Unbelievable

Nolan man ffs..

Where was Perch..?

Weird sub...

I think we'll see a lot of that this season. Stamina is a bit of a problem for both players. And may I say, for the first time this season, Shola is better than he's given credit for. How's that? ameobi's goal record last season was better than anyone in the division per goal Heh?

I think we'll see a lot of that this season. Stamina is a bit of a problem for both players. And may I say, for the first time this season, Shola is better than he's given credit for. How's that?

Shola to the rescue...

Harsh on Hughton.. He can only work with what he gets moneywise...

true although to be fair we could have Villa or Torres up front and still wouldn't have looked like scoring, the service is crap. Not in this match it isn't...

Impressed with our style of play as much as anything.. Good to see we are actually trying to play football, with a lot of movement going on and using pace and width. Now all we seemingly need is some fucker who can put the ball in the net (alongside Carroll).

WTF was that by Harper!

Barton seems to be losing the ball a lot..

Good goal, susses to sleep there..

Aye, seems to be working well..

fuck me, that was close..

Jonas seems to be allowed to roam over the place a lot..

Great play that was...

This isn't happening for real, is it?

Wow, hadn't opened this thread before. What a pleasant surprise that was! Great work! Keep 'm coming Kasper!

Not really. They won't take any of our s*** players.

I want to see Krul lift the trophy so I can change my avatar...

World Cup final. Thanks for reminding me..

Heh?

What a pillock..

Every club is that. Even the big clubs like are s*** as soon as they get some injuries. I reckon that the majority of the top 4's reserves could all make an impact on our first XI Probably true. But they can't make the same impact in their respectively first XI. Which is why I said that every club will have problems as soon as some injuries to some key players come around. Even our first XI is going to struggle to keep our necks above water. We need a full strength team for basically the whole season to have even half a chance of survival. It's a bit different to the difference between 3rd and 4th. I really think (and hope) we aren't that bad tbh. We are if we don't strengthen further, no doubt about it..

How are we "consolidating" anything if we end up not significantly improving on a weaker squad than the one we got relegated with the last time, and with the remnants of quality left one year closer to the ends of their contracts? Consolidating our position in the Premier League means staying up this year, no matter how we do it. Next year we'd no longer be a newly-promoted team and would have the benefit of two season's worth of Premier League income etc, which if it's anything like as lucrative as you've mentioned before will surely see us with a nice transfer kitty. If that doesn't prove to be the case I won't be happy at all. I'd say us having a weaker squad now is debatable tbh, not that it's even possible to compare any season with the train wreck when we went down. Every conceivable thing that could go wrong went wrong. We might have fewer individual talents now but we have better team IMO. As I said before, me being happy just to stay up by any means this time does not mean I'm happy with doing that every year. I can't understand how accepting the situation we're in somehow means I advocate it and want it to continue forever. Again In the same way being satisfied with making astute and low-risk signings doesn't mean that we're happy to sign second-rate players, not hating Ashley and anything Ashley-related doesn't mean that we want the club to languish in the lower half of the league for eternity fighting relegation battle after relegation battle. UV - Going back to your earlier post about the players who 'took us up to 7th', individually, there were some very good players but if they lack the winning mentality, then it doesn't matter how much you spend. Again, I'm going back to my long-standing question of why people attach such significance to the price & wage of a player (i.e. if we're spending lots of money, it's a good thing and we're signing world beaters ) - it's defintely a recurring trait amongst the Ashley bashers. Price is just the amount of money someone is willing to pay for something. It doesn't intrinsically represent the true value or worth of a good (i.e. player) to the club. It's easy to argue that if you're spending more money on players then you have a greater chance of getting together a squad of 'better' skilled players, but our recent experience doesn't support it. I'm not going to speculate on the income levels for this season, best to wait for last season's accounts to come out next March/April and see which direction the club is heading off the pitch. You can only bash Ashley with the concrete numbers from the accounts published, which shows that he's still using his own funds to run the club. People argue this, because it is factually true and can be scientifically proven. You may want to have a read through this for example: http://tomkinstimes.com/2009/10/the-cost-of-premiership-success/ Now, I know spending more does not guarantee better performances, nothing can. Make no mistake though, by spending less or nothing at all whilst our competitors are, we would in effect be decreasing our chance of success in reaching our objective (in this case survival in the Premiership), and no amount of pulling together or strength of character is going to save our bacon when the bad results start rolling in and our collective of players will just not have enough quality about them to turn the tide. I am reasonably satisfied with the business done so far, but I feel we still need some genuine quality added in midfield and up front if we want to have a fighting chance of staying up.