tmonkey

Gutierrez looks such as smashing footballer.

We must have the thickest bunch of footballers in the Premiership.

The system worked for Spurs until they sold their key players on top of shipping out half the squad. If anything, I think Spurs' failure is proof that you dont sell your best players on top of making wholesale changes to the squad and expect things to pick up as they left off. The good old "if it's not broke, dont fix it" rule.

Enrique coming on has a bit of logic behind it, hes better at distributing the ball than Bassong so its an improvement from an attacking point of view.

Presactly. Intelligent play... Given must be worth 10-20 points a season to us. Butt must be worth 20-30 points to the opposition.

Quality goal to be fair.

Ameobi is the best striker we have. 2 in 2 now.

Class performance, but switched off for the equaliser.

Good result for 10 men + an awful penalty decision against us.

Damnit. Ireland has had a good game to be fair. Coloccini should've marked him better.

Wright Phillips keeps aiming for someone in the crowd about 10 yards to the right of the goal.

Butt has been excellent after the first 10 minutes.

Coloccini another massive header.

Dunne

He's been excellent so far.

Will be furious with Styles / Poll if the card doesn't get rescinded.

Was it Butt who missed the header that lead to City's possession and consequent goal, or was it Guthrie? Ran straight past where the ball was set to land and instead ran for the player. Daft thing to do, although didn't have a good look on the telly.

Fucked over by the ref.

Ameobi blocks a through ball to Martins.

Where's he going to go though? I can't see any team wanting to pay him what we do a week. He's also recently shown he still gets the odd injury. Apart from Man City I can't see any other options (and who knows if they'd want him). He doesn't want to go abroad again. I can't see any of the 'big 4' wanting him. Back when we signed him, I think the chances are pretty high that we offered considerably more in wages than Liverpool were prepared to offer. Had he the choice back then, its clear as daylight that he would have chosen Liverpool. Hence, his thinking could well have been that he'd accept a reasonable wage at a CL club but would consider a mammoth wage at a mid table club were no CL clubs interested. On top of which, the bonuses paid out at a CL club must be pretty high every time they qualify for things or win competitions. Added to which, it'll be important to him to get back into the international side, particularly with the World Cup at the end of next season. That's almost certainly another big "alternative" earner for him on top of the wages, e.g. the increased sponsorship deal he's likely to be able to negotiate because of the national/international exposure. It's very difficult to see why Liverpool wouldn't want him on a free/cheap deal. The owners could do with a crowd pleasing signing.

Well Bassedas was capped 26 times and a regular in the mid 90`s with the Argentina national squad But I agree about Colo, can`t believe some people are doubting him.....really think he`ll turn out to be a top buy and prove the doubters wrong once we have some stability on and off the field There's a big difference between being a current international and a past international though. Bassedas hadn't played for Argentina for a full year before he signed for us. On top of which, there's also a big difference between a fringe international player and a first teamer. E.g. Alan Smith, who has nearly 20 caps for England and was starting up front for a few games in the national first team only last season. Doesn't mean he was ever a regular or good enough to be one. Added to this, it was stated that Bassedas picked up the majority of those caps in the Olympics and under 23 games, but more imrportantly, im pretty sure Argentina (and Brazil) used to have plenty of home international games where few or no European based players are selected, i.e. domestic ones only. So there is/was also a difference between an Argentinian international based in Argentina, and an Argentinian international based in Europe (i.e. in many cases, the former is only really used in the less important fixtures, hence why lesser calibre players might regularly make the squad or the team for that type of fixture).

So the contract is for 10 games. Must mean the 8 games referred to earlier is with him in the dugout.

Thought he was awesome in the second half. Won a large number of headers, won every 1-on-1 situation, and generally seemed like a magnet for the ball whenever it was knocked into the central areas. I really hope that was the game where he truly started to find his feet in this league - there aren't many strikers in La Liga who are capable of bullying a centreback, so the challenge the likes of Yakubu and Fellaini will have posed wouldn't have been something Coloccini is used to. But he seemed to grow in defence as the game went on, and whereas at the start he was being bullied by Yakubu/Fellaini, by the end they were effectively being shut out by Coloccini.

Wont have impressed Capello too much today.

Referee influenced by the crowd.