Cronky

So yet again, the whole club is run around the needs and wishes of one player. No thanks. The whole 'fitness' issue has always been an excuse. Kinnear - quite rightly - feels that the present striking partnership has done well enough to keep their places but then - quite wrongly - because of Owen's status he has to come out with all this rubbish about what a great player he is, but he doesn't want to risk him. If he rated him that highly, he'd have picked him. This whole thing is bad for the team. If Owen gets picked now, everyone's now going to wonder whether it's because of who he is.

Source? HTT: He is not keen on tricks (if that is what flair is) that go nowhere. Legend has it & the source of the story was Tino via Gabriele Marcotti. Ginola & Tino were doing tricks & they asked Al to take part & he said no, other players egged him on, he took the pair on & was much better than both of them. He then chucked the ball on floor & said " I would do it if there was a point to it" walked off. Heard that story before. Utter bollocks I'd imagine. Several former players who claim to have witnessed it swear by it so who knows, it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest mind if indeed it was true despite like you thinking it to be utter bollocks. What I can imagine is Shearer declaring himself the winner, and no-one being prepared to argue with him.

4-3-3 or Geremi coming back in on the right and Jonas moving left, then? I wouldn't change the formation. The team needs to settle and find more rhythm and confidence. In any case, although I like 4-3-3, with the players we've got, I'm not sure that it would suit them better. I quite like Duff and Jonas together. They interchange and link together well. What we could do with is a busy striker in the Bellamy mould who can link the attack together with the midfield and pull defenders about. Martins does his best but can't keep the ball. Zoggy looks good when he has plenty of space to move forward into, and coming on as an attacking full back against 10 men gave him those opportunities. When he's closed down, he sinks without trace.

How do you know he "refused"? From what we've heard, he wasn't offered a contract until the day or so before Keegan resigned and the mess all started (and his contract was apparently subsequently withdrawn as the club is sold). There was no time to replace him after that, if you recall. If he was in negotiation, and Keegan seemed to think they were close to re-signing him, why would the club replace him (until Keegan was apparently all-but ready to leave and then the club is rumoured to have tried to flog Owen at the last minute). You can hardly blame a player for not signing the day he's offered the contract because I'd assume he'd like to have his agent and solicitor read the thing before he signs it -- plus the players may have had an inkling of the problems "behind the scenes". I get the impression Owen was rather ill for a good part of the summer In a recent interview he said he was in hospital for quite awhile, probably around end of May and start of June. From what I know of mumps, he wasn't feeling very well or very energetic until 1 July or so. Which was when we started to hear about contract talks opening, iirc. None of this adds up to "refused to sign" for me. A typical Owen tragicomedy of bad luck/timing but nothing intentional. That said, I think Owen will want to leave in January if it's still a mess. The club, unless it can secure a high-quality replacement despite the problems, would be better served to keep him and let him go on a free in the summer. As today proved, even a bit off-form and not fully fit, Owen scores important goals. Losing any of the strikers in January would likely mean relegation unless the defence improves vastly. NUFC needs a fit and on from Owen AND Martins, at least (if not a third), to survive the current style/form. Getting 3-4 mil for him is not worth risking relegation by pinning all their hopes on one striker, imo. I don't think we know exactly when Owen was offered the contract. The announcement of the offer came only a few days before the end of the transfer window, but that was to refute the idea in the press that we had asked him to take a pay cut. It doesn't mean that the offer came at that time. I don't particularly blame Owen for not signing. In that situation, with just a year to go, many players will prefer to see out their contract. But I don't think it does the team much good if the captain or senior player is uncommitted. Owen isn't so great that he warrants special consideration, and I'd rather have seen someone come in who really wants to be here.

Mancienne is a good player, and Capello is to be commended for picking him. This is just a demonstration that the top four clubs are better than the England team.

Just going by the 60 minute highlights on Sky - I thought Bassong looked at home as a Premiership CB, and deserves another chance. Another good performance by Shola. Our ball retention is bad, and it makes it difficult for the players to build an attack with confidence. Chief culprit is Martins. He produces some great moments, but bloody hell is he frustrating. Duff had one of those games when he tries to do too much. He was poor today, but Zoggy ain't the answer.

The Moody Blues had the right idea - if you've gotta go, go now. We should have shipped him out and brought in a replacement when he refused to sign a new contract in the close season. That decision just wasn't possible with all the in-fighting behind the scenes.

