Cronky

Chopra just wasn't quite strong enough for the Premiership, and was easily muscled off the ball. It's a weakness that often separates good Championship strikers from the very top ones. Our old hero David Kelly was like that, I think. A great opportunist striker in the lower division, but easily snuffed out in the top league.

Wot about this - Parker....Butt.....Emre .....Dyer...Duff ........Martins

Possibly, but I don't think so. Like Ferguson and all the best managers, O'Neill has a knack of keeping players on their toes. The challenge for any manager is sustaining the players' interest after the initial novelty has worn off, and keeping their motivation on a high. O'Neill gets under the players' skin and keeps them going.

Yes, I think the players are behind Roeder. He wasn't my choice as manager, and I still have my doubts, but I do think he's keeping his cool under pressure. It looks like he's trusting in his own judgement and making his own decisions about tactics and selection rather than bowing to pressure. That can only be reassuring for the players. I think the pressure got to Souness more. The prime example was where he picked Dyer for the home game against Man U, when he'd had a hamstring injury only a week before. That wasn't smart and he paid the price. Although it was only a few weeks into the season, Souness seemed to be desperate for a result and that clouded his judgement. With Dyer and Martins' injuries, Roeder has been a lot more patient. In fact, assuming Roeder at least gets us out of trouble, I think it would be a mistake to replace him immediately after a takeover. The new man might then walk into a slightly resentful dressing room. He should have a season to prove his worth under a Board which is more professional in its approach.

Parker was good in defence, getting a lot of important blocks in, but poor in possession. It's becoming a bit of a pattern. I think you have to give Henry a lot of credit. Given knew where the ball was going and made a good attempt, but the accuracy and pace of the kick was pretty much perfect. It's great to have Dyer and Martins back, because they do set some problems for the opposition. But I'd agree with those who say we shouldn't get too excited by this result. Arsenal don't look likely to score from crosses, so if you can get bodies behind the ball and jam them up down the middle, then you can keep them at bay, which a number of teams have been able to do this season. Man U and Chelsea have a variety of ways of breaching a defence, so playing defensively is unlikely to work, and that's the difference between them and Arsenal at the moment.

For once, Roeder's ultra-defensive tactics paid off, so credit him for that. Some of the criticism of Duff I've seen is a bit harsh. He did a lot of work in defence and can't be blamed for not creating much. Martins did very well, feeding off scraps. Bramble showed again that, for all his faults, he's our best defender and doesn't deserve half the stick he gets. Fabregas's foul on Moore was a red card. It wasn't clumsy, it was nasty. If the ref saw it at all, he should have walked. Although we showed very little in possession, the spirit of the side looked okay. We might still struggle to break teams down at home though.

It seems to me that it's in the hands of the Halls. If they decide to sell, Freddie is dead meat.

No.

Actually they do sound like they come from genuine Chelsea fans.

For his own sake, it sounds like he should have had the operation a long time ago. You hope that there won't be any long-term effects, but playing on when an injury hasn't fully mended is exactly how you get long-term problems. It's very difficult for a young player to make that decision and it ought to have been taken out of his hands.

I watched Villa and Everton at the weekend, and it really pissed me off. Villa's squad is certainly no better than ours, but he had them playing with 100% concentration, organised, confident and determined. O'Neill gets the basics right. Villa's position is not a fluke and he'd have done a similar job with us.

Genuine query this. This organisation must feel that there is some chance of making money out of the club, and naturally we hope it's through investment in the squad and getting the club into the Champions League / Trophy-winning places where the revenue starts to take off, and you can expect more from fringe commercial activities. If this isn't their real agenda, how else could they make money out of a near £100 million investment? If they start selling players, the club would sink down the leagues, turnover would collapse and they'd end up deeper in debt. Are there any other saleable assets which could possibly cover the initial amount? Seeing we don't own the land of the ground, the only land that could possibly sold would be the training ground, but again, would it be worth their while? How feasible is an 'asset-stripping' exercise? I guess what I'm driving at is that, from my perspective, the only possible way of making money out of a football club our size is to make them successful on the pitch. Or to put it another way, there's no way of making money if a team is unsuccessful. Assuming that Belgravia know what they're doing, should we be worried? Given that the current Board is already making money out of the club, do we really have anything to lose? I'm not well-versed in financial affairs, so I'd really welcome other perspectives on this.

Yeah, he was a good player who put in a good stint for us. I can remember him taking a very good goal in what I think was a 3-0 win at Palace. Not that strong if I remember, but skilful and reliable.

