Mowen

I think Liverpool have a version of it. At Anfield Reading were singing "we're winning away, we're winning away, how shit must you be, we're winning away". Think it's quite a common tune.

Misses out in this thread via pure nit picking.

As far as I can tell we haven't played a central midfielder since about 2005. It's unlikely that mike will sort us out, much as I rate the man.

I always thought his nickname was 'the buffalo' rather than 'the bull'? Sure VI mentioned it.

Yeah, he was decent against Ipswich. Didn't look very composed when Taylor and Colo were missing though, and he's a CB by trade I think.

Acquilani is the absolute spit of Berbatov.

Weirdly my mate who's a Rovers fan thought he was worse than shite for them and that Khiz would do much better for us / was better for them. He's still learning the game though, not had that much first team football yet. Warnock was a late-ish (ie about 24) bloomer too, there's plenty of time. Did Simpson not get sent home by Blackburn in January?

The performances were so bad you couldn't see where the next points were coming from. Even though it was a win, the Fulham game was atrocious, never seen us play so badly and get three points. Wigan and Liverpool in particular were horrific, need say no more about the Derby game. We had a good start which means the points stat misleads you when looking at the direction we were heading in. At the time I thought we were staying up but I think I'm more level headed about it now and looking just at how we were playing in terms of our ability to win it looks like we could well have gone down to me.

Kid or staff?

Decent enough signing based on his performances over the season, there's been a worrying decline over the last month or so though and he was very poor on Monday. £500k is ok though, we needed a full time RB and we need to spend as much as we can muster on stopping every team in the league walking through the middle of the park unchallenged for at least 10 minutes a game.

He's a very poor referee no doubt.I still want to murder him after the Fulham game last season. If you don't like his mistakes presumably you're still pissed off about the penalty we won against Sunderland?

Agree with some and disagree with some. Crouch was hard to call, the entire time they had hands on each other, very much a 6 and 2 3's situation. Defoe's goal should have stood and I wasn't sure about how many fouls Masch had made but Jenas's was definitely a yellow. Also, Bale's might have been accidental but it was very late. I thought Webb played a couple of good advantages during the game though, he's a good referee generally.

Probably not but it's hard to tell. We were in freefall and had had a very easy start to the season, iirc after 19 games we'd played Wigan and Derby twice and were yet to play ManU. It was unlikely but far from impossible, and we'd have been in a scrap - to assert that we'd have no chance of having gone down would be ridiculous. Pretty much how I felt in January last year then. The players weren't playing for him, the fans were sick of what was going on and the whole club had gone a bit sour. Having said all that I didn't want him sacked at the time.

I haven't looked through this thread since the game but does anyone know why Smith and Nolan weren't playing? Also, has Hughton indicated why he thought it might be alright to play a full 90 without any central midfielders?

Overall points no, but we were a much, much better team at the end of the season with much better prospects for the next year. Pretty much everyone who was in that team had their best ever spell for us in that final 10 or so games including the likes of Owen, Viduka, Geremi, Butt, Faye, Harper and possibly Martins too. It was a significantly more capable side than that which Keegan inherited. Shame the owner was such a fuckwit after that.

Won my first bet in a while, £5 on Liverpool, Arsenal and Villa paid £19. Lost a tenner on us to beat Brom the other night mind. My £20 project, having peaked at £185, currently sits around £115.

I watched the game last night and I don't think we had anyone playing in centre mid so this could be useful.

You can usually only get those ante-post. Try ringing your online bookie and asking, that's often the best idea for obscure gambles.

I assumed it meant 80% and was written by a retard.

It wasn't last year and it's got a lot worse.

That literally doesn't make sense.

And one of them was last year.

No....he's just bald. Well, that's what alopecia means, it's the same thing. Ones a medical issue and one's hereditary. Alopecia *is* the hereditary condition that makes males lose hair. The Charlton player must have some other thing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baldness JJ Shelvy has alopecia areata, a rare condition very much different to common baldness. Yeah, it's mental, one of my mates has it. No eyebrows or pubes or anything.

Blackburn get a good following, it's a fucking small town with a lot of top flight clubs around it.

He's injured, had a big injury coming into the season, played in the ones where he was fit then got injured again. I almost put an *awaits news of him being horribly injured* disclaimer at the bottom of my post.