSC only has rights to the final this season apparantly, and GolTV claims to have coverage of this event but I haven't seen any on air this season. There was a major rights shuffle in the offseason with Setanta coming in and a lot of contracts expiring, so its hard to know who has what this year.

Setanta apparantly have coverage of neither game, they've got the Spurs game as well as the Leverkusen one. FSC and GolTV either don't have coverage this year or don't have it until the later stages. I would hope that after this round the stuff will be on TV. I remember when we were getting our first round UEFA Cup games televised here....

It sounds like Curbishley is as much of the problem as anybody else.

not in a million years One of the reasons Chelsea are still in the title race.

Hadn't Sissoko just had a long spell out? I've never seen him play that much, but I thought this was his first game in like 3 months. I could understand if he's rusty. Stupid of Rafa to start him with Gerrard on the right when he could have played Pennant instead. I agree that Lampard is the most overrated. Cracking shooter, little else.

Drogba's hurting big time now...

Tactical adjustments should have been made. This game was ideal for Sibierski with all the long ball stuff going on. Play should have been much quicker and we should have tried to push the ball on the "break". Milner and to a lesser extent Zoggy were lively on the wings, but still no end product. Nobody impressed or stood out except Schwarzer.

Sissoko is absolutley woeful. Liverpool need to bring on Pennant and let Gerrard drive for the win through the middle.

3-0

I agree about your assessment of Roeder and his strengths and weaknesses, especially the fact that he is not a great tactical manager, but sometimes I just do not understand his team selection. I think in a way having so many injuries has helped him, because the team has picked itself. If a duo like Parker and Emre had stayed together, I think we could still have a central midfield that had big time problems, and Butt never would have gotten a chance. Roeder just seems to have an inability to see things like this at times. Another example was today, playing Taylor at RB instead of Solano at RB and Milner on the wing. He just makes decisions that fundamentally unbalance the squad, something we really need with the lack of cohesion that we have. While it will be great to have a full team if we actually get it, I'm afraid that certain players will never get a look-in, and tactical problems rooted in team selection will never be remedied.

Does anyone else think that maybe Wenger doesn't really mind losing this one - in fact that doing so may fit into his master plan?

I think we'd be compensated anyway because he's so young, and plus he's not that great anyway.