TRon

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.

Don't think we should send Ranger out on loan tbh, he's generally looked dangerous for us when he's come on as sub.

Funnily enough they have never looked very good together before last Friday, neither of them seems to have two games in a row. FYP Personally I think its more to do with having a more balanced team that made the difference I would agree, I wish Hughton starts the same team just to see if an aggressive formation will work away from home. I don't see why not but we'll have to be clinical if we do go there with an attack minded team as the game will probably become quite open and the team that finishes best will win.

The players who are most senior or influential usually have the most say, it's got nowt to do with their football ability. Nicky Butt for example has been a big voice in the dressing room long before Hughton arrived here.

Hughes is the only decent option I've heard mentioned so far, and I have my doubts about him as well. Curbishley was the other one but the money he wasted on the likes of Dyer and Lljundberg was scandalous. West ham could end up in deep shit because of his reckless signings. That's why I'd rather sit tight and see what Hughton does next season before making any appointment.

Funnily enough they have never looked very good together before last Friday, neither of them seems to have two good games in a row. Maybe it was because we played better a a team, or maybe they just need some competition to keep them on their toes. Either way should be interesting to see if they have the same impact tonight.

I doubt Lua Lua will amount to much, he seems to be a bit thick tbh. Plays just like his brother running into blind alleys and probably really difficult to play with for team mates. He should have been pushing for first team action this season but he hasn't made his case very well on the odd occasion he's been given an opportunity.

That's just it, there is a further test to come for Hughton in the premier, but no one really knows how he will handle it until we get there, yet there is a general consensus that he will fail or that a replacement is going to do a better job. On the sort of contract that Ashley will offer I'd be surprised if there are many candidates, and even if there were they would need decent funds. Which as we have seen with Steve Bruce, doesn't guarantee results in any case.

I'd rather stick with Hughton than get Jewell as a manager, I don't know what it is about him but he just comes across as an old school mouthy git like Kinnear. Maybe I'm doing him a disservice but he hasn't ever struck me as a good manager.