This bloke is just the head of a Football Association, and his opinion about a player is no more valid than Sepp Blatter's or Brian Barwick's. He's not an expert or a professional on matters on the pitch. It's completely ridiculous for him to make comments about Martins' career being ruined when he's only played half a dozen games for us. He's just making himself look stupid.

If Charlton are anywhere remotely near the relegation zone, they won't let Darren Bent go. A more realistic target is Marcus Bent, who could do a fill-in job for us for a few months, assuming a big money signing is out of the quesiton.

My reading of the situation is that both Shepherd and the Halls reached the conclusion during that season that Sir Bob should go. The Halls wanted him to go at the end of the season, but Shepherd wanted to give him one more season. The master plan in Freddie’s mind was for Shearer to take over as manager after he’d finished playing, and another season would allow that to happen. On reflection, the Halls were right in the sense that if you’re going to go, go now. Freddie’s fudge and nudge approach unravelled very quickly. He initially wanted to keep the knowledge of Sir Bob’s retirement secret, but then realised that this would probably be impossible and would only lead to months of speculation and unconvincing denials or evasion. He then came out with it, and Sir Bob was then a dead man walking, losing even more of his standing in the dressing room and round the club. IMO, the big mistake came earlier, at the start of the season, when Sir Bob wanted to start building for a future without Shearer, and Freddie didn’t back him. That’s the point when Sir Bob became a dead duck, not in control of the area that should have been his. That’s the point when we stopped being run in a professional manner, and we ended up with a series of decisions which were heavily influenced by the need to accommodate the career plans of one man.

It's a list of the bad decisions that the club has made over the last four years, but the author didn't draw it all together into an overall conclusion. Which IMO should be - Shepherd may be a good businessman, but he's been a disaster when he's been involved in the football side. He should either leave that to a Chief Executive and / or Director of Football, or get out altogether.

I think the idea that Freddie would have done a much better job if it wasn't for the interference of the Halls needs to be knocked on the head. I can't detect any sign that the Halls get involved in transfer decisions. There have been indications that they get involved in the more major decision of the manager's appointment, but the word was that they imposed the choice of Sir Bob on Freddie, not the other way round. As for Sir Bob's dismissal, the Halls were in favour of it, but again I can't see that Freddie didn't reach the same conclusion himself by the end. I'd also heard that the Halls wanted O'Neill, but Freddie wanted Roeder. If anything, I don't think they get involved enough. The club has become a bit of a one-man band.

Unless there's something going on behind the scenes which we're not aware of, this doesn't sound like a good decision. I think Dowie's a good man, and he's inherited a difficult situation.

On the question of managers, there aren't any guarantees, but you do expect the Board to try and get in the best man available. Now I'm not convinced that Shepherd did that with Souness and Roeder. I think he wanted managers that were happy with Shearer's exceptional status at the club, first as a player and now as an ambassador-manager in waiting. One way or another, I think that ruled some good candidates out. On O'Neill, I'd heard that the Halls were keen but Shepherd wasn't. Certainly I've not detected any sign that Freddie wasn't 100% happy with Roeder's appointment. It also fits what we know of Shepherd's 'hands on' style. O'Neill is a man who wants to make all this own appointments, and who wants to be heard at Boardroom level, and that wouldn't suit Freddie.

Some very good points here, and I think we're getting to the heart of the problem. It's not enough for a Chairman to spend money on players. He also has to back his manager's judgement on how the money should be spent.

This whole speech shows how carried away Freddie has become with his role. The most important person at a club is the manager, not the chairman. The chairman should be a background figure who finds the best available manager, and who provides the resources for the manager to do the job. From the tone of Freddie's comments, you'd have thought he was Mr NUFC. I'm particularly pissed off at hearing him say that he'd rather the fans attack him, rather than the manager and the players. When Sir Bob and then Souness were attacked by his cronies in the local press, he let them hang out to dry. The minute he comes under attack, he comes out with an endless serious of excuses and distractions, using the media to get his message across. I'm beginning to think that he is not a very nice man.

I first heard this story about FS wanting to take the club private some time ago. For whatever reason, it hasn't happened, and I don't know why he should be in a position to make it happen now. Or perhaps that's wishful thinking on my part. We need a change.

How do you come to this? He is terrible and is by far our worst defender. He dives in all of the time and lacks concentration. He is thick as mince, and that is why he makes so many mistakes. I think the reality is he doesn't make any more mistakes than any of the other central defenders. The difference is they get highlighted more because of his reputation. On the plus side, he's stronger and quicker than any of our other defenders, and is often able to bail us out of difficult situations. He's not great, but I think the idea that Moore, Ramage and Taylor are better is ridiculous.

Looks like we're better than Chelsea. Someone tell the players.