Mick

Did he post on here at some time?

Beardsley was born in the wrong country, if he was from Brazil he would have been hailed as one of the all time greats.

We'll have to agree to disagree about Nolan.

I'm with you on that, we've got as much to lose as we have to gain.

He's also had reserve games and didn't look short of pace away to the Mackems. He looked very fast and pulled us out of the shit a few times with his pace.

He's been missed but at the same time he's a massive liability and I don't think that he's worth the bother long term. I rate him as highly as anybody when he's playing well, too often he's missing games and I don't think we'll ever be able to rely on him, he's a luxury we can't afford to have. I've got to the same stage with him as I had reached with Woodgate, great player but not worth the effort. I just hope that we don't replace him with a midfield version of Boumsong.

Routledge is too inconsistent and I hope that he can improve with games. We have weaknesses and we'll have to live with them until we can bring in better players. I just see him in that position and Barton in the middle as the lesser of two evils.

It probably is and we might as well put somebody in the middle if we're going to go with an under-performing Ameobi.

I agree, even Carroll wasn't working like he has done but like Tiote, he was playing the game of 2 players.

We've played 4-5-1 this season, probably as much as 4-4-2.

It depends on what you call our best performances, Routledge and Jonas played on the wings against Villa with Barton in the middle and that is our best result of the season. I thought last week was one of our best performances and Routledge and Jonas both played against Chelsea.

Coloccini and Williamson let 5 goals in the last time they played and both received 3 match bans, that's shit form. The defence isn't always the reason that we let in goals, our midfield was shit in both games.

I'd settle for Barton through the middle and Routledge on the wing.

Nolan has played in most of our poor games, holding today up as a reason to play him doesn't stand up when our heaviest defeat of the season was with him in the team. Nolan as his worst is almost as bad as Guthrie was today as in both cases we play with a man down. I understand that statement is subjective and either of us could be right or it could be somewhere in between.

Does Barton not do that better when he's on form?

He is when he doesn't score.

You're right, I don't know what I was thinking. :-[

Our movement off the ball was terrible and a lot of the players were struggling to find anybody.

1 point actually which is the number of points we'd be worse off without Nolans goals.

Campbell is getting loads of stick yet the game before he got in was a 5-1 defeat with both central defenders getting 3 game bans. Maybe the players in front of the central defenders are as least as much to blame as the people getting the blame. The central defenders who played today were good enough to keep Chelsea down to 1 goal last week.

Nolan giving us a lift is more often than not a myth and it doesn't happen enough to justify his place in the team, his goals probably do when he turns up. Playing him against Villa and the Mackems were no brainers as he was always likely to be up for those games, too often he isn't up for it. Even against West Ham when he scored, he was always going to be up for it considering the week he'd had before the game. I'd play him against the better teams as he seems to be more motivated, when he's not motivated he plays like Guthrie did today.

No problem, I posted the same at the time.

Shola as captain is a joke, that shouldn't mean that we have to play Nolan.

His presence is the same as Shola's if he doesn't score he doesn't contribute and we've seen that so many times over the last 2 seasons. Nolan has played plenty of times this season when we've lost and he's contributed nothing.

Campbell shouldn't have been booked as the player ran into him and getting out of the way would have been impossible.