TRon

Are you fucking joking? That's exactly what he'll be, a guaranteed starter for another year. He's not a bad squad player, but if he's around no British manager will put him on the bench. Another year of stagnation guaranteed.

Enrique's weakness is his attacking play rather than his defending, it doesn't seem to be his natural instinct to raid down the flanks and overlap. Funnily enough, he does look like he could be coached into doing it, he's got a sweet left foot and he's got a couple of assists to his name now. I still think he's going to become a much better player, if not here, then somewhere else if we're dumb enough to sell him.

That normally happens because the other clubs are willing to pay those higher salaries though, this is a unique issue due to his age and the monstrous amount of money we're supposedly paying him already. Can you envisage a situation where Owen will be on the free transfer list with no teams going near him becaseu of his wage? How often does the oppurtunity to sign a 1 in 2 striker come about? In todays game £100k isnt a unique thing, even Sol Campbell is on £90k... True, but in the current economic climate wages are going to be coming down. Other than Man City, no one has money to burn any more, Chelsea's moving to a sell to buy policy reflects that very clearly.

Thank fuck Duff got injured and Zog's got the shirt just in time, otherwise he'd have been flogged off in January for sure.

Aye, he'lll sign it's just the media don't want him to for some reason so they are making up crap again. If he doesn't sign for 90k per week for 4 years bearing in mind his injury problems, he needs to be sectioned. He could wait until the summer do his cruciate be out for 12 months and end up playing for Tranmere. I don't think it's the media, it's always seemed pretty clear that Owen is waiting to see if he can get a move to a more successful club, not necessarily for the money. If by some miracle we should hit a vein of form this season and qualify for Europe, I think Owen would happily sign for us unless one of the big 4 come in. Yeah but a bigger club won't unless he plays the rest of the season. Anyway how many clubs nowadays play with poachers. I can't think of any in the top 4 , Villa don't have any and Owen's too cheap for Man City All very true, but Owen will expect to remain fit for the rest of the season (all players do) and he will wait until the summer IMO before he commits to a new deal if he can't see anything better on the table.

Aye, he'lll sign it's just the media don't want him to for some reason so they are making up crap again. If he doesn't sign for 90k per week for 4 years bearing in mind his injury problems, he needs to be sectioned. He could wait until the summer do his cruciate be out for 12 months and end up playing for Tranmere. I don't think it's the media, it's always seemed pretty clear that Owen is waiting to see if he can get a move to a more successful club, not necessarily for the money. If by some miracle we should hit a vein of form this season and qualify for Europe, I think Owen would happily sign for us unless one of the big 4 come in.

The thing is, for me personally, he's already shown a great deal more than Jenas showed in his time here. Jenas had the technique and vision, but hardly ever applied himself. IMO Guthrie is the real deal in terms of application, and long may it continue to improve. The key is for the player not to believe his own hype and just get on with things. My Jenas-loathing aside (which has subsided considerably, it must be said), I'm not sure Guthrie has quite yet matched what JJ did for us here just yet. He was very, very good at times and scored some hugely important goals. I was always a big fan of Jenas, him and Dyer gave us a fantastically high powered engine room during our Champions league years. I don't think he has made the most of his ability though, either here or since he moved to Spurs. I'm not sure he's hungry enough to dominate games week in week out, and that's what Guthrie has to look to do. I don't think he has the mentality to do so, something I remember SBR saying how he'd be fantastic in training then when it came to the crunch he never had the stomach or character to do so. That was my suspicion as well, even when he was here. Ability wise he should be providing a lot more.

I always said Villa suit Milner far more that we did. They have big powerful forwards to hit so aimless high crosses from deep can be more effective. With our small pacy forwards we need fast precise delivery like Jonas has provided for his two assists for Owen. It's a move which suited all parties, especially us as we got far more than he was worth.

The thing is, for me personally, he's already shown a great deal more than Jenas showed in his time here. Jenas had the technique and vision, but hardly ever applied himself. IMO Guthrie is the real deal in terms of application, and long may it continue to improve. The key is for the player not to believe his own hype and just get on with things. My Jenas-loathing aside (which has subsided considerably, it must be said), I'm not sure Guthrie has quite yet matched what JJ did for us here just yet. He was very, very good at times and scored some hugely important goals. I was always a big fan of Jenas, him and Dyer gave us a fantastically high powered engine room during our Champions league years. I don't think he has made the most of his ability though, either here or since he moved to Spurs. I'm not sure he's hungry enough to dominate games week in week out, and that's what Guthrie has to look to do.

