tmonkey

Souness plus the lack of backing from his chairman. He wants Boa Morte and Anelka to play a 4-3-3 system. What does the chairman do? Piss about with low bids, then blow three times as much on Owen and Luque.

To be fair to Martins, the one thing on his side here is that his motive for feigning injury isn't too clear. It's easy to say that he bottled it because Stoke are a big team who are relatively dirty, but then most of the Premiership is filled with big centrebacks, and I don't think Stoke are any more dirty than at least half the teams in the league. In fact, are they even a dirty team as opposed to an ugly one? And as he's a short, pacey striker, I seriously doubt Shearer would have had Martins defending corners and throw ins in the penalty box, so it's not like their aggression inside our box is something he'd have to wory about. Bellamy feigned injury for us under Souness, but then that's because he resented being played out of position and had been picked on by a manager renowned for being a grade A prick. Martins, as far as we know, was starting in a 4-3-3 and would not have been out of position. Even if he's been asked to play wide, he's done so on numerous occasions without looking unhappy. And in comparison to Souness, Shearer (as far as we know) has done nothing but praise Martins. And if he did feign injury, why wait till the morning of the match? I'm sure he's thick as mince like many other footballers, but if he didn't want to play against Stoke, why make it so obviously suspcious when he could have feigned an injury any time during midweek? There's the possibility of wanting to hide it from the physios or club doctor (assuming we have one), but then again, I seriously doubt he's not capable of feigning an injury they can't prove. A lot of assumptions, and to be perfectly frank it does look like he did bottle it, but as Henry Fonda would say if this were the case being debated in 12 Angry Men, its possible that he did wake up to a painful groin/thigh.

Decent defender who could play anywhere across the back four. We've had to put up with unbelievably shit defenders in various positions since he left, most of them costing at least double what we got for him. Fucking ridiculous decision to sell, but then that's the sort of decision made by managers like Graeme Souness.

Had another goodish game at centreback. Almost certainly will be gone if we go down, but if we don't, playing him at centreback could quite possibly extend his career in terms of his current playing standards.

If he has feigned injury, it's time to cash in in the summer and get a replacement. Will be easily replaced with a bit of money. If we stay up and all of Martins, Owen and Viduka leave, I honestly would look at it as an opportunity to replace faulty/unreliable goods and move on to potentially better, more useful, more reliable, newer models that aren't as well known right now because they're new on the block.

Good: Bassong, Edgar, Beye, Jonas, Carroll, Guthrie for 15 minutes before his lack fo match fitness kicked in. Fucking awful: Butt, Ameobi.

Ameobi - learn from Caroll. Thanks.

Butt

Look at the difference Gutierrez has made. No assists, no goals, but he's come on, kept the ball, driven the team forward, and won free kicks in positions and circumstances where other players would lose the ball.

That is a phenomenal header. Deflected cross, but all is forgiven Duff, just one more of them

The back three have done alright. If the likes of Ameobi and Butt weren't playing, they'd be having decent games.

I think they're quite good. Ryan Taylor thinks he's at the driving range, and Jonas hits them off his golf bag. Won't disagree with Taylor and Jonas, but noone is going to score from crosses like that. You need crosses to be whipped in, all you want to do is direct the ball with your head, otherwise it's almost always impossible to both add direction, generate power, and keep it low/on target. Duff is just a complete waste of space imo. Won't score, won't create - it'll be a miracle if he does either.

Duff, fucking hell, can the guy cross at all? Every time he fucking lobs it into the box as though he's playing golf and chipping it out of the sand dunes.

Duff's crosses have been f***ing useless. Never going to score if you float it in like that.

Paul Scholes' twin.

Well done Butt, just contributed to Guthrie getting injured.

Oh fuck off Butt you fucking prat. Ferguson cursed us by selling us this cunt.

He's such a fucking cunt. He's one of the main driving forces behind our potential relegation.

Ameobi, Duff, Butt, Nolan, Ryan Taylor - we may as well have amateurs on minimum wage who can run around enough to close opposition players down rather than these muppets. 45 minutes gone and we haven't looked remotely like scoring. Not even close to it. We don't even look capable of creating a chance. Shearer needs to sort this Big Sam style formation out, Duff and Taylor are too shit to be playing wingback roles effectively to it's like a major bottleneck on the team.

Guthrie in the team = passing it more in midfield than we do without him. Barton in for Nolan or Butt would further that change.

2 good chances to score for Stoke. Nice clearance from Duff.

Portsmouth equalise. Good news. WBA being relegated before the remaining few weeks means that we only have two clubs to better to stay up.

Good goal from Agger, 30 yards out.

Handball by Ryan Nelson in the box. Liverpool can't even be bothered to appeal because it's been so easy.

It's a case of damned if you do, damned if you don't. The guy is unhappy with life in Milan, with playing football in Italy and the pressures that come with that. Irrespective of whether he should enjoy being paid mega bucks to play football or not (ridiculous viewpoint anyway), he's not happy and not motivated to play. So he's almost certainly doing his club far more favours by not playing and accepting cessation of pay rather than doing what many professional footballers do, i.e. carry on picking up a weekly wage playing for a club they couldn't give a s*** about, putting in performances with zero effort (or just enough effort to not get singled out for abuse). Some even fake or exaggerate injuries so that they don't have to play. It's a team sport, and if he's not in it 100%, then he's letting his team down by continuing to play just so that he picks up his weekly wage. With respect to your analogy, he's a footballer playing at a rich club with vast resources and a large playing squad, as opposed to being an office employee working for an organisation with limited resources/personnel allocated to specific functions (assumption). Hence, it's even better for him to not turn up if his head's not right (and not get paid for it), because it gives someone else the opportunity to play in the team and contribute to the team. It's not like Inter will be starting with ten men becasue Adriano has gone walkies. In fact, having worked in local government for a few years, I can honestly say that what Adriano is doing is nowhere near as bad as many local government employees. Ones who go off sick with "stress" for 6 months on full pay for example.