Cronky

The team has no shape. And that's the fault of the manager.

A completely incompetent team selection by Keegan that is getting its reward. We don't know what we're doing out there, and we're relying on them to make a mistake.

Keegan has got to change things before we go two down. We don't look remotely like scoring.

The team has no shape at all. Apart from the odd individual effort by Viduka, we're not carrying any threat. What's worse is the opposition is poor, but they're still bossing us.

Amazing selection in that he's gone from two wingers to none. 4-3-3 with no wide men. I think we'll have difficulty keeping hold of the ball. Hope I'm wrong of course, but that team looks incoherent.

I'd agree that, for the reasons you've said, a classic 4-4-2 isn't our best shape. I don't think that Keegan will change though, and that will cost us.

A brilliant article that outlines exactly what Owen is offering to the side at the moment. It's a shame we don't have more ex-players who can share their professional knowledge in the papers like that. I'm not sure that Owen is exactly 'blaming others' though. And I don't know that it's down to a lack of enthusiasm or a lack of hard work during the rehab process. Owen's body just won't let him do what it did before. His body-fat index is down to what it was before, but he's bulked up. Trouble is, unlike Shearer, who was a versatile enough player to adapt to a loss of pace, Owen can't. Owen is the problem, not the solution. I think Keegan thinks that he can coach him to be the striker that he (KK) was, but Owen has never been that sort of 'busy' player.

Keegan is seriously beginning to worry me. With being based in Glasgow, and otherwise taking very little interest in the game over the last 3 years, these are probably the only up and coming players that he knows. Having done nothing in the January window, does he really have a clue about where the talent is, on a more widespread basis?

I think your marks for technical merit are a bit generous on all three players, HTT.

In their report on the wolves game under SBR. They spent the remaining part of SBR' managership sniping at him and generally leading the cheerleading to get him out. Nice one lads I hope your happy with the last 5 years but lay off the hypocrisy of other fans expressing their views eh? POT KETTLE BLACK. Shameful. Which match is that from? Reads like it's from the last game....when the season is over...when they still invite people to mull over the bones. Isn't the widely held view that they were spot on too? That Robson should have went at the end of that season, hanging on made things worse....and led us to rush Souness through the door. It's not my view like, I think the couple of odd thousand that stayed to applaud that team were spot on and the majority who f***** off for an early pint should be ashamed of themselves. But there's not many that agree as far as I can tell. I think that was the problem at the time. The 'widely held view' was expressed then by those dickheads who fucked off early/booed because we had merely finished 5th. .com we far from shy in expressing their opinions on SBR at the time but now its time for everyone else on the net to STFU. It was Alf Ramsey who said that managers get too much of the credit and too much of the blame. There were things going on during Sir Bob's final season which undermined his position. We've spent the last few seasons trying to get out of the tailspin that we created that year. This is the closest yet we've come to crashing and there's no sign of any upward climb yet. Eeee, I love the sound of a good metaphor in the morning.

Dean Richards.

Carroll's good, but I don't think at the moment he's offering anything that we haven't already got. Troisi would struggle to impose himself. Lua Lua I'd like to see more as a sub. He hasn't looked out of place at all at first team level.

I don't think he'll walk, although seeing he's got some previous on this, it's not quite as outrageous a suggestion as people are saying. I hate to say it, but when I read the post, the question occurred to me - if that's what did happen, what would I feel about it? He hasn't shown any capacity so far to turn things around.

They wont make such a DVD. What happened to the DVD of last season? It's the first time for years that nothing's been released.

......providing the opposition never get the ball.

Stats don't tell the whole story, but when Dyer came back from injury last season we were in 18th place. We then climbed up to 9th. Things went downhill after the Alkmaar game, but at that point, the whole team had stopped playing for Roeder. I agree with Baggio. Dyer added pace and movement through the centre and that stretched opposition defences. We don't have an equivelent player and that's why our attacks are being contained fairly easily and we can't hit teams on the break. Dyer has had his moments, but I couldn't fault his effort last season - as I say except for the last period when the whole team lost faith in Roeder. That's why he must have been so pissed off at being booed during pre-season.

