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Not completly fair, he was also caught up in the sale of the club which delayed transfers etc. Yet still spent over £25 million, £11 million net and brought in 9 players. And cleared out a shitload of deadwood from the SBR, Souness and Roeder days combined. Give him time, it's been one transfer window and 2 months into a season! Jesus Christ do we deserve to be in the position we are in or what?!

It is true that Allardyce does have a lot to answer for in terms of baffling team selection and negative tactics, but other than that, everything he's done has been really good. Just look at what he's done in the transfer window! We have a whole new defence, and apart from Beye who seems to need some time to adapt, who have all turned out to be astute signings. Zoggy's form has also improved massively from last year and he seems to be back on track again. And of course this is not mention everything that's gone on off the field (Clarkie leaving! ) and his new backroom staff. If we take the medium-long term view then we'll all see that we are heading in the right direction.

It's mind boggling that fans like yourself are only willing to give the manager 10 games to change his mindset! Fuck's sake man, he's been in one mindset for about 15 years and you expect all that to change in what? 2 months? Give him some time. He's shown that he does realize the weaknesses we have in the team, and in time, I have faith that he'll show that he's very adaptive and will turn this club around. If we win the next couple of games what are the odds that you won't be concluding, already, after 10 games, that we won't be making it into Europe next season?

He needs at least a couple of seasons. Honestly, anything shorter than that would be a disgrace. Unless we're in serious relegation trouble or anything of that sort, he deserves two seasons to turn us around on the pitch and probably more importantly atm, off the pitch. Anything less would be as Mort says, very short-sighted.

Should be a good game at Anfield. If Besiktas can somehow nick a goal it'll make my week Honestly not the best of games this week, except maybe the Barca Rangers game but that's tomorrow anyway. Today I'm just hoping Liverpool lose.

Umm, it's perfectly acceptable for him to say that. Hell, it's the kind of thing I wish some of our players started saying! At least he has his priorities straight and knows what actually matters in football.

Maybe I was just too excited for my own good then...

You're talking shit. And I bet you weren't saying that in the summer after he was coming off a good season and was a free agent.

Emre's car is really not subtle. Saw him driving into St. James' on Saturday. Usually people tend to mess around with the plates, like 3mr3 or something but his massive black 4x4 just said 'EMRE'

Bringing this thread back seeing as we're all quite frustrated with what's going on atm. Many people, me included, need to realize that it's going to take time for us to move forward. So much has changed since last year, just look at this thread! This was still a time when Shepherd was still our chairman and there was a shitload of deadwood at the club at the time. This year will be a year of transition, and Allardyce deserves at least a season after this to show that he can change the club around. Nothing will happen overnight and all of us needs to accept this and show some fucking patience.

oml, fuck me, have you ever thought of applying for a coaching position at the club? You and johnnypd would sort out this lot, that's for sure. You're defo right about going back to the basics i.e. sticking a right winger on the right, a left winger on the left and playing dynamic and balanced center midfielders. Allardyce is fiddling around too much with the midfield - what a tit. Barton was shite, can't believe he actually started. I mean, after 10 minutes you could see he needed fucking hours on the ball to make a fucking decision. And then whenever he actually decided to do something, it was shite. Even Butt, who perenially gives the ball away, gave it away less than Barton did. Wtf was Emre doing on the bench for 60 minutes? Why did Allardyce wait that long to make an offensive substitution? Did he need the PA guy to announce that it was 3-1 and that we were being dominated before he was going to do something about it? Too slow, too stuck in his ways - a feature he's exhibited quite a few times this season now. Change quick Sammy or you won't be here long. He's also not doing himself any favours as well with the defensive tactics away from home. Just frustrating because he does seem to know better; he speaks a good game and usually is able to identify where we were weak (or at least says it to the fans) but then game time comes and he does stupid shit like stick Milner on the left. Now any defender with a brain will know that a) Milner's slow as fuck, so b) he will not be trying to take the ball to the byline. They'll also know that c) Milner's favourite move is the cut-back so even if by some miraculous divine intervention he gets past the defender, he will cut back to his right foot to cross it. Which all leads to Milner being useless as fuck even though he had a lot of touches in the first half. Now imagine if Zoggy had had all those touches; all those chances 1 v 1 with Pamarot (or whoever it was playing RB for them), all those chances to try to get to byline and deliver a good cross for our lethal striker Owen, or to cut in and try a shot (which he's shown he can do - think Boro away this season). It was just obvious from the start that this wasn't going to work. Everytime Milner cut back, he had to pass it into center midfield or to just outside the area, so Owen/Smith had to drop back and pick the ball up from there with their backs towards goal and the rest of our players pretty much static because the ball was going backwards. It hasn't worked on the many occasions he's tried it this season so what made Allardyce think it was going to work against Pompey?! The next game cannot come fast enough. I just wanna see some fight now, some spirit, some and most importantly, some ambition (players + manager). Edit - Re: the actual topic (Mickey), he was pretty shit but then what do you expect from a midget playing 30 meters away from his favourite area, and up against Sol Campbell? Owen can't do that anymore. He can't sprint away from the defence and his movement is useless when its so far away from goal. When he does create some space for himself, it's too far away from goal for him to actually make use of it. There was one time when someone lobbed a ball forward and Owen was seemingly through on goal, but then when he brought the ball down, he didn't have the acceleration to just power through on goal so he had to slow it down and then try to curl it past James, which of course because he's not the hardest striker of the ball, struggled to and was easily saved. The Owen of old would have sprinted away and slotted it into the bottom corner. The newer Owen requires that ball to land closer to goal so he can actually utilize the time he has created for himself, but he can't do anything now if he's 20+ yards away from goal!!

