TRon

Of course we could still escape, the real question is will we? To create enough chances to give ourselves a hope of winning the two remaining home games, we need to be able to get the ball into the final third of the pitch. Our passing is too slow and erratic, so the only option seems to be the long ball which we are resorting to more and more so I think our chances of winning two games are pretty slim. Our best hope is if we can somehow fluke a goal against boro hopefully giving us the momentum to go in against Fulham with more confidence.

I don't think we are hated, in fact I think people really want to like us given any sort of encouragement. We play horrible football with very few goals and we have an owner and Chairman who don't give two figs for the game. Why would we be popular? Other than the fanbase, and the city itself, we are an embarassment to the game.

We had a great atmosphere despite this contrived stunt. Whether he was there or not was immaterial.

BTW, Colo was class yesterday. Even his one "flaw" where Crouch stumbled over his own gangly legs was shown to be a case of the striker's clumsiness rather than a mistake by the defender.

That's the problem with nearly all of them, because they know it. Wheras we will give contracts to the likes of Nolan, Shola, Butt and Ryan Taylor. Whoop-de-fucking-doo.

What? That post is idiotic. Rooney over 10 shots to 1 goal, thats terrible. I suppose you think stats are rubbish when you look at something like 14 goals in 38 games for example. stats are meaningless without a context. the fact you reckon Rooney and Ronaldo must have worse finishing because "stats" tell you so says everything about your argument. it's laughable. you havent addressed these points 1/ that owen's goals are and have always been more about his movement, positioning and anticipation then about his finishing 2/ that other players take more speculative shots which is why they miss more 3/ that Owen cannot take these kind of speculative shots because his actual finishing (the pure act of the boot hitting the ball) is so poor and 4/ that even though the only shots Owen is able to take are those put on a plate for him, he still misses 3 out of 4. put all that stuff about stats and what players were like 5 years ago out of your mind, focus on pure finishing, the moment when the player strikes the ball with the aim of scoring, think about comparing how different players would do in that one distilled moment. for instance, 30 yards out, a gap presents itself, the keeper is poorly placed to the right of the goal. who will best be able to smash the ball home with incredible power and accuracy from that distance? Rooney, Ronaldo, Van Persie? Or michael owen. Think about players through on goal, a big striker breathing down their neck, the keeper swiftly rushing out. Who will finish more calmly and place it most accurately? Arshavin, Berbatov, Eduardo? Or Michael Owen? Think about a poor cross that loops over a player's head so that they have to turnin mid air and aim a blind volley or overhead kick at goal. who is more likely to pull off this difficult attempt - Adebayor, Tevez, Anelka, Drogba? Or michael owen? let's face it he is nowhere near the class of those players. All of your attempts to argue the point have tried to ignore actual explanations and descriptions of player's finishing. all youre doing is parroting statistics without the slightest understanding of what those statistics show. You think finishing is 30 yard shots? I view it as composure, awareness, anticipation, intelligence, shot accurracy, ball control. Not speculative shots. Natural born finisher gets on the end of chances just through intelligence and anticipation of whats going on around him. yes, that is part of it. if you don't think taking speculative shots is finishing then why are you comparing Owen's 'shots on goal' stats with the 'shots on the goal' stats of players like RVP or Rooney? Because i can guarantee that most of their shots are opportunistic, ie, the kind of shooting that Owen is incapable of trying. as i said, youre clueless about what those actual stats represent and how to contextualise them. obviously you have a different idea of what finishing is, i think it is the actual act of trying to score, not the stuff that comes before it like making space for the shot, making runs behind defenders, peeling ahead of your marker to get to the near post or dropping away to the back post and so on. finishing is what happens after that and, for owen, his finishing isnt particularly good. When Owen gets a chance, he is wasteful then? Because he doesn't shoot from distance that make him poor at finishing off chances? yes, it limits the kinds of chances he can realistically score from. he is nowhere near being the sort of clinical finisher a la Crespo who can get away with not doing much in general play because his finishing is so good he can score from any kind of half chance. Owen's finishing is so average that he only bothers to try when its laid out on a plate and even then, he's not that good. he still has some top class elements to his game but without service and due to his detoriating body he is not having a chance to capitalise on them. Your argument is a mess. Ok we understand that Owen can only score when its presented 'on a plate', yet he scores every 1 in 2 games. Just under 1 in 2 for Newcastle. If its easy for a striker to do this, why isnt there many players with a better ratio? Is it maybe because there is more to goal scoring?? yes, there is more to goal scoring than finishing. this argument has always been that owen is not particularly clinical or a good finisher. his strengths are what ive listed time and time again. that is why he is (or was) a good goalscorer. as a finisher he is very limited and even the one or two things he used to be good at have been very shoddy in the past season. A finisher - clue is in the name - finishes the chances created by the team. He does this, by getting on the end of what is created in and around the area, and when he gets on the end of these he is scoring goals. Like a good goalscorer does. How you can not call him a good finisher (of chances) when i have been proving with stuff from this season and over his career when he gets opportunities he puts them away, more consistently(!) than people who are supposedly better at it then him. Finishing isnt about long range shots at all. If i was manager of Rooney and i got told he scores 1 in every 10 shots, be estatic! but apparently true. Finishes alot of moves that boy. Makes you wonder why Man U didn't buy Owen rather than sign the likes of Ronaldo, Rooney, Tevez and Berbatov. Fergie obviously hasn't got a clue.