I don't think things would have been all that different under Allardyce, because the pressure that was building up on him was immense and that was affecting both him and the players. That doesn't mean that Keegan hasn't made mistakes though. Generally I feel that Allardyce is getting too much of the blame for the whole situation. He wasn't backed properly in the transfer market - the net spend of £8 million was way below the average for the Premiership, and yet he was still expected to move things forward from last season's 13th place. We'd been flirting with the relegation zone for the previous three seasons, and we were in far more danger than people had realised. Basically, the managers had been getting the blame, and there was too much of an assumption that (as with both Allardyce and Keegan) a new man would turn things round pretty quickly. The new Board didn't have faith in Allardyce and withheld funds, and Keegan has been over-optimistic in choosing not to spend in January. The other problem has been the loss of Dyer, which was not Allardyce's fault. He was hounded out by the fans, whatever he might have said in public. He did a lot to keep us up last season, and we don't have a replacement for him. Allardyce is criticised for some of his buys - well, mainly Smith, the son of Beelzebub - but overall I don't see how he could have done a lot better with the limited funds that he had. Players like Smith and Barton are never going to be at their best in a team that overall is struggling, and they are shouldering too much of the blame. Besides, we weren't the only club after those players - England internationals both.

My enjoyment was spoilt a bit by Andy Gray droning on about the sending off. The guy seems to want to mark the ref's card after every decision, and when it's a major decision that he thinks is wrong, he just never stops.

Seconded. No contest. Has to be. I wasn't at the game, but I had my own little bit of human drama. I'd avoided tuning into the latest scores by going out. I switched Grandstand on with 10 minutes of the match to go, and the score came up as 0-0. My heart sank because we needed to win. Then, as I was watching, the score changed on the screen to 1-0. Moments like that don't come round too often.

Souness was said to be 6th choice. Whether that's strictly true, I don't know, but I'm sure he wasn't first choice. In which case, you have to ask why so many turned us down and we ended up having to approach someone whose reputation had diminshed. Two reasons, I reckon. Shepherd had acquired a reputation for interfering with the manager's football decisions, and the shabby way in which Sir Bob was treated didn't create a good impression with the likes of O'Neill. Secondly, Shearer was exerting too much power within the club, both as an undroppable player and the Chairman's choice as future manager. No manager who wasn't desperate for a job would walk into that situation.

It's more than current form that's keeping Owen out of the England side. Capello wants to play in a certain way and doesn't think Owen fits in. Except for the odd sub appearance, Owen's England career is as good as over.

My hobbyhorse this. I'd drop him. The only way you can play Owen is just off a big centre forward in an old-fashioned 4-4-2. What we really need is a striker like Bellamy or Beardsley who can drop deeper and link creatively with the midfield. Besides, now that Owen has lost his pace, his value as a specialist finisher is diminished. If we keep playing him, we'll go down IMO. I've always thought that Shepherd behaved badly on our behalf, when he as good as forced Owen to join us when it was clear he didn't want to do it. There's a sad element of poetic justice if that's a decision which turns out to blow up in our face.

If he's fit, he has the experience to handle it. He's not a player that hides. I'd like us to play with one striker and someone acting in a free role as a link with the midfield. Emre did a decent job a couple of seasons back in that role. I think it's his best position, because he can't defend at all. Duff is another possibility, but it didn't work out well yesterday. Owen isn't one to lead the line, and they never looked like combining though. Shola can play well in a 4-5-1. I'd give him an hour, and then bring on Martins.

He inherited a bad situation, but he hasn't shown anything in the way of courage or imagination, which is what we need. And sitting on his hands during the January transfer window was not a good thing.

..........Harper Beye...Faye....Cacapa....Enrique Milner....Smith...Barton....Duff ..................Emre .................Shola Go ahead. Laugh. See if I care.