Shak

That would be my preferred option like, interesting to see what he tries! I reckon Lovenkrands could do a nice job in that Oba role, but as you say he's hardly a winger. Then you're getting into the territory of Nolan coming in for Jonas in the middle as well, unfortunately. The team you suggest would be my favoured one too. I think with Butt and Guthrie in the CM then you need someone with legs in there beside them. Jonas can't cross for shit so maybe the best thing for him would to be used as the box-to-box player, with Butt playing the holding role and Guthrie getting on the ball as much as possible. It's not like Jonas isn't physical enough to play in the middle either, hopefully Shearer will agree.

Gay Paris? If by that you mean regular Paris then when I was there I watched the West Brom home game in an Irish bar called Brady's, address is 14 rue de Lisbonne. Chez will probably be there too if he's not off travelling somewhere.

Lovenkrands is desperate on the wing, really don't see why he wouldn't just stick him in Oba's position in the 4-3-3 and let them at it?

Aye, you were wrong about Owen mind. Turns out they're both shite.

That's a load of balls in all honesty. There's a few reactionary types on here but you make it seem like everyone just reacts based on the last game we played, which is quite clearly not the case. If anything people tend to make their minds up about something and stick to their guns about it too much. And I said "near the ball", not on the ball.

I'd have Taylor in the team ahead of Colo at the minute tbh. Gotten to the point where I completely shit myself any time that Coloccini gets anywhere near the ball.

Selling Milner wasn't the mistake, for the £12m we got we could have vastly improved our team more than James Milner would have done this year. Some central midfielders, for instance.

Thing is there's really nothing that's stopping a number of clubs from challenging and breaking that Top 4, and I'd be confident they will in time. Arsenal spend less than pretty much every team in the Premiership, and teams like Spurs, Villa, Man City and ourselves to name just a few are more than capable of challenging the big 4 if they get their act together and appoint a good manager. Villa this season is a prime example, and they'll only get better next year if they give O'Neill some more funds to work with. Really, Chelsea are the only team who've bought success in recent times. I suppose it is unfair on teams like Wigan, who have a certain level they'll never be able to surpass due to their shitty support, but the suggestion that the top 4 is somehow inpenetrable the way things are at the moment is pretty much ridiculous. Salary cap, as well as it works in the US, is completely unworkable in football too, barring miraculous levels of co-operation and sacrifice from clubs who have no reason to do so.

Personally I'd revert back to a straight knock-out competition. No seedings, just luck of the draw. Aye, would be nice but it'll never happen surely. Too much money in the group stages.

The Boro game is pretty much it like. If we win that we should survive. Draw and I'm a 9. Lose and we're gone.

One thing I'd really like to see is an extra knockout round before the Champions League group stages. Instead of 8 groups of 4 teams, get it down to 4 groups. Champions League group stages are a shambles, there's usually about 12-14 teams who you can pretty much gaurantee will make it through, with a couple of question marks here and there. Knock it down to 16 teams, then have 4 groups with the top two in each making the quarters. It'd make the thing competitive at least, it's more or less pointless the way it is.

Man U's second best 11 would play any team submitted in this thread off the park. Pretty laughable stuff, in all honesty.

This would be one of the benefits of a salary cap for me. The players earning the truly obscene amounts of money are the players who make the game worth watching. Your Ronaldo's, Kaka's and Messi's earning over 100k doesn't really bother me tbh. It's the slightly above average players that take home thirty or forty grand a week that get on my tits. All in all though I agree that a salary cap is completely unworkable in football. An unusually good post, by your standards at least.

What a dismal team that is.

"It's like Hull are in a lift, descending so fast and stopping at no floor and heading towards the next storey of the hotel." The senile old commentator on RTE's comments at the final whistle in the Hull game. Word for word, had to stop and rewind the SKY+ to make sure I heard it right. Possibly the stupidest thing I've ever heard.

Came across this on another forum just now, felt the need to post it. Completely irrelevant to the topic, so apologies. Still, unbelievably disturbing IMO. http://i269.photobucket.com/albums/jj41/bronkota/springtime-animals-demotivational-p.jpg

Can think of a few people I'd happily murder if I was assured of getting away with it tbh, wouldn't demand much in return either.

Don't Think People Neccessarily Assume We'll Beat Boro Tbh. Rather That Everybody Knows That It's An Absolute Must-Win If We're To Have Any Chance At All Of Escaping.

Dreadlocked Idiot!!

Bolton could relegate us, the cunts. Clearly not arsed, can see Hull getting something from them very easily.

Richardson should have a hat-trick by now.

Get in. Unbelievably fast thread title edit btw.

The dog smiley pretty much sums him up. Clueless, by far the worst manager we've had in my time supporting the club. If we go down and he somehow ends up in charge again next season I think we'll be lucky to finish top half in the Championship. Sold our most talented player and brought in useless bags of shite like Taylor and Nolan. The fact that he came off as a complete wanker doesn't help either.

How did it even itself out? Surely Chelsea would have won at least 2-1 if he got both decisions right? Had Abidal not been sent off then the game most likely goes down an entirely different path and the Pique handball probably never happens. I wasn't entirely serious btw and I know it must have been tough to take last night so no harm intended mate.

We can only judge based on what we've seen thus far though, and over the course of those 4 games Barca have looked completely ineffective going forward. Don't agree that Barca scoring was "always going to happen", looked like they could easily have played until midnight and not gotten a goal. And while ultimately it was a wonder goal fom Essien that won it for them, barring Bojan's header the best chances over the two legs all fell to Chelsea, and they had a stonewall penalty turned away on top of that. Really hope they beat Man U, but I'd be surprised if it happens.