tmonkey

Poor man's Pancrate goal there from Messi.

Messi's final pass has been poor as usual.

Woah. Barcelona's pink kit is horrendous.

Idiot. Absolute idiot.

This league is just awesome.

Jonas' legs, Robert's end product, Ameobi's greatness - there'd be no stopping us.

It blew my socks off. Great group.

That's our right winger for next season's Premiership survival fight sorted then.

I guess the tribunal findings that essentially declared Ashley's regime to be a bunch of odious, lying, slimy c***s went right over Brady's head. As the article says, she's good at keeping the right people happy, which is how she managed to become a football director at the age of 23, despite having no formal qualifications and by her own admission, "I didn’t know anything about football". This is just a further exercise in sucking up to someone with a decent amount of wealth/power who probably operates in circles she wants to keep happy.

Ranger has similar attributes to Didier Drogba imo, who didn't turn into a good goalscorer until his mid 20's. Not saying he has that sort of potential of course, just that he does have a few similarities to Drogba in how he holds the ball up, his physique, the technique/control he shows in flashes, etc. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Didier_Drogba#Statistics Drogba's first four seasons at Le Mans, who were in the French 2nd division at the time, hardly indicated a future world class striker in the making there (although admittedly can't tell from those stats how many were substitute appearances).

Pie-in-the-sky talk, but I'd love to see how Rooney would fare at Arsenal. Reckon he'd fit in well there and would find alot more joy in Arsenal's style of play than he is currently getting with ManU, where he's stagnated to an extent. Arsenal would get someone capable of both adapting to their "walk it into goal" philosophy, as well as providing something different when it's needed (drive, aggression, directness, bit of physicality, shooting unexpectedly from range). Perfect fit at this point in time.

Wonder if Owen would win in a "which former/current NUFC player do you hate the most" poll. For waste of money, toss up between Owen if considering fee + wages, or Boumsong if considering performances per pound played alone. Luque would be ahead of Boumsong, but at least he has the excuse of a bad injury being the start of his problems here.

Ameobi, as he's the most experienced and most likely to finish off decent chances. And based on the most recent game, Lovenkrands alongside him. Ranger and Carroll are both promising prospects, particularly Ranger if he can find his scoring boots, as his holdup play has looked exceptional. But for now, we should field what is most likely to get us 3 points every game, as promotion is more important than aiming to develop players who may or may not eventually be good enough for the Premiership.

Orbital with a decent cross there.

Class goal from Gibson.

Iniesta should be first for his 08/09 form. Turned up for all the big games last year and outshone Messi in practically all of them, especially the CL ones.

That's both Jonas and Coloccini now claiming that teams were interested in them but they wanted to stay to help us - who are they trying to convince, and who is this information meant for? Us? Yeah right. To me, it reads like they're trying to repair damage from earlier on as they hope for a January move. A sort of "look, I'm not s***, people did want me, really" come-get-me plea. They know their reputations will have been tainted because of the lack of interest or concrete bids in the summer, so they're making sure that anyone who might be interested in them in January has an alternative view to the logical conclusion that noone wanted them because they must be s***. Maybe I'm being too cynical here, but it does seem to come from the Michael Owen school of PR, whereby you claim loyalty and explain away criticisms purely in the hope that managers elsewhere buy those excuses and decide to take a punt on you.

Ibrahimovic > Drogba?

Great tackle from Puyol.

The term "complete forward" is subjective. Drogba isn't someone who'll dribble past players with the ball, or carry the ball from e.g. the half way line beating several players to then score (like Henry used to do for Arsenal). He's not fast/mobile/skillful enough to do that on the ball. So the definition of "complete forward" that imo Ronaldo is using is within the context of a target man who is also decent to good at other things (e.g. free kicks). Similarly for Shearer, there were some things he couldn't do, and being able to blast the ball into the net from 25 yards out into the top corner doesn't negate that. For example, Shearer wasn't capable of turning defenders on a sixpence like e.g. Ronaldo, or Romario, could. Not that type of striker. The only truly complete attacking player in the past two decades imo is Zidane. He had absolutely everything in his game, dribbling, vision, passing, heading, strength, pace (when he got going), control, finishing, volleying, trickery, simple passing, pinpoint passing, holding the ball up, two footed, big game player, small game player, consistent, reliable, fit, positional sense, tactical sense, etc etc.

Fabregas has shown today why he is, or should be, behind Xavi and Iniesta in the pecking order for Spain. Looks a better player threading through balls and scoring for fun against mid table teams, but isn't quite good enough to do that against a quality team. Maybe his teammates can be blamed, but he should be performing better.

When Drogba lines up to take the free kick, the stadium is full. A couple of replays later, and it's half empty.

What an awesome free kick from Drogba.

The Drogba + Anelka partnership seems to have taken them to another level, especially in the big games.

Awesome tackle from Terry. What a defender.