TRon

You were the one who said he'd done well for Ireland, I just assumed you'd have something to back that up. A competitive match which counted for something would be a start.

Who has he played well against? Malta? Brazil. A friendly match with lots of space and no pressure doesn't really tell us much.

I prefer Faye and Cacapa, they compliment each other well, although against the more physical sides Faye should start with Taylor. Agree with the rest of your post, where was the midfield for the 2nd and 3rd goals?

Who has he played well against? Malta? I stuck up for Duff when he was out, but his safe,sterile performances have reeked of fear recently. Has he given any full back a hard time recently?

I once asked NE5, seeing as he didn't agree that Freddie was a thick fat so and so, what was Freddie's intelligent reasoning for wanting to hire Souness? Blackburn being 2nd bottom of the league at the time, and Souness being on the brink of the sack. I never got a reply to that one strangely enough.

I've stayed quiet so far in this thread but I have to take issue with that. If Duff and Owen are our best players, we will go down, absolutely no doubt whatsoever about that. A winger who hasn't scored or set a goal up all season is our best player? Christ! I have to agree. It doesn't matter how bad the rest of your team are, there's no excuse for not being able to at least fire in some decent crosses. Zog isn't playing great but he always manages a couple if given the chance. Even Milner does although usually from deep positions. I think you said it in one of the other threads, to think the flak Robert used to get, and there was a bloke who could make and take them.

How about an unfit, unmotivated Viduka up front with Oba? Seeing as that's the more likely option.

spot on. The essence of having an ambitious board or not. Mort is increasingly looking like a clueless idiot to me. Its called using your fanbase to your advantage, and if you don't do it you are the same as those without a big fanbase. Hardly rocket science unless you are a blind man or blindly refuse to accept the obvious. Or just waiting to see if Ashley/Mort spend in the summer assuming we stay up.

Allardyce was lining up a big bid for Nolan IMO. Then we'd finally see an Allardyce team in full swing.

This is worrying. He's making runs and beating people at times, but never really finding a man in the box with a cross or getting goal. Thing is, the whole team has been a shower of shit this season. Simply because Duff hasn't shone and banged in a load of goals or made loads of assists isn't a sign that Duff is finished etc. - think its more down to the fact that the whole team have been poor and confidence is at an all time low. Duff's been out for a while with injury and he's come back in to team going through shite run of form and has had to play under two different managers. If the team was playing better football and confidence was high I'd wager that Duff would be performing better, which goes for a number of other players too. I don't know. Zog has his faults, but you can guarantee at least once in a match he'll skin the full back and whip in a decent cross. Against Blackburn, Duff took three consecutive corners and didn't beat the first man. It was abysmal, nothing less. As soon as Zog started taking them we had much more dangerous deliveries which actually caused a problem. If you can't take a corner, you aren't likely to produce much else, especially when the pressure is on.

They can also be won by the sides with more pace and skill, if we can get Zog and Martins in, I think we'll cause them problems. Also we should see a lot more possession than we have of late as they won't be able to keep the ball. I doubt they are capable of stringing more than one pass together.

Well you don't have to, but anyway the point is: while Duff has offered plenty of industry and running at defenders, that's as far as he seems to get. He never actually gets past them or puts in a decent cross. His end product is generally zero, plus he strikes me as someone who's head goes down. He was subbed by Keegan on Saturday early in the second half. does this mean Zog will finally get a run of games in that position?

Funnily enough, if you dropped Owen and Smith out of the reckoning and replaced them with the two forwards on the bench - Martins and Carroll - I think you'd have a front pairing that would put the shits up our relegation rivals. Even if they didn't score, they might create enough havoc to get others in.

I'd pair them together. I don't think we'd be losing much by replacing Smith with Martins, and we'd be gaining a hell of a lot more.

Keegan won't drop Owen for the same reason England managers wouldn't for so long. He scores in crucial matches. Unfortunately, without pace he can be easily marked out of a game. The best bet suerly has to be to play him and Martins so we have sometthing else for the opposition to worry about?

We also need to score goals when we are playing well, and to show some backbone when we aren't. Let's hope we are up for it.

I'd much rather be going into these crunch head to head relegation games coming up under Keegan than Allardyce.

Just because our predicament has followed a board change, it doesn't mean our predicament is due to a board change. We've still got every chance of getting more points than we did last year and finishing above where we did last year, I think we will, but we'll see. We're still only one place lower than we finished last year for fucks sake, it's not like there's been a drastic drop in quality since the club changed hands. I appreciate all of that, but i think his point still stands. The very reason relegation seems so unthinkable to a large proportion of our fans is due to the success we had under the previous board, under the man who almost everybody wanted rid of. The fact that the closest we've come to it for some time has coincided with the change in ownership, wether as a direct result of it or not, only strengthens his position. Unfortunately NE5 has become something of a parody of himself, perhaps people would be more receptive to his views if he wasn't. We were in the bottom three several times under Shepherd.....and were only 5 points from relegation last year. I'll wager we have a wider margin of safety this year. It's all up in the air at the moment. I have doubts whether these players have the bottle required to win head to head battles, but the extra quality should count for something. I can see Sunderland wilting when the heat is on, and others might too.

Our work rate drops visibly once we concede though. It's not a defence of Smith, more an indictment of the rest. It's the only reason I can see for him getting picked week in week out.

It might be based on the fact we have looked ok against the lesser teams under Keegan.

Yes let's all reminisce about how good the old board was. Again. and again...and again and again forever and ever till thy kingdom come and thy will be done etc...

I wonder if Smith is getting picked because he runs around a lot? He is definitely shit no doubt, but in a relegation battle you need all your players to run non-stop. I don't think many of our team do.

and the fact they are playing shit. Not that we can talk like, but it's true anyway.

It really is time to stand up and be counted. We've played the Man U's, Arsenal's and Liverpools where we expected little and got less. Next monday brings the first head to head against fellow struggling wankers. This is where the questions will be asked of our squad. This is where capitulation after conceding won't be accepted. On a positive note, we've generally played better against the crap sides since Keegan took over. Let's hope the players can at least show something at this sub-standard level.

To be honest, I think that even terminally self-centred spackers like Barton must have realised by now that the Geordie support is second to none. Even at home, where the atmosphere is sometimes lacking, against Blackburn we were great. It isn't going to be the supporters who will be found wanting over the final furlong. We need the players to fight for 90 mins. as well.