Mowen

Really? He's not in the same class as Fergie, but he's the best manager Liverpool have had in my lifetime, and they're still going forwards rather than back imo. Good news for Liverpool.

And when Habib comes back to tell everyone what to do we'll be laughing.

Eloquant and yet concise. Excellent appraisal.

Taylor's only been dreadful at centre back this season, if he's going to be in the team then why would you take him out of the position where he's done his best work this season? I disagree with the Coloccini point, but that isn't really what I'm getting at.

Finishing a post with "end of" doesn't mean you're right. End of.

You'd pick Beye and Guthrie despite not actually knowing whether or not they're fit enough? I'm also amazed by the number of people who want Beye in for Colo, with Taylor moving to the middle. Fair enough, he's not been too bad at right back, but he's looked shocking at centre half the last few times I've seen him there.

Interesting how the vast majority seem to think we'll more likely go down than not in this thread, and yet only about 40% of voters picked us in the 'who do you think will go down' thread.

Anyone who disagrees with you needs to give their head a shake? We're not actually in the bottom three you realise? I reckon it's about 50-50 personally.

This final paragraph kind of hints at the alternative to Ashley's strategy, which is a speculate-to-accumulate policy of forking out for established players in the hope that you can then recoup the outlay by success on the field. Aside from the fact that we have Leeds as an example of what can happen with a run of bad results, is this a strategy that can work in the present climate ? With the gap between the top four and the rest being so large, and the huge cost, in fees and wages, of attracting the best players to a non-Champions League team, you could easily end up spending £50 million and end up with a team that's in the relegation zone. Even a few years ago, it was a risky strategy, but now it seems completely unrealistic. I get bored of Leeds being trotted out as a cautionary tale to everyone in the league. One example of a club that speculated and failed....but let's not forget they are still living to tell the tale. "Doing a Leeds" isn't the end of a club. It's highly likely they'll be in the same division as us next year ffs, even with all our frugality. What we did in the 90's shows that speculation works. The same as Villa are doing now. Look at the bottom five.... Newcastle Portsmouth Blackburn Middlesbrough West Brom What have they got in common? None of them have a net spend of more than £6m over the past two years. Look at the next nine up... West Ham Man City Wigan Fulham Bolton Tottenham Sunderland Hull Stoke Only Bolton and Wigan have managed to get in this position with a net spend less than £10m in 2 years. In football, the speculators DO accumulate. Current league position is dependent on spend over the previous 2 years? Even if the league table continues to reflect those positions at the end of the season, the myriad of interconnecting factors that determine league position are far more complex than just something as simplistic as that. We should have spent more money in January, you dont need a statistical fallacy to persaude anyone of that. Yeah, I've not done a thesis on it, found the Spearman's rank correlation coefficient or owt. Interesting trend though, no? And I did 2 years, because that's how long Wor Mike has been here. In that it tells us we needed to spend more money in January? We didnt really need it to know that. bobyule did. He said we could easily do a Leeds if we spent more. I was just pointing out Leeds are the exception. Not the rule. I'm sure there's another club that spent a load of money on players, had a brief flirtation with the Champions League some time ago, and is now struggling as a result of overstretching themselves in the attempt to "speculate to accumulate". What are they called again? It's on the tip of my tongue. Begins with an "N"... Not that brief. We were in Europe 8 years out of ten before Big Mike arrived. They managed a couple of years. I spoke of the Champions League. We were in that once about eight years ago, and one other time about 12 years ago. Since the Champions League began in 1997, only 6 English clubs have qualified for it and played in it. What do you think of the fact that 85 clubs have had NO "flirtation" with the Champions League ? The Champions League began in 1992, not 1997. Seven English clubs have qualified, not six. But you're correct, surprisingly, that 85 clubs have never been involved in it -- which means that you can't subtract six from 92. And our brief flirtation is still a "brief flirtation". Seven clubs have qualified but only 6 took part. Everton finished 4th when Liverpool won the competition and replaced them as holders. I'm not surprised you don't know this, as you have pretty much most of the time shown yourself to know nothing. Everton didn't get replaced, both clubs were in the qualifying stage. Everton failed to progress (against Villareal iirc) and were 'relegated' to the UEFA Cup (much like when we lost on pens to Partizan Belgrade). They were susbquently knocked out of the UEFA sharpish iirc.