It's difficult, because it's very easy to make a deliberate swing of the elbow look accidental. I reckon that in 80% of cases where a player is caught by an elbow, there's some kind of intent involved. Even if a player isn't going out with the aim of hurting an opponent, it's often an intimidatory tactic which now seems pretty endemic in the professional game.

So long as he's the manager, he should be making his views known, at least behind the scenes. He has to take his role seriously if he's going to do it to the best of his ability. I don't think Owen is lazy - you don't get where he's got to without some determination. I do think he avoids things he's not very good at (ie work outside the box)

Yeah, this I'm afraid. The pace and skill shown in the recent games between the top four has been awesome. They really are pushing the game to new heights. If we were following their lead, we'd be ecstatic.

I don't know, but I'm happy to do the driving. I'm sick of the whole business.

That miss was nothing to do with his fitness. He just doesn't have a left foot.

Completely agree. One thing we weren't doing was stretching Fulham, they did it against us with their full backs and as a consequence were able to cross freely and drag out back four around. He needed to allow (or encourage) Beye and Enrique to overlap and pull a player out, they defended deep and dealt with the majority of what we threw at them. JK doesn't seem to like our full backs getting forward too much. Maybe it's my imagination, but they don't seem to be getting ahead of our wide players as much as they used to.

There's an article in the Times today about teams being too cautious in the Premiership, and I think that applied to us for the first half hour. We seemed afraid of making challenges in case we didn't get the ball, so ended up letting them pass the ball around us. It was only when we went a goal down that we started playing with any aggression. We then looked the better side, but our defensive frailty let us down. We need to have a more positive attitude from the start. Even then we should have got a draw. Owen is very good at getting on the end of chances, but not always so hot at putting them away. That ball needed to be hit with his left foot, but as he's very limited in that area he tried to hit it with his right. World class striker my arse.

Jonas is tiring quite significantly towards the end of games at the moment. At the start of the season, his fitness level was astounding - he was getting up and down the pitch like a greyhound. However he's not at that level yet. I wasn't completely surprised when he got taken off. Managers often do this thing of putting on a third striker when they're chasing a game, but I often feel that whatever you gain on firepower you lose in terms of the shape and balance of the side. As people have said, we seemed to be playing more long balls after the substitution. I usually prefer a like for like sub with the midfield just instructed to get forward more. Zoggy for Jonas and Owen for Martins would have made more sense to me.

He probably won't be doing it on his own. I think our setup is fine, Wise et al. have done fairly well so far, so why change things. I'd agree with this. We also need continuity. It would only be worth going through more chopping and changing if there was a Mourinho or a Wenger looking for a job mid-season, but of course there isn't.

Clark Hunt? I had to look that up on Wiki, because I thought it might be a piss take. His middle name is Knobel, by the way. If I were him, I'd have fired my parents.

I think we'll win this one. Confidence is high. We now have the ability to hit teams on the break. Defence is still dodgy, but they're not the strongest opposition. Could be quite comfortable. Blame me if it all goes wrong.

I think he's a good manager, but at our club, it's dangerous to appoint a manager who doesn't have the confidence of the fans right at the start. I like JK and hope he gets a longer contract.

He'd be a big gamble. It sounds like he's surrounded by friends where he is, but the pressure of managing a club in the English Premiership would be quite different. Who knows how he'd cope.

It sounds from JK's comments that Owen will come on from the subs bench, citing his fitness levels. I think he's just being tactful myself. Most players, if they're fit to be on the subs bench one week, are fit to start a week later. But it's a wise move. Owen should have to win his place back like anyone else.

I've seen this happen so many times in football, at club or international level, where a particular player's standing or reputation makes it difficult for the manager to leave them out. It's happened with Beckham and England, and with us and Shearer in the last two seasons of his career. It's generally a very unhealthy situation which can hold a club back. Owen has his qualities, but he's not 'world-class' and doesn't warrant any special treatment or status. If he was anything like as good as some say he is, he'd still be in the England squad and be playing for one of the big four.

BARTON FAILS TO SIGNAL CORRECTLY WHEN APPROACHING ROUNDABOUT

I suspect that things could easily have turned out worse, and I hope the player realises that. Hands down and mouth shut next time please, Joey.

For me, this is a big test of Kinnear's leadership, and will show whether he really has the bottle for the job. Shola has been a very important player for us over the last few games, and quite pivotal in the way the team plays. If he gets dropped for Owen, it'll be a rather craven cop-out, and I wouldn't mind betting that the team will see it like that as well. Kinnear has to be prepared to take responsibility and make the controversial but correct decision.