Mick

Change seats, it's only £30 for Milburn level 7.

Baggio was going to shout of you but thought better of shouting Pegasus.

The tackle for the booking looked OK to me, I thought he'd got the ball.

The daft thing about the booking is that it looked as if he was only booked for mouthing off, not the tackle.

Yet some think he didn't have a good game, I also thought he had an excellent game. The only thing he did wrong was probably miss a couple of passes, not bad as he had as much of the ball as anybody.

That's what I thought.

I don't know if they started it but if they did they were followed by a few of our idiots, it sounded as if it was coming from all around the ground to me.

Owen looked class for the limited time he was on the pitch, my guess is that the booing was because of Martins coming off, I thought Smith should have come off.

I think we had 4 defenders playing today who can become a very good defence and Faye is one of them, they just need games together.

He seemed to give quite a few away, the TV will prove it one way or the other.

I thought Faye had a good game which he spoiled himself with his grappling, no way were they 50-50. He was penalised once or twice for nothing but I think the ref was just expecting him to pull in the end, try watching him later on.

Given could have cost us a goal as early as the third minute when he appeared to drop the ball in his 5 yard box, he flapped at the first goal and God knows what he was doing for the 2nd. Faye was good in the air but his jumping technique looked weird, I think he ended up on the ground after winning most balls in the air. His holding of players gave away far too many free kicks, he was actually getting whistled for nothing at times because the ref expected him to be holding. I agree about Enrique, I thought he defended well for most of the game and only made a couple of mistakes and that was poor passing. Capaca was my man of the match, that tackle when covering Enrique was a match winner, he worked really well today. I thought we had 4 good defenders playing today, they just need to learn to play as a unit and make some improvements individually and they could become a very good defence, Beye was out of position a couple of times but he still did some good stuff, Faye must keep his hands off the opposition. Agreed about Butt, he could have been off minutes before scoring for a late tackle which just missed taking out one of the Everton players, his passing was terrible but the goal made up for that. I agree about Smith having a good 20 minutes but thought he was the one who should have come off instead of Martins as he was offering nothing and on the rare occasion when he managed to get the ball after the first 20 minutes lost it. It's no good winning the ball if it goes straight back to the opposition and that's what happened today as our players hadn't a clue where to go to pick up the 2nd ball. I also agree with the last two lines.

I hope Sam gets asked about the Milner substitution. Seems a bit odd that he'd play the lad out of position for most of the match then sub him. Maybe he is tired. Shouldn't have been on the pitch in the first place. Played like he wasn't. Faye was MoM. Cacapa's challenge on Anichebe (iirc) was the turning point. Superb. Faye wasn't man of the match, he must have gave away half of our free kicks for his constant use of his arms, the bloke was like an octopus, I agree with Cacapa getting it, he didn't put a foot wrong.

I don't think we were dominated at all and could have had at least a couple before Butt scored.

Given was poor today, did he make a save?

Bare footed or wearing shoes?

I don't remember seeing too many talking him up, most have just said that he's done nothing to cause him to get dropped.

I think the same, I just think what has happened is wrong.

I disagree, I don't see a lot between the two keepers now that Harper has had a good run of games and has had time to settle in. They both have strengths and weakness's which make them too close to call as far as I'm concerned. Harper has had poor treatment over his place going back to Given for no reason other than that Given is fit.

Regarding the house of cards, Ashley & Mort have never run a football club before but they know all about how to run a business and finance one, especially Mort. I would think Mort is well aware of what sort of financial mess would lead to the kind of situation that could cause a business to fail, he hasn't been one to cause the previous owners and kind of embarrassment and always seems to pick his words with great care. I'll take his word until he proves he's not to be trusted, so far I've seen nothing to doubt anything that he's said, he doesn't come across as being a Hall or Shepherd basher no matter what he thinks of them, what he thinks of them has remained private.

I can't talk for anybody else but I was waiting for you to deliver some highly original post that hadn't been discussed before, you haven't disappointed.

I agree with your initial point, when you get the right man in you must give him a chance to get the job done without sacking him the first time something goes wrong. Every new manager wants to build his own team and should be allowed to do that, otherwise we'll never get anywhere, we'll always be in a state of transition. We’ll be forever buying and selling players because they will be constantly adapting to a style of play which they weren’t brought in to do and we’ll constantly lose money on players because they look bad in a formation which they can’t play in and were never brought in to play that way, I think.

Sacking Souness and Roeder was the right thing to do, appointing them was the mistake.

Read post #5 in this thread.

I hope Emre does better than he has so far for us, he's got a lot to prove. I don't see him being as good as some people think he is and his injury record is very poor.