TRon

:banana: :banana:

Curious that Nolan/Guthrie dominated Cardiff, yet throw Smith in behind them and it falls to shit. They didn't do too well against Derby though. Most of our team are inconstant. Good one game and terrible the next. Of Smith, Nolan and Butt, I think it's a mistake to play more than one in the central midfield as they are all knackered. I would go for Smith and Guthrie if I had to pick two.

Carroll is still f***ing s***, it's only statistics that with all the headers he f***s up one or two will sometimes be good. That's 5 goals in 6. So? If our target man was any decent it'd be more than that with our long ball tactics tbh. If your being serious that is even funnier! Of course I'm serious, anyone not wearing "He's a local lad, he's teh best since Shearahhhh lolz!!!11!1one!!1" glasses sees that. Our target man should be getting a goal every game Your funny. Where was Carroll prior to his scoring run? If we had a target man that could actually steer his headers towards other players, and use his feet as well, we'd easily be a much better side. I'm not saying a target man needs to score, but Carroll offers nothing besides being lucky a few times in recent games. Ranger for instance, whilst still being very raw, shows sign of being a decent target man in that he can hold up the ball and actually aim headers. It's a shame he can't put them away. Carroll is just a young Tore Andre Flo tbh. You should look at how many assists Carroll has, it might just surprise you. I don't need to look, as I'm well aware. He's still not good enough to be first choice striker for us, I'd be concerned if he was our 4th choice striker, even. He'll never make it at the top level, and while he'll be good enough until we (hopefully) get promoted, we need rid of him in the summer and bring in someone that's actually a footballer. Well it's not 'offering nothing' than is it, when he is scoring and assisting. How about you put some logic into your next argument. Andy Carroll has 7 in 24 apps and 5 assists. We have 48 goals, which means he's been involved in 12 of them, which in itself doesn't sound bad. Though, when you look at all the chances he's had to set people up and to put more away, it starts to get more shocking. You can't waste that many chances, if we'd not have Nolan around fluking one in here and there earlier in the season, those errors would be much more apparent and could single-handedly be a reason for us being around mid-table rather than at the top of the table. He has 65 shots (headers included), whearas 20 have been on goal. We're s*** at getting the balls to him though, but you'd imagine a player like the one you're describing would be able to produce more than statistically 2.7 shots a match, wouldn't you? I mean, after all, he has "5 in 6". But wait, 5 in 6? What happened before those 6? Oh, yeah, he did almost nothing. I can't find his completed pass percentage, but I'm fairly certain that when and if I do find it, it will be less than 30%. He's not a good striker, we're not a good team. It's not a good match when we need ability up front to make up for the shitness of the rest of the team, especially in midfield. If he can only get 56 shots fired in the Championship, what would he do in the Premiership? He's not good, the numbers speak for themselves. What he does on the pitch speaks for itself. I'm not blinded by one lucky scoring run. Basically, he offers us pretty much nothing. I'm fairly certain even Ameobi would be banging some of the headers Carroll has missed straight in. Unbelieveable. What? The actual statistics of Andy Carroll this season? I know. That's funny, your funny. You're. If you don't want to have an actual debate about something to defend your opinion, I'll resort to childlike petty replies as well. Actually, i dissected your massive post - just up above. Where you contradicted yourself more than once If there are contradictions, they're there because I'm not a native speaker of English and have probably constructed sentences wrong. Your dissection is pretty bad as well, mind. As you've bolded statistical facts regarding him this season were I say it doesn't sound to bad, before I go into describing why it still is bad. Then you've bolded that I say we're s*** at getting balls through to him, which we are, which in turn I mentioned to describe how our midfield is not good and that we need a striker that can do more with the delievery they do get. Then you've highlighted where I've said he basically offers us nothing, which he doesn't, as we could easily play Ameobi instead and have a better striker on the pitch. Even Ranger, as I've mentioned before, has better hold up play. That said, I'll give you that Ranger has yet to develop the finishing skills needed to score the goals we need, so he's not a better choice as long as Carroll keeps getting lucky. Once Carroll starts to dry out, though, he'd be a better choice as he can keep the ball up and get it around to others better than Carroll can. You said he offered nothing.. then pointed out his contribution has resulted in 12 goals in 48. That he doesn't have many chances a match, and he provides assists to his team-mates. Stop it now, i'm bored. Amazing, I'd be tempted to say something about your intelligence, but I won't, so I'll bold it out for you, my point is THAT IT IS NOT GOOD FOR A STRIKER STARTING AS MANY GAMES AS CARROLL FOR THE TEAM CURRENTLY LEADING THE CHAMPIONSHIP AND THAT IS WHY HE OFFERS US NOTHING THAT SAY AMEOBI COULDN'T. There, get it? I like it how you have managed to change your argument completely . I also like the fact you must edit your posts at least twice. I like the fact you can't actually argue your side of the argument, rather than point out things that has nothing to do with it. Seriously, man. What are you even doing on a debate forum if you don't want to debate something? Sadly, you can't really debate with people who say a striker offers nothing, and then say he is responsible for 25% of our goals. My point has always been that he offers us nothing compared to our other strikers, and that he'd barely be 4th choice for me. You can search all my previous posts regarding Carroll (in all threads) for evidence that it has been my opinion. And he's not responsible for 25% of our goals, since when is 7 out of 48 25%? Ameobi has 7 in 9 as well, by the way. You count the assists as well http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c75/Kaizero/dcscs.jpg I'm out. Let me know when we can have a debate where both sides discuss the same thing, though that will probably be never. ur an idiot. r u claymin u can pridikt da fyootah!?!?!? idiot! You have contradicted yourself so many times, which i have even pointed out on each occasion. You don't actually have an argument. You made a knee-jerk post, which you keep trying to defend.. which has been picked apart. 7 goals and 5 assists = 12 - right? 48/12 = 4 = 25%. Simple math. I'm out. tbf thats typical of you. One, I haven't and two you haven't pointed it out or proved it on any occasion. If you're going to stat it up then Ameobi 7 goals and 1 assist in 8 starts. =100% Carroll 7 goals and 5 assists in 20 starts = 60% Lovenkrands 5 goals and 1 assist in 10 starts = 60% So therefore our other options are as good as or better than Carroll in 10 less games. I love you fttw, man. I felt like I was the only sane person left. No it's not that, it's just most of us have given up on getting into useless debates with dmck. He thinks the sun shines out of Owen's arse if that's not enough of a clue to his retarded thinking I don't know what is.

