Shak

Blatantly here for life. We'll get 7 more years of the same sort of carry-on from him, in about 3 years time when his contract is up again we'll re-sign him for a bit of squad depth. Then he'll come of the bench to score an injury time winner in the 2016 FA Cup Final in his last game for the club, finally ending our long wait for a trophy. And it'll be epic.

Every time I see a thread title like this I hope for something a bit more exciting than a player doing something stupid at a nightclub. We need an OJ type of story, could you imagine turning on Sky News to see live helicopter shots of Rooney or Lampard being chased through the streets after murdering someone? Preferrably Jamie Redknapp.

Weakened. We've basically signed Kevin Nolan and sold Given and N'Zogbia. Lovenkrands and Ryan Taylor won't do anything to improve the team whatsoever most likely. Tidy profit though.

There was absolutely no reason whatsoever not to insist upon getting Johnson as part of the Given deal if we really wanted him. Stinks to high heaven, this whole thing.

Anyone who wouldn't take 17th right now is a lunatic. Could we finish higher? Of course, there's a lot of other shite teams around us who have just as much, and in some cases more, of a chance of going down. But honestly, the difference between finishing 12th and 17th has pretty much no long term effect on us. The absolute best thing that can happen to us this year is to not get relegated, depressing as that is. 17th is good enough to achieve that goal, and it'd do me all day long.

Seriously doubt that. There's something very much amiss though. Ashley is a fantastic businessman, he's proved that his whole life. Yet he's now completely bolloxed up the end of two transfer windows in a row, and we could now get relegated because of it. Lots of smoke and mirrors going on here IMO, I think it's pretty conceivable that we had no intention of signing anyone other than Taylor today. Yet they've gone to all this fuss to make it seem as though they've been busy working on deals all day, so they can now go "We worked tirelessly all day, but in the end we just couldn't get the deals done." I reckon they sat in the office doing shots all day tbh.

do you include the injured players Harper Taylor Coloccini Bassong Enrique Taylor Nolan Butt Jonas Martins Ameobi > Given Carr Bramble Moore Babayaro Solano Parker Butt Duff Martins Sibierski All depends on Martins really, if he were to miss the rest of the season we'd go down pretty comfortably tbh. Worst manager in the league, easily.

God damn that's cynical. You know it makes sense.

This thread. I'll bet a part of the Given deal was that City would pretend they rejected a bid from us for Johnson, make it look like we tried to actually spend some money.

For fuck sake.

http://i39.tinypic.com/28bsk6w.gif

Some of the best out-and-out attacking footy i've seen from us, atleast in glimpses, were in the first 20 mins of this game, and the first half of the West Brom game. Butt wasn't playing in either and it's not a coincidence. Stoke first half was good too, and we were Buttless in Seattle for that as well. But now, as then, I expect Kinnear to put a stop to that as soon as is possible.

We can actually play some half decent stuff going forward without Butt there to ruin everything.

Tend to agree. Would love to see Geremi and Guthrie run the show today, see if Kinnear has the stones to keep them in ahead of Butt. Not a fucking chance like, obviously.

It's a myth that Owen is a brilliant finisher tbh. Sure, he's half decent at it and probably the best in our squad. But his real talent is his movement, how he anticipates where the ball will be and gets into position to get the chance. He does this so well that he generally gets numerous chances per game and eventually puts one away. Doesn't half miss some sitters in there though.

One thing that's always seemed strange to me is that if the last defender takes the guy down he's deemed the last man and a red is given. But then a keeper can take someone down as he goes by, then gets a yellow because there's a defender back on the line to cover. Surely beating a goalkeeper 1 on 1 is a tougher task than having just a defender on the line to beat? (unless it's Steven Taylor, obviously) Always think a penalty is enough in those situations anyway, a red card and a penalty at the same time is too much. Unless the foul is cynical, but often a defender or keeper just gets to a 50-50 ball a moment late and as a result his team both lose a man and most likely lose a goal too.

3 isn't worse than 3 though.

Owen looked very disinterested for some reason, sort of wandered through the match without ever showing any sort of urgency. No leadership whatsoever, too. He never does though tbh, whereas he usually looks alive when the ball is in around the box. Today he seemed to phone it in a bit. Was nowhere near as bad as Viduka though, who seemed to really be applying himself to playing shite.

Owen looked very disinterested for some reason, sort of wandered through the match without ever showing any sort of urgency. Chance he had in the first half summed him up. Seemed to hesitate and never even got the shot away. Credit to Scharner for a great challenge, but more often than not Owen at least gets the shot away in that situation. The problem with Owen and Viduka as a duo is that on their off-days they're both pretty much useless and offer you nothing. So when they both have a bad day, as they did today, then we're fucked.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

Yeah, more or less. Hope he crashes his car on the way home tonight tbh. Preferrably into Damien Duff, if possible.

Horrible half of football. Viduka has been pathetic, Owen hasn't been a whole lot better. Only way we'll get anything from those two as a partnership is by having two wingers who can get at full backs and cause problems. Which brings us to Damien Duff. What a waster, useless cunt has done nothing the entire half. Jonas has been pretty poor as well. Butt has been a disgrace, how someone who's played in the Premiership for so long can so constantly get caught in possession is beyond me. Guthrie has been pretty much playing on his own in there. N'Zogbia is getting done at LB, but then he's a winger isn't he? And ten times the winger Duff is as we saw last week, boils my piss to see him back there where he's not only handcuffed going forward, but a liability defensively. The good news is we're only 1 down. The bad news is we're absolutely fucking shite today and I struggle to see this getting better. Really missing Oba.

Jesus this is ridiculous. Duff gets a start and looks absolutely shite, what a fucking surprise eh?

Working in a call center here. Actually said "Get In" down the phone when I saw the posts on here.