Mick

I agree that calling for his head this early is stupid and he has done a lot of good. That's no reason for him to go into games that we should be winning and instead trying to get a draw. It's not a one-off either, we did the same against Derby and it failed then the same as it did yesterday. Sending the players out to get a draw and then getting beat is not going to help the players gel, if anything they'll go away from home expecting to get beat. We should play to our strengths, our strengths are not trying to hold out for 0-0 at the bottom teams who are themselves low on confidence, we should be ripping into them. Derby were shitting themselves for the first half hour, the home fans could have been in a library for all the noise they made but as the game went on you could hear the noise level increase as the players began to realise that we had nothing to offer up front, Reading saw the team that we put out and must have got a lift from the start. No team is going to see our away teamsheet and worry about us, they'll look at it and think they've got a good chance of beating us if they get a goal and will go all out to do that, they'll get a lift before we've even kicked a ball.

If we don't have the players to go 4-3-3 then why do it? It would seem that only one person thinks that it's a formation that's going to work, most see it as three points lost before a ball is kicked. 6 players out of the 11 who started were brought to the club by Allardyce so it was basically his team that he put out yesterday. I think that's enough for him to have made his mark.

I think it would depend on who they could get in, I doubt they'd bin him then start looking for somebody. If the special one was still out of work then I wouldn't be surprised if they tried to get him, at the same time I wouldn't be surprised if they gave Allardyce more time.

Spot on James.

What has 'the whole club being rebuilt' got to do with Allardyce playing without wingers who were on the bench and Newcastle getting beat at Reading?

He didn't get Sevilla promoted, they were 6th the season before he took them to 5th.

You've forgot Jose Mourinho, add him to the list.

I think most of us thought we'd do OK until we noticed the white shorts on MOTD, I saw them and just knew we'd lose 2-1.

I'd go along with that.

We lost today after starting with no wingers, we started against Derby with one winger. I don't see the formation as being the problem, I see the players selected in the midfield 4 as the problem. At Derby we stuck with a shocking display from Shola for 90 minutes yet replaced like for like when bringing on Martins for Owen, we took off Geremi and brought on Faye and we took Taylor off for Beye, I don't see any of them changes as being game changing. As for Bolton away, look at the league table.

I admired Keegan for his outburst about Fergie, the players should have watched it and ran through walls for him but they didn't, that was down to them not him.

The problem today wasn't 4-4-2, it was the players selected to play in the formation that was the problem. 4-4-2 would have worked if we'd played with 2 wingers and attacked down the flanks from time to time, we would have stretched the game a bit and gave Reading something to think about.

I don't see guiding us to a defeat against teams like Reading as doing a good job, the last two managers were capable of doing that.

I've never really looked at how they did other than when we've played them, I seem to remember somebody saying that they had a record for goals conceded which wasn't as good as ours last season although I may be wrong.

You can't really make a comparison as all teams have changed since then.

8 points would have had us third or possibly second depending on goal difference.

More teams have taken points off Villa and Everton than haven't, Spurs have drawn one more game than Derby and have won the same number as them.

Could Bolton defend draws?

I've just looked at the league table and noticed we've played 1 team in the top 7, we lost. We're currently 8th, I wonder where we'll be once the balance between playing shite teams and playing good teams is evened out?

Derby have won 1 drawn 3.

I doubt Viduka would have made much difference in either game because the service to the forwards was crap in both, I don't think Shearer at his best would have made a difference.

Can anybody remember when Roeder first became manager and we played Bolton at home and we beat them 3-1? Newcastle playing away reminds me of that side we played that day.

You're hard work, our forwards were not given anything to work with. We did have players out of position and we didn't need to do that because we have players who are capable of beating Reading, we just didn't use them from the start.

I wouldn't have changed the team we put out on Monday, I'd have gone at Reading like you've suggested instead of narrowing our game and allowing them to come at us. I'd have used Owen and Martins to really have a go at the Reading defence instead of having them chasing lost causes and coming deep looking for scraps.

Well said Parky, I didn't think you were capable of that, sorry.