So that's obviously why Keegan by the end couldn't stand his guts? So? Just because Keegan doesn't like him equates to what? He was ruining the club, the fact the fella walked out showed we are not first in his mind. I fail to see what Wise has done bar stop us getting over-rated trophy signings and securing some good young talent. Well yes...that's the point, it's quite good that he's done those things

It'll probably be Spurs or Man City for me. Ironically both clubs are below us at the moment

Abhisit Vejjajiva in...then OUT!!

Kinnear is talking about signing two £6m players to strengthen the side, there aren't too many dominant midfielders around for that sort of money. That's why I'm thinking it could be Bullard, let's face it even if we ahd the money we aren't going to win the race for Diarra when he leaves Portsmouth in January.

I really don't under stand JFK's obsession with JAR. I didn't understand Keegan's obsession either. Maybe they know something the rest fo the EPL teams don't? Or maybe they are both stuck in a time capsule watching Sky re-runs?

When someone signs a better £ for £ signing at Newcastle than Rob Lee it will be good day. Or we sign striker from the lower leagues as good as Andy Cole, I will be very impressed. Who are these relatively unknown players we signed for the first team? Because everyone of them played in one Europe's major leagues the previous season & I think all of them have some type of international caps. I'm sure you must have recommended us targetting Jonas and Bassong as great potential signings then. Fair play to you, I had f*** all knowlegde of them in truth. Tbf I would rather we had signed another Argentinean from Real Mallorca (Ibagaza) instead of Jonas. Did you recommend him before we signed Jonas or is this our chief scout Mr Hindsight talking?

it's a "favourites" thing. same goes for taylor and owen. they aren't crowd favourites so each little flaw will be magnified and pounced on,where as for others,the crowd faves......n'zogbia,martins for example,anything they do wrong is excused. According to Alan Oliver, Milner was absolutely a crowd favourite for his 100% work rate and honest effort. Zog and Martins are liked for different reasons.

When someone signs a better £ for £ signing at Newcastle than Rob Lee it will be good day. Or we sign striker from the lower leagues as good as Andy Cole, I will be very impressed. Who are these relatively unknown players we signed for the first team? Because everyone of them played in one Europe's major leagues the previous season & I think all of them have some type of international caps. I'm sure you must have recommended us targetting Jonas and Bassong as great potential signings then. Fair play to you, I had fuck all knowlegde of them in truth.

it was oldtype who put his name in capitals. i thought this thread was supposed to look beyond system vs keegan, fans vs ashley and all that and simply praise the recruiting team,and that's all of them, not just the ones you back or blame, love or loathe. Keegan did some things in the window that have already been covered so deserves to be amongst the names. this is about a team and, for a couple of months at the beginning of the summer at least, keegan was part of that team. to put it more bluntly - to not include him would be as divisive as not including dennis wise's name. I never really felt Keegan was part of 'the team'. Whether that was his fault or the rest of Ashley's crew is up for debate, but trawling the world for unknown talent isn't something I would associate with Keegan, or Arthur Cox and McDermott. I hadn't heard of Bassong, Coloccini or Jonas before they arrived here, and I doubt Keegan had either.

When he signed I thought he was a tidy player and at the moment he's still that although improving. If he could add a few goals and assists to his game he'd be worth his weight in gold, but his all round game has gone up another level since he's been here.

While Keegan wasn't a bad judge of a player, unearthing and buying relatively unknown players for small fees wasn't really his way of doing things otherwise he'd be the most sought after manager in the world. It's a bit daft to insist on pushing his name into this thread (IN CAPITALS!) just because we don't like to think the cockney mafia could possibly have done some things right by the club.

Is Ledley King definitely out? Spurs were playing shit until he came back into the team against us in the cup match. If he's out as well as Woodgate, our chances of winning will rocket.

Milner can look impressive to a neutral, especially when he's playing against poor opposition. In a high pressure game he hasn't got the temperament to cope, I would put my house on him flopping for England and getting dropped from the squad once Capello realised this.

I'm not saying he didn't score. I'm just saying that it wasn't the fantastic piece of work that most people seem to have persuaded themselves to think. FFS, he was one on one on the goalkeeper, inside the penalty area, in ten yards of space when he received the ball. You'd back any Premiership striker to score from that position. Once the first touch took the ball wide and allowed James to close the distance it became an extremely difficult chance, and 9 times out of 10 the average striker will miss those. The chip was genius and it's those sort of finishes which seperate the class strikers from the hit-and-hopers for me.

I have a genuine fear we'll sell Enrique, buy someone like Leighton Baines and then find out that while he's the bee's knees going forwards, he can't actually defend. So yes, by all means by a left back but don't ditch Jose unless we are getting the real deal.