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Definitely agree. Especially playing away. Saying that, there is an argument to make for starting Viduka again because he holds the ball up well and can challenge those balls that are hoofed up. Most of the defensive clearances that were made today just came right back at us (especially in the second half), something which probably would not have happened if Viduka was in the team.

Tbf, I thought Spurs' game suffered when Bale went off but then our game suffered even more when Zoggy went off. Milner wasn't in the game at all and thus we couldn't hold onto the ball, which meant Spurs really dominated. Thumbs up to Martins, Faye, Butt and Enrique especially. Owen played within himself today and I'm slightly worried about Beye and how often he seems to get skinned.

Great first half for us. I don't know why there seems to be some negativity in here. We've outplayed them, outpassed them and outhustled them so far. Nicky Butt has been really good. Emre's a bit quiet but he's had his touches. Similar story with Zoggy but he's been really active and trying to create something. Geremi is slow Anyway, even though we haven't had the best individual performances, the key thing is we've been awesome as a team, especially the midfield and defence. Martins and Owen also look threatening. Owen's link up play is really top-drawer. I echo Keef's statement - Owen's a class act. Oba's looked the most threatening of our players so far and everytime a long ball is hoofed up, we actually have a shot at scoring a goal because of his pace. Great half from the boy. Hopefully Spurs will come out more in the second half because I really do see us scoring a couple more if they have to push on. Lets not concede early and I think we'll be home and dry.

I notice that James has deleted his predicted lineup (which was wrong)

So it's Given Beye Cacapa Faye Enrique Geremi Butt Emre Zoggy Martins Owen I like

Teamnews? Kick off's in an hour. Edit - Towelie you tit

Is there something wrong with you, Decky? You've predicted us to lose and now you're predicting that a striker who's hardly played in the last month will actually score against us if (a big if) he plays. Fuck's sake man, show some spirit.

My first thoughts when I read them as well. If I were Sam I'd be showing these comments to the players before the game. Reminds me of a few years ago when Dyer was backing himself in the press to dislodge Scholes from the England team, right before a game with Man Utd. Scholes came out and taught him a lesson in football. Jol really isn't in a position to be making these sorts of comments. Hat-trick in a 6-2, wasn't it? At our place as well iirc.

I have a really good feeling about this one. We'll be up for it, the crowd will be up for it and boy will Spurs be up for it. It'll be a good game and I see quite a few goals in it, hopefully something like 3-2 to us would be berry nice.

No. That would be Arsenal.

We'll beat Sunderland away. I just have that feeling. We'll also get 3 against Spurs/Porstmouth. 7 points in total. I think someone's said this but Reading is gonna be another 'Derby' game - immensely frustrating but we'll be good enough when we play the better teams.

blueyes.gif Everything you said about Zlatan I agree with. He's a great player and one who's probably now underrated because of how shit he was in the WC and in his last season with Juve. The criticism he got from all that seems to have stuck and now people don't seem to appreciate how much he's improved and matured as a player. No more silly bookings/red cards and no more stupid mazy dribbles that go nowhere. He's more direct than anywhere and very lethal now.

No offencem but personally, I'd have to smoke a prodigious amount of crack to even start to believe that Ibrahimovic is even a quarter of the player Rooney is, let alone Owen. And I don't even particularly rate Rooney. I reckon in the past couple of seasons Zlatan has matured in a way that he probably should have ages ago. He's better than Owen imo, and he's proving it at Inter every single week. Edit - 22 league goals in 34 matches says a lot.

Wow. This is too much for my heart. Fucking hell blow the whistle.

That's fine. These people are free to write what they want. They just shouldn't expect their opinions to be taken seriously in the future. I haven't read the whole match thread but from what I saw there wasn't that much of 'knee-jerking' going on. What's wrong with calling a spade a spade? We were shit today, couldn't string together more than a few passes when they took the lead, BS fucked up with his tactics from the start and fucked up even more when he failed to react after they scored, then when he did react it was too late. I haven't seen a 'Big Sam out' comment except the sarcastic/WUM ones.

He finished very tidily for the goal after a really good run. Overall a good performance from him. It was actually the type of performance you would see an accomplished striker put in. Worked hard, contributed more to the team that just the goal and never stopped trying. Also seems to have curb his angrier moments - you know, the moments where his face is about to explode because he's just lost control of the ball

Thing is, football is a game of emotions. It's a rollercoaster ride, especially if you happen to support a certain black and white team. Surely we have to expect people to react with their emotions every now and then and not carefully consider, analyze and then articulate their ideas. People aren't robots man.

Same could be said of Martins, Emre, Owen and quite a few others in our team. We need to play to our strengths and today was a day in which we seemed to be trying to do the exact opposite. Theres two viewpoints here - either the manager plays the best system for the players at his disposal, or he sticks to his guns (even if sporadically) and uses the system he knows best, gradually changing the personnel to best fit this system. To be fair, I would rather we do the latter, because the potential to go further is when the manager gets to mould and incorporate players around the system he prefers. If that means gradually shipping out some of our best players who unfortunately cannot adjust to the preferred system, and replacing them with players who do have the ability to play in the system he prefers, then im all for it. Atm, it should be the former. Our best players will cost a fortune to replace - Owen, Martins, Emre, Milner etc. All players who have shown that they can contribute when played in a 4-4-2. We ideally should be fitting a formation around our 'key' players, essentially forming a spine for the side. Given Rozehnal Barton - Zoggy Owen ^ That's how I see the 'spine' of our team. Zoggy's obviously on the left wing but he's an essential part of our attack. Barton will prove so to be as well and of course the others are pretty self-explanatory. Now from here, we have to fill in the rest of the positions. Atm, it seems Allardyce's spine consists of Geremi and Smith in the center together, which will NOT work. I'm not arguing in favour or against a 4-3-3 - just saying that we need to make sure our best players are on the park in their best/most effective positions. Anything other than that would be inexcusable from BS.

