Mick

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.

The worrying thing is that most people debated the debt on here at the time the accounts were published yet they couldn't find out what we already knew. I would guess the accounts were debated to death on most forums and they were headlines in the press.

It can't be easy for anybody communicating during a football match, even these days.

Unless he's training to become a ventriloquist, he's not communicating as his lips don't move.

I thought the support during most of the first half at Derby was oK, the second half was poor but it was a reflection of how bad the team were, that and the black & white ball going missing.

If it wasn't for the problem with West Ham I'd go with you being right rather than Oliver 9 times out of 10.

My guess is that you're both wrong, the Dyer transfer delay was due to something which West Ham had done.

Shepherd Offshore had one.

The Dyer deal falling through at that time didn't stop us from signing Alan Smith the same day.

The Dyer transfer hit problems the day after Elano signed for Man City, if the deals were dependant on each other you'd expect the Dyer transfer problems to have come before Elano went to Manchester. I'm not sure that the timing really backs up what Oliver is saying. Elano signed on 2nd August, the Dyer to West Ham deal hit problems on 3rd of August, I think.

People being worried is down to our last 2 managers rushing people back too soon, they see somebody being brought back to fitness as a sign of a problem.

Allardyce has been on the radio talking about Barton, it looks as if the break has healed but he needs to regain fitness.

Ashley owned the club long before Elano went to Man City, the guardian need to check some facts. Ashley owned the club in June, Shepherd was sacked in July, the others had gone at the end of June and Elano moved to Man City in August.

I'm sure you've mentioned those figures before, why do you carry so much debt while making those profits? I can only guess that the profits are used in a way which is thought to bring in more value than the servicing of the debt.

The £8 million Liverpool bid was reported at the time, I have no idea if it was a true bid or not but the only 2 clubs innterested in him were Liverpool and Newcastle. Liverpool were reported to be not interested in paying more for him than they got when he went to Madrid. As for the hindsight, it was predicted that he would be injured far too often and that was based on his injury record, I predicted it and I know Wullie did the same, others predicted he would miss far too many games, only the type of injuries are hindsight.

I think the £150 million and £80 million are different types of debt, I remember going over our last set of published accounts and £80 million was loans, the rest was running costs and players transfers although that is from memory and I'm not going looking through them again, I seem to remember having an argument with somebody on here about the size of our debt and I mentioned that it was heading towards £200 million but can't remember exact details.