TRon

true he wasn't certain to score but he would have been clean through on goal. most experienced players would have done the same thing. That might be the case but the part you highlighted was probably the least important part of the post. Tsunami is right, Souness dismantled a midfield which had pace and energy in midfield. No surprise that a midfield of Duff, Butt, Guthrie and Geremi doesn't quite have counter-punching sting of Robert, Jenas, Dyer and Solano.

The reason why I used a Keegan quote is precisely because he was brave enough to keep encouraging passing football and I remember marvelling at it then. He was brave enough to take the flak when it wasn't working and eventually the players grew in stature. It didn't really work until we went 4-3-3 and had three top notch strikers causing havoc in the opposition ranks. Personnel is a big part of it. Some players give the ball up easily, others don't. Jonas is a prime example of the quality needed to keep the ball under pressure, pass it then run into space. He stuck out like a sore thumb amongst the rest of the confused bumbling rabble around him.

I think I'll wait till after Tuesday to jump to any rash conclusions. JK's bigget mistake was relying on the same players who consistently let Keegan and Allardyce down. It wasn't great but it's worth considering that before they scored the winner, Ameobi had a great chance to put us 2-1 up. Kinnear's a temporary solution in any case. I don't really see any alternatives out there at the moment.

Duff and Geremi should provide protection to stop a defender doubling up with a winger to have a go at the defence, nowt wrong with that. Were any Sunderland midfielders doubling up on Geremi and Duff?

Who was playing in front of Bassong? It looked as if we had Martins playing on the left. I noticed there was a 10-15 minute spell in the second-half where Geremi & Duff switched wings. Wonder if that was JFK thinking Geremi would offer more protection in front of Bassong down that side. If Duff and Geremi were on the pitch to provide us from protection against a roaming striker there is something wrong with the game plan in any case.

Why is it Taylor always playing last man defender anyway? Shouldn't he as the big strong stopper be dealing with the big guys and taking out the target man rather than sweeping up in front of the goalie?

Are they going to offer him a net £20m transfer budget every season then?

'appy 'arry hasn't got rid of anyone, he's just got a bigger job within reasonable commuting distance.

Keegan did the same until the penny dropped. It takes a while for new managers to realise the reputations are sometimes bigger than what they actually produce on the pitch.

The fact that Owen, a player who doesn't want to be here is captain, and Butt who should be playing a division below is second choice, says a lot about the rest. The heart of the team should come from the engine room in midfield and I don't think any one of them stood up to be counted.

JK is picking names like Duff, Butt and Geremi who probably seemed like good players in his time.

At least the slack-jowelled cunt will be able to stay darn saarf. Spurs and Redknapp deserve each other.

If he was quality we wouldn't have gifted the mackems the midfield, for most of the 2nd half they just walked through us. He was the only one winning the ball from what I could see. Guthrie was nullified after 3 minutes and should not have reappeared for the second half, the fact he "couldn't" risk tackling Diouf stitched Butt up as much as anything for the free-kick, then we made a fucking substitute as well. Criminal to make a change at this level when defending a set-piece of that nature. Butt had a pain injection mid-match and was obviously carrying an injury, yet still put in a decent shift in what was a fucking terrible game. I'm usually as blinkered as any about him after past events, but he was one of the few who impressed me today (along with Coloccini and the subs.) He did win a few tackles but the ones he misses tend to cost us goals. Other than that his passing is telegraphed as bobyule has said, and quite often intercepted. His movement up and down the pitch is middle-aged so it's difficult to see what he brings to the team other than lower league commitment. He wasn't the worst player today, but he consistently offers the least week in week out.

Ramos wasn't a bad coach necessarily, just couldn't impose himself on English football. Didn't really look at home here at all.

He's crap but he is a good free kick taker, just look at last week against Fulham. Our direct free kicks by comparison, I totally despair. Total and utter waste of time, if the free kick is vaguely central and closer than 40 yards, we might as well just give the opposition the ball back and do away with the rigmarole of the wall and Geremi hitting some kid in Row Z. He's good with dead balls but that one today definitely caught the wind. We are crap from all dead ball situations. I'm amazed we scored from one today. The days of Robert and Solano lining them up are sadly missed. :-[

Possibly, but how often do you see strikes these days change direction? Wind or no wind, it was hit at something like 73mph Does that change the fact he's a little mackem shit? No.

keegan gets bummed to fuck for quitting his "untenable" job and ashley gets crucified for the same. as ever. Ashley's "job" was untenable ? Would you rather he stayed? Whilst I was gutted that Keegan left, I would have been pleased if Mike Ashley had come out immediately and said that plans are immediately in place to try and replace Keegan with a world class manager and that Keegan's leaving doesnt affect his long term plans for the club. I don't want bad blood at the club and think it's best Ashley sells up and we can start under a new owner. Whatever plans he had here are up in smoke and would never be accepted by a large section of fans. We don't want a divided club here, or at least I don't.

Richardson's free kick was a freak tbh. He was hitting it one way, but a gust of wind changed it's speed and trajectory by quite a lot.

He was pretty poor today, looked a lot better when Jonas came on.

keegan gets bummed to fuck for quitting his "untenable" job and ashley gets crucified for the same. as ever. Ashley's "job" was untenable ? Would you rather he stayed?

Thank fuck we have another game on Tuesday, I don't think I could bear carrying this result around for a week.

Injured IIRC The club never mention him, he might as well not exist. Another inspired signing. Sign unknown foreigners, forcing out the current manager in the process, then bring in an old school English manager who is never going to pick them anyway? Genius. What the f*** does this have to do with the player being injured? It's amazing how people like you can insert opinions about the board in threads that have nothing to with it. If he's injured, why don't the club tell us when he'll be back or how he's getting on? My prediction is that he won't play for us again, injured or not. He was brought in to give us some cover for Barton at the time but he's spent all that time out injured. Barton is back now so I wouldn't expect to see Gonzalez start much now in any case when he does eventually get fit.

Injured IIRC The club never mention him, he might as well not exist. Another inspired signing. Sign unknown foreigners, forcing out the current manager in the process, then bring in an old school English manager who is never going to pick them anyway? Genius. Injured IIRC The club never mention him, he might as well not exist. Another inspired signing. Sign unknown foreigners, forcing out the current manager in the process, then bring in an old school English manager who is never going to pick them anyway? Genius. The situation calls for a time machine tbh. Instead we've got a dinosaur.

We need the club sold ASAP really, until it goes through we are going to have major outbreaks of angry venting with every bad result.

it's about trust and bravery i think. a manager knows his fate is in the hands of the players and an old school manager simply doesn't want to put his future in the hands of temperamental, lazy lads who dont train well, cant speak english and have no rapport with him. they'd rather pick good honest pros who will run all day for them. it's why managers like Souness dislike players like Laurent Robert. it takes a better manager to get over it and pick those types for the good of the team. Yeah, it took balls for SBR to keep picking Robert when so many snide pundits got off on pointing out Robert's bad points.