Mick

They had a pub outside of our end.

I hope you didn't park near the ground, I was next to a Toyota Garage and was stuck for at least 45 minutes, that just rounded off a bad day.

I'm not too bothered about the result, I'm pissed off at the way it came about. He's (Allardyce) done most things right but he shouldn't be immune to criticism when he gets it wrong, especially as it looks as if we're going to be the same long ball team that he left behind when he resigned at Bolton. I’ve seen us dominate games and lose, at least you can take something from a game when it goes like that.

I don't know if he's tactically inept but he didn't get anything right last night. Derby were crap for the first 20 to 30 minutes but we couldn't create anything and the longer the game went without us scoring the more confident they became. I don't know why we played with the team we had out but I felt we had given the game away as soon as I saw the team. If we'd scored first we would have won easily, we were set out wrong, I'm not even sure what the formation was that we played but it wasn't balanced as we had nobody on the right to support Taylor. To blame the defeat on International football is laughable by Allardyce, Derby were crap, they were lacking confidence but we gave them it because we didn't have a go at them. I don't know if anybody remembers when we beat Bolton 3-1 at home soon after Roeder became manager but we looked just like they did that day, we would have been beaten by as many goals as Bolton were that day if Derby had a better goal scorer.

I hope you're fishing for a bite.

I can only guess that you were standing outside the ground because where I was standing he had no chance.

You've got to blame the manager for allowing those who played shit to remain on the field, N'zogbia should have been pushed up with Milner moving to the right, all we needed to do was stick somebody at left-back. I thought taking Owen off was a terrible decision at the time but if he’s injured then it had to happen, if we ever get an offer for him then we should take it as the bloke is a total liability. He doesn’t get himself injured but I’m sick of him being fit for England then injured for us. I don't know how it looked on TV but it was very poor watching it live. Smith has been poor in most games yet he was picked, Shola was terrible yet he stayed on when we should have been trying to keep the ball away from the Derby defenders who seemed to get everything in the air, Shola's head must be the same shape as a 50p piece because the ball never seems to go where he wants it to when it bounces off his head, he's also slower than my dead grandfather. Our midfield was so far away from our defenders that I thought the pitch had been stretched, the gap after they beat our midfield and before they got to our defence seemed massive. I don’t know who was supposed to be our right winger when we were supposed to have gone 4-4-2 because I didn’t see him, it must have been the invisible man, and I don’t mean Smith. Taylor looked OK to start with but he ran himself into the ground and ended up looking ragged, he looked very poor at the end although he still tried, he's not a wing-back. Other than Taylor, I don't think we had anybody who did anything worth mentioning, Harper didn't have a lot to do, people were slagging him off again for taking his time when kicking, the problem for him was that nobody moved to create anything, he ended up just kicking anywhere in the hope that it wouldn't come straight back at him.

I've not had a chance to read through this but we were awful last night, Bolton mk II. Long ball for most of the game and we seemed to carry Smith and Shola.

How's this going to be taken further?

I wasn't referring to his debut in particular but even during that game he looked good while playing out of position on the right, I thought at the time that he was pushed off the ball and should have had a free-kick. Taylor played with Woodgate twice, once against Bolton and again coming on as a sub, that's hardly enough time to learn from him, I'm sure he (Taylor) played on the right both times.

Taylor was an excellent prospect when he first broke through to play first team football, he's done well to play at the level which he has played considering what he's had around him at a time when he was supposed to be learning. All in all, he’s done very well to have played with so many clowns and still come out of it looking like a footballer, at times he’s carried our defence.

I haven't read the question in post 133. I couldn't get past the first line for some reason. I just read up to where you of all people were having a go at somebody for his use of grammar, I cringed and skipped the rest of the post.

Do you think an FA Cup final defeat is better than a League Cup win?

Interesting, that wouldn't take much editing to look as if you've been describing another club.

If you know the state of the ground before he took over, why draw attention to it with regards to him?

The remark was meant to be taken literally.

I'm not a member of any Ken Bates fan club at all, the blokes an idiot. Chelsea had a ground which was terrible long before Bates arrived, you don't seem to know that so I'm just putting you right.

I'm not sure how many times you went to Chelsea but he did have a point. Most of the crowd trouble was outside of the ground, especially on the tubes but the Chelsea fans were terrible. I don't think I've ever seen as many NF mongs in any ground in my life as I've seen at Chelsea during the 80's and 90's.

I've been to Chelsea a few times before Harding arrived and it was a horrible place, both ends behind the goals were a joke, a corner of the shed looked like a scrap yard and the away end was almost as bad, I'm sure they had a corrugated metal fence between the home and away supporters the season they put 6 past us. That was long before Bates took over so it's not as if he ran the club down as they were in a terrible state before his arrival, no doubt you remember that game as it was when we really were shite.

It doesn't work like that, remember Ellis being a shite chairman yet doing better in the league than our chairman at the time?

I couldn't care less about International football, I've only ever been to one International at Wembley and it wasn't anything like going to see Newcastle. I'll watch certain teams for a while but if the football isn't worth watching I'll find something better to do. If England play good football then I'll watch them but I usually switch off after 5 minutes.

I'm not sure if they has or hasn't.

The statement I'm referring to is: "How much more money do you think the board should have gave Bobby Robson ?"

Trophy players, you'll have to define that.

The net spend for Sir Bobby was less than £6 million per year. Dalglish has a net spend of almost £16m per year, Gullit was £7.6m per year, Souness was £30.9m and Roeder was £7.64m, all figures are per year, obviously Bobby spent more than the others but he had the job longer.