Rich

Fair enough then. Wullie, did you think Parker could have done anything else from the penalty?

Get out! Nicky Butt does NOT makes mistakes (apparently). Even when he does, they get ignored.

Sorry about that then, NE5. Should have said "Leazes", got mixed-up. Seriously, what is so funny here? Is this some sort of joke that is flying over my noggin?!

Also, is there anyone who thinks Parker should have done more for their 2nd goal yesterday? More than make a goal-saving tackle, I mean?

Have I missed something here??

If that's the case, can we get rid of the sort of people who I was sitting amongst last night, as well? Offer nowt to the club bar their cash.

yet he was there when we were a top 6 side go figure. Your point being? It was despite him, not because of him. He's not good enough to be in a team that achieves and maintains that level. 3 seasons in a row ain't bad. yet he was there when we were a top 6 side go figure. Your point being? It was despite him, not because of him. He's not good enough to be in a team that achieves and maintains that level. 3 seasons in a row ain't bad. Griffin, O'Brien, Bernard & Hughes all played 30+ games when we finished 3rd...one's at Stoke, one's being linked with Derby, one with Sunderland, and the other hasn't played a game for over a year. Is your point that Bramble was carrying all of them? If so, I agree.

Sorry about that then, NE5. Should have said "Leazes", got mixed-up.

He was a striker, man.

yet he was there when we were a top 6 side go figure. Your point being? It was despite him, not because of him. He's not good enough to be in a team that achieves and maintains that level. 3 seasons in a row ain't bad.

Gary Speed quite probably played in over 90% of the games that Laurent Robert played for us, and he was a left-footed central midfielder, so I wouldn't say that completely explains it. Emre would help Duff simply because he has the best vision/passing out of all of our central players, not just because he's left-footed.

Fairly well know, isn't it? We were close to getting him in January, but face stiff competition from the likes of Arsenal for him in the summer. We were linked with him an awful lot on January, in particular.

Debatable. We've had 3 top 6 finishes with him as a first-choice player, although I concede the league is now stronger than it was back then. There are other areas to worry about first, I'd say.

Get out of town!! It's 100% Duff's fault, man.

Such as? Such as losing his man a few times. You think he had a flawless game? I've never seen (or can remember) a game where a defender hasn't made a single mistake of the nature you suggest. Even Woodgate against us lost Martins a few times and Terry has been guilty of costing Chelsea a few goals this season from getting done/losing his man. I don't think anyone is saying the idiot plays flawless games, but he certainly has games where he is very, very good for us. I thought Taylor was far more dodgy last night, in particular, and I can only recall 1 truly bad Bramble long-ball, as well, right near the end left-footed up the left-flank. I would still like to see him replaced with someone better/less chubby/less embarrassing to have associated with our club, but for now he's the best of an utterly average bunch.

Howay man, it was blatantly Plan A before all those dastardly injuries took their course!

Their defending was a great source of amusement to me last night. To think the stick our lads get, this lot looked like they had midfielders playing in defence and a striker in goal.

To be honest I don't think AZ are in the class of Werder Bremen and Sevilla. If we beat one of those two then arguably we'd deserve to win the trophy. Don't think AZ are as good as you're making out. They looked good going forward but absolutely woeful at the back. Potential shock with Sevilla atm, 2-2 after the first leg. If they go out, it's anyones to win really. Sevilla might be undone by their Championship race in Spain, let's hope that they are.

Aye, we are far better than a lot of people give us credit for. Of course we're not Keegan's team anymore, but some of the European wins this season have been really heartening to see. If we can transfer that form over to the league more often than we have done, then next season is starting to look a far brighter prospect, if we don't get done with injuries yet again.

To my mind he didn't exactly play wide right last night, he was more tucked in and drifted, like in SBR days, which allowed Solano to push up and play almost as the winger. Agreed. I've long been a fan of Dyer in that position and I thought he had his best game for a while for us playing there. His lack of crossing ability/confidence to make a pass doesn't help him, but his interplay with Solano was excellent and he caused De Cler loads of problems on the night. Fair play to Roeder for his team selection last night because despite my doubts pre-match the front six all did their jobs incredibly well and Solano, in particular, was magical supporting them from the back. If we can get Babayaro back to help Duff out on the left, then with a more balanced attacking threat we can be a match for anyone left in the UEFA Cup. When Duff was involved he looked very, very good. I think we need Emre back involved, though, to free him up a lot more from the centre. Time and time again Duff was ignored on the left-flank as all our play came down the right, and when Duff did get it he looked extremely threatening on a number of brief occasions in the first half.

