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Butt as a DM >>>>>>>>>>>>> Smith as a DM.

Flamini's doing quite well at Arsenal and he's a pretty shit passer of the ball as well

Of all the games I've watched City this year, I don't think I've seen him attempt to lob balls into obscure areas of the pitch once and imo it's because he can give it off to Johnson/Elano and then let them do the passing. City's wingers zip around all game, causing havoc for the other team's defenders. On more than a few occasions you'd see Petrov/Ireland being double-teamed. This creates space for other players and that's why they're so good. It's all about the movement. Notice that Hamann isn't involved in all of this. He's the equivalent of Butt imo. In his decline, was class once but can still do a decent job provided he's surrounded by good players. Butt's having to do so much more than he ever had to do in his career because of the ineptitude of our CM like Geremi and Smith but that doesn't mean he's useless.

What do you think of Hamann? Is he a 'good' player?

I'll disagree there. He never had to make any passes. Never had to lob balls into areas. He only had to pick up the ball and give it to the wingers (who were very good at getting open) or give it to Lampard.

The last three all have something to do with his midfield partner being shite so it was irrelevant. And the 7th point is just Parky's opinion, one which I disagree with.

He's not Gerrard or Lampard. He's not a box-to-box midfielder. He never was for Man Utd, never was for England and yet somehow you seem to think he should be for us. He's not Elano, Diego, VdV etc. He's not creative. He does not have 'vision'. He won't be making any killer through balls this season nor will he be opening up the other team with an incisive pass. But, you seem to judge him harshly because he cannot do all those things which he's not meant to do. He's quite a simple player, much like Keane, Vieira, Makelele, Deschamps etc. were/are. He's a good tackler, knows when to pressure a player and when to back off, he's got good positional sense and he pops up with a couple of random goals in a season. That's all he is, and imo he's good enough for us.

So he's not able to do the things that someone in his position is not meant to do? Very insightful, Parky. I'm gonna go with the first six points you've made here and let's see if someone like Makelele passes your test. Can he pass? No. He makes two yard passes to Lampard then drops back. Does he have an engine? No. His game is more to do with anticipation, very much similar to Butt's. Does he have pace? No. Like Butt. Is he tiny? Yes. Does he have any hair? No. Are his legs little? No.

Butt was poor because he is a limited player trying to do things outside of his ability, but he had an impact on the match and tried to pull strings and drift into shooting positions. These are all things he wouldn't have to do (and fuck up) if he had a midfield partner capable of helping him out. I don't think he's a super player, but in much the same way Jenas made Speed look woeful for long periods, Smith/Geremi is doing the same thing to Butt. Butt's playing the role of the DM and the AM. He clearly does well in the first role whilst the less said about the second the better. It's not his fault that he's forced to dictate the pace of the game, forced to make through balls and shift the play from one side to another. It's not his fault Alan Smith is so fucking shite.

Even though he's playing in midfield, why the fuck has his passing ability disappeared? Fucking useless today and that's not judging him as a midfielder, but judging him as a footballer who supposedly can tackle, pass and move. Shocking.

It's interesting that we've been consistently shit in the second half for many games now. We start out well, actually dominate (like we did against City), but then when the second half comes around we regress into Roeder mode. I wonder why this is consistently happening. Surely the fact that we start out the first half well means that the same formula (tactics, teamtalk etc.) can be applied at halftime.

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.