alpal78

Why you decide to keep him baffles me & others far greater. Is it purely up to me like? People seem to have a good time conversing with him. Anyway, seeing as you're so bothered by it, I've added a poll somewhere. Where??

Yup don't like it either. Everytime he/she posts in a thread, the thread gets hijacked and is driven down to abuse and counter abuse. The original thread is lost He is different from posters from other clubs like Kingdawson who at least mixes rubbish arrogance with some useful insights on Spuds.

That's a shocking attempt at a wind up. Looking forward to a spanking off Norwich tonight? Wind-up? If you read the thread you will find numerous posters genuinely claiming that Ben Arfa is better than Rooney. Care to quote some of these "numerous posters" you are imagining?

I'm not trying to discredit the hard work we have put in, but we could have had a more difficult start, Arsenal were at their weakest, at Sunderland we came away with a great result but as you seem to be going of previous form we have recently always done well there. Fulham were there for the taking, the hardest game we have had this year was against QPR. We did well at villa but they were also there for the taking especially in the second half, same goes for Blackburn. Yes, every game in the premiership is a hard one, so by that logic you are right. I stick by my original post though, that we could have had harder fixtures. Luck in the form of the opposition has helped and in the case of QPR hindered too. Both factors have put us in good stead by giving us time for the new players and team to gel. Unless we went against the likes of Man City, Man Utd and Chelsea away in quick succession, we can always have "harder fixtures". That is irrelevant, the point is that the fixtures we've had are a good sample of teams in the Premiership. A team in the top four, three more teams who finished above us in the top 10 (with 2 being away), a team who finished below us and a newly promoted team (who by the way is not thrash like most other promoted teams). So whilst the start is not an indication of where we will finish, we should not pretend that we've not had a good start.

I will never forget, NEVER, taxfree ! you must be like an elephant then

I'll be honest, I'm worried of what will happen when HBA plays against City again. The way the cunt showed no remorse whatsoever and his general style of play, I would not put it beyond him to go sliding in with a leg breaker again just to keep HBA quiet.

That's still another good 3-4 years for a center back, hope Mike sees it the same way too. It's all good scouting for gems for peanuts, nice to be pleasantly surprised with the like of Tiote, Cabaye, but we also need to keep a core of players as our backbone to have some stability and Colo is the center part of our backbone! Despite all the optimism we (rightly) have here at the moment - I can't see Ashley changing his transfer policy. Colo will be sold as will Jonas and Krul as soon as a decent offer comes in. Back to reality. The only thing that could change that is a change of owner or us getting back to European football. Whilst I've terribly disappointed with the sale of Enrique and not reinvesting the money we got from Carroll, I'd like to wait and see how he deals with Colo (not so much Jonas). His circumstance is quite different from any of the players we've sold so far.

That's still another good 3-4 years for a center back, hope Mike sees it the same way too. It's all good scouting for gems for peanuts, nice to be pleasantly surprised with the like of Tiote, Cabaye, but we also need to keep a core of players as our backbone to have some stability and Colo is the center part of our backbone!

seriously how old is he? Surely not in his 30s yet?

fair enough, I'm only comparing based on what I've seen so far.

I'll disagree again, whilst Rooney can dribble, when he does, it is usually based on strength, power and a bit of pace and sometimes trickery. Can't remember the last time Rooney dribbled with some fancy skill that had me awed the way Nani did yesterday or the way HBA did against Everton, beating players with fancy footwork and body feints.

I disagree. I think Rooney is the better player (especially on current form) but would not say he is twice as good. HBA can do things that Rooney can only dream about. Rooney at the end of the day is an intelligent version of a typical English center forward. Lethal when shooting but also with intelligent movement, but his technique in terms of dribbling, feints and just pure skill are significantly below HBA. Think Rooney is the stronger player physically too but suspect HBA has faster acceleration

I'm not interested in arguing on this thread, just going to put up the stats every month. As of now, stats and ranking are as below (based on soccernet and assuming 45 minutes per half i.e. not including injury time) 1) Ba - 3 goals in 253 minutes = 84.3 minutes per goal 2) Best - 3 goals in 336 minutes = 112 minutes per goal 3) Carroll - 0 goals in 377 minutes Edit: Ba and Best has one assist each What was interesting to me is that I thought Carroll played a lot less and was only playing bits here and there, but he actually played the most minutes and even completed 3 full 90 minutes game. Of course as with stats on strikers, the ranking could easily change in the space of a few weeks never mind a season.

