greydos

This is from the club shop name printing service on the site at the moment - http://i66.tinypic.com/bdjjiv.png Still has Atsu at 30.. £4 per digit? f*** off. Yikes. I know - I know girls who let you fist them for a quarter of that. This whole expensive digits thing, it's £4 per number and a maximum of 2 numbers so £8 total. It's expensive but it's not extortionate - or am I missing something?

In 5 years, maybe less, I'll have forgotten he played for us.

That is not James Corden.

He's the kind of player who can get a ball under control in the final third, whether by finding a pocket of space or back to goal lower body strength. We've had a year of Diame and Perez being powderpuff up there. He'd lay it off for decent wingers and we'd advance up the pitch. Plus he could get 12 goals with Shelvey feeding him early bullets quite comfortably.

It maybe a pipe dream etc etc, but would anyone take Rooney as the 10 for 2 seasons?

No buts, Colback is dreadful; far worse than Sissoko. Like Colback would ever get in the France teams or manage to con a top 3 side to buy him for £30m. Colback has never, ever, commanded a transfer fee.

I'm not his biggest fan, but Joe Hart would be ideal.

Hope: http://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/mo-diame-reveals-hatem-ben-12362135

The international break is the only thing stopping us from winning every week. We'll beat these

Let's get out of this division first. There's nothing wrong with a bit of dreaming about the future. It's a conversation gauging the quality of our manager and I think he compares favourable with SBR. Where we finish next year will also be highly relevant in a couple of months when we start talking to January transfer targets. Those targets will be considering whether we'll be a Burnley likely to yoyo or a NUFC of 2009 who can get up and establish themselves. Th This. Where we'll finish in the PL next season is a topic for another day. There's nothing wrong with a bit of dreaming about the future. It's a conversation gauging the quality of our manager and I think he compares favourable with SBR. Where we finish next year will also be highly relevant in a couple of months when we start talking to January transfer targets. Those targets will be considering whether we'll be a Burnley likely to yoyo or a NUFC of 2009 who can get up and establish themselves.

We're currently 14th in the highest attendance league across Europe. That'll please some on here!! ??

Yeah but if Leicester can win the league then surely Swansea can ? If they stay up Swansea will have more chance of winning the PL than Portsmouth next year - gotta be in it to win it! Ultimately this is a question of likelihood: what's more likely, a Benitez team finishes above the crap I mentioned or the crap manages to scrape together sufficient points to finish above us? Time will tell As likely say as Leicester winning the league last season ? That was your point after all. This is a bit dumb. Just because something is unlikely, doesn't mean it can't happen at all. More often than not more likely events occur. Why are we debating this; are you seriously saying you think top 14 next year is likely beyond us? When we do comfortably finish top 14 I won't remind you of this conversation It's not beyond us but the Leicseter example is getting overused. Could happen but right now it's a bit daft to even think of. The Leicester example? I didn't say we'd win the league, I said we'd finish 14th next year! My point wasn't so much Leicester as Ranieri; generally a good manager will make more of his team and resources than a poor one. This can gain places in the league because there are lots of dross managers. Ranieri gained a lot of places last year and now they're reverting to the mean. We'll (more consistently) gain places with Rafa in my view. Look people are saying we're odds on to beat Hull. In effect we're good enough to be 17th in PL as it stands. With another 3 transfer windows I'd back Rafa to have us 14th next season. I'm not saying I'd boo if he didn't. It's just what I think will happen.

Yeah but if Leicester can win the league then surely Swansea can ? If they stay up Swansea will have more chance of winning the PL than Portsmouth next year - gotta be in it to win it! Ultimately this is a question of likelihood: what's more likely, a Benitez team finishes above the crap I mentioned or the crap manages to scrape together sufficient points to finish above us? Time will tell As likely say as Leicester winning the league last season ? That was your point after all. This is a bit dumb. Just because something is unlikely, doesn't mean it can't happen at all. More often than not more likely events occur. Why are we debating this; are you seriously saying you think top 14 next year is likely beyond us? When we do comfortably finish top 14 I won't remind you of this conversation

Yeah but if Leicester can win the league then surely Swansea can ? If they stay up Swansea will have more chance of winning the PL than Portsmouth next year - gotta be in it to win it! Ultimately this is a question of likelihood: what's more likely, a Benitez team finishes above the crap I mentioned or the crap manages to scrape together sufficient points to finish above us? Time will tell

I'm not asking for anything; that is what I expect will happen. Rafa's a world class manager: players will want to come play for him and he'll be effective in making us better than the sum of our parts. It's no different to SBR's reign in that respect and I can imagine a similar trajectory for the team.. What's unrealistic about what I said? Next season, Rafa's NUFC finish above 3 relegated PL teams, and crap like Pulis' West Brom, Yank's Swansea and Whoever's Watford (throw in Howe's Bournemouth for a 13th place finish). That's not a stretch in my book

Pardew finished 5th once. I appreciate the PL now is a little stronger with all the top managers as compared with 5 years ago, but of course Rafa can get us top 8. If Ranieri can win the league last year with Leicester's squad, we can finish top 6 easily within 3 years. The question is can we finish top four? We'll be good enough in 3 years' time to be top 4, the problem will be that there'll be 7 teams good enough for top 4. Someone has to finish there and someone has to miss out. Why not us finishing there once or twice? Next year i'd expect top 14, year after top 8, year after to be one of the teams that's in the so-called top 7 league.

West Ham (or West Brom?) at home, 1-0 win, Mitrovic assisted by Shelvey through ball comes to mind as the exception that proves your rule.

But it wasn't common though. No other club had the sense to buy those 2 players. Carr does deserve credit for their signings

Townsend has the best left foot in Europe don't you know? No-brainer for Guardiola (says Keown) FYP

Townsend has the best left foot in Europe don't you know? No-brained for Guardiola (says Keown)

He will eventually work as one of the midfield 2 in a 4231. His legs would allow a slower 10 who doesn't chase around so much, like de Jong. He needs a destroying passer next to him though. There must be another Kante somewhere...

My thoughts: 1) Perez was sluggish, his first touch was awful for him and he didn't have enough strength to hold off defenders when being tackled from behind. Needs to work on finding space between the lines to receive the pass on the half turn if he's going to play as a 10. 2) Colback remains gash. No chance Rafa can improve him. Glad he's banned for 2 games. 3) Shelvey needs to play 10-15 yards further up the pitch. We don't need him dropping deep and playing Mbemba and Lascelles into midfield. We need Wijnaldum who can drop a shoulder and advance 5 yards to take the ball from the centre backs then feed Shelvey to play with Gini then advancing passed him. 4) Lascelles is better than I thought (although he was playing a Championship team, which by all accounts is his level). 5) I cannot believe De Jong held his own in a midfield 2, even if Sunderland were backing off at that stage. I think SDJ's touch and look to pass early are better utilised at no. 10 and he should play there ahead of Perez. If that happens, we need Townsend and Sissoko to offer the threat of a run in behind, like Dyer used to from midfield. 6) Townsend should've stayed on, although Wini's cross was class. 7) We're not dead yet!

Started with: ----------- Shelvey --------- Anita ----------- Perez ------------ Wijnaldum -------- Sissoko --------------------- Mitro -------------------- Turned into: Townsend ------- Shelvey ------- Gini -------- Sissoko ------------------- Mitro ---------- Perez --------------- Not sure what it was when SDJ came on. Cheers

Missed the game tonight. Can someone tell me what formation we played and whether we changed shape with the subs?

Even with 12 players we would still lose