Rich

Howay man, out of over 1200 votes on the main site the result stood at 51% to 49% at the time of his sacking. It wasn't like everyone wanted rid, it was barely the majority of readers at least.

THE MESSIAH RETURNS!

BOBBY ROBSON!!!

Where's this from? SSN? Fucking great day for my TV in here to be broken

Another big question could be, "why now?"

Don't see why we'd go for Defoe, personally, he's much like Martins/Owen in that he can't effectively play anywhere but right through the middle.

Oh no doubts, I'm not saying only Spurs and Man City are more technically gifted than us, far from it. I'd add Blackburn to the list as well, and Everton, etc. I just don't think we're as bad as some are making out.

I'm noticing it, fuck me if people can't read a few short paragraphs like that no wonder they don't even look at Grass's posts. Not entirely convinced that length is the only reason for that. ZING~!

Hopefully he's the only one who'll get through the loop... as he was already through the loop.

I'll set the system at defcon five in preparation for a mong invasion.

Sounds pretty defensive to me, that. But i don't know masses about Diarra. His signing would signal a 4-3-3, though. Him at the back of it, a la Makelele, the role he was meant to move into at Chelsea. Can you see us playing anything else? If anything, I'd expect to see us play a team that is a poor man's Liverpool or Chelsea as opposed to Man Utd or Arsenal. Sissoko/Mascherano, Alonso, Gerrard is hardly gung-ho, neither is Makelele, Essien, Lampard, which was Chelsea's most successful midfield trio. Who will be our Lampard/Gerrard though? Had high hopes for Barton but that's not happening. I still think it'll be him, if he doesn't get banged up, simply because there's nobody else.

Sounds pretty defensive to me, that. But i don't know masses about Diarra. His signing would signal a 4-3-3, though. Him at the back of it, a la Makelele, the role he was meant to move into at Chelsea. Can you see us playing anything else? If anything, I'd expect to see us play a team that is a poor man's Liverpool or Chelsea as opposed to Man Utd or Arsenal. Sissoko/Mascherano, Alonso, Gerrard is hardly gung-ho, neither is Makelele, Essien, Lampard, which was Chelsea's most successful midfield trio. I think you could be possibly right, but that kind of formation has no place for Owen & or Martins. Bring in Drogba. Exactly

How dare you! I sing my knackers off down in the front row of the right Gallowgate L7 is the place to be, though, and it's where I'll sit for cup games. I don't mind the charva element too much as it's just good being involved in the constant chanting/support and bantering with the away fans.

Sounds pretty defensive to me, that. But i don't know masses about Diarra. His signing would signal a 4-3-3, though. Him at the back of it, a la Makelele, the role he was meant to move into at Chelsea. Can you see us playing anything else? If anything, I'd expect to see us play a team that is a poor man's Liverpool or Chelsea as opposed to Man Utd or Arsenal. Sissoko/Mascherano, Alonso, Gerrard is hardly gung-ho, neither is Makelele, Essien, Lampard, which was Chelsea's most successful midfield trio.

Defoe and Diouf would be more expensive, I'd think. Brown would probably be about £3M tops. Nolan would cost a bit more, as well.

I'm still thinking we're going to succumb to the 4-5-1/4-3-3 eventually, so in this fantasy team of sorts, I'd have Brown and Taylor in defence, Faye in the holding role, and Diarra playing the more roving/withdrawn of the remaining two central positions. Probably alongside Barton.

Surely not? Scott Parker was "fucking rubbish man, absolutely woeful"... he looks better with every passing game to me. I liked the bloke. I've no idea what this post means, Janitornater. I should have used ""... like so...

Pinch of salt.

Agree with this currently, as well. But if Brown were to come, then I'd like to see him played alongside Taylor and Faye deployed in front of them, with Diarra pushed on a little bit.

It's always KaKa, isn't it?

