Cronky

Hard to know who's the bigger twat - the ref who sent the money or Jewell for talking about it.

The pressure on an England manager is far greater than the pressure of club management, and it just looks to me like McLaren is floundering. He's had no significant record of success at club management, and so his confidence must be a bit brittle. The media start to get behind Beckham after a couple of good games and suddenly he starts to doubt his original decision. I've seen the pressure get to most England managers eventually, but never as quickly as with McLaren.

Lille were about to shoot themselves in the foot by walking off, and Neville rushes over there to try and stop them. What an idiot. No wonder Ferguson went mad at him.

With 90 % of free kicks in the various parts of the pitch, there's no whistle before the kick is taken. It only becomes complicated when the ref has to delay the kick in order for the defenders to be pushed back. It's the same kind of delay as when a ref has to book someone. Play can't go on while the ref is doing something else. No whistle is the general procedure. There's no rule that says that when a player is using a free kick to take a shot at goal that the ref needs to blow first. It really surprises me when people who are professionally involved with the game - coaches, players and TV commentators - don't know the rules. Last night the commentator didn't know what the rule was, and needed to be corrected by Pleat. Last week-end, a commentator was claiming that a player wasn't offside because the ball touched a defender on its way to him. That rule was changed in about 1990.

I think he's got them playing some good football, and looks to have completely turned the situation round. Yes, I think he'll be a top manager, and he's one we should be keeping tabs on for the future. He may have looked like a lunatic on the field, but there's a good brain operating there as well.

That Lille coach is a complete arse. If he'd succeeded in taking his players off, he'd have ensured that his team would have got thrown out of the competition, and banned from next year's as well. The general cost to his club would run in millions.

The thought has occurred to me that he may be making these kind of public comments to put pressure on Freddie. Souness did the same kind of thing. The manager gets promised backing, but isn't sure that the notoriously secretive Freddie really means it. Of course it could all backfire like you say, and the manager is the one who ends up looking stupid.

I'm a convert to Roeder. He's done a very good job in difficult circumstances.

Isnt it Barnes that is being touted to have agreed a £3m deal in advance? Oops my mistake. I misread the earlier post.

I made a point of watching him in the Man City game. He definitely looks like a Premiership player, but I'm not sure he'd be an improvement on what we've already got in that department.

John Terry. A dominating centre back can make a tremendous difference all the way through a side. It's far easier to commit men forward if you know you're safe at the back.

Why should Southampton agree to sell Bale in advance for £3 million? If they wait till the end of the season, in all probability they could get more. Bale may not choose to go to Man U, if he has Evra to compete with for a place. With us, he'd be guaranteed a first team spot right from the off.

And booing somebody who still gave 100% effort out on the pitch despite being 'targeted for removal', and reportedly belittled in front of the entire 1st team squad by the idiot charge. Bellamy's performance level at the time, even when played out of position, imo overshadowed Shearer's showings and the subsequent body language & effort displayed out on the pitch during the final months of Gullit's tenureship. Both players', at their respective troubled periods at the club, days were numbered - ie. if both managers had their way - under two managers who had absolutely no confidence in the players in question whether it be for footballing or non-footballing reasons. So by comparing both Bellamy and Shearer's respective levels of effort & commitment during the aforementioned periods there's alot to be said in favour Bellamy's intestinal fortitude when faced with the environment of being targetted by an incumbent manger in charge. I know many supporters will obviously will take issue this point just because Bellamy and Shearer have mentioned in the same breath of air - as a point of comparison that is. On to another comparison, that being Bellamy's reception on the weekend & Owen's at Anfield last year. Owen, with the aid of his agent - by constantly stalling contract talks & essentially playing Houllier and the Liverpool for fools for about 18 months, engineered his way out of Anfield so his reception was to be expected. Many Liverpool supporters think ill of him and understandably so - he was developed & nurtured by the club before taking the piss. The reception afforded to Bellamy - ie. for a bloke who wanted to stay, contrary to Owen at Liverpool - was sad indeed. The same clowns, and they were probably the same type who were spouting s**** in the manner of "i hope somebody snaps the little Welsh f***ers legs off" in the week leading up to the game. I wonder if they also, and this refers to your point as to whether or not they'd shake the Scottish shitstain's hand, nodded in aknowlegement while shedding tears when Shearer dedicated his record breaking goal to the very same shitstain. that could be matched by the beardsley/waddle receptions at SJP after moving. strange for a player who gave 100%for us he told robson to "f*** off" and disobeyed match instructions,said if we bought rooney would have to /"consider his position"..even before this weekends shenanigans rumours were in hubcapland he was on his way this summer.as for body language blah blah,think of bellamys when played wide then think of taylors,solanos,milners,duffswhen played out of position...ffs man even steven carr!!!!!! More often than not talented players have an ego attached. In Bellamy's case there's a combustable personality to match, like Roy Keane. Robson's problem wasn't that he took s****/outbursts with a pinch of salt, afterall decent managers know that occasionally they have to let their players release a bit of steam on occasion. Roy Keane's frequent outbursts at training are an example. Ferguson took onboard Keane's personality, was prepared to live with it and the product was a decade or so worth of top football. That's decent man-management and i think Robson was handling Bellamy in a similar type fashion. IMO where Robson got it all wrong was the incessant need to blow hot air up the arses of the likes of Dyer, Jenas et al.... and Bellamy can be included to a lesser extent. By throwing out constant praise some of these blokes - ie. especially Dyer - thought they had become world-beaters and began to take the piss out of their careers. I think Robson handled Bellamy as well as any manager could, especially considering he's run into difficulties after less than a season at Liverpool. Robson knew that Bellamy was a key player in the team, and to get rid of him would have been to see us sink back into mid-table. I think the trouble was that Bellamy then became more and more aware of his power, and became more and more out of hand. It seems that it was reaching a point where Bellamy would have to go, although I don't think Robson can really be blamed for the problem escalating in the way that it did. He had to take the chance that the kid gloves would work. Where I'd differ is the comparison with Roy Keane. Yes, Keane had a temper, but he always put the team before his own individual interests. I've never heard any story that he abused Ferguson - only team mates who he thought were slacking. It explains why Keane seems to have taken to management quite easily. Bellamy still seems to be a big, self-centred kid who thinks the world's against him whenever he can't do what he wants.