Same could be said of Martins, Emre, Owen and quite a few others in our team. We need to play to our strengths and today was a day in which we seemed to be trying to do the exact opposite.

Just got back from the game. Thought the ref was wank, always giving little niggly fouls which stopped the flow of the game. Elano was immense. Always the first to the ball and his vision is something else. Petrov also had a very very good game, totally raped us down the left-wing. For our team, Martins was always lurking and finished his chance really well. Other than that, Enrique came on and did alright. We just lost to the better team today. However, saying that, Allardyce's tactics today were wank. Fucking hell man, starts with a 4-3-3 again although it must be said that Smith had a decent game, showed more for the ball and generally was looking to get involved in our attacking play, which was a nice surprise there. Anyhow, we started with a 4-3-3 and was blatantly dominated. Our goal came from nowhere and Citeh were looking dangerous whenever they attacked. Cue half-time with us undeservedly level. Then, the logical thing to do would be to change it up a bit, get some width in since our attacks only consisted of long punts up - which lead to them getting the second ball and launching a counter-attack on one of our wings. But no, Allardyce stuck with this ineffective formation, which became even shittier when they scored straight after the beginning of the second half, effectively making his half-time teamtalk redundant. For 20 mins after that, we couldn't keep the ball, couldn't string together more than a few passes and all our 'chances' were created by lucky bounces off of their defenders. Change was needed but still no, Allardyce stuck to the 4-3-3. Then FINALLY he makes a change with something like 10 minutes left, and then makes another change, but who the fuck comes on? That's right, Abdoulaye fucking Faye comes on for Steven Taylor. Way to go Big Sam. Way to go on the offensive when there's fuck all time left. It's mightily frustrating because 3000 fans in the away end knew that an offensive substitution was needed but the only person who didn't was BS himself. Btw, straight after Emre came on, him, Zoggy and Enrique strung together a few passes and won us a corner. And that was only in a minute or two of playing together. In the end though, it's only one game. Just wish we put up more of a fight in the second half than just succumbing to the loss.

I reckon Smith is a better option for the team than Viduka is. He's more mobile, more versatile and will work harder for the team. He might not have the touch of Viduka but how often has Viduka actually shown it in the first five or so games for us? Smith can do the flicking-on and holding up play job almost as well as Viduka can, and probably better as well because he doesn't require pin-point passing from the midfielders to get involved. With Viduka, it's almost a situation where if you lob it up and he's not in a 2 meter radius then he isn't going to get it because he's too slow. Though Smith isn't the fastest, he's certainly faster than Viduka! This is not a knee-jerk or biased opinion as well. I just think that maybe Viduka's form last season has tricked many fans into believing he's better/more consistent that he actually is and will be for us. I remember when Roeder was wanting to sign Viduka last year and many people on the forum was vehemently against it. I think last year was an anomaly, it could actually be due to it being a 'contract' year for him. And with Ameobi not being good enough, Smith is my choice to play the target-man role.

1. Newcastle -------- 18. Liverpool 19. Manyoo 20. Spurs

Jon, you go to work but do you actually do work?

Cheers, so it is either a choice, or a mentally disability Mental disability? WTF? Where did you get that from indi's post?

In the grand scheme of thing homosexuality is natural. There are many scientific recorded examples of homosexuality in the natural world, ie gay monkeys, gay penguins etc. Even gay human are natural, cos we are the product of nature, we are part of the nature. Homosexuality is unusual yes, but it is not unnatural. And there is nothing wrong or immoral about homosexuality, unless you are a religious person who follows the religious codes. Well, tbf, the gene that says you're gay would naturally cease to exist because there's no way that this gene can be passed on to future generations. The fact that this gene is actually created certainly has to be down to a 'mutation' which isn't beneficial to the gene itself (because it can't be passed on). So I guess homosexuality can actually be argued to be 'unnatural', but that has no bearing on whether it's morally right or wrong. And I mean 'unnatural' as in it goes against what our body was 'naturally' created for (to reproduce and pass on our genes). Edit - It's pretty important for science to try to understand why this mutation is happening though, especially since it's not isolated to a certain race nor gender. So are you saying that there has never been a case of a gay man fathering a child? Because I know a bloke who was married for several years, had two kids to his wife and then came out as gay as he couldn't keep on living a lie and has for the past 32 years(he was a friend of my dad's and that is how I know him) has lived in a relationship with another man. I wonder how many straight men here only ever have sex to reproduce? I mean naturally as in if he was gay and admitted it from a young enough age, there isn't a 'natural' way to pass on those genes. The case you mentioned is an exception. I don't think it's normal for a gay man/woman to be in a marriage and have two children before coming out as being gay. In regards to your last sentence, I echo it (and have said so in this thread). Natural or unnatural is really irrelevant because of how we've evolved and how we're capable of doing much more than what was/is 'natural' to us.