HTL, I can only assume you're on the wind-up here looking for a scrap, because otherwise your recent double standards regarding Parker and Smith are laughable You bang on about supporting our players, when last season you slagged the club captain off mercilessly, when in his first season he showed miles more than what Smith has shown here so far. I'm not one of these who slags the current captain off, but I can see where his detractors are coming from, to an extent, except the ones who have a blatant agenda against the lad. At least Baggio is consistent in his views, he didn't rate Parker and doesn't rate Smith and he makes it known. Personally, I see a lot of similarities between the pair of them as footballers and as professionals as well, and think that both have suffered here because of the weight of expectation/pressure of the armband and by not being utilised properly by their managers.

Top waffling btw Thanks! Are we comparing ourselves to Arsenal now, by the way? Because that's a bit rich in my eyes, no pun intended. If you look around the league, I don't think our players are really that bad when you compare them to the majority of squads, at least technically. Arsenal are the exception to the rule, of course, they are the only team that play like that. Man Utd play exemplary stuff when they're in top gear, but again they're far and above where we are at the moment. Excluding the top four, there's probably Spurs who stand-out as being amongst the most technically gifted team, and Man City are up there as well, but even these sides aren't flooded with the sort of players that you see Arsenal utilising. They have their share of cloggers in there as well, but they have those extra few players with superior class (Berbatov, Huddlestone, King, Keane and Elano, Hamann, Petrov, Corluka) in a technical aspect. If we're comaring our current lot to Arsenal at this point in time, then we might as well give up now, and I think you know I wasn't saying that the formation fully impacts a player's natural ability. Naughty, naughty.

It's the way I believe everything works, more than anything. The "Butterfly Effect" sort of thing, every action has a reaction, everything leads to something different... I think our players are shown up technically at times, especially at the back, because of the amount of pressure that they're under for the majority of games (you didn't mention pace at first, btw, you only said controlling the ball and picking a pass)... If we had better players up top to provide options for passes, drag defenders/midfielders around, keep the pressure on the opponents rather than the other way around (see Solano, Dyer, Bellamy as personifications of these three traits) then that immediately provides a platform for the rest of the team to step-up in their game. These lads are all professional footballers, many of them have come from places in the past where they've shown their ability with the ball at their feet and where I bet they could hold the ball/pick a pass with far more ease than they can here. Aye we're not a team full of Maradona's, but we're not full of cloggers either. The Parker example is the best one I can think of, and I've explained that already. I'm not convinced that we have a squad of players who are technically shite, you only need to watch them in the warm-ups pre-game to see that the vast majority of them can play. Of course pace is affected by formations, I never questioned that, but the ability to keep the ball/pass the ball isn't as simple as being completely controlled by natural ability. Of course it plays a massive role, but there are other factors like the fear of trying anything risky, the ability of their team-mates to find space, the way the manager lays the team out on the pitch (does he work with partnerships, does he give free roles, etc.) A lot more goes into the two things you mentioned than the natural ability of the player alone. Viduka, Duff, Owen, Rozehnal, Cacapa, Barton are the names that immediately spring to mind, Nicky Butt also looked miles better at Man Utd than he has here, as well. All of them have come with good pedigree from good teams in their past (massive in some cases).

When I saw you browsing this thread, I knew you'd say something along those exact lines If we're playing 4-4-2, then we could do with somebody with similar attributes to KD above what we currently have, aye, although he's not as missed as Bellamy, Robert, Speed or Solano in my book. In the summer the whole debate was centred around the 4-3-3/4-5-1 formation, and we both agreed then that Dyer wouldn't even be in the starting XI for either of us, along with Smith, as far as I recall. I think pace out wide and in one of the striking berths is more essential than it is in the middle of the park, still. We don't necessarily need Dyer's pace again, I think a midfielder with the eye for a pass and some creativity about him would be as effective, if not more effective. In comparing with Robson's time, I was merely saying we need to be looking at getting a player in that position more than anything, rather than it being a carbon copy of Dyer. I didn't make that entirely clear though, looking back.

To add to that last bit, and whisper it quietly, but Dirty Diouf could actually be the answer there.