That's quite a Roman-ish thing to say, though it's justifiable.

Athletic have been reported in the past to have been interested in him (on quite a few occasions too actually) so he might end up there.

That is some speed! Fucking hell.

3-1 to us. Why the negativity? It was like this before the game against WH, and then it was like this again before the game against Spurs. Come on man, we're gonna win this. We're at home, we were that bad in the last game that BS made the whole team watch it again, and we'll probably have a striking 'partnership' up front, and someone who can hold the ball up and thus give us more possession in their half of the pitch. All points to a victory for us, especially against a team we've beaten on numerous occasions at home! Edit - If Zoggy starts, we win.

Fabregas or Essien. Seems that Essien's quite underrated on here. I think he's the glue to Chelsea's team - without him they're very vulnerable and usually get dominated. Edit - Good thread btw, we haven't had a good Gen Footie thread started in a while. 2nd edit - I think Gerrard's not been at his best for quite a while now - excluding his wondergoal against Villa in the opening week that is. Didn't finish last season well (I still remember his miss in the Champs League final), hasn't been that good for England and now he seems unable to drive Liverpool forward like he used to do so well a couple of seasons ago, which is actually a polar opposite to Fab's fabulous form atm - showed his class on Sunday.

I don't think I've ever sat down at an away game

I admired Keegan for his outburst about Fergie, the players should have watched it and ran through walls for him but they didn't, that was down to them not him. blueyes.gif I was a kid then but I identified with how he felt. He was a fan, just like the rest of us were.

Tbh, I think I'll we'll all be really lucky if we ever see a Newcastle team play as well Keegan's team did.

This is what I said in the pre-match thread and it seems that my initial fears about the team selection were very justifiable. We've already seen this at Derby and now we've seen it again - we just cannot go away from home against 'shit' teams and play for a draw. The Bolton game earlier this season also demonstrated this fact even though we won. We seem unable to create any chances playing this formation and seem to invite the opposition to just come at us and score. And obviously that's quite a shit tactic since we're not adept at playing quick incisive counter-attacking football, especially with one of our best counter-attacking midfielders on the bench today (Zoggy). We're not Arsenal. We're not going to be able to score from an opponent's corner kick especially since we leave our most direct player on the bench. It's really baffling why, if Zoggy was fit, he didn't start and at least try to get us going in the right direction from the off. Out of our 5 away games this season, we've produced two or three truely abject performances which is unacceptable, especially against teams like Derby, Reading and Boro. Hopefully Allardyce will realize that we don't have the personnel nor do the players have the ability, at the moment, to play this counter-attacking-based formation in away games. We have to play like we do in our home games because I'd take our attack over most of the rest of the Premiership's attacks any day of the week. I'd take Martins, Owen, Emre, Zoggy, Barton et al over players like Doyle, Hunt, Harper etc. etc. It's just so frustrating that our manager does not realize this. They (the teams we play against) should be afraid of us. Not the other way around. Make them chop and change to deal with the movement of Owen, the pace of Martins and the directness of Zoggy! However, saying all that, our home form has been a massive improvement over the past couple of seasons so there's no doubt that we're heading in the right direction, Allardyce just needs to change his mentality for away games and we're nearly there. We'll be better next week.

Any idea of the bench? Where's Zoggy? Did Sam not see how poor we were offensively when we didn't have anyone driving at the other team on Monday night? Fucking hell, seems like he's looking for a 1-0, instead of actually going out and playing. Though this should probably go in the thread, these are the kind of games which will decide whether Sam stays here for a while or not. Most of us don't seem to expect to get much from games against the top 4, so it's 'okay' if we get dominated and lose - we're all frustrated (like we were against Arsenal) but we seem to know that we were up against a better team. However, when we're up against teams like Reading, Derby, and Boro away and we go out defensively, Sam will get criticized to fuck because we all know how that's not our speciality. If we at least attack and play football, at least Sam will have that even if we don't get any points. He needs to improve the football that we play away from home.

Imo we're heading in that direction so that's why I'm really optimistic about Sam's (and Ashley's) era.

The good thing is he seems to have gotten over the initial pressure of wearing the No.9. Honestly, I don't even think about Shearer when I see Martins now. Initially, I have to admit, I did think quite a bit about whether he'll be good enough for the shirt but over time he's proved himself capable of doing a job and is now on his way to making the shirt his own. I haven't felt this good about the club since we came 4th in Bellamy and Robert's first season

Same team as last game. Bring on Smith for Martins/Owen early in the second half if nothing is happening and then throw on Viduka for a midfielder if we're still down with about 15 minutes left. We need to play this time around (as opposed to what we did against Derby). No hoofing it up because that's probably what Reading will be doing to us. Keep the ball on the ground, Owen will be looking for channels to run into so we'll have an outlet for the defence and midfield. And then of course we should be looking to play the ball behind the defence each and everytime we have a chance because Martins will burn them over and over. He created about 4 chances against Spurs just by being a fast tit so we need to utilize this attribute of his over and over and over again. Butt and Emre do seem to have developed a balance in midfield, and it's even better that Butt doesn't seem to be alone in trying to join in the attack (which he was when Geremi was in center mid). The only real position I'm worried about is RM because Geremi will be up against a pacey-ish leftback (Shorey). He was ineffective (at best) against Spurs, so maybe Milner should have a go. That's the only change that'd be acceptable. Anyway, howay the lads. Win this and we're at the 2pts/game average = top-four form!

Any news on Zoggy's niggle?