I think Johnson has laid to rest the idea that he was just a one season wonder. I'd like to see how he could do in a really good side. I've also been impressed by Kuyt, who has adapted to the Premiership no problem at all.

i hope you are joking? he scored 111 goals in 5 seasons since then Well he only played 3 seasons after the Mpenza incident, but my point was that, during that period, the team went into a decline, from which we're only just starting to emerge. That's more important than how many goals a particular individual scores.

Who knows how we'd have fared with Mpenza, but sticking with Shearer wasn't exactly a howling success was it.

Scholes will walk it.

I can't say I share the optimism about Martins and Owen as a partnership, but no doubt we'll get a chance to see. It all depends on Martins playing in the more withdrawn, creative role that Bellamy and before him Beardsley did so well for us. Personally, I don't think he's got the ball control or the football intelligence to do it that well. I like him, but I see him as a finisher like Owen, and Roeder may need to show some courage to choose between the two.

Arguing about who's going to take free kicks, even more than penalties, is something that you see fairly often in football, and it always strikes me as strange. Unlike in sports like Rugby or Cricket, where the Captain is supposed to make quite a number of decisions on the pitch, the captain at football has a much more limited role. Last night, if the decision hadn't been made before by the manager, you'd expect the Captain to have the final word. I don't think you should just leave it for the two players to sort out. Footballers have egos, and someone who's eager to get his name on the scoresheet isn't going to be the best person to judge who should take the kick.

Agreed. It's something I mentioned on the Post-Match thread. There's no reason at all for players arguing or negotiating about it on the pitch. If Martins isn't the best penalty-taker (and I don't think he is) then that's that.

Nonsense. You want your goalscoring centre-forwrds to be greedy for crying out loud! I think it's great to see him so desperate to get his name on the scoresheet. It's not 'just' to get his name on the scoresheet - it's not 'just' that. He's the number 9 centre-forward and he is desperate to be top goalscorer, and justfiy his price tag - and so he should do. I'm fecking glad Shearer was greedy... Agree (Yorkie-Geordie) Shearer wasn't greedy. He was the designated penalty-taker, and was good at it. Solano was given the job for a reason. Someone trying to take over the job during the game just reminded me of a bunch of a kids. If Martins wants to take the pens, he needs to earn the right. For what it's worth, if my life depended on it, I'd far rather it was Nobby taking the kick than Oba.

I thought Martins had a poor game. He's still got a lot to learn about his decision-making, and often looked a bit greedy. The penalty should have been taken by Solano. Who takes penalties should be decided before the game by the manager, and it feels a bit amateurish for a striker to be pleading to take one just to get his name on the scoresheet.

Difficult to really assess individual performances because the opposition was so weak. It was good to see Duff going past people but it all looked very easy. Likewise Bramble at the back, who won everything without looking like he was having to battle. A bit frustrating that our passing wasn't a bit better, because we could have got more.

Definitely not. The weaknesses in his game - lack of pace, lack of variety in passing, one-footed, inability to go past his man - have become more and more exposed over the last few seasons. Soon, the Americans are going to be wondering what on earth the fuss is about. The other problem about Beckham which I think led to his being dropped by McClaren is his inability or unwillingness to adjust to the players around him, and team instructions. For England he wanted to be a playmaker down the middle. It was tried and it didn't work. Then when he was pushed back out to the wing, he still wanted to be a playmaker, hanging back, playing long passes rather than getting on the end of passes further forward. It completely messed up the balance and fluency of the side.

He looks like a great talent, with both pace and good close control. Having said that, I've noticed that he has the usual English impulse to try to go past his man at every opportunity, whereas Arsenal of course have a continental style where they tend to try to pass their way through. It'll be interesting to see how he adjusts. But somewhere, some time, this lad is really going to hit it big.