Rich

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!?

Distin is walking anyway. Samaras will be off home (Not got the bottle to play in theis league unfortunately) Barton could end up at Newcastle, Everton, Villa Corradi is fucking shite and will be off to Italy to play for someone shite. Richards to Chelsea. Isaksson to anyone that will give him a game (And he'll be ace) Trabelsi to disappear to someone with a fat wallet Beasley back to PSV altho no-one will notice Vassel to whoever gets promoted (not Birmingham) Dunne to whoever makes a silly offer of far more than he's worth. Happy days :'( PS: I thought Liverpool have signed Mascherano permemantly from MSI, thats the reason there's no Premier League charge for them for playing him... Has Trabelsi been any good for you lot? Yes. Played out of position on the right wing for most of the season (odd game at Right Wing Back) but he's fucking class, and there has been no sign of his dodgy knee/heart. If you're wondering about whether or not you missed the boat last summer, well yeah, you did. I'm sure he'll be off in the summer tho, he signed a 1+2 year contract and I can't see him taking up the option to stay (if he has a choice). I can see him at Portsmouth. If we don't go in for him then we want a slap, again. To think of the defence we might have had this season of free transfer players, it's quite frightening. Glad to hear he's been good for you, shame about the vast majority of the rest of them.

Didn't bother him when he strung Liverpool along.

Distin is walking anyway. Samaras will be off home (Not got the bottle to play in theis league unfortunately) Barton could end up at Newcastle, Everton, Villa Corradi is fucking shite and will be off to Italy to play for someone shite. Richards to Chelsea. Isaksson to anyone that will give him a game (And he'll be ace) Trabelsi to disappear to someone with a fat wallet Beasley back to PSV altho no-one will notice Vassel to whoever gets promoted (not Birmingham) Dunne to whoever makes a silly offer of far more than he's worth. Happy days :'( PS: I thought Liverpool have signed Mascherano permemantly from MSI, thats the reason there's no Premier League charge for them for playing him... Has Trabelsi been any good for you lot?

Surprised by how few people have said Lucas Neill or Matthew Upson, both a lot better than the vast majority (if not all) of our defenders and both with clauses in their contracts allowing them to leave West Ham if they get relegated. Along with Ashton and Tevez they'd be the main ones I hope we'd be in for.

A good defensive midfielder would be a boon, though.

The 2-2? I'm talking about the away game, mate.

He played at LB against Birmingham directly after, and had a shocker. Mind you, Huntington/Taylor didn't exactly cover themselves in glory either. When he came on at CB against Aston Villa he was once again excellent. We didn't just "drop him" right after the Man Utd game, is the point I'm getting at here. I do agree he should play ahead of Huntington/Ramage based on form.

I hope to see some genuine celebration there tonight, not just sarcastic cheering.

Something that has been eating at me for seasons now needs to be gotten off the old chest: Mark Van Bommel is an absolute stinking bastard cunt of the highest fucking order.

Aye, Man Utd have lost buckets of points this season because of Rio. Definite fallacy to say he costs them games.

Crikey, could a 40k+ attendance be on the horizon?

On current form it's Woodgate and Carragher, for me. Obviously we all know that Terry and Ferdinand are top-quality, but the former two have been absolutely colossal for their respective teams lately. Carragher is once again reproducing the form that made him instrumental in Liverpool's European title win of two seasons ago and Woodgate is playing regularly and showing everyone that he is possibly the best in the business, despite getting slower because of his multiple injuries. Woody and Carra fall down because of their lack of pace when compared to the likes of Ferdinand, but they make up for it with their reading of the game. Not exactly a bad pool of defenders for England to choose from, is it? Why is Dawson in the list, by the way? Tottenham's defence has hardly been rock-solid lately, has it? Doesn't get near the other 4, IMO.

I couldn't help but think "Sunderland" while reading that

According to Oliver there have only been 28,000 tickets sold for this one by today! Very, very surprised by that.

To think I only stumbled into the Arcade today. Curveball is immense.