Surprised Blackburn only have one vote out of 62.

So you think we'll stay up, but still vote a 6 (which to me would indicate a 60% chance of going down)

wba, boro and pompey

We'll notice a huge improvement when Habib comes back. Not just because of his defending, but because of his organisation and leadership. Taylor has done OK there.

19 voters. 19 votes for West Brom. You haven't.

He's a massive BS

Watched him play for Forest in league one a few times. Nowhere near good enough imo.

It's a massive game, don't get me wrong. It doesn't decide anything though.

I do blame alot of the fans including myself to some extent, we don't create the atmosphere of old that made St James' a fortress and people are constantly protesting and were even booing the team. We need sod all this crap and back the team. It's 2 way thing though - if fans see the players can't be bothered why should they put the effort in. Why are the fans held responsible whenever anything goes wrong at Newcastle. As far as I am concerned, it all comes down to bad decision making by Ashley & co. We've got decent players - better than our relegation rivals. A decent manager would have them in the top half of the table. Yes this is fair enough, with a decent manager we would be half way up the table, we don't have one, the players don't decide this. Adding pressure to them will only make things worse, people can say whatever the like about Ashley but just support the team, we give ourselves a rep as fairweather support, i.e. we only have a good atmosphere when we are doing well. We outsang Liverpool when we were 5-1 down. we didn't at 0-1,1-2 and 1-3 though perhaps when the players needed it most. Have to disagree here. We outsang them the whole game. No disrespect intended, but I wouldn't mind trading great support for having the worst fans in the world and actually winning. Not for me. Can't beat singing for 90 minutes. I'd rather we won, but I'd also rather enjoy myself at the game than have more bragging rights. Just seems a bit desperate when we're going "yeah they slaughtered us, but at least we outsang them for 90 minutes!" I agree with that, just not really your previous post. See what you're getting at though.

I do blame alot of the fans including myself to some extent, we don't create the atmosphere of old that made St James' a fortress and people are constantly protesting and were even booing the team. We need sod all this crap and back the team. It's 2 way thing though - if fans see the players can't be bothered why should they put the effort in. Why are the fans held responsible whenever anything goes wrong at Newcastle. As far as I am concerned, it all comes down to bad decision making by Ashley & co. We've got decent players - better than our relegation rivals. A decent manager would have them in the top half of the table. Yes this is fair enough, with a decent manager we would be half way up the table, we don't have one, the players don't decide this. Adding pressure to them will only make things worse, people can say whatever the like about Ashley but just support the team, we give ourselves a rep as fairweather support, i.e. we only have a good atmosphere when we are doing well. We outsang Liverpool when we were 5-1 down. we didn't at 0-1,1-2 and 1-3 though perhaps when the players needed it most. Have to disagree here. We outsang them the whole game. No disrespect intended, but I wouldn't mind trading great support for having the worst fans in the world and actually winning. Not for me. Can't beat singing for 90 minutes. I'd rather we won, but I'd also rather enjoy myself at the game than have more bragging rights.

Given that it's still pretty unlikely he even is gay, I'm surprised at the serious tone of that post At this point, do you honestly think that anything bad that could potentially happen to this club won't? There's an outside chance we won't get european football next year, but other than that I'm pretty bullish.

Aye, sorry about the length of my post. Got way carried away. Not like you

Are we fuck. It becomes more likely, but it's not over until it's over.

Been quite pleased with him so far. Decent to good against West Brom, and respectable whilst massively out of position in the middle. Better distribution and fewer free kicks given away than silly little nicky.