Taylor Swift

Still in it, which is what counts. Terrible conditions, you could see it from the way the ball kept bobbling everytime we tried to pass it around. I'm not excusing the players, but it is pretty hard to pass it around (carpet football) if you're not actually playing on a carpet. We had a few decent chances. Owen really should have scored twice. In the first instance he had to react quicker and in the second instance I just thought he needed to be stronger and head that fucking thing in. Great defending from Faye. Taylor also did quite well for me and I like the way he kicks the ball out everytime it goes loose instead of trying to pass it back to Given or anyone else. That's good safe defending there. Smith was shite. Worst player on the pitch. I don't think I've seen a midfielder disappear like that in a while. It's a joke that he's our 'captain'.

I'd love it if we fucking thrash them today.

Wonder how much he'd cost? On loan would be nice instead of stumping over something near £10m which Wenger will want. Although after seeing the furore caused by us loaning Rossi last year, maybe not...

Zola had a decent first touch as well irrc. After thinking through this a bit it's funny how everyone that comes to mind is not British

Easily winning La Liga in his first season and his team played attacking football that at the time was as good as Arsenal's ever were. And this after selling off their best player (Mendieta). Then two years later winning La Liga easily (again!) and winning the UEFA Cup. He's a phenomenal manager. Two league titles in three years in Spain against Real and Barca is an amazing achievement.

How about what he did at Valencia?

Sir Les is up there with the Bellamy sale since Shearer's injury pretty much set us back a couple of seasons until he returned fully and SBR took over. We lost the initiative at that point but still hung in there until Souness came and sold Bellamy. Just consider that, at the time of Bellamy's fallout with Souness, we had an aging and slow Shearer up front, Ameobi who hasn't developed since bursting onto the scene (though can it really be called a burst ) at 20 and the perenially injured Kluivert. Selling Bellamy costed us that season (finished 14th), and of course we looked like we had no clue in attack in the season after. We had no pace and then of course there's the Fred--Souness transfer thingy-majingy where he wanted the 4-3-3 Luque Anelka Boa Morte, but ended up with the 4-4-2 Owen Shearer thing. Selling him, even though he was a little troublemaker, is one of the moments that will be looked back on in the future with great disappointment. All he needed was someone to manage him well like SBR did. Some people will always be troublemakers but that doesn't mean that they're shite footballers. Too bad Souness was such a dumb fuckwit that he never realized this. Edit - his sale might even be significant enough (if we do not recover from the position we're in now) to be compared with the sale of Gazza and them lot in the past though I'll let NE5 explain since he knows a lot more about that decade

Bellamy's true value for us was only realized when he left, not before or during his stay. When he left we had fuck all pace and movement up front, and since then we've had no one who could change the way the other team's defend us like he did. Bad sale. Hamann is an interesting one in that we were pretty much shite when we sold him so it wasn't like he was the key player in our Championship run or something. Though he proved his worth for Liverpool and is currently doing so at City, I don't think him being allowed to leave was a big mistake, at least not as big as letting Bellamy go.

Benitez is overall a quality manager. I just think it's a case of wrong place wrong time for him at Liverpool. If he'd come into England a couple of years earlier then he'd be better off. The billionaires have certainly not helped. And if he went to a different club he'd have been more successful should have been here after SBR's final season.

This. As well. Given hasn't looked himself for quite a while, our central defenders keep fucking up and our strikers continually put in inconsistent performances. Has Martins even improved one area of his game in a season and a bit at the club? What's going on with him? Does he need the equivalent of toilet training with his first touch? How can most of them keep coming out with the same bullshit that they're trying their best and our luck will change etc. etc. when they're fucking lazy shites on the pitch. God knows what they're actually doing in their own time on the training ground. It isn't all the manager's responsibility you know? A manager can't forcibly make a player run more, tackle harder, work on his game etc. Some of our players need to behave like men and do the fucking jobs that they're handsomely paid for. The malaise began during SBR's last season here and since then I don't think I've seen our team consistently put in the necessary effort in games. It's always been one good effort followed by a couple of shite ones, and then a good one then another couple of shite ones. Four managers and none of them have been able to correct this. The players have to take a large part of the blame as well.

Everton nearly got relegated the season after they finished fourth iirc, Spurs have suffered for 10 or so years and I'd say their improvement is more down to the players recruited by Comolli, actually their improvement began several seasons ago and Ramos might be the manager to capitalise on all the investment in the past couple of seasons. Ramos didn't turn a mid-table team into something better, he's managing a team that has finished 5th twice in a row. Hardly a spectacular achievement that he's now getting them to play football again, is it? And Villa? They ended up in a decent league position last season only because they had an unbeaten run to end it, but before that, they were very shite for a very long time after the initial honeymoon period ended. O'Neill certainly didn't look like the saviour that people seem to think he is now during the middle of last season. I'm not saying Allardyce will turn it around. In fact, I'd bet on him not making it but I'd rather give him the chance because there's a body of evidence out there that time and stability will lead to a general improvement in the team. For fuck's sake, we gave Souness a year and a bit, Roeder a similar amount of time. Now why can't we give someone else, who's better, an equal amount of time to try and implement his ideas? And that's what Allardyce is suffering for atm; he's implementing ideas that the players aren't familiar with and he's gotta decide whether to stick with those ideas or abandon them. That's why our players tend to look clueless and our attack is inept at best, but it may all change with time and that's why he should be given the chance.

Zoggy, Faye and Beye are the only players that should be happy with their performances from yesterday. The rest of them were average or worst (Martins, Milner and Butt in particular). We looked really good in the first half, should have scored a couple. We had decent attacking moves and really pressured them, and then in the one half chance that they get, they score. I thought Given went down a bit too slow, really should have had that covered since it wasn't exactly flying in, was it? I'll give credit to Sam for the substitutions, they're the ones that he should be making in every game; only this time it didn't work out. Enrique looked good enough to me, which begs the question of why he isn't getting more games. This 'settling in' nonsense is just that, nonsense. He looked like a defender when defending and also showed some attacking intent as well. Though it must be said that Zoggy disappeared when he was actually moved up to LW, so maybe Sam is doing the right thing after all? It was a decent performance on the whole and I really think there's positive things that we can take from this game, especially the first half. Saying all that, it's still bitterly disappointing that the most excited I got in the first half was when Charlie dribbled past three players and had a decent shot on goal.

That team would be fun to watch.

Wasn't Dawson's fault for the goal. He wasn't marking the man, just look at the replay from the bird's-eye-view angle and you'll see he had his man covered.

Thanks kd. Thanks for crushing my new year spirit.

The Villa - Spurs game should be a good one. Hoping for a draw here, and a hat-trick from Berbs, Chimbonda, Barry and Laursen would be the perfect way to start the new fantasy year

Maybe he needs a rest since it's been a relatively heavy footballing schedule recently?

That is true. Emre always seems to be quite good for Turkey, and they're successful enough as well. Not that I'm saying we should be building a team around Emre, but it's certainly interesting to see how they operate and then maybe using Emre in a similar role here.

Is 'all be it' Oliver's attempt at trying to say 'albeit'?

Spot on HTT. You've been posting some good stuff in the past couple of days.

What a game

My bro just orgasmed over Santa Cruz's goal. What a tit

City are playing like we did when SBR was here

Bianchi

we didn't expect magical results but after 19 games and 7 months you'd expect some sign of improvment,not the feeling that the performances arethe same as the last 2 mangers who at least would atempt to win away games. "not playing well at the moment"... that moment has lasted since august. we played well 1st half at bolton,then against spurs and arsenal. don't fall into the trap that we beat west ham and everton seemingly comfortably because we didn't play well and there were long spells in both games when we were under the cosh. Our last two managers did NOT attempt to win away games. Roeder took a whole season to win a couple of away games, and don't even mention Graeme f****** Souness and his ineptness. they did attempt to win away but failed,i'd rather fail trying than not attempt. They did not. Souness was busy getting rid of Bellamy and Robert. He was busy buying 'proper' players and wanting good hardworking performances. His team selection was idiotic, never had the balls to drop Shearer, stuck Bellamy on the right wing, and when Bellamy left, he stuck Bowyer on the right wing instead. I don't recall any ambitious selections or tactics away from home. The first time we lost to Wigan demonstrated his attitude. Only when Emre was sent on did we look like scoring. Roeder was probably worse. Never played Zoggy, trusted Ameobi to lead the line and bought shite like Onyewu. Do you not remember the League Cup game against Wigan? Sorry, I have a hard time believing our previous two managers was more ambitious away from home. They weren't ambitious at all. Pathetic managers who had no fucking clue what they were doing. It seems that people have very short memories.