He was poor on the whole but I thought he was the spearhead of our attack in the last 15 minutes or so. Nice passage of play from him for the goal. I'm not doubting he's far better ability wise than Nolan or Smith, I just don't think there is any excuse for his lack of effort. We shouldn't be talking about a good last 15 mins, at his age he should be fizzing all over the place so even if he has a shit game you can say, well at least he put the miles in. Routledge wasn't partularly good today either but he at least ran his socks off.

I think what pissed me off was not just him dawdling and getting caught on the ball, but when we actually had possession up front, quite often he was stood back watching absolutely stationary instead of offering support or making a run into the box. If you watch him off the ball you'll see this a lot.

Clearly Shola clearly was a massive reason why we were so shit the last couple of games. He's fucking up our play with his awful touch and terrible jumping, heading, big lips etc.

Carroll is still f***ing s***, it's only statistics that with all the headers he f***s up one or two will sometimes be good. That's 5 goals in 6. So? If our target man was any decent it'd be more than that with our long ball tactics tbh. If your being serious that is even funnier! Of course I'm serious, anyone not wearing "He's a local lad, he's teh best since Shearahhhh lolz!!!11!1one!!1" glasses sees that. Our target man should be getting a goal every game Your funny. Where was Carroll prior to his scoring run? If we had a target man that could actually steer his headers towards other players, and use his feet as well, we'd easily be a much better side. I'm not saying a target man needs to score, but Carroll offers nothing besides being lucky a few times in recent games. Ranger for instance, whilst still being very raw, shows sign of being a decent target man in that he can hold up the ball and actually aim headers. It's a shame he can't put them away. Carroll is just a young Tore Andre Flo tbh. You should look at how many assists Carroll has, it might just surprise you. I don't need to look, as I'm well aware. He's still not good enough to be first choice striker for us, I'd be concerned if he was our 4th choice striker, even. He'll never make it at the top level, and while he'll be good enough until we (hopefully) get promoted, we need rid of him in the summer and bring in someone that's actually a footballer. Well it's not 'offering nothing' than is it, when he is scoring and assisting. How about you put some logic into your next argument. Andy Carroll has 7 in 24 apps and 5 assists. We have 48 goals, which means he's been involved in 12 of them, which in itself doesn't sound bad. Though, when you look at all the chances he's had to set people up and to put more away, it starts to get more shocking. You can't waste that many chances, if we'd not have Nolan around fluking one in here and there earlier in the season, those errors would be much more apparent and could single-handedly be a reason for us being around mid-table rather than at the top of the table. He has 65 shots (headers included), whearas 20 have been on goal. We're s*** at getting the balls to him though, but you'd imagine a player like the one you're describing would be able to produce more than statistically 2.7 shots a match, wouldn't you? I mean, after all, he has "5 in 6". But wait, 5 in 6? What happened before those 6? Oh, yeah, he did almost nothing. I can't find his completed pass percentage, but I'm fairly certain that when and if I do find it, it will be less than 30%. He's not a good striker, we're not a good team. It's not a good match when we need ability up front to make up for the shitness of the rest of the team, especially in midfield. If he can only get 56 shots fired in the Championship, what would he do in the Premiership? He's not good, the numbers speak for themselves. What he does on the pitch speaks for itself. I'm not blinded by one lucky scoring run. Basically, he offers us pretty much nothing. I'm fairly certain even Ameobi would be banging some of the headers Carroll has missed straight in. Unbelieveable. What? The actual statistics of Andy Carroll this season? I know. That's funny, your funny. You're. If you don't want to have an actual debate about something to defend your opinion, I'll resort to childlike petty replies as well. Actually, i dissected your massive post - just up above. Where you contradicted yourself more than once It's also been pointed out that other strikers offer goals too, except a lot of the others offer more than that. Shola, Lovenkrands, even Ranger offer more than just goals. And before you say 'just goals!?' think about Nolan. Shola doesn't offer anything except goals, in fact Carroll offers more than him, Ameobi is a better goalscorer - that i would agree on. So then surely your point is moot if you're basing your argument to have Carroll in the team is based around goals? Carroll is easily the most one dimensional striker we have. Not at all, Shola is the most one dimensional striker we have. Carroll actually lays on goals for his team-mates. Carrolls link up play was on display for everyone to see today after all. How wonderfully he dove-tailed with Lovenkrands to lead the Swansea defenders a merry dance.

