afar

I don't think this picture is ever coming back on, probably a good thing.

Good lost the tv feed here

Absolutely fucking shocking, what the hell are lthey doing out there. No passion at all, losing every 50-50. And those fucking horrible Stevenage fans, every single chant is nagative, full of hate.

I'm still amazed how Grant is still in the job tbh. Hodgson will be lucky to survive the day, and I'll be amazed if he's still their boss for the next league game. Houllier is probably safe for now, but a couple more defeats and he could be out. Ancelotti is living on time he boughjt last year for winning the league, how long that will buy him is a mystery, but I wouldn't be surprised to see him go soon or last all the way to the end of the season.

Just finished watching it. I think the game will be remembered by most neutrals because of the ineptetude of West Ham, but that's doing us a injustice tbh. We controlled it from start to finish and took advantage of West Ham's poor defending. Best really did well, all three goals were taken superbly and Barton was just what we've come to expect from him this season, outstanding, imo another England cap shouldn't be far away. One of the most pleasing things for me was the way we defended at the end, despite being 5-0 up in cruise control at the end of a grueling christmas period, down to 10 men, our defenders will still throwing their bodies in front of the ball trying to preserve the clean sheet. That showed a lot about the character of the players, simply marvelous.

They seem to play teams at the right time and get large slices of luck. They obviously are well drilled at the back, because it is seems they are always in games, and bar the thrashing we gave them they don't conceed to often. But they must be riding their luck surely that'll run out soon.

Talking about goals I think it's a bit funny bottom of the table West Ham have only scored three less goals than sixth placed Mackems. That gives me a bit of hope that we can catch the dirty scum. They've either defended fabulously all season (bar our game of course) our they've had a large slice of luck this year.

Nope we are not, and amazingly we are just seven points clear of the bottom. Having said that we would have to implode on a gigantic scale to drop now I think, there's too many simply awful teams between us and the bottom to have me overly worried.

West Brom and in as bad a run of form as anyone at the moment.

Just watched Houlier's post match interview, he sounded like a beaten man. I think they are in a lot of trouble, it'll be poetic justice after their fans behaviour when we went down, but I would love to see them go, feel sorry for Houlier. I'm laughing at bit at all the villa fans who were happy to see O'Neill go

West Ham were quite cofortably the worst team we've played this season, their ineptness in the game at their place wasn't really reflected in the scoreline. No reason at all why we shouldn't expect another win tonight, even if they've picked up a few points recently.

I'm not convinced Villa have nothing to worry about, they played well against Chelsea, but have a terrible goal difference and there's problems there in the camp. They've probably got too good a squad of players on paper to go down but so did we two years ago. Everton struggle to score and that could kill them, especially without Cahill for a while for the Asian cup thing. Although I think they have way too good a team an manager to seriously be contenders. Liverpool will be fine, although that won't be good enough for their fans.

If Brum win their game in hand, Wigan would be third bottom on 20 pts from 20 games. So that's 1 point a game average, scale that out till the end of the season and it's a 39 point target to stay up.

Blackburn's a good shout, caretaker in charge, average at best set of players.

They've really had a fantastic season tbh, what a job Holloway has done, they might still go, that's how crazy the division has been this year, but even if they do, they've shown a lot of people wrong.

Shit forgot about them and we just played them

Thought I would bump this. Funny to see that the current bottom three, 20 people voted for Wolves, while only one a piece voted for Brum and Fulham. Right now I have no freakin idea who the final 3 will be, thought West Ham were certianties up until a week or two ago, now they're 16th ! I can't think of an occassion were at least one of the bottom 3 hasn't been in the relegation positions for the majority of the season, so that does not bode well for Wolves or West Ham. If I were going to pick three though right now, I would go with WWW - Wolves (just don't seem to be able to get themselves out of it), West Ham (I have a feeling their current form is only temp, they were certainly the worst team we've faced this year) and West Brom (who have been quietly slipping down the table). But I could be totally wrong.

Now I like that suggestion but too expensive ? too high wages ?

Would prefer for us to go for the unproven, promising signings over the likes of Keane tbh. Honestly think the squad at the minute is good enough to keep is up and we should be looking to the future in the transfer market, rather than trying to consolidate. That's kind of where I was coming from too. I get Yorkie's point also, he feels we need someone to stay up. Perhaps I'm a more optimistic but I seen enough from the current squad to feel we have the qulaity to survive comfortably already and we need to start looking towards the future. A win on Wednesday, might change our policy a bit, especially if we could follow that up with another win before we sign someone, that would put us on 31 points and only a complete implosion would stop us from accumulating enough points over the last 4 months of the season to survive.

I was angry as hell at it appointment, but he's doing OK so far, no real complaints. Results are what will define him obviously, and even the most sceptical of us will warm to the guy, if the team is successful on the pitch.

Hatem Ben Arfa, for me, unless he means Ben Arfa plus one. Then I would like to us take a gamble on a lesser known player plying his trade in a foregin league (ala Tiote) or a youngster such as Ipswich's young kid Whickham. I have no idea who the lesser known player could be, but that's why we employ scouts. Just not really excited about the usual suspects we are linked with, but I have little doubt, we'll go down the route of familiarity.

I didn't think it was too bad a game tbh. Especially the first half. Good performance, but shaky at times at the back but we deserve nothing less than the 3 points.

Absolutely vital win, good job guys.

Played well offensively there. Hope we don't regret not scoring more. Defensively, we look fragile. theat would be the big worry for Pardew at half time.

Enrique's having a mare, he's going to cost us here, if he doesn't start getting a grip of things.