This is why we love you Mimi, we need more optimistic posts like yours! Thanks. Well, it's sure that i don't know really the past of your club and what you've been through the last years. It must have been difficult with the relegation but NOW you've got a very good team ! I'm a recent Newcastle fan but i can see when a team play well or not. You have a solid defense, strong midfield and some excellent individualities who can make differences only by themselves. That's the case of Hatem. For example, to my mind, you have a better team than Arsenal, which isn't improving any more. Mimi says we are better than Arsenal...top four...top four!

This is why we love you Mimi, we need more optimistic posts like yours!

If Jonas is dropped at some point, the last reason ever would be because he is not running/working hard enough I'm a massive Jonas fan and I've defended him on this thread when he was getting real stick before now so I'm a big fasn of his running. But I don't think he likes making runs to score goals unless he has the ball at his feet. You rarely see him moving into a goal scoring position when the ball is on the opposite wing. If you watch wingers who score goals they often arrive at the far post when their opposite number crosses from the other side. Ok you may have a point on running off the ball when we are attacking. He does do lots of off the ball running when we are defending though. No argument there, he covers as much ground as anyone. Can I begin an argument then by saying that he covers more ground than most others when we are defending?

If Jonas is dropped at some point, the last reason ever would be because he is not running/working hard enough I'm a massive Jonas fan and I've defended him on this thread when he was getting real stick before now so I'm a big fasn of his running. But I don't think he likes making runs to score goals unless he has the ball at his feet. You rarely see him moving into a goal scoring position when the ball is on the opposite wing. If you watch wingers who score goals they often arrive at the far post when their opposite number crosses from the other side. Ok you may have a point on running off the ball when we are attacking. He does do lots of off the ball running when we are defending though.

In many aspects, he already is better than Rooney Better left foot and better dribbler, that's where it ends. Whilst I agree with you in principle, it also depends on how you measure attributes. Dribbling for instance can be further broken down to smaller components

In many aspects, he already is better than Rooney

How old is he again?

If Jonas is dropped at some point, the last reason ever would be because he is not running/working hard enough

Daft because you may not like how the stats look at the end of the season? :gm's dummy: As for your point, that is nothing more than just an assertion. No, it's daft, because Carroll is playing under a far greater weight of expectation than Best. Carroll has nor had that many more games for Liverpool than Best had in the second half of the promotion season - ie when he was just arrived, in a successful side and expected to perform. One reason Best has been a minor revelation is because nobody expected anything from him after that half season when he was utter s***. To a lesser extent, the same applied for Carroll in the Championship and even in the Premier League early last season - he massively exceeded modest expectations - modest expectations meaning less pressure; less pressure meaning a more relaxed player. Then there's the fact that Carroll is now playing for a manager who we know all too well struggles to get the best out of players. Oh, and the idea that Carroll can only play football in the air is also complete bollocks. He scored more with his feet than his head last season, was our quickest player (according to stats) and showed on his England debut (dropping the shoulder on one man, then jinking past another against France) that he is decent on the ball. I won't go into your own track recordnon this forum... The whole point of this thread is to try and be as objective as possible, based on stats of goals/minutes ratio in evaluating both (now three) players. Goal/minutes is used as the main criteria as i) these are indisputable facts and ii) that's what strikers are paid to do. Sure we can start going into Kenny is crap, 35M is too much pressure, Best is an ugly fucker...etc, but there are more than enough threads for all those subjective endless arguments. If you want vote Carroll be my guess and good on you if you are proven to be right. As for my track record on this forum, kudos for being a stalker and analyzing my record

Does a better goals per minute ratio mean the player with the best stat's is the better player? In the case of Carroll vs Best (over this season)? Yes. Then last season Nolan was a better player than Rooney. In terms of getting goals yes he was (for last season). Rooney last season was atrocious (especially early on), Ameobi was probably better than him. In any case not sure the point you are making, 'striker's like Best and Carroll's main responsibility is to 'strike' (duh) and score goals and to a lesser extent provide assist. When all is said and done, that is what all strikers will be measured at, same goes for Best, Ba and Carroll.

Daft because you may not like how the stats look at the end of the season? :gm's dummy: As for your point, that is nothing more than just an assertion. The thread title is Best v Carroll, I think Carroll is by far the better of the two. Great and good on you I think Carroll is better in some areas but that Best would have a better goal/minutes ratio by the end of the season. Let's see

Nah the club should keep all the embarrassing parts and upload the whole truth, so we can have a go at them for their PR stupidity. It is just "bizarre" that they even think of editing the blog post