tmonkey

The stats seem to think the defence has been fine, its scoring goals that are the problem. But as ever, look for a reason and you'll find it Nice dodge on the question by the way :-[ At last!!! Someone else who can see what's been obvious all bloody season long. Bit hypocritical today are we? http://www.newcastle-online.com/nufcforum/index.php?topic=38902.0#quickreply Stats tell you very little, that you think they do means you should stick to golf. Stats are good when they agree with you, but are bad when they dont, right? Stick with your original views tbh, they were correct. Stats more often than not mean little when it comes to football because there can be different reasons for those statistics - weve not conceded too many goals because the rest of the Premiership is quite shiite, and when weve come up against the top sides, weve gone all out defensive for the most part. In fact, considering weve had the likes of Butt and Parker in central midfield together alot of the time, its pretty accurate to say we are a defensive, unadventurous team. Fact is, look at our squad of defenders - apart from Taylor, most arent mid table Premiership quality, let alone top 6, which even then doesnt include Taylor. And weve got two perma-crocks registered at left back, which is why weve had to play academy kids, as well as your precious left winger Duff, as well as a poor right back in the shape of Carr, in the first team, at left back, for most of the season. But go ahead and use anything you can think of to justify our failure in reinforcing the defence.

Thats the view I held last summer. But managers who want their sides playing ugly football dont sign players like Sorin or Anelka, quality and skillfull footballers. Granted Allardyce failed in his bid for Sorin, but that was down to Sorin wanting higher wages than Bolton could afford - ultimately, hes a wing back you want for his footballing abilities rather than his defensive ones. And its only been very recently that hes even been able to consider such players, as Bolton are a tiny club and its taken years of moderate success for them to have any sort of attractability as well as the finances in order to get the good players who arent over the hill OAPs. Modern training and fitness regimes, good discipline and organisation on the pitch, good scouting system - he has alot more going for him than Roeder, thats for sure. Only real negative about Allardyce is that he has had no success in Europe - even with the players hes had, youd have expected them to do better in the UEFA Cup, yet his sides have failed to deliver. Whether thats down to his lack of resources, players, etc is irrelevant - if were going to expect someone to both qualify for Europe as well as go far in European competitions, on top of being a top 6 side domestically as a minimum, then we really should go for a manager with a decent continental record, not just purely domestic success.

They enjoy moaning, more reason for them to go than not.

Tap Tevez up now whilst theres still a chance! It reads as though hell be on a free transfer, or hes free to sign for anyone as long as MSI transfer his contract over to the club.

Maybe the "fine" will be in the form of withdrawing the prize money all Premiership clubs get for finish in their respective league positions? If its the PL that pays this prize money to the clubs, then they must be in a legal position to withdraw that money if their rules are broken.

Replcae Dyer with Tuncay on a Bosman. Ideally though, SWP. If we need goals from midfield, a full season from SWP will get 10+ as a minimum, if hes on form, 15+ easily.

Gutted, but 7.5mill is a few mill too much for someone with his injury record. Still gutted though.

Taylor is a kid, 21 years old. Bramble is a moderately experienced defender by now, 25 years old, and has been here for something like 5 seasons. Thats nearly half a decade since being at the same age that Taylor is today. One can be excused for making poor mistakes or rash decisions, whilst the other has run out of excuses. It doesnt matter now whether Bramble goes on to become a class defender for someone else, hes shown hes not the right defender for us because he cant be relied on. A defender who neither wins nor loses you games on an individuall basis is better than a defender who does both.

Ok let him go along with Gooch, Moore, Carr , Baba, Edgar ( Loan ) Hunty ( Loan ) , Zoggy, Dyer ( If the rumours are right ) , Luque. Clever people you lot up north aren`t you. Considering our injury history and paper thin squad anyway. Even more reason to get rid of Bramble and replace with someone more reliable. If you have a thin squad, you dont want to be drafting clowns into the team surely. Reckon we could replace Gooch, Moore and Bramble with one competent entreback with a track record of staying fit, and we wouldnt suffer one bit. Theyre all as bad as each other for one reason or another, so ultimately theres not much difference between relying on them as backup as opposed to relying on the likes of Ramage, Huntington and Edgar. Sign two competent centrebacks and were sorted in that area. Either way, its time for Bramble to go, and having a mini-exodus in the defence shouldnt result in us handing him a new contract.

