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Just youtube 'leeds 3 4 newcastle' and watch the ten minute video. We were fucking good back then, and Dyer was an excellent player. We won't ever come close to reaching those heights with Kevin Nolan starting in center midfield.

I've addressed the Boro match already.

I'm not I'm just following on from Raconteur's point on the previous page that Nolan would be looking back on his career and thinking he made the most of it while Dyer would have a fat wallet but wonder what could have been.

It's the making the most out of his career line that I'm drawing these things from. Dyer made the most out of his career; injuries like his - muscular ones - aren't something that you can control and prevent. If he was a lazy fucker who didn't put his best in and never reached the heights that he could have because of his laziness, then you could say that he should look back on his career with regret. I think Dyer looks back and thinks 'what if' with regards to his injuries, but probably not his effort.

You don't reach the pinnacle of the game unless you're a hard worker. But you also have to have talent. Hard work alone is not sufficient to make it to the top, but it's necessary. Dyer played at a level high enough that we can deduce that he was a hard worker off the pitch.

It's not about making the most of your career. It's about what both these players achieved, regardless of your perception of their work ethic. And I say perception because you seem to think that Dyer was a selfish, lazy bastard when his performances and his determination to return from injury after injury demonstrates the complete opposite. And you seem to believe that Nolan is the average Joe hardworking footballer when it is patently obvious that he's one of the least fit players in our team and that's why he looks knackered every match after only an hour. If he's to look back in time and say that he's made the most of his career then maybe getting in top physical shape (like Dyer always was when he played) would have made him a better footballer.

Well done.

More consistent PL performer? That's why the Bolton fans were glad that he was sold to us for a paltry £4m, right? Consistently average, sure. Dyer was consistently good to very good in his time with us. That's why we finished very high up the table in the years that he was fit. Injuries cost him games every season, particularly his last season with us and his time with West Ham, but Dyer was an excellent footballer who achieved things that Nolan can only dream of.

Come on, we're a mid-table team. There's only three players that would get in our SBR team and they're Enrique, Coloccini and Tiote. Nolan doesn't sniff the bench while Dyer's a guaranteed starter. There's no comparison.

What do you mean by effective? If you mean that Nolan has a bigger impact on matches than Dyer then you could not be more wrong, and you must have missed those two magical seasons under SBR. The only argument that you could reasonably make - and it would by no means be inarguable - is that Nolan is a more important player for his team than Dyer was for his. That, of course, ignores the respective positions of the teams and their respective aims. Honestly, this is like comparing a Ferrari to a fucking Toyota. Just because a Toyota doesn't break down doesn't mean you'd rather drive it if the Ferrari was sitting in your garage. Any person with a functioning brain picks the Ferrari without hesitation, and any intelligent football fan picks Dyer over Nolan without a moment's hesitation. There is no argument.

Kieron Dyer played three times in the World Cup. Nolan will never, ever come close to playing on that platform, at that level. Ever. This is such a ridiculous argument.

The first season that Nolan's done something in his career at the top level and suddenly he's been a better player than Kieron Dyer has over the course of his career

Holy shit

By seriously comparing him to Kieron Dyer.

How are you giving him respect by overrating his ability?

Why are people so desperate to defend Nolan? There's a reason he spent 10 years at Bolton and moved to us when we were at our lowest point for almost 20 years. You would have laughed if SBR wanted to buy this version of Nolan for our team back then. Laughed.

All those players, with the exception of the last two, were better players than Nolan during their peak. Which proves my point re: Dyer's caps. There's no argument, man. Dyer gets 50 caps easily if he was fit for the past 4 years.

THIRTY-THREE caps for England and people will take Kevin fucking Nolan over him. Unbelievable.

Yeah, and Bellamy was a shit striker because he didn't score enough. Actually, funnily enough, Bellamy averaged the same number of games per season playing for us as Dyer did. Until the Souness thing, of course. It doesn't matter how much of a spoilt brat Dyer was. You look at the top teams and they've all got moaning cunts. Look at Arsenal, at Wilshere, at Fabregas, at Wenger himself. They're all moaning cunts, but they're world class. Dyer wasn't world class, but he was damn good; much better than Nolan was and is.

Dyer played 35 times in the league when we came 3rd and started 12 times in the Champions League when we got to the second round. He was absolutely a quality player, well worth the £25m Man Utd were rumoured to bid for him, if not for his injuries. I know that's a big if, but it shows Dyer's quality, which was absolutely greater than Nolan. edit: and this £25m is not the £25m of today which doesn't even fetch you Carroll. The £25m back then would have made him the second most expensive transfer in Premier League history. That is the kind of money we were talking about for Kieron Dyer at his very best.

If Dyer is inconsistent then what the fuck is Nolan? Shows up one game with a goal, disappears for two, shows up with another goal, average next game, another goal, another disappearing act... hell, the reason this thread has gone 70 something pages in only 7 months is because of how polarising he is, and he's polarising for a mid-table team. Dyer was a full England international, heading to the WC and was polarising for a team playing in the Champions League. I also don't get how Dyer was selfish. The only incident that comes to mind is the Boro away with the captain's armband but otherwise he always gave his best on the pitch, even if it sometimes wasn't enough. His lung-bursting runs are proof of that. With Nolan, when he's there, he's there. When he's not, he's completely invisible.

Nolan doesn't even come close to our starting eleven from that era. Not even fucking close. Not even if you could guarantee his fitness for eleventy billion years. They're incomparable in terms of quality. Dyer was the much, much better player and there's no reasonable argument that can be against that.

No one is saying they prefer the Dyer of today. We are discussing the Dyer that we had vs the Nolan that we have.

Dyer was better than Lennon. He played in a more influential position and had a bigger impact on matches. I'm not sure about Walcott yet. I think people underrate Dyer because he had a rep as injury prone, but like you said, he averaged about 33 games a season across all comps and about 25 in the league for a team that finished 4th and 3rd for two consecutive seasons. I know he was injured for quite a bit during the season we nearly won it but he still played a part and showed his class. His finishing was always suspect. He never thumped it. Hell, the winner against Feyenoord should have been him thumping it in, not trying to pass the ball into the corner and having it saved. But for all his faults, he was an excellent player, someone who's better than most of the players we have in our squad now. He's actually the type of midfielder that, with a decent strikeforce, would push us over the top. And by over the top, I mean on a level pretty comparable with Spurs, which would mean challenging for the top 4.

I can't even believe we're having this discussion. Dyer was unplayable on his day. He was so good at exploiting spaces in midfield and running the other team ragged. I remember hin ripping apart Leeds at least 3 times, two of which were away games (4-3, 3-0). He could easily have been one of the best midfielders of his generation if not for injuries, and we were a Bellamy hamstring injury away from winning the title. Remember, 8 seasons ago, we were on top of the Premiership at this stage of the season. That was the team that Dyer was a part of. Nolan is not his stratosphere.