alpal78

why should we? He actually did well in his last game for us and got an assist with a lovely through ball for Carroll against Villa. He celebrated like crazy too which shows that he does care bout the club

His goals apart I thought he was quite average against Man City myself and today he was woeful. I'm probably like a broken record I know but I truly believe as a footballer he is really average and although he will cause a side problems with his height and strength a smart defender or tactics would easily nulify him in my opinion. a lot of goalscorers would be classed like that. Not £35m ones shearer wouldn't have got a game for us in midfiled and that was a world record fee. You've lost me there. he was the equivlient of the current 35mill striker and never seemed to be a brilliant footballer, just very effective at scoring goals and leading the line. like carroll. Don't agree with that, think Shearer was twice as good on the deck. Not to mention being cleverer and more sensible... and carrolls better in the air. carroll is also better on the deck than he's given credit for. Better than he is given credit for, maybe. Better than Shearer? No chance. andy carroll can go past a man with the ball more often than shearer ever used to. neither are fantastic footballers, shearer was on his own as a goalscorer but then he was the most expensive player in the world, carroll isn't. Go past a player? Are we talking of Carroll here? Maybe you confused him with Suarez. The only time I saw that was against Villa when he had acres of space on the counter and sort of skipped past a defender. The other times he went 'past a player' (if you can call it that) is when he literally barged his way through. Shearer at Blackburn and at before the injury was much better on the deck. Don't forget Shearer's long rangers and free kicks were ace too. The only time I've seen Carroll do that was against Liverpool where the defeders for some stupid reason stood off him and invited him to shoot. In terms of headers I think they are almost equal. Carroll again use his height and strength whereas Shearer used movement and his intelligence. When they connect with headers, it's usually a goal or close to one, though I think Shaerer has marginally the better technique. Yes Carroll can still improve and who knows might one day be better than Shearer in his prime but the funny thing with potential is that it could go both ways. So far I agree with HTT, I only see an above average/good one dimensional striker.

Well how often do we concede 3 gaols in less than 10 minutes? Isn't that also a freak? Still think we'll get bummed though especially if they play Berbatov, Rooney, Nani and Giggs. Tiote's return is a relief but our 'strikeforce' (and I use that term very loosely) won't get anything out of Ferdinand and Vidic. There won't be any Nolan popping in from midfield either so our chance of scoring is very very low. A draw would be a bonus, though I want to see our boys fighting them for every ball and not just give up coz we're going against affectively the league champions.

Yup, should have been the last kick

nah couldn't care less bout him now

Yup that's the one, on Kindle I think its called Soccernomics (at least that's what I have). The bit on England is interesting too showing that given size of population, GDP and football experience, England has actually done better than we should.

Ya of course, but I don't think they pretend that their conclusion are definite, just based on probabilities and they accept that its the randomness in football that makes it difficult to predict but you can still analyze some patterns.

Has anyone read the book soccernomics? It's the soccer version of the famous Freakonomics where the authors use stats, data, regression, probabilities...the whole lot to reveal some very interesting facts on football. For instance using tons of data on penalties, it was shown that the highest percentage of scoring a penalty is when the striker blasts the ball down the middle (presumably coz most keepers move to one side early), but data also shows that strikers are not keen on doing this. Reason being that for the striker, if the keeper saves by diving right/left, then credit goes to the keeper (i.e. no blame on the striker), but if the striker shoots down the middle, and the keeper saves by just standing there, then the striker is blamed for a lousy penalty. Interesting case of conflict of personal interest vs team interest. Over the next few days, (weeks if sufficient interest), I wanna to post some of their interesting findings that we can discuss, some interesting staff including the best features of transfer policies (based on analysis of Brian Clough's transfers)

Someone should have just pole axed Ferdinand, what a f***ing c***, summed up why I f***ing despise Man Utd!

Better than the thought of Man Utd getting another treble!

Silva has been excellent!

yes please let them get a flukey goal!

sorry mate are you on drugs? He was late and got Zabaleta on the thighs. If you gonna go in high, you better make sure you get to the ball first!

Why is De Jong not breaking anyone's legs?

How does today's results affect us?

