Thorpinho

can whoever has this banner fuck off please? Mike Ashley and co's incompetencies or otherwise have absolutely nothing to do where he is from. I go every week and its offensive considering i have family from London. Its something you might expect to see from some of those braindead charvers on sky sports news. Thinking that they represent fans could not be further from the truth, carrying that banner round represents ignorance stupidity and nothing else.

Hey, I don't know if this is being posted in the right place or if anyone will be able to help but thought I would give it a go... My girlfriend works for a secondary school in the north east and wants to try to arrange something with the players or the club for the kids e.g meeting players or doing something for their school magazine etc. Does anyone on here have any knowledge about the club doing this sort of thing or the best way for her to go about arranging it? Would appreciate any help, cheers

although its not saying much, he was our best player against hull

Temuri Ketsbaia.

The biggest thing by far that disappoints me is the fact that going to the matches wont be as good any more. Keegan had got the team playing well and i was for the first time in several years enjoying turning up and watching the team play some good stuff. Whilst i think the board room stuff is ludicrous, at the end of the day thats not what im interested in. I pay to watch good football, and i feel that with keegan now gone the chances of seeing that on a regular basis are somewhat diminished.

thats clearly not the point i was making

Whilst the figures being talked about particularly with Man City are insane, is it that different to when millionaires ran football clubs and not billionaires? 10-15 years ago millionaire owners were buying their way to success with signings like shearer for 15 million, now its billionaires buying 30 million players. Even going back to the amateur football days clubs were known to be paying players an extra 10 quid a week to make sure they had the best line ups to win the trophies. The game is getting worse because of stupid money, but i dont think its that drastic a change. I do think a FIFA imposed wage and transfer cap is a great idea though, and would make it more about managing your club and the money instead of just throwing truck loads of cash at players.

"It would leave the beaten Champions League finalists and Premier League runners-up desperately short of world-class candidates for their hotseat" Yeah because no one would want the Chelsea job would they. How stupid is the person that wrote this? If Mark Hughes was their top candidate then all the caviar must be going to Roman's head.

One thing that disappoints me about what Ferguson has clearly done to him, is that now he seems to rarely shoot from outside the area. He has a great shot on him from distance and i would like to see him try it more often like he did when he was younger. Especially for England.

well if ronaldo is worth 100 mil in today's money, then surely maradona would be pretty much the equivalent or higher.

I said at the time when West Ham were let off on the points deduction thing, that the FA had set themselves a dangerous precedent and completely nullified the threat of docking points. This Birmingham scenario could show that to be true. On the other hand, if they do deduct points, then all the remarks and talk of london bias will be confirmed as totally true. Either way the FA will have once again confirmed themselves as idiots and that they are run by incompetent morons.

Utterly disgusted by the result. Extremely dubious penalty, but if the bindippers get that one then why the hell didnt Hleb get a penalty last week? When the commentator said last night about the prospect of Liverpool Chelsea again i felt almost physically sick, is there a more overhyped let down of a game anywhere on the planet? Every time they play each other its like watching paint dry. Walcott's run was absolutely class, im glad he is starting to show glimpses of what he is capable of.

Was it CoachHTT that was in love with Sam Allardyce and used to write essays to that effect on here? I hope he hasn't cursed it again On a serious note, Keegan seems to be the sort of manager that thrives on momentum and once he has that it will be difficult to stop us moving up the table - but talk of champions league is etc is very fanciful unless we get some serious quality.

Whilst we will probably have a substantial amount of money to spend, i really dont see the point in wasting millions of pounds on a position that does not need strengthening compared to the rest of the team. We need to be spending big on the midfield, not the full backs.

Fair comment. I would prefer Enrique to be a bit quicker maybe, but otherwise I think the "defensive" aspect starts further up the field. Man for man, those 4 players are a lot better than the ones we had under Bobby Robson that qualified for the Champs League and europe, apart from Bernard who was the best player at the time, and Distin who was only on loan in the first qualification season. It is likely Spurs may get a few goals, but it is also possible that if we take the game to them and play well on the day we will get a few goals especially if they themselves play their all out attacking game, At the end of the day, we just need 4 or 5 points to stay up and it doesn't really matter where we get them. The home games against Reading and the mackems look the best bet, but does anybody think we are going to lose all of our last 4 away games ? I wasn't really meaning to make any comment on the ability or otherwise of Enrique, just that people get very carried away with a win and a clean sheet talking about consistency and stuff, which will inevitably be followed by a barrage of criticism if we ship a few against spurs.

It will be interesting to compare the posts in here about the defence with the ones post spurs if we concede a few goals and say for example Enrique gets destroyed by Lennon.

might not want nicky butt hitting it but Michael Owen definitely needs some serious encouragement to shoot!

He is crap, over the last couple of years the Spurs defence has been even worse than ours with him as a regular. No pace and not better than what we have. On top of that is the fee, which has the English multiplier on it as well.

Commitment and loyalty are largely irrelevant in the premiership these days. We have the likes of Butt, Barton and especially Smith who give all the teamwork/commitment talk and we are utter crap with these players. A few years ago we had a bunch of total cunts like Dyer, Jenas, Bellamy, Robert and we were in the champions league. I dont want to get into a debate about the examples of players i have used there, just wanting to make the point that you can be a lazy player who doesnt care and be very successful.

I agree with the point about the pressure being huge, and it is just going to get worse and worse and worse with every game we dont win. If we get nothing at Birmingham then the next game becomes worse and it gets to the players even more. As soon as we win one game we will be fine and the pressure will go - the problem is that that first win might just come too late.

The fans can make a difference. What would really make a difference though is dropping the players that are playing shite.

Well at the very least its good to see that our new set up of Wise/Jimenez/Vetere are doing something productive, and we are no longer sitting around asking the questions we used to ask like "i wonder if freddy shepherd has heard of Samir Nasri"

The saddest thing of all is that Smith will almost definitely be here next season!

For me this article pretty much sums up why the useless plank keeps getting in the team. We are in a battle or whatever cliche you want to use, and day to day on the training ground KK/allardyce/whoever would be seeing Smith's undoubtedly great attitude. His "sir yes sir!" approach to training must just convince the management that hes really up for it and motivated and consequently they pick him. Its an incredibly dated and sunday league approach to picking a player but it is the only logical reason i can see for him getting in the team on a weekly basis, ahead of the quieter players/less hard working players like Emre.

Agree with that. The amount of times the ball goes out for a throw in and the linesman deliberately waits for the ref to decide which way it goes before flagging in agreement is ridiculous. They're there to make decisions like that but haven't got the courage of their convictions to do so. And it's f****** annoying. Its not just throwins. Literally the ONLY decision a linesman makes on his own is offside, that is their sole purpose it would seem. If they had some balls they would be able to help the ref on corners throwins goal kicks, fouls, penalties. The only time a linesman waves his flag around is when someone has been poleaxed right in front of them. The refs themselves in general perform pretty much at the limit of their ability. The best referees are the strongest characters - but thats not something you can teach. We cant have 'how to be Collina' seminars. Its part of the game though, and for the most part referees dont win or lose a team competitions (unless your italian, in which case your fucked )