Beren

McCarthy.gif

Yeah, I mean sure it'd be nice to get a clean sheet (more so because it'd give us a great chance of qualifying ) and get the record but I don't really recognise the Europe League as being significantly different from the UEFA Cup - certainly not different enough to have its own records, anyway. Anyway, massively excited for this. Really hope we turn up.

Not to hark back but Hughton's stuff RE: Carroll was a very happy medium. A lot of people get hung up on 'hoofball' and wanting us to play like Barca without relevance to what we're capable a lot of the time. A mixture of measured/composed build-up play and lethal directness is what I'd ideally want. Being able to hit the front man early can be incredible, especially if you have someone who can spray the ball up the pitch with the precision that Cabaye is capable of doing, but it's only really a problem/unattractive when you're overly-reliant on it as a means of attacking, or the opposition can telegraph it as it is the only weapon in your arsenal.

Since the renaming/rebranding of the tournament presumably?

Sounds like he had a cracking game. The freekick is brilliant (saw a gif)

No, no, Ferguson's team scored from the corner.

Yaya will sure know he's been in a battle after the game

i don't think they did last time, just the strategy didn't get what we wanted. it's not like we said "we aren't ineterested in buying anyone" just that the deals didn't come off. And totally coincidentally they ALL came off this January when we were in relegation trouble. Whatever. well I wouldn't say it was coincidence but if you want to think we could've got sissoko, gouffran and mapou last summer for the prices we did in january then thats up to you. i'm not denying and never have that we spent a little because we were in trouble but the overall strategy of exploiting clauses/contract endings (paying under market value) is still there and it's a damn sight easier to spend 1.5 mill on a player worth a lot more (sisssoko,gouffran) than an extra 1.5mill who may not (de jong, debuchy). for what it's worth had sissoko,gouffran and mapou been available at those prices last summer do you think we'd have bought them then ? Our procurement strategy is commendable there's no doubt or argument about that but failure to pay the market rate in summer for a fourth centre-back (for example) was inexcusable. IMO they would have thrown their procurement strategy out the window and paid over the odds in January for the players we bought, had the selling clubs quoted higher prices, because they had to - case in point being Sissoko, who would have been free/virtually free (agent fees etc), but we paid for - the principles of their procurement strategy were correctly overridden in January by necessity, as they ought to have been in the summer. However, they had rested on their laurels and penny-pinched to a dangerous degree after last season's achievements. They certainly deserve credit for realising the damage caused by the inactivity of the summer window and being very active in remedying it in the summer, we were like a fucking whirlwind in January I genuinely couldn't keep up but even from a fiscal perspective, would we have had to spend the alleged £31m in January, had we paid an extra £15m in the summer? Three players who are at a first-team level, I wager, would have allowed us more rotation and prevented many of the injuries which have blighted this season IMO.

HAH! You'd be rubbish in a DDX. It's clearly a congenital allergic reaction to Pardew's bullshit regarding having ambition to play good football (cf. every Ashley Regime Puppet lies), which was intermittently masked by the talent in the squad.

We should play him in the final.

Have that in my slip too. 8/5 it was, not sure about now. Edit: Man Utd have, historically, antagonised me in every sphere of life that they have access to - betting has been no exemption to this in days gone by

Love the commitment. [You've seen our shite scores on page 1 though, right? Just fucking copy Barnes23, man. ]

Learnt from their mistakes my backside.

Proper shit that for Arsenal. He's not their best midfielder, but they look so much worse without him. Diaby-Wilshere-Cazorla is a great midfield three. Two of them spend most of their time on the treatment table though.

"Ball boy costumes from McCleish's time in charge" etc

You can argue the toss over the likelihood of us winning it, but we'll still have a chance of silverware in April this season. Long time since you could say that. [/re-realisation]

I'm always quite curious about the policies etc utilised in preparing a set of accounts for a football club, but at the same time, far too lazy to investigate the underlying figures. I see your point, but either way, it's very difficult to extract profits from a club without attracting tax - whether its shown on the summary page of the accounts or otherwise.

Upon hearing about their injury news, I came in to post that by sheer virtue of their distance from 18th they'd probably be okay for this season. Having re-examined the table and their fixtures, I'm not that sure. All depends on momentum down there, couple of weekends of results seems to shake the shit out of the relegation battle candidates. On the other hand, whilst they have very difficult fixtures, they are fixtures which might suit them too. Ziff has the perfect excuse to put 11 men behind the ball against the likes of Man Utd, Chelsea, Everton, Spurs. We're only two points better off which is galling. I'm not excited for them exactly, but the home games against Fulham and the Mackems can't come quick enough in terms of securing our status in the league for next season.

Well, yeah, they're Norwich. Crazy money for Norwich. Spending that TV money early? Good gamble, I guess. Hughton's done incredibly this season with a horrific squad/no striker better than Shola.

I only just found about this. I don't know how this is possible. Incredible coup.

GW31: Mackems 0-1 Man Utd Arsenal 2-0 Reading Man City 2-1 Newcastle Southampton 0-2 Chelsea Swansea 0-0 Spurs West Ham 0-0 WBA Wigan 1-2 Norwich Everton 2-1 Stoke Aston Villa 2-3 Liverpool Fulham 1-1 QPR

Treble of: Newcastle +2, Man Utd to nil*, Arsenal @ roughly 5/1 * - is a surprising 8/5 by itself Not great value overall though.

Ok.