Beren

That is a classic ROFL moment, after the "Try and escape a yellow by pretending I'm hurt".

Ugh. Ugly.

I enjoyed the tactical battle of the first leg, but that half was dour. Man Utd's plan is to keep shape/hassle Real Madrid and get the 0-0, with Welbeck/RvP/Nani as wildcards to nick a goal. Those three are all defending energetically though, so it's a good gameplan, but a poor spectacle.

Man Utd's workrate is so annoyingly good.

Rafael shoves him with two hands in the chest then falls over and appeals for a penalty

Corner. Carlos Santana with a smooooooth finish.

Should be working De Gea more on those corners. Poppadom hands waiting to reveal themselves.

Wouldn't have been running for the pass, though. Aye he'd have done a Godfather impression after he scored though.

Berbatov would have buried that.

Real / Dortmund double.

GW29: Norwich 1 - 1 Southampton QPR 2 - 0 Sunderland Reading 1 - 2 Aston Villa West Brom 2 - 0 Swansea Newcastle 3 - 1 Stoke City Liverpool 2 - 1 Tottenham

GW29: Norwich v Southampton QPR v Sunderland Reading v Aston Villa West Brom v Swansea Newcastle v Stoke City Liverpool v Tottenham

I do think that not acknowledging that Cisse's poor season is a serious problem that may not remedy itself given a bit more time, is pretty much equally as myopic as stating that he is now the next Torres. The length of his poor form is not an insignificant amount of time. [And as a side note, the offside statistic on the last page is daft IMO. Being in an offside position and being flagged for an offside (and recorded in a statistic) because someone passes to you are two different things entirely. I wouldn't deign to compare his positional sense to Benteke as I haven't seen nearly enough of Benteke to make any such judgement, but I've seen more than enough of Cisse this season to know that his awareness of offside this season has been about as good as Shola on horse tranquillisers. Admitting that doesn't make you a heretic/Cisse-hater/mean you have an agenda -it just means you've watched him play and formed an opinion].

One of those was a Sammy shot fired off his arse btw. Normally there'd be no point quibbling over a goal here or there, but when that's 16.7% of your league goals...

Peter Reid?

He hasn't been good enough this season in fulfilling his main responsibility for the team: scoring goals when presented with chances. He isn't Luiz Suarez or Carlos Tevez, and the creative side of his game isn't even nearly good enough (even at its best) for him to escape deserved criticism for his poor goal-scoring record this season by virtue of having been more concerned with creating chances for others/link-up play. His season has been a 4/10. He's scored just one more league goal than Cabaye ffs, who has been out injured for ages. There ought to be repercussions for this, but at our club, there almost never is with certain individuals (cf. Pardew). He's not finished and no one's given up on him with any finality, but he has been shit this season. Don't see any two ways about that personally. It's not a form issue either IMO, it's been season-long thing (though during parts of the season when he's been played on the wing for example, there have been obvious and genuine mitigating factors) - so it's not something to be dismissed/ignored IMO. If he can't demonstrate the sort of form/prowess which instils confidence in the crowd that if he got a chance, he will bury it, then I'd have serious reservations about him being our main striker next season tbh. Especially since he's pretty much our only striker atm. Right now, I dread the thought of him taking a penalty, let alone him ballooning a regular chance then smiling at the sky with whimsy in his eyes.

Hopefully, one day, we can hope to aspire to compete with Stoke and Fulham.

Definitely. Couldn't really be much worse. I hope he is embarrassed by it. It'll be Ferguson, Sammy, Williamson and the u-15s' team fault, not his.

Qualify for the CL? Really? He himself was saying that in August and we've a much better team/squad now. Was he just being an arrogant, smug cunt or did he really mean it? Add the word 'incompetent' and it's always this. We won't get rid though. The board just need to bring in lots more talent to compensate for him. Whether they will/won't this summer, who knows.

Robert was fantastic delivering dead balls, but his crossing was a bit more inconsistent during play. Both embarrassingly better than what we have at the club now, though.

Awful season. Need a new striker in the summer.

GW28: Chelsea 3-1 West Brom Everton 2-1 Reading Man Utd 1-1 Norwich Southampton 3-1 QPR Stoke City 2-0 West Ham Sunderland 1-0 Fulham Swansea 1-2 Newcastle Wigan 2-2 Liverpool Tottenham 3-4 Arsenal Aston Villa 1-5 Man City

GW28: Chelsea v West Brom Everton v Reading Man Utd v Norwich Southampton v QPR Stoke City v West Ham Sunderland v Fulham Swansea v Newcastle Wigan v Liverpool Tottenham v Arsenal Aston Villa v Man City Re: Arrogance - apologies, not going to have time to do it. Will barely have time for this going forward.

Licking my chops for the inevitable hybrid North-East XI :lol: