Ashley17

To those being ironic - For those genuinely confused - It's Sunday 21st.

Before anyone goes mad, £10m can buy you Andy Johnson in today's market. However a £10 million rated full back is a bit of a rare commodity.

Tony Coton isn't dead man, you're thinking of Tim Carter I think

If Duff just lets it hit him, it stays out. It's the fact that he panics and....knees it into the opposite corner that is annoying.

The shortcomings with Enrique's passing are largely due to where he is on the pitch. He gets the ball on half way, here are his options: 1) Pass to the left winger - if this is Duff, he will not be on the left wing. If this is Jonas, he is heavily marked. Problems. 2) Pass to a centre midfielder - Butt and Guthrie playing within 5 yards of each other, possibly further back than where we have the ball. See the "lack of movement" thread. 3) Pass back to the centre halves - Will draw groans for being negative 4) Hump it into the box - playing the percentages will obviously result in a degree of success/unsuccessful passes. And of course there are some occasions when he just passes the ball straight out of play, which is unforgivable

Got to be honest, when he first went down I assumed he was play acting to stop them countering. However he looked absolutely gutted he couldn't carry on which makes me worry it's serious

Rooney having a "chest infection" is far too convenient. Same with Rio being out, Ferguson knows they can beat Stoke without those 2 so exagerrates their injuries/illness and don't have to go away for international duty, come back next weekend as fit as a fiddle. [/Conspiracy]

Duff bottles more tackles than anybody I have ever seen. That is not giving 100%

Geremi is only useful if Owen's in the team (which he should be one way or another) Geremi is like the opposite of Jonas - Jonas looks impressive and is always involved but has next to no end product. Geremi does fuck all except provide a great cross in every 10 that Owen/Richard Dunne coverts.

As this is an attendance thread, just as a side thought: If we go down, will our attendance fall to 30k(ish)? Presumably ticket prices will fall and there's always been the theory that the majority of fans will always turn up for league games no matter what. I reckon we'd probably still get near enough 40,000.

Don't open this can of worms, fucking hell man.

Yellow brick road time. Kinnear has no brain so he can be involved somehow

How the fuck does Carson get in and Green doesn't

Return of the entertainers tbh

The main problem Colo has is he's so slow on the turn, Camara ghosted past him today on that 1 on 1 it was scary. I know Camara's quick but Colo had a 5 yard headstart

Everyone was shite today in fairness, first half especially.

I hope someone shits in his lucky charms in the morning

Those 90 minutes epitomise us as a club. Shit for a long time, 10 minutes of "fucking hell" and then throw it away. Boils my piss how inept we were, every pass was stray, the whole team had no accuracy in anything they did and were generally fucking shite. Duff, playing left wign, was never an option on the left, standing in the congested central area. Get on the left you prick. Gutierrez is the game plan. We give it to him and he runs at people. However, recently teams have realised doubling on him will do the trick, and today was no exception. Can't fault the lad, he always looks for an alternative but there's nobody moving for him. Taylor's goal was fucking good, no idea why he hates us to the point where he feels the need to score screamers every game he faces us, but anyway. Wigan decided it would be fun to be tossers all afternoon, playing like a European team and having a lie down everytime any contact was made. Was piss boiling and I hope Steve Bruce never darkens our managerial door. We created very little until the stroke of half time when Martins had a good chance but he hit it straight at the legs of Kirkland and that was that. Second half more of the same, Wigan having a spate of corners which they took 10 minutes over each time, each corner more dangerous than any of our set pieces. We eventually got a break when Ameobi's determination won him the ball back and Boyce took him out. Was as far away as physically possible from me (I was in SJH Corner) so I can't comment on the correctness of the decision but Wigan deserved to have a man sent off for being a set of twats. So that left us half an hour+ to get at least an equaliser. Instead we had 10 minutes of pushing without ever really coming close, and Henri Camara outpacing Coloccini and coming within a cats pube of making it 2-0. Eventually, diamond Joe thought it was a good time to bring on Owen and N'Zog. Good, there goes Enrique (who had a shocker) and....JONAS!? Right. Fuck off Joe. N'Zogbia made a massive difference and as Wullie said, scared the shit out of them. He is a winger - pace, directness, looking to get the ball in the box. Duff does none of these things. Owen somehow missed from 4 yards and there were some rumblings. 5 minutes later, Owen lashed over a volely on the turn...and the rumbling was a bit louder. I had a horrible feeling Owen was gonig to become public enemy number one, however he then had a header well saved and it was forgotten. The equaliser came from a spell of passing about looking for an opening and getting nowhere. Shola has a put on his left from 25 yards and Kirkland spills it, Owen taps in and it's happy days. 10 minutes on the clock so go on and win it! In fairness, we did the hard bit of scoring, Martins' goal was well taken and it was good to see him score a "typical" Martins goal. That should have been the 3 points wrapped up, but that's not NUFC. Ball into the box, Shay shouts, is about to claim it and Beye needlessly heads behind. Not worried too much, we've got 2 men on the posts and surely we can't throw it away. Good ball in, Bramble header, Duff's there no problem. Oh wait...it's in the roof of the net. How the fuck did that happen? Well because he's clueless. It was at this point he was announced man of the match for contributing nothing and in fact gifting the other team a goal. Fuck sake. So 2 points dropped and a frankly terrible performance, positives are few ad far between, maybe N'Zogbia's performance when he came on, the fact Owen got 4 chances in 20 minutes shows he's still sharp and that's about it. Negatives are Barton's injury, which he looked gutted about, the fact we're 17th with 2 away games to come, the fact Damien Duff is seen as the fucking messiah by all and sundry. Bassong was shaky but not terrible by any means, and Wigan should be ashamed of themselves for the way they conducted themselves today.

It worries me really that JFK is making big decisions like this, this isn't Dean Holdsworth and Robbie Earle we're talking about ffs

are we playing norwich like? Wigan's vital football site says he was re-called as he was at Wigan's training ground today - he had been ruled out of Norwich's game tomorrow with a dodgy knee so it's unclear whether he was just getting treatment at Wigan or if they were assessing if they could get a game out of him tomorrow.

I'm sure if: John Terry Rio Ferdinand Joleon Lescott Matt Upson Micah Richards Phil Jagielka Wes Brown Jonny Woodgate Steve Taylor Anton Ferdinand Michael Mancienne Curtis Davies Sol Campbell Gary Cahill David Wheater Chris Riggott Michael Ball Nedum Onuoha Ryan Shawcross Anthony Gardner Michael Turner ...Spontaneously combust and Jamie Carragher remains retired..... ....Then Bramble can vie with Dawson for a place

A few weeks with Viduka means "at least a month" and then a further 3 months to get match fitness. I predict he'll slide on for 10 minutes at home to Liverpool (December 28th) and he'll have a reoccurance.

Zaki definitely out "In a phone call between Amr Zaky and his official website AmrZaky.com, Zaky said that he is not fit to face Newcastle United tomorrow and he is rulled out of the team trip due to injury. Zaky did not train this morning because of his injury and the coach decided not to rush him into tomorrow hard clash. http://www.amrzaky.com/en/news6.htm " Same site says Heskey out and Sib attended Wigan training. Oh my.

Sib is injured, ruled out for Norwich tomorrow at any rate. Would be surprised if he's been recalled

If someone came to watch me at work and started throwing coins at me I'd be a bit annoyed like, and a bit richer. Can see why Drogba would throw it back but he has responsibilities not to rise to the crowd - even Barton had the sense to just pick them up and hand them to the 4th official