The Bonk

Are NI through if they win?

I can't see losing to Macedonia being the biggest of confidence boosting.

not out of the realm of possibility, is it?

Okie Dokie.

Did you have a clue when you were 14? I didn't think footballers were wankers just for getting injured playing, no. I doubt he quite meant it like that. I'm sure we all said something daft regarding football at 14. Did you have a clue when you were 14? I had a raging clue when I was 14... And at least we get to see our top goal scorer now. Did you hide it behind your books in class? I did. Agreed, can't wait to see Oba get more than 8min +Injury Time.

Please Sam, play him up front in your 4-3-3. Little Mickey is out, now is your chance!

No, he THIGH STRAINS!!!!! Oh yeah, give the drummer some.

Did you have a clue when you were 14?

At PSV? Well yes because he played more games than him, hense scoring more goals. ZINGS!!!!!!!!!!!

Shearer? They just throw that name in for shits and giggles?

Unbelievable that they get away with it. Certainly love a good riot, don't they. A slap on the wrist doesn't seem to be working. Identify those who are the most violent and or repeat offenders, examples need to be made.

Why is that? Too much red wine? Not enough spaghetti? I've never been, but everyone I know who's gone to Italy says it's a great place and the people are quite friendly. Are there that many football hoolies there?

That's absolutely mental, Brummie. What a load of scum, was anyone able to get video evidence? From their mobile or digital camera?

How does an officer fire a warning shot? Is this the wild west? Also, I thought warning shots were fired directly upwards, not into a moving vehicle. Anyway, this is all very tragic and senseless violence, but it's what we've come to expect from Italy. The whole country needs to have a word with themselves.

Do you do any other tricks?

We've been patiently waiting to win something for almost 40 years, we've been patiently waiting to win a domestic trophy for more than 50 years and it's getting closer to the 100 year mark since we won a league title, I would think an 80 year wait is quite a while to be able to claim we've been more than patient. So do you expect instant success from Sam then? Owen. Emre. Viduka. Zoggy. The mackems have never in their entire history had a player within two bloody leagues of the class of these players. Man for man every single player (except GK) they have inferior players to NUFC. I really cannot undertstand why people think its OK for us to go out and get dominated by the mackems. Right now we have a squad that shits all over them. It isn't just because its the derby, exact same argument Derby and Reading. Right now. And yet we get sent home tail between legs. WHY? Because Allardyce has more skill and talent in those four players than he's ever had in his entire career and he has no idea how to use it. Sam clseems to have no desire/ability to use the talent of this squad away from home, and it is probably top 8 at best. That being the case, how is he the man to take us forward? What is the point of bringing in better talent in winter/next summer if he's just going to take it out to pride park and tell them to 'hold out lads, there's a point in this if we graft it'. Lets face it, it isn't about instant success. It's about at this instant, Sam has a much much more talented squad than the bottom 8 teams at least, and he is showing little to no sign of being able to use it intelligently. He is making the same mistakes over and over again. I say give him the season, sure. But if by round 35 he is still going to bottom of the ladder and trying to graft out a point then can't we safely say he's out of his depth? Do we really need another 3 years of trying to turn michael owen into alan smith? Great post. End of the day, we've got better players than a lot of Premiership teams (based on player quality alone I'd say we're top 6 material) yet we're struggling against so many of them. Ridiculous. Maybe we're over-rating the quality of player we have.

you're putting spin on that. i don't think there's a member here who would have said no to 6mill for dyer. also i he didn't want to sell solano, solano requested to leave, and we abliged, as we should have to such a great servant of the club. barton is also creative in my book, or at least that was my impression of him at citeh, didn't he lead their assists last season? personally i'm going to accept allardyce's experimentation up to a point. i rate him as a manager, and experimentation is one thing that i think he is renound for. the only thing that concerns me atm is that he appears to be a slow learner, regarding things that don't work. Selling Dyer and replacing him with Smith is awful which ever way you look at it, ok Dyer wanted to leave but he should have been replaced with a player with a similar amount of pace to get in behind defences. I believe when used correctly, that is Zoggy's realm. We have the players, they just need to be deployed properly.

He'd better see some reserve team action before he does anything with the season he had last year. I still have hope that he can come good, but he's far from a midfield savior. I hope to eat those words, though.

Exactly. All I've been trying to say in this thread. ok, i get that. But no one has yet to explain why those things excuse abhorent tactics like we saw today. I don't think anyone has to. Some of his tactics are shocking, inexcusable. Wish he'd outline his reasoning behind them post-match. Might put some perspective on things.

Ok...apart from that one .. Agree with most of what you said, we looked decent playing for the tying goal, but nowt much else. Sam still has my faith, but those tactics were shocking. I hope he figures this team out sooner rather than later. Also Specky, I seem to recall a certain Derby not too long ago where a team was thoroughly outplayed most of the match yet scrapped a win out due to some lucky bounces and Kasper The Ghost haunting the goal. Nowt mentioning names, though. tbf...we weren't playing Sunderland. And we won. So there. Tbf I was expecting a pretty hopeless attacking performance with that midfield but also thought you were suprisingly iffy at the back. Thought Faye was dodgy apart from a few headers. There was one moment when he made a tackle on Chopra as he was running thru in space in the first half, but he was only in space and not miles offside because Faye was 15 yards behind the rest of the defence in dreamworld. Dug himself out of the hole there, poor for the goal too. Also thought Rozenhal was very iffy - for all his comfort on the ball he doesnt seem to know what to do when he's not got it - and i've never been a fan of Taylor. Very shakey performance defensively IMO - don't think Sam is doing himself any favours with all this chopping and changing, seems to be a new back 4 every week and you don't look that hot there. Got some sort of inverse Benitez thing going on at the back there, doesn't know his best back 4? No-one else seems to change their defence so much. And he signed most of em. Very strange. Agreed, I would love it if Sam stuck with a core group of back 4. Zoggy is not a defensive player and should be in the midfield. In fairness to Rozy, he's not had a run of games and was thrust into an intense Derby, but he should be better off the ball. Again, this is probably due to not playing in matches with the same back 4. Disagree with Faye, though, he was a beast in the CB outside of the goal. Jones is a tricky player to contain, thought Faye did alright. You didn't look much better than us beating the Mackems last monday, you did win though. Lucky Bastid.

Pretty ridiculous, the only reason I can see is that he jumped like that in some sort of crazy defense of getting bowled over or something. I don't know, pretty funny the way he was having a go at the Mackem players after though, having a sinister chuckle.

Agree with most of what you said, we looked decent playing for the tying goal, but nowt much else. Sam still has my faith, but those tactics were shocking. I hope he figures this team out sooner rather than later. Also Specky, I seem to recall a certain Derby not too long ago where a team was thoroughly outplayed most of the match yet scrapped a win out due to some lucky bounces and Kasper The Ghost haunting the goal. Nowt mentioning names, though.

What exactly did Viduka do? He took that elbow to the face like a champ, nowt much else. Martins looked more a threat in the 10min he was on than Viduka did all game.

Just what is Sam telling them to do with the ball? I don't fucking get it, I thought Barton had more guile than what he's shown. Hasn't looked good going forward, at all.

I'll settle for that, much much more work needs to be done. FUCK SETANTA FOR DROPPING THE FEED!!!!