tmonkey

Its baffling. He does the hard work well, then completely wastes any potential break or chance to play a teamate in by hanging onto the ball for no reason at all.

Makes too many individual mistakes in what is a very good defence.

Thats both Martins and Milner who have missed from 2 yards out.

AND we have another right winger at our disposal. At this point in time, putting Milner on the left results in a central player having to play down the right. Although I think Martins is doing an OK job there, its far from ideal, to the extent that its nearly wasting a position as well as distorting the team's balance/shape.

3-0. Martins x2, Smith x1, everybody else x0.

Martins was playing on the right for most of the match.

We should loan Ameobi out to a smaller club instead of selling him, since he has a great deal of potential and could be an England international one day.

Faye Cacapa. Taylor should be the long term replacement for Cacapa.

Time to judge Enrique will be in a year or two. Maybe three. Evra is the best left back in the league for me, but he was shiite in his first half season.

He had a good match, but lets not get carried away here. Rosicky wasnt exactly a left winger who was going to cause Beye many problems, considering hes not a left winger at all. Beye quite clearly has some excellent defensive abilities, but I still think that he needs some sorting out with regards to his positioning. Gets sucked into central areas an awful lot and at times gives the man hes meant to be marking either alot of space, or a bit of a head start. Which is why he was torn apart by Petrov. Overall though, if he can iron out these problems, and theres absolutely no reason why he cant especially after a season in the Premiership, he should make a pretty good right back, but I wouldnt sing his praises until hes made these improvements.

Martins has pace, good shooting ability, and an infinitely higher work rate than Owen. He's also shown he can play down the flanks to a moderately decent degree. Owen on the other hand is slow, hardly in the game, and only wants to play in a central position, which is where Smith does his best work. Itd cause Smith to either drop very deep or play wide, neither of which makes Smith as effective as when hes up front causing problems for a centreback. As a partnership, Owen + Smith would have no pace in it.

Martins + Smith is our best strike partnership purely because they compliment each other so well - what Martins lacks, Smith possesses, and vice versa. On paper we have better individual forwards, ones with better goalscoring records, however they have severe weaknesses that cant be compensated by any combination of strike partnership, nor can they play on their own.

Just have a mixture of the Arsenal reserves and Arsenal's youth team. Would probably take any dream select Premiership u21 team to the cleaners.

Biggest problem at the time was Shepherd though - loads of stuff been written that suggests he was underminign Robson, and buying selling players himself - The Woodgate and Speed sales, and 'alleged' Rooney bids being the most well reported. The chairman had clearly lost confidence/faith in Robson, so probably wouldn't have backed him for too many players had he left him in charge anyway. As I said above, I felt it was the right time for Robson to step down at the end of the season before (after losing in the UEFA to Marseille, and finishing 5th). While finishing 5th was still good, the results had been slipping away, and there were the same rumours as now about him l'osing the dressing room'. We should have moved him to Director of Football or similar, and installed a new manager at the end of the season, giving the new man the whole summer, while keeping Sir Bobby at the club in a new role. We all know what happened, and the rest is history, and the damage done is still being repaired now. in fairness to Robson he would have played Bellamy and Kluivert up front the season he got sacked. Would have spent the January money on a good centre half and full back (not Boum and baba) and finished top 4 quite possibly, 5th/6th worst case senario in the summer 05, Souness spent £40m. Had Robson been given this type of money we'd be challenging for something, but it's unlikely we'd have won anything in fairness, especially with his deteriorating health Robson had lost the dressing room from all reports. Dyer should have been booted out after refusing to play on the wings, and Shearer should have been sold as soon as he fired those warnings about being dropped. However, would Robson have done either of these? I think he had become too soft - Dyer was like his son and Shearer his star player and the team's icon. Someone like Alex Ferguson would not have blinked twice about releasing players with that sort of relationship if he feels the team needs to move on, eg Roy Keane booted as soon as he caused a stir in the media and no longer being the player he once was. Big shame that these players took the liberties they (allegedly) did, but thats part and parcel of being a Premiership manager - they have to handle big egos and those who want only to further their own career irrespective of the team's needs, and the manager needs to do that without letting them step out of line or taking any s*** from them, which ultimately means shipping out a bad seed regardless of their importance to the team. In fact, thats the trademark of a good manager - they have no fear in replacing someone who many fans think to be the irreplaceable.

2-1 win. We'll have a good start where the players are fighting for every ball, with 2 early goals. Arsenal will eventually get into the game and absolutely dominate us as our long ball game starts kicking in and we fail to maintain possession, but they will miss tons of good chances as Shay has another blinder. Adebayor gets a goal.

Ditch the wife after Jessica says yes. Crossaints, orange juice and a red rose in bed for wifey the next morning if Jessica says no. She'll never find out. No lose situation.

Dont think he turned up for the two games prior to the weekend. Has just been acting like a dick tbh. Edmilson said something about him not training hard and he took offence, cant remember the whole story. "In our group of 23-25 players and coaches we are like a family and on many occasions the family has a black sheep." "The world in which footballers live is different because money, success, fame, women and getting things easily means they lose the true values in life. "Sometimes our job takes second place and players say 'I've got a meeting or an advertising commitment so I'm going to train quickly." http://sport.independent.co.uk/football/european/article3191555.ece

If ever there was a goal to wank over, that was it.

The lineups are piss poor too. Shaun Goater ffs.

Terry Venables probably. On paper, hes experienced, continental, well liked by Shearer, currently unemployed, etc. In reality, hes a snarling, incompetent, bung taking buffoon who's had his best days over a decade ago, and probably the mastermind behind England's collapse in qualifying for the EC, which followed his spectacular display at the helm of the sinking ship that was Leeds. Or maybe not, and hes just been unlucky recently. Likely candidate though, given how he must have begged for it when Sir Bobby was sacked.

No. It was Harper who was beaten by Pomrat.

There was a particularly delightful 60 yard volleyed pass with the outside of the boot from Barton that put Martins through on goal. It wasnt a pure lump it, kick it anywhere pass, wasnt merely a ball over the top, it was a perfectly weighted swerved pass with excellent technique, a difficult pass to pull off. Not that big a deal, but considering weve been watching midfielders pass sideways or backwards for years now, and rarely through on goal with any sort of technique, it was pretty refreshing. Having said that, I wouldnt want to see it being attempted too often, since too much long ball is just ugly to watch, even more so when defenders latch onto the frequent attempts, but at least we have someone with the ability to play a through ball that isnt utterly simple. Should turn out to be a good central midfield signing for once when hes fully up to speed, calms down slightly, gets his shooting boots on, etc. Poor man's Gerrard hopefully.

Smith what the hell...

Milner shoots 40 yards high.

Holy shit, sitter missed by Cruz.