Carroll is still f***ing s***, it's only statistics that with all the headers he f***s up one or two will sometimes be good. That's 5 goals in 6. So? If our target man was any decent it'd be more than that with our long ball tactics tbh. If your being serious that is even funnier! Of course I'm serious, anyone not wearing "He's a local lad, he's teh best since Shearahhhh lolz!!!11!1one!!1" glasses sees that. Our target man should be getting a goal every game Your funny. Where was Carroll prior to his scoring run? If we had a target man that could actually steer his headers towards other players, and use his feet as well, we'd easily be a much better side. I'm not saying a target man needs to score, but Carroll offers nothing besides being lucky a few times in recent games. Ranger for instance, whilst still being very raw, shows sign of being a decent target man in that he can hold up the ball and actually aim headers. It's a shame he can't put them away. Carroll is just a young Tore Andre Flo tbh. You should look at how many assists Carroll has, it might just surprise you. I don't need to look, as I'm well aware. He's still not good enough to be first choice striker for us, I'd be concerned if he was our 4th choice striker, even. He'll never make it at the top level, and while he'll be good enough until we (hopefully) get promoted, we need rid of him in the summer and bring in someone that's actually a footballer. Well it's not 'offering nothing' than is it, when he is scoring and assisting. How about you put some logic into your next argument. Andy Carroll has 7 in 24 apps and 5 assists. We have 48 goals, which means he's been involved in 12 of them, which in itself doesn't sound bad. Though, when you look at all the chances he's had to set people up and to put more away, it starts to get more shocking. You can't waste that many chances, if we'd not have Nolan around fluking one in here and there earlier in the season, those errors would be much more apparent and could single-handedly be a reason for us being around mid-table rather than at the top of the table. He has 65 shots (headers included), whearas 20 have been on goal. We're s*** at getting the balls to him though, but you'd imagine a player like the one you're describing would be able to produce more than statistically 2.7 shots a match, wouldn't you? I mean, after all, he has "5 in 6". But wait, 5 in 6? What happened before those 6? Oh, yeah, he did almost nothing. I can't find his completed pass percentage, but I'm fairly certain that when and if I do find it, it will be less than 30%. He's not a good striker, we're not a good team. It's not a good match when we need ability up front to make up for the shitness of the rest of the team, especially in midfield. If he can only get 56 shots fired in the Championship, what would he do in the Premiership? He's not good, the numbers speak for themselves. What he does on the pitch speaks for itself. I'm not blinded by one lucky scoring run. Basically, he offers us pretty much nothing. I'm fairly certain even Ameobi would be banging some of the headers Carroll has missed straight in. Unbelieveable. What? The actual statistics of Andy Carroll this season? I know. That's funny, your funny. You're. If you don't want to have an actual debate about something to defend your opinion, I'll resort to childlike petty replies as well. Actually, i dissected your massive post - just up above. Where you contradicted yourself more than once It's also been pointed out that other strikers offer goals too, except a lot of the others offer more than that. Shola, Lovenkrands, even Ranger offer more than just goals. And before you say 'just goals!?' think about Nolan. Couldn't have said it better. But we cant think about Nolan anymore when saying just goals. If he was still scoring now, hed be getting less criticism. I thought he was shit when he was getting goals mind. If he's going to be in the side we must play long ball football 100%.