If there was any hope of Bramble turning into a half-intelligent defender in the future, learning to use his brain as opposed to ball watching and making wild idiot swings with his club-like feet at the ball, then it would be worth handing him a new contract and loaning him out to a newly promoted Premiership side where he would be a guaranteed starter and would get more breathing space to iron out his mistakes and get some consistency going. But weve been living in this hope for ages now. Hes always going to ball watch, will always make daft choices, and will always dive in. Hes good when his mistakes arent costing us, but hes not so good that we cant replace him, or shouldnt look to replace him. This is Titus Bramble, not Woodgate or Toure or someone of that calibre suffering from concentration and other defensive mental problems. We should just get rid, bring in someone half decent, and move on. Dont see why we should bother putting up the same mistakes year in year out any more - even if he goes on to sort out his problems later on in his career with someone else, it still wont be worth crying over spilt milk - weve let significantly better players go to other clubs in the past. Let him go and move on.

PS Giggs has yet another quality game. Hes been like that the whole season, and because hes changed from a winger ala Ronaldo to more of a playmaker, hes not been given the praise he deserves. Been as good as Scholes for ManU this season.

Thought he had a class game. Im not sure how the first goal was supposed to be awful keeping - maybe he could have claimed the ball better, but he blocked a point blank header from Ronaldo that looped over him. Second and third goal had nothing to do with him.

Milan crumble yet again. Ancelotti is a top manager, and granted Rooney's goal was class and pretty much unstoppable from a keeping point of view, but his sides arent half good at blowing a game that theyre initially on top of. Deportivo 4-1 first leg and cruising, Liverpool 3-0 half time and in complete control, ManU 2-1 half time away having dominated the game. All of these in the CL knockout stages in the past few years, every one of them Milan have lost a game with baffling complacency after dominating, ending up going out without a whimper. Great to watch though.

Nobby Solano might make a good captain. Everyone (ie the players) seems to like him from an outside point of view, hes often seen lecturing players and telling them what to do on the pitch, hes one of the few who everyone passes to when they get the opportunity to do so (ie confidence in his ability), he seems to be a calming influence when hes in the side, hes an experienced/good player, as well as one who has been a loyal servant to the club. Butt or Shay Given could be decent options. Taylor is definately going to be our captain one day. Alternatively, we could just sign Woodgate, and make him our captain. Even if he gets injured, its not a big deal at least because then the manager normally chooses who the captain will be for the match, ie whether Woodgate is fit or not, itll stop the likes of Parker, Butt, Taylor, etc, being made club captain, and hence undroppable from the first team when in truth none of them are really good enough to have that status with us.

Aye, I fully understand that, its obvious that you can never say "this player is better than that player" from one game (although that didnt stop most people in the world cup when an off form Ronnie was in the shadow of a rejuvinated Zidane), but my viewpoint was more about which out of the two in form "best in the world" players are going to make the bigger impact tonight, which isnt to say that this match will definately decide who is the better player. Other players will probably decide the game and have the bigger impact, probably someone unexpected and atm out of the limelight like Rooney or Inzaghi, but still, its just interesting when two such on-form players who are considered by many at the top of the profession come up against each other in a crunch game.

ITV1, 7:45 kick off. Should be some good football tonight, especially with ManU reportedly missing most of their first team defence (although theyve done this tactic before, wouldnt be suprised if several of them suddenly pass a fitness test) and Milan's defence having a couple of OAPs. Will be interesting to see the reputedly two best attacking players in the world on current form up against each other.

