The Bonk

Who would you rather have, Dave? Mourinho in an instant, but ONLY if we lost Allardyce. I wouldn't want to see us sack Allardyce. If that makes sense. Yeah, I see your thinking there and agree. I'd probably prefer Mourinho as well, but I don't think he's all that different from Allardyce (Tactic's wise). He's a winner though and has one up on Big Sam in that department.

Who would you rather have, Dave?

Has Carson? I'm looking on the bright side. That's taken at least 2m off his price in January

That's nice of you.

if they go 3-0 up then yes i think so There that much difference between 3-0 and 2-0?

;D Amazing!

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.