After spending a night deep inside of enemy territory, I came away from a game I should have thoroughly enjoyed seething because of the constant attitude/comments from a bunch of old cunts sat around me in the Leazes End. These detestable old bastards were bad enough in the fact that they didn't sing, or clap, once, even when Sibierski was substituted for Milner and Duff came off for Emre - they did not even stand up to acknowledge the change. They did not clap the players out onto the pitch, and they barely celebrated the goals. I suppose I should be thankful that they even bothered their arses to turn up, but I would have preferred it if they didn't. I have never heard so much constant moaning and abuse towards our own players in all of my life. Far, far worse than this, though, was that everything that went wrong on the night was the fault of two players: Stephen Carr and Scott Parker, two players who I didn't think did a great deal wrong, although neither of them were particularly brilliant when compared to some of the performances on display (Martins, Sibierski, Dyer, etc.) There is a worrying culture developing, seemingly among some of the older generation of our support, over Scott Parker's contribution to this club - I can understand why people aren't happy with him for his lack of passing range, his lack of pace and his lack of being able to release the ball quickly, but when Scott Parker is the sole player on the pitch getting blamed for not closing down opponents, when Scott Parker is accused of "not being interested", while everyone else gets off scott-free and when Scott Parker, brace yourselves for this, gets BLAMED for their second goal because his last-ditch tackle didn't clear the ball of the goal-line and out of danger. Never mind he was the only fucking player who had bust a gut to dive onto any potential rebounds, never mind he'd done brilliantly to stop a fucking goal going in, no, it was his fucking fault that they scored. This last one, in particular, forced me to have a word with the cunt sitting next to me, who I merely told "if you think that goal is Parker's fault, I hope you watch it on a replay tonight and feel like a prick." Some of the gems heard from Team Cunt last night also included: ¤ Blaming Scott Parker when Nicky Butt gave him a waist-high pass from 5 yards away, which was intercepted. ¤ Sarcastically applauding and shouting "he's finally won one!", near the end, when Parker won yet another tackle. ¤ Refusing to acknowledge anything good that he did, merely sitting in silence when the rest of the ground applauded. ¤ Constantly shouting to Roeder (from the Leazes End) to "get him off" from about the 40th minute, until the end. ¤ Blaming Parker for their second goal going in, as already mentioned. ¤ Claiming him to "not be interested" in the final five minutes because he, like the rest of our lads, was too paggered to press their central defenders (a job that isn't even fucking his.) Now of course these near-dead fuckers are entitled to their opinion on Parker, who I didn't think played particularly well last night (or for a few games now), but I certainly didn't see him as being any worse than Nicky Butt, who managed to successfully escape abuse-free after dishing out his usual dose of astray 5-yard passes and 10-yard hospital balls. As I've said, I can understand him getting abuse in the way that HTL or NE5 do it, because it's fairly educated abuse about what they have pinpointed as his footballing weaknesses, and I'd be greatly interested to hear from them about the points I've listed above (whether they agree with them or not.) But when a lad who quite obvsiouly slogs his bollocks off for us, despite his weaknesses as a player, gets the level of personal abuse he did last night from a group of gents who should know far better it crosses the line for me. I've never even heard some of our greatest misfits get such constant abuse from the stands before, and I've been to practically every home game for years now and witnessed some utter fools wearing our colours. To me, though, it seems that there's a Scott Parker bandwagon starting-up and with some, like with Ameobi, it's already gone past the point of no-return when they refuse to clap anything good that he does.

I have never, ever seen such a laid-back team in all the matches I've watched. They were playing like they knew something we didn't, in a way, seemed far too over-confident when to me they look like average players trying to play good football. Barely threatened us, when compared to the amount of chances we had, and they got extremely lucky with the penalty - both in the decision and the rebound/s. I don't think it will be all that difficult for us to cancel out the two away goals in Alkmaar, a shite Fenerbahce team managed to put 2 past them. The goalkeeper was a legend, though, now THAT'S what I call sticking to your managers instructions: i.e. thou shalt never kick it over the half-way line, like English goalkeepers always do, although he was forced into it a couple of times and you could just see that he hated having to do it. AZ Alkmaar, where the goalkeeper is the playmaker. Dat'ch how we do it in de Nederlands!

Well worth a tenner, that. Attendance was 28,452 apparently - fucking rubbish.

Taylor27 has drugs for lunch.

02/03 = 29 starts / 1 sub 03/04 = 37 starts / 2 sub 04/05 = 40 starts / 1 sub 05/06 = 29 starts / 0 sub 06/07 = 13 starts / 1 sub Granted, this season he hasn't played a lot at all, and last season wasn't perfect for him, but 139 games in 4 full seasons isn't too bad (averages out at 35 games a season, well 34.75 to be precise.) Surely not all the games he's missed were through injury, as well. All-in-all, even including this season so far, he's averaged 28 games a year, still not too bad when there's a chance he might play again before the season is out. Can't help but think that they rushed him back, like we often did with Taylor, etc. when Souness was here, which is why he broke down against Spurs. By that logic, how many players aren't "crocks" these days? Loads of players get bad injuries. A funny segment from Wikipedia: Is this well known!?