Maybe Villa would take him? Theyve done well with Nobby and Milner before, theyre cash rich due to the new chairman, and theyll be wanting to make big signings but will struggle to attract the real top class players as I assume none of them will want to play for Villa. Dyer would be a good signing for them as hed be classed as an England international, one of our "better" players, and would inject some much needed pace and movement into their side. That type of club at a similar level to us is where I would expect him to end up. Villa, Pompey, or maybe CL football with someone like Celtic, although the Bellamy incident showed that theyre tight bastards even if Bellamy was the best player theyd had since Larsson. Wed do well to get rid at this point in time. He not only has no real position, but hes also limited in a major way when it comes to every single position you can put him in. Cant play central midfield as he has absolutely no distribution other than passing to the nearest man, he cant play on the wing because he has no crossing ability and spends the entire game looking like he wants to come infield so he can then pass to the nearest man, and hes not a forward because he spends most of the game dropping into midfield and still does nowt. Dont think Dyer has gotten on the end of a cross once in his stint up front alongside Martins, nor is he to be found anywhere near Martins 90% of the time - every good withdrawn forward like Gudjohnsen, Bergkamp, Beardo, all of them were good at getting into good attacking positions and supporting the front men - Dyer has zero understanding of how to play that role. Dyer is a good player who isnt good in any role/position. Hopefully this rumour is true, and he puts in another decent/good England performance or two and gets some real interest in him.

Replace with SWP and we'll be laughing.

Owen seems to be a weak athlete. Might be a deadly finisher, but that doesnt necesarily mean he has the body strength required for professional football at the highest levels in terms of staying fit over a long period of time. With Owen, you always get the impression that hes one collission away from another injury. In his first season here, he hardly played at all, and iirc it was in the second half of the season that he picked up the broken metatarsal when clashing with Robinson. He seemed to be injured every few weeks, only coming back for us when an England game was looming over the horizon - obviously a coincidence, but thats what it felt like for many of us, because on top of that it was well known that Owen initially wanted nothing to do with us. But essentially, he was frequently injured for us long before he broke any bones, something that was forseeable and fit in with the pattern of his Liverpool career.

Ljungberg didn't really play on the wing either. Never seen him put in a cross in my life, he plays in a free role. Ljungberg regularly played on the left or right wing when he hit peak form for Arsenal. Granted he drifted infield alot, but he did play out wide alot of the time, and the reason why you probably havent seen him cross the ball is because he tends to fall over when there is minimal contact from a fullback, either that or pass it to an overlapping teamate. But the point still stands - he wasnt someone who would beat his man with pace, he would instead make intelligent runs infield and use the ball well. The point with regards to Milner being that Milner can do likewise as an alternative to going down the flank, he doesnt have to be limited by a lack of blistering pace. Hes already starting to do that to a degree imo, and hes becoming harder to dispossess ala Ljungberg, hence the slight comparison.

Not on the ball, in terms of being a dribbler.

Time for his critics to hold their hands up. I thought he was a poor player overperforming earlier on in the season and last season for Villa, really didnt like him because of his poor technique at times - thought of him as a Bowyer type player, high work rate low ability - and would have been happy to see him being shipped out. Needless to say, that was all bollocks. Without a doubt, the lad is an absolute class act, and whats more, hes improving every game. Lack of pace means nowt for a winger if you have intelligence and some ability on the ball, Ljungberg who I have always hated was a top player for Arsenal purely because of those abilities, and Milner has improved in both respects for me. On top of this, his first touch has improved drastically. Todays game should have confirmed without a shadow of a doubt that not only is Milner good enough to be backup for left wing, hes more than good enough to be a permanent fixture there. Its also possible that hes a better player on the left wing than on the right, because he ends up cutting inside more often and linking up with play as well as working the touchline, whereas on the right wing he tends to do that less as naturally he wouldnt want to come onto his left foot.

He is on course to be fully fit for England's friendly against Brazil, fingers crossed.

We're playing with 9 men. Sibierski is so shiite that he counts as -1 as opposed to 0. Hes breaking down practically everything were creating, a competent and half mobile striker would have been put through on goal twice instead of having the ball bounce of his arse as hes trying to get on the end of the pass.

Is there an online petition I can sign? Who knows, it might make a difference.