Another gutless display. I know he wasn't in his favourite position (boo hoo) but you don't need to be in a certain position to RUN.

Carroll is still f***ing s***, it's only statistics that with all the headers he f***s up one or two will sometimes be good. That's 5 goals in 6. So? If our target man was any decent it'd be more than that with our long ball tactics tbh. If your being serious that is even funnier! Of course I'm serious, anyone not wearing "He's a local lad, he's teh best since Shearahhhh lolz!!!11!1one!!1" glasses sees that. Our target man should be getting a goal every game Your funny. Where was Carroll prior to his scoring run? If we had a target man that could actually steer his headers towards other players, and use his feet as well, we'd easily be a much better side. I'm not saying a target man needs to score, but Carroll offers nothing besides being lucky a few times in recent games. Ranger for instance, whilst still being very raw, shows sign of being a decent target man in that he can hold up the ball and actually aim headers. It's a shame he can't put them away. Carroll is just a young Tore Andre Flo tbh. You should look at how many assists Carroll has, it might just surprise you. I don't need to look, as I'm well aware. He's still not good enough to be first choice striker for us, I'd be concerned if he was our 4th choice striker, even. He'll never make it at the top level, and while he'll be good enough until we (hopefully) get promoted, we need rid of him in the summer and bring in someone that's actually a footballer. Well it's not 'offering nothing' than is it, when he is scoring and assisting. How about you put some logic into your next argument. Andy Carroll has 7 in 24 apps and 5 assists. We have 48 goals, which means he's been involved in 12 of them, which in itself doesn't sound bad. Though, when you look at all the chances he's had to set people up and to put more away, it starts to get more shocking. You can't waste that many chances, if we'd not have Nolan around fluking one in here and there earlier in the season, those errors would be much more apparent and could single-handedly be a reason for us being around mid-table rather than at the top of the table. He has 65 shots (headers included), whearas 20 have been on goal. We're s*** at getting the balls to him though, but you'd imagine a player like the one you're describing would be able to produce more than statistically 2.7 shots a match, wouldn't you? I mean, after all, he has "5 in 6". But wait, 5 in 6? What happened before those 6? Oh, yeah, he did almost nothing. I can't find his completed pass percentage, but I'm fairly certain that when and if I do find it, it will be less than 30%. He's not a good striker, we're not a good team. It's not a good match when we need ability up front to make up for the shitness of the rest of the team, especially in midfield. If he can only get 56 shots fired in the Championship, what would he do in the Premiership? He's not good, the numbers speak for themselves. What he does on the pitch speaks for itself. I'm not blinded by one lucky scoring run. Basically, he offers us pretty much nothing. I'm fairly certain even Ameobi would be banging some of the headers Carroll has missed straight in. Unbelieveable. What? The actual statistics of Andy Carroll this season? I know. That's funny, your funny. You're. If you don't want to have an actual debate about something to defend your opinion, I'll resort to childlike petty replies as well. Actually, i dissected your massive post - just up above. Where you contradicted yourself more than once It's also been pointed out that other strikers offer goals too, except a lot of the others offer more than that. Shola, Lovenkrands, even Ranger offer more than just goals. And before you say 'just goals!?' think about Nolan. Couldn't have said it better.

Good manager + bad players = good performance (sometimes) As we saw when Keegan was here he could let a midfield of Geremi, Butt and Barton outplay teams like Spurs. Crucially we had Martins to provide power and pace up front, and Owen providing runs from midfield. If we had someone to do what Owen did it would make a massive difference. Unfortunately we've got Kevin Nolan whose only fit body part is his drinking arm.