right there is Sunderland and Hull's pre-match pep talk If we win our home games we will more than likely stay up. There's our pep talk for all the fucking good it will do.

Geremi has hardly figured this season, not really sure why you have included him in the list. If anything he has done well in his last two games compared to the sorry figures who have figured before or since.

But don't they create loads of chances because their forwards are agile, quick and have great movement? I would think Michael Owen would be a bit of a spanner in the works more than anything else.

Our position is still saveable, I am pretty sure we can get draws from all the matches other than Liverpool where we will be beaten like dogs. The problem is turning those draws into wins. I don't think we will do it because our football is rank.

To be fair there was an effort made last night to keep it on the deck, just our three CM's were utterly incapable of picking a worthwhile ball forward when we got into an attacking position. i thought we played the long ball far too much, as we have in all of shearer's games. We've been doing it since Keegan left, I don't think the players are capable or confident enough to knock the ball around on the floor for too long. There's not enough movement off the ball anyway. We did start off trying to pass on the deck, but Pompey moved the ball around much slicker.

he is the definition of light-weight, been saying that all season. he needs strong runners (barton maybe?) alongside him otherwise his head drops. i actually thought he was excellent after he came on in the first half, but abysmal in the second. He has just returned from injury to be fair. he came back from injury a month ago. i quite like him tbh, he is good on the ball, usually, which puts him ahead of someone like Nolan. if he had strength or pace or stamina or aggression he'd be a good player, but unfortunately he lacks every single one of those attributes. he's a mediocre, lower-mid-table premiership player, which makes him one of our best, sadly. That's pretty much spot on. He is technically streets ahead of Nolan and Smith but he is easily dominated. Also, like most of our midfielders he just hovers around the centre circle, he doesn't get box to box or try and get beyond the strikers.

How long before Martins contract ends?

Guthrie has a habit of going to pieces in some games, I don't think he handles the pressure situation very well. I wouldn't want to rely on him in a do or die match.

Most of the team will leave tbh. Of last night's starting eleven, Harper will stay and possibly Butt. Most of the first team squad will be off though, although inevitably we'll get stuck with one or two due to their wages. We'll miss Bassong, Enrique and Beye. The rest....meh.

Howay man what you on there reading that mind-polluting shit for? I think it's very accurate actually. It's fucking class

Everton maybe? He'd probably take half the wages to go back to Merseyside if they'll have him. Which they probably won't.

He's too quick, we need to flog him and get a slower player so he'll fit in with the rest of the team. Who's that fat winger Sunderland have in their squad?

No way we should try 4-3-3, we will get torn to pieces by a quality team like Liverpool who have a dominant midfield in any case. I'd go for 4-4-2 and play the youngest, fittest midfielders possible in an attempt to at least close the space for their players to work in. It might even be worth sacrificing a forward to give us extra legs in midfield, we aren't going to score anyway.

That's certainly true for Martins and Guthrie, it's pretty much par for the course with Viduka. Then throw in the fact that we also have players who are past their sell by date in Owen and Butt and it's not surprising we run out of steam. There are only a handful of real athletes in the team, the rest are Championship standard.

Maybe we should go with Viduka and Owen as our front two again...although they have looked too slow and static to be effective in the past. It's not like Oba is offering as much movement as before anyway due to the groin injury.

Keegan's gone, it's pointless trawling through the same trash every week. Shearer's in charge now, if he's got anything about him he'll want to be here next season and give it a real go whatever division we're in.

We can't even do what Portsmouth did and sit back and defend. We aren't capable of keeping the ball under pressure, something Pompey did very well.

he's never really used it when fit. At least he was capable of pulling wide and getting on the end of a long ball when he was fit. He got in behind Distin yesterday but was easily over-hauled.

They looked like that last season as well when we first tried it against Brum, but then we clicked second half and our confidence soared after that. We also had Barton and Geremi in the midfield and they can pass it a bit. I don't think there's enough running in our midfield or forwards to do it this time round.