tmonkey

Never a penalty tbh. Poor touch from Martins too.

Reid really is a porker.

Keegan is just a top, top manager.

Butt's been excellent, but theres just no reason why he makes some of these woefully bad passes when hes under no pressure.

Martins selfish there and trying to score from a ridiculous angle when other players are in the box.

McShane

Shearer-esque goal that was.

Quality cross from Geremi, Owen with a quality run and header.

4-0 win.

Dirty tackle by Rooney after being moutmuscled by Samba.

Edit: Dive by Rooney.

Tevez clear through on goal, and yet again as seems to happen every time theres a through ball from deep that results in the forward being completely free, it gets flagged off for offside.

Santa Cruz. 1-0 against ManU.

Tevez missed a sitter.

Not sure how he's doing at Lyon, but Kim Kallstrom might be good in the current system. Tall player with a strong left boot.

King is nothing special.

Soloman Kalou would be a decent acquisition.

Not really worth signing someone who'll expect first team football here when its debateable as to whether they're better than what we already have (and none of our lot are exactly world beaters).

Tim Krul had a good debut against Palermo, might be worth giving him a game in the Premiership.

Bramble was a big miss when he got injured the season we got knocked out by Sporting in the UEFA. That is one of the reasons I can't see how he could possibly be our "worst" player. Yes he was a clown and yes he did have some absolute shockers but people seem to forget at times he was also very good. He was shit overall, but he had some stunning games with us in amongst the shiite.

In the same way Spurs "stole" Carrick from Sir Bobby, as he would have been ours. A chairman not willing to back his manager with the money because he was arrogant enough to think we were the best these players would get, and hence they wouldnt go elsewhere.

He's a good footballer too, good technique, first touch, hes proven himself a decent finisher, but the one thing he has over Crouch is that he's pretty mobile/agile and can dribble and carry the ball forward adequately. A solid step up on Viduka in terms of the overall package (i.e. taking into account age/fitness), and would be a strong improvement of us playing football on the deck.

The one big moment that I would reverse is a certain incident in 97 during a pre season friendly, where a player had his studs stuck in the turf and ripped his knee as a result. That injury basically robbed us of one of the best strikers in the world at the time, the most lethal in Premiership history, and essentially undid all the comparaitve success up until that point, because we had only a year ago spent the world record transfer fee on him and had sold a few star players to fund that transfer and balance the books. We were robbed of someone who would most likely have ensured the minimum we would ever finish would be 4th. Its also an injury that ensured a promising player like John Dahl Tomasson became a laughing stock because of having to play in an unsuitable role far too early in his career. Had he been able to play his more natural game behind the main forward, who at the time would have been one of the best in the world, the player who went on to become a good quality squad forward for one of the grandest clubs in the world, winning the CL in the process, might have formed a brilliantly lethal partnership in the Premiership for us. Ah well.

I think we'd be top five contenders with Owen playing in this midfield position and a mobile/fit version of Viduka up front, the reason being we're going to pick up alot of points against lesser teams if we have goals from both midfield and up front. From his current performances, Owen is getting at least two good chances per game whilst contributing to us playing on the deck because he's so tidy on the ball. That's brilliant for a midfielder, because not many are able to get on the end of chances so frequently on a consistent basis, and I acknowledge that this comparison is not of players in the same calibre, but if you ignore the phoney stepovers and showboating and put to one side the goals that he's getting due to his pace or flair or free kicks, it is essentially what Crisitiano Ronaldo is doing so successfully right now on a base level. As mentioned, put certain things aside that he does once in a while, he's basically playing a tidy game where he brings his teamates into play, letting others pull the strings or do the real playmaking, whlist he ghosts into scoring positions from midfield, getting a handful of chances per game and now managing to put one or two away on a consistent basis. Again, not a good comparison, but the effect is pretty much similar for us, with Owen using his timing and intelligence to get these chances. The ultimate result is that we have another dimension to our attacking game, and to say the least given what weve seen for the past half decade nearly, its extremely refreshing.

If we had won the race to sign Schmeical, a large number of trophies would have gone our way. Imagine the 95/96 attacking team with Schmeical in goal.