Exiled in Texas

Google for "adidas sizing guide" plenty to choose from

Supposedly he was called "Mad Dog" by the Chelsea players who didn;t like him. He was brought in to play the Bad Cop to Steve Clarke's Good Cop, but took it too far. I read that Ten Cate and John Terry ended up in a face-to-face screaming match after Ten Cate was spent a whole practice session in Moscow picking on Mikel. Jerry got pissed at the unfair treatment of Mikel and went after Ten Cate who he thought was being unfair. Don't think Terry Mac could handle Ten Cate

Interesting thought......College Football and Basketball is THE way to develop players. The coaching and development that they receive is vital to them making the transition to NFL/NBA. But I can see that in the US Soccer environment, the emphasis is more on the players getting a scholarship through College than making the jump to MLS or European leagues. The $$$$ involved in the college football and basketball programs forces the schools to hire the very best coaches, and implement the very best training/development programs. The lack of money in the College Soccer program will not promote the similar development in players. Also the Title 9 requirement (Equal number of athletic scholarships for men and women) forces many schools to avoid having a mens soccer team (need to balance out the 90+ footballs scholarships) so the level of competition is down for mens soccer. US mens soccer won't rocket up in standards, but they should be making slow steady improvements.

That's the key question....if Ashley doesn't like Keegans roadmap for the club, then why is he employing him as Manager. You don't hire someone who wants to go against the Corporate vision, it's a recipe for disaster. They may not be 100% aligned on individual players but I bet they share the same common vision of how best to move the club forward.

It can't be Hotel facilities as there are never more hotels in/near Sunderland than Newcastle.

No need to rush to judgement on this. This should be taken as a rational decision, primarily based on how the rest of our transfer season goes. If we can find suitable replacements then, by all means proceed with getting rid.....if not then hold on to him. I actually think this is a good thing for the Club (in a painful sort of way) in that they will be forced to bring in additional replacements to cover for him. Then if he gets out early we have an additional player, but if he stays in, then they will have had to find a replacement for him.

Aye, I heard about a liner or ferry being used as a hotel. That's quite a common process for events like the SuperBowl or the Olympics, as it's a great way to bring in high class temporary accomodation, although these are usually only offered through tour companies or private corporate events. When the Superbowl was in Jacksonville, FL a few years ago they had 6 or 7 cruise ships moored in the river.

An Ode to Stephen Carr....... I read that as .......Odious Stephen Carr

Finishing next season in 6-8th place, and playing attractive football would be very satisfactory., and the necessary foundation for more improvement the following season.

Breaking into the Big 4 is not something that will be accomplished in one season, even if a new team were to finish in 4th place next season. The Big 4 have been set for several seasons now, and it would take a couple of seasons with a team finishing in 3rd/4th before they would truely be considered into the Big 4, or more likely the new Big 5. It will take Arsenal or Liverpool dropping down to 6th/7th for a couple of seasons before the media will consider them out of the lead pack, and a new Top group is defined. And I think we see a Big 5 before we see a new Big 4. Neither Arsenal or Liverpool will drop that far/fast to loose their media-darling status. Newcastle need to establish themselves as 5th-6th team for a couple of seasons, and then each time we will have a better foundation for the push into the Big 4. It would be much easier for Newcastle to attract the necessary players, from a couple of back to back 5th/6th place finishes, for a realistic push into the Big 4 than trying to shoot for that from 12 place.

Zany Just... wrong. Exactly.....who thinks Sunderland will finish in 10th place.

Help me out here.....how did the Keane/Dog thing start? I know when he joined SUnderland there was a picture of him and his black lab, but how do you go from being a dog owner to a dog w**nker?

Exactly - they opted out of the Welsh League to play in the English League so they should be governed by the English FA

Childish......but WTF!!! http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v207/pmrye/Stuff/chelseareaper2.jpg

Why do I have a vision of the Grim Reaper being surrounded by Chelsea players with Lamps and Terry yelling at him that he got the decision wrong??

Away goals are fine, and provide the right level of reward to draw out the visiting team. Anyone remember the Shut-Up-Shop approach to away games before they introduced the away goals rule. But, I would stop counting Away Goals once you get to Sudden Death Overtime, like in the Bayern-Getafe. Game ended tied (and tied on Away-Goals), so they went to ET and again the game ended tied, but Bayern went through on the OT Away goals. I don't think its fair to count the ET goals as Away goals (That was never the spirit of the rule). By the time you get to ET it should be enough to count goals only, and not have one teams goals worth more than the others.

Whenever you see KK quoted on the LB situation, all he says is that they have no cover for the position with Enrique being the only recognised LB. I think he is wanting to bring in a back up for Enrique, but isn't quite saying that incase he finds a deal he just can't turn down. Enrique is more than capable of making the LB position his own, and trying to bring in a better player might be more trouble than it's worth if it upsets Enrique. A young promising back up would be good to fill the back up role, and then the ££££ can be better spent getting in players for the Midfield/CD.

First away game was at Joker Park for the Liam O'Brien game, but was in the Clock Stand with the Sunderland fans as my Mackem mate got the tickets for us. Would have loved to have been able to celebrate the goal, but watching the Sunderland fans get crushed by the goal was a very very close second.

Not quite up there with the RTG-BigSam thread, but some funny pics in there.

Interesting.....might be worth plunking down the PPV$$$ for this one.

Yeah - like a hiring manager is going to turn down a qualified person just because of his post code.

CP - is it the one that was posted in the thread earlier.......find the post with the pic.......and click the "Quote" button. Then you'll see how the tagaddress[/img tag] concept works. If you are thinking of editing the photo to circle yourself.....your need to post the edited-photo back to the intrawebz and then use the address of the new image.

CP - find the image on the Intrawebz that you want. Right click on the image, and on the little pop-up menu scroll down and select "Properties". You'll see a gray box which will have an Address(URL) section in the middle - you need to copy that entire link starting from the Http and ending at .jpg or .gif. Copy that address. (Please don't tell me you need help with copy/paste) Once you have the Intrawebz address of the image copied, in your post type [i m g] then past the Image Properties address, then type [/i m g] only without the spaces in "img" that will insert the image into your post. should look like [i m g]http://img120.imageshack.us/img120/7229/obrienys2tx9.jpg[/i m g] but without the spaces in img they are there so you can see this and not the actual image. Remove the spaces and the picture shows.

Right click the photo, go to properties and cut/past the full JPG URL into the post with the IMG tags.

My best mate is a Mackem and he got a pair of tickets for us to the 2-1 Liam O'Brien game. In the clock stand with about a dozen or so of his Sunderland supporting mates. Before kick off, you would see a few Toon fans work their way to the front of the Clock Stand or the Fullwell end, and then un-zip the jacket to show the Black-and white to the Sunderland fans. Then pray that the stewards would pull them out of the stand and chuck them into the away end before the Sunderland fans could pull them back in and give them a good hiding. Watched one guy have stewards grab two arms and one leg and the Mackems were still hanging onto his last leg trying to pull him back in. Ahhh, the bliss of the inward cheer when O'Brien scored. Awesome walking back over the bridge into town with all the rest of the gutted mackems.