3 games he's shoehorned him or Campbell in for no reason and 3 defeats to opposition that have been equivilent standard to us this season is no coincidence. He can't learn quickly enough to stop dicking about with the back 4 IMO. I can sort of understand him putting S. Taylor in for Coloccini when Colo moved to midfield, simply cause there was no one else available. But as you say, hopefully it never happens again. I understand his reasoning too but for me, and I know I've said this f*** loads, but you just don't change a settled back four. More or less every team thats been successful has had a settled back 4 and I know we're only relatively successful this season but a settled back four is a large back of it. I agree with you. It's my number one rule for team selection, keeping a good back four settled. I'd have played Ferguson Barton Guthrie Jonas and kept the back four settled. Oh well. Natural positioning & form > experience at all times. You guys have obviously not played Football Manager regularly. If you did, you'd know that even reloading games to try out different formations and tactics sometimes don't change the result. I've reloaded 19 times and no matter what formation I try still can't beat f***ing Chelsea! The point is nobody know what would have happened if we tried different formation or kept Colo in defence for a 'weaker' midfield, we could have won, drawn or even lost with a bigger margin. When evaluating tactics, the relevant question is not was he right, but was that a formation that could have worked? (i.e. can you see a logic behind it?) Given our paper thin squad, Pardew tried a formation that he thought could work and it just didn't work out, that was it.

Couldn't give a f*** about the answer, because it's worthless. Even if he preferred Hughton as manager, he wouldn't say so. AS JH said, why he couldn't he just say that he respected them both or that they are both good in their own ways? You think Pardew gonna drop him for saying that?

I'd go with the Zidane led Madrid that won the CL in 01/02 in first place, followed by the Dutch Milan team that thrased Barcelona 4-0 and the current Barcelona team in 3rd place. It will be interesting to see the next 4 classicos and see if the current Barcelona team is as good as people are making them out to be.

Agree with this attitude, btw. I don't quite follow the argument. For a player to be conisdered one of the greats, he should be excelling in all levels of competition and for all the teams (club and national team) he plays for. Nobody is saying that the World Cup or the Champions League are the only barometer, so the Djimi Traore example is clearly rubbish. Plus it's not just about having a medal, but the said player must have been the driving force and inspiration behind the team winning the medal. For the world cup, Zidane, Maradona, Ronaldo has all done this, Messi has not. He is clearly a super player with bags of skills, one of a kind but unless and until he can bring his Barcelona form to Argentina he won't be a world great, not yet at least.

THIS! That's not true though How do you know it's not true? you build an atmosphere within the club that is geared towards success on the field rather than making a profit in every transfer window, then maybe he doesnt want to leave. we made a profit every transfer window since Ashley took over? You've got the stats to back that up?

THIS! That's not true though How do you know it's not true?

He's living in a fantasy world. What's so fantastic about the idea of hanging on to one of the better strikers in the world?? If we're so desperate for cost-cutting, maybe the attention should be at Alan f***ing Smith and Ryan Taylor's wages - that's 80k or whatever for two players who have never performed for us. "One of the better strikers in the world"? Can we wait for him to at least finish one season in the Premiership before anointing him with such silly recognition.

We got Ben Arfa for about 6 million, and on less than £80k a week. The kid has more talent in his little toe man. I'm obviosly not expecting another Ben Arfa-esque signing any time soon, but it goes to show it's not immpossible, and also what a ridiculous sum of money we got for AC. Invested wisely and it could be worth it 10 times over, he is only 1 player after all. Just how much have you seen of Ben Arfa? Probably about as much as any of us have seen of AC at a truly competative level Speak for yourself. I watched him play at least every other week for two years, whilst he was at Marseille. And after watching HBA that often, you still don't think that it is possible to get a good player at a reasonable price within our wage structure? I guess he must have played badly for Marseille then?

Those are two quality players, but what good's that when underneath them are the Perch's, Guthrie's & Ryan Taylor's of this world? £50m from that pair, you could get a £15m striker who can get 12-15 goals, a £6m left-back who could do a good job, and then spend on a pretty good squad so we don't get a repeat of the sort of team we had out at Villa on Sunday. As it stands, we won't know what'll come of the Carroll sale until September. If we've not strengthened it's a disastrous sale, but from Carr's quotes in the Sunday Sun last month, I think we'll see a much stronger squad in September than it was in December when we had Carroll. But but you're not supposed to wait and see what actually happens in the summer. You have to take a position NOW, if you don't, then you are an Ashley apologist who will just keep on saying let's wait for the next transfer window.

Yup you described my position perfectly