Shak

Who's the "waste of space"? Leon Best. Though he'd make a passable 4th choice striker next season I suppose. As long as we don't get promoted, that is.

I love how signing one decent/good player, one serviceable Championship player, and one complete waste of space, as well as getting a couple of loans in is considered some sort of glorious transfer window these days.

Tend to be of the opinion that a penalty + red is much too strong a punishment in the instances where a defender/keeper narrowly fails to get to a 50-50 ball. If the foul is done deliberately then yes, the guy should get a red. But when you get beaten by milliseconds in a genuine attempt to win the ball, the punishment is a bit severe IMO.

Not really, no.

The majority of young footballers from the UK and Ireland do seem like they'd be absolute twats if you met them to be fair. Young, obscenely wealthy people who've never done a day's hard work in their whole life and have probably had people hanging out of them telling them they were great since they were 10 years old don't tend to be the soundest people in the world like.

Fiver returns 19.50 for that on Ladbrokes.

Anyone with Darren fucking Bent in their team needs shooting.

Considering we've had pretty much nothing in terms of players who can play right wing this year, it doesn't say much about Lua Lua's chances of making it at the club that he didn't get a look in. He's 19 now, you would think he should be able to offer something in the Championship? Maybe the loan will do him good.

Think we're good enough to get to the play offs at least. Aye, Russia would have been pretty high on my list of teams I'd have wanted from Pot 1, and Slovakia isn't a bad result from Pot 2 either. Now, we just need a competent central midfielder of some sort to emerge from the country. Or another one, that isn't a complete gobshite this time, at least.

You're on the internet man, how fucking hard could it have been to find out yourself?

Couldn't have asked for a much nicer group, think we'll go close.

Reckon he's gonna be one of those who you'll have to learn to take the good with the bad, like most flashy players which he's always struck me as. Still, I'll take him over Ryan Taylor out there any time.

Everton really shat the bed in this one like, woeful performance against 10 men.

Lovenkrands +1 all the way. Still would go with Shola at the moment, personally.

Hopefully he can build on this, nice to see us give someone a proper thumping.

This is what happens when we actually start with a positive line-up.

Just offside. Shak will love that. Logged on to see it was 2-0 and was sure he would have scored em both.

Reckon we'll win 3-1. Just go out and take it to them, we'll score more than we concede.

Bit Norwichy for my liking.

"Good football" is a bullshit term. I want "effective football". Do you think Stoke play that brand of "bad football" that you think will fail in the premiership? I can confirm to you that they don't, FFS they even use throw ins to lump it long! I'm not saying i want us to use this style of football, i'm saying that it can work and it's nonsense to think it can't. We don't play effective football though, not when we have the ball anyway. We've conceded 16 goals in 27 games, that's why we're top. In attack we are pretty much directionless, and get by mostly on capitalising on mistakes from our opponents, the type of mistakes that aren't going to be as easy to come by in the Premiership. Stoke at least have a good collection of players for the style of football they want to play (a bunch of big fuckers + a guy who can throw the ball miles). We have a bunch of tall strikers who, barring Carroll, are pretty much shite in the air. And yes, eventually that brand of crap football will be found out and I expect Stoke to be gone from the Premiership in a few years.

What it boils down to is basically that this kind of approach will get us killed next year if we do go up. We're top of the league because our defense is too good for this league, the opposition at this level simply doesn't possess enough quality to take advantage of the few chances they get per game. Anyone really think that the same defense is going to be so watertight against Premiership opposition next year if we do go up? You simply can't just hoof long balls at your strikers all day long in the Premiership and expect to get any sort of consistent success. Teams will find a way to score if you insist on giving the ball back to them immediately with hopeful long balls all day long. People have a problem with Hughton because he doesn't even try and get our lads playing anything resembling good football. If he won't do it in this league, against inferior opposition, what chance he'll manage it against better opponents in the Premiership?

It'll only hurt more when they beat you again. Glutton for punishment, Shak. All the top seeds would beat us, of the ones there France are among the weaker sides, IMO. At least with France we get a game with a guaranteed bit of buzz about it and the lads can go in and break some legs and such.

Are you in the squad at the moment or hoping to play your way in? My real name is Stephen Kelly, to be fair.

Hope Ireland get France. Can't wait until they expand the tournament to 24 teams, be nice to go to one of these things while I'm still at a good age for it.

He's Irish, yeah? No, but he does have a number of caps for them nonetheless.