tmonkey

Palacios is out injured, that's Geremi wearing Palacios' shirt.

He's been a bit wank. Over the course of the season he's an excellent striker, but if you zoom in on any one particular game, he's pretty much a very average footballer. Personally, whenever I see him playing I can't help but think that he's a clone of Bellamy but with little to no pace. Wouldn't back him to not score though.

Modric has been excellent so far.

He's like a poor man's Nobby - which is still excellent for a squad to have.

Liverpool have played for a 0-0 since kick off. No wonder the Liverpool fans are getting on Benitez's back. Everton were always going to struggle to score with no striker, yet they've pretty much had one player at most in the box for most of the game during open play.

Team of cloggers, hackers and hard workers + Arteta. Cahill is a class act imo. He's got good end product, but he's a dirty hacking cheat for me.

Team of cloggers, hackers and hard workers + Arteta.

He's like a big, ugly, cuddly teddy bear. A teddy bear who doesn't mind taking a back hander or fixing a match.

Lucas off! Second yellow. Looks like Grobbelar was right. "Will there be a goal? Not sure. Someone will get sent off before anyone will score". If he's completely right, this will go to penalties.

Osman should have scored that. 6 yards out.

I think its the Liverpool fans chucking all the socks.

If the stand that the Liverpool fans are collectively jumping on collapses...

8.10 I think. Gerrard's penalty box diving will start around 8.35.

No different to the team that finished 3rd under Sir Bobby, with a defence of Hughes, O'Brien, Bramble/Dabizas, Distin. A few average defenders there, a few s*** ones, but overall the stats were good and the defence didn't look that bad because the rest of the team were controlling the game through the midfield and/or ripping teams apart down the other end of the pitch.

He played like a £20mill centreback today. Dare I say it, but that performance was Woodgate-like in the way he read the ball quicker than anyone else on the pitch, got tackles and little steals in before the opposition players knew they were coming, and when it was needed, pulled off the difficult big tackles to perfection. If he can sort out that one problem of letting players get slightly goalside of him (and therefore having to wrestle with them on the move in an attempt to get back in front), then it's scary to think how good he could be. Scary because we'd then be worrying about hanging on to him. IF he turns out to be as good as he looks like he might become, then that's pretty much the type of centreback you simply do not sell.

Bassong has been fantastic.

Why the fuck didn't we go for Jimmy Bullard? A significantly better player than Nolan, and a good free kick taker.

Rivaldo. Back when Shepherd said there was £100m to spend and he specifically hinted at Rivaldo as part of that spending spree.

Ginola took the huff long before Dalglish arrived - Keegan never forgave him for trying to engineer a move to Barcelona in the summer of 96. Well, fair enough if that's the case, although that's suprising given how Ginola iirc was a regular starter under Keegan o 06-07 and seemed to have a good relationship with him. My recollection of events was that Ginola was dropped by Dalglish after Dalglish had moaned about his tracking back and then switched to a 4-3-3 whilst benching Ginola. I'm pretty certain the fallout occurred between Ginola and Dalglish, although again, fair enough if I'm wrong.

N'zogbia not in the same class asGinola, or Robert. He is more like Olivier Bernard, (he thinks he is a better player than he really is) I've not said that N'Zogbia is as good today as Ginola or Robert were for us at their respective peaks. I've said he's talented, which is what he undoubtedly is. IMO he's our best left wing option (with Jonas on the right), because out of all the players we have available for the left wing, he's by far the most likely to score, put in a peach of a delivery, or create a half chance out of nothing using his natural dribbling ability. Speaking his mind off the pitch, no matter how inappropriate, or even being a total cunt, should not result in his talent on the pitch being forgotten or ignored. Maybe we'll improve straight away without him, but my basic point was that we seem to have a bit of a long-running management problem where we're continually appointing managers who neither realise the talent they have at their disposal, nor have the managerial skills required to handle talented footballers who may happen to have flawed personalities. As a result, we're seeing these flawed but talented individuals being pushed to the edge of reason, the fans turning on them once the outburst occurs with the player becoming a talentless gimp overnight, the player gets shipped out, and inevitably the team suffers or the player goes on to be a big hit for someone else when it could so easily have been us. Hence, my fear is that N'Zogbia is going to fall into the latter category purely because our manager never gave him a chance from day one.

This will have been the third talented French winger who has been shipped out, or forced out, (unreasonably imo) by a manager who didn't like them because they preferred grafters. Dalglish with Ginola, Souness with Robert, and now Kinnear with N'Zogbia. And in the first two cases, the team suffered badly after the respective players were sold (Ginola went on to be the domestic Player of the Year, and iirc he was the main reason for Spurs winning the Carling Cup in 99 to boot). Wouldn't be suprised if this turns out to be the hat-trick in the s*** sales of talented French wingers.

If the money is re-invested elsewhere in the team, then it's a good move. Better to stay up without Given then to go down with him whilst blaming the rest of the team for losing us matches.

Granted his form has dipped this season, but prior to that he was absolutely immense for Chelsea. A phenomenal centreback in the Premiership who if anything is underrated becasue he's not done as well on the international and European stage, where he seems to be more vulnerable against a combination of a slower style of play/buildup and nippy, skillful, intelligent footballers. In the Premiership though, although he's slow, he positions himself exceptionally well to compensate, added to which his anticipation is top rate. He frequently seems to be a magnet for balls and crosses into the box. There are different types of defenders in the game, I would say Terry is probably the best "beast" class centreback in the Premiership, alongside Vidic.

His reaction is no different to some of ours when Everton were interested in Smith and some scousers were posting on their forum about how "he's still a good player, he's just made to look bad by the team". We know it'd be laughable for anyone to blame the team for Smith being finished, both are mutually exclusive, and trotter clearly thinks the same is the case with Nolan. Except trotter has the guts to go on the other clubs' forum and state what he knows about the player, so kudos to him.

He's been mediocre for the past few seasons, but then given what he's surrounded by at Bolton, he might still be a decent player. Having said that, he's yet another player we're picking up because he had a good reputation or hit a decent bit of form several years ago. Hope this works out, might form a decent partnership with Guthrie, which could be important to us staying up. If he's paired with Butt though...