It could well be that Hughton isn't up to it, but anyone else coming in his going to have the same problems in midfield, Nolan, Smith, Guthrie and Butt are all slow and can't run, doesn't matter which combination you play. The amount of times Nolan and Guthrie got caught in possession while ponderously trying to move the ball forward was embarrassing. Utter, utter shite.

That's the most embarrassing point we've ever won. We'd have been better off stringing four central defenders in midfield.

I think we need to dampen down our expectations a bit, we probably paid dearly for being to open at Derby after getting carried away following the game against Swansea. We are still in a great position so a draw away from home will be a decent result anything more than that would be a bonus. I don't give a shit if we play rotten football and go 4-5-1 to get it.

Yep. Titus shouldn't return here, this is the wrong club for him. I wouldn't give this story too much credence anyway, it's probably bollocks.

There's a surprise.

'Cos it's knee-jerk. Draw away and your nearest oppostion win. Soon enough you'll lose ground. We'll end up in the play offs if we can't win enough on the road. and some have been saying it's been coming for a while. Are they the same ones who have been complaining about our defensive line ups away from home? and we'd have romped home tonight with smith and nolan ? We didn't need to romp home, a draw would have done nicely.

His hold up play could be better, but it’s still better than that of our other target men. We should either have bought a better target man in the summer, or brought in the elusive and costly creative midfielder. We did neither and the die was cast. You might not like AC but if he got injured we’d be toothless. N None of this has much to do with tonight result. You win some and you lose some. I think we were quite lucky with injuries and results over the first half the season, but since xmas things seem to balancing things out a bit. It could be closer than we’re excepting come May. o it isn't. Andy Carroll's hold up play is usually more by accident than through design.

'Cos it's knee-jerk. Draw away and your nearest oppostion win. Soon enough you'll lose ground. We'll end up in the play offs if we can't win enough on the road. and some have been saying it's been coming for a while. Are they the same ones who have been complaining about our defensive line ups away from home?

It definitely matters who is in our back four. We had a settled, quality back four and noone was scoring against us. When Taylor got injured earlier in the season we patched up the defence and dropped points to QPR and Forest. He's got injured again and we're dropping points again. We have kept clean sheets all season regardless of formation because of a very good defence at this level. Three of them are injured and we have replaced them with three players who barely know each other, all new to the club and all of a lower standard. We have leaked three goals. I predict that our results will pick up when Enrique and Colo are back. Until then, we just have to hope this lot can hold the fort as it's a very makeshift, thrown together defence. I think you are doing a big mis-service to the role of players who defend from the front. Smith and Carroll for all their faults are good in the air at set pieces particularly. Van Aanholt too is a good player but he's not Enrique when it comes to defending. All these things have to be taken into consideration by the manager. It's not just about us playing lovely football, it's about stopping the other team as well. We aren't Barcelona in case anyone needed reminding, we are a crap team that got relegated last season.

Bad idea for me personally. I think he has to maintain the positive attacking formation as I believe it will ultimately pay more dividends than a negative mentality. This is all assuming he has the tactical nouse to manage an attacking team. Maybe a defensive mentality is what comes natural to him. If so, it wont work in the long term. Not sure we have the quality attacking players to go for too adventurous formations, we could just end up being boro in disguise. My one concern about whether we'd be clinical enough to attack Derby away from home was whether we'd put the chances away and I said it in the pre-match thread so it's not hindsight. It might turn out to be a blessing in disguise if we realise our limitations and play within them.

I think we missed Smith more than people would like to admit. Defensively he's quite important at breaking up the play and his aerial strength is under-appreciated. It's not the end of the world though, at least people might realise that we aren't good enough to thrash teams at will home and away.

I'll ask you again. If Hughton had it down to a T because he knows these players inside and out, why did he change it tonight ? Because we were coming off a 5-1 win? Imagine he'd gone back to a more defensive line up and we didn't win...he'd have got slaughtered.

In these sort of games if you are going to play an attacking formation away from home, it's a given that the opposition will have chances too. It just depends on which side takes theirs and unfortunately, so far it's Derby. If we were Chelsea and had the sort of finishers they possess we could take it for granted that we can roll over teams like Derby, but Carroll and Best are not Anelka and Drogba.