afar

I just don't like the half finished addidas 3 stripes on the shirt, really spoils it for me, why not go all the way down, or highly unlikely since it's addidas's trademark, leave them off altogether.

Excellent. I hope they used permenant marker otherwise that top's never going to get washed. I wonder how many of those will wear the shirt outside the customary last home game of the season ?

League is an abomination of a game, only people in two counties in England and in Australia actually have much interest in it. The last league world cup proved once again what a minor sport it is. Union just offers so much more variety and is much more tactical than, the one dimensional League game. Oh yes, kicking it backwards and forwards to each other for long periods of time is very entertaining. Absolute bollocks, kicking is part of the Union game but not everything.

I've only ever had one name printed on a shirt, that was for one of the cup finals, think 99. I had Hamman put on it, within a couple of months he'd left, haven't done it again. If you want a safe bet, Shola's the way to go

League is an abomination of a game, only people in two counties in England and in Australia actually have much interest in it. The last league world cup proved once again what a minor sport it is. Union just offers so much more variety and is much more tactical than, the one dimensional League game.

Exactly but apparently we all want Hull to win and send us down just so the Mackems can be relegated too ??

Agreed. Who gives a s*** about the mackems when we have the opportunity to guarantee safety for ourselves? Madness. f***ing small-minded man. My cousin is a Mackem and he was saying the same about their fans. Loads of them wanting Hull and 'Boro to keep winning to put us down... slight flaw with that logic there like when they've got Portsmouth and Chelsea to play yet... He said the same has happened in previous seasons when he's been at home/away during pivotal weekends and their fans have cheered goals against us at the back-end of a season, when the team scoring them has gone on to finish above Sunderland and see them relegated. Classic Mackems. Yup, they woud rather see us lose even if its means them being put out by the result. Small minded, But it's our fans saying it, not theirs. Of course the people saying it are probably complete tools. I'm not sure I saw more than one person on this thread say they wanted Hull to win the next game. If we beat fulham and bolton beat hull and sunderland get beat at pompey. I sure as hell want hull to beat Manure (narrowly) because that would have no effect on us, unless we totally self distruct and conceed 8 or 9 goals at Villa (even for us that's not gonna happen). Trust me, no one is seriously hoping Hull win at our expense, you are just being somewhat of a drama queen here.

I'll still fucking hate Manure.

It's not just about Shearer though, when KK was here for his second stint they were singing that song then about keagan. So there's more to it than just Shearer turning them down. I hate Manure, almost as much as the Mackems. They are a horribly arrogant club, with arrogant players, arrogant fans, an arrogant manager and bobby fucking charlton. And why can't they show some originality in their songs, the Manchester races, Glory Glory Man United and of course Cheer up Alan Shearer/Kevin Keegan, all ripped off. Oh I hate them, the media and even other fans just refferring to them as United. They are not even a "united" they just picked the name becasue it sounded cool. Fucking hate them, did I mention that ?

Limited

That's not the full story though. None of the manager's including hughton (who you've missed from that list) have even considered him as an option for the bench. FFS an 18 year old kid who's never played a first team game is considered a better option than Xisco. I've hardly seen the lad play but the coaches seee him every day in training, if he can't make even make a 7 man bench then there is something seriously wrong about his training.

If we survive it'll be fantastic and of course the only thing that should come into our thoughts but it would just be so much sweeter if it was at the Mackems expense.

Even if we do have 20 million to blow the GK situation is not a priority. 20 Million will barely scratch the surface of what we need, this team needs a HUGE makeover, not some cherry on the top type investment we seemed to try last summer. Personally I think a gross spend of around 50 million is the bare minimum we need in order to just get us back into the also rans league. Unfortunately these sorts of numbers are not in Ashley's thinking, and that's why it's more than likely that we'll be in for another fight for our lives next season, should we survive. Of course if we don't all this talk is up in the air and Krul is our future and I believe will make an excellent long term GK solution, putting in someone else would be counter productive to his development and Harper is more than capable of holding down the post until Krul is ready, which I think may even happen some time next season. There's a lot of hope for Forster too apparently.

That would be great but for the sake of my nerves I would rather NUFC win of course, Hull and mackems lose, meaning we are safe, then Hull narrowly beat Manure and the mackems lose to Chelsea. Oh happy days if that scenario pans out.

you never said that but the point is intimated - don't target the outfield players and we're down regardless of whether we have harper and given in goals at the same time we cannot, CANNOT go another season ignoring the glaring deficiencies in our outfield staff harper will be fine for another season, if he's that bad krul will cover simple as Totally agree with MrM and totally disagree with Yorkie. Harper a perfectly competent PL goalkeeper and if we spuk 5million or so of our most probably very limited budget on a replacement, we really need to question those in charge of evaluating our squad.

I hear what you are saying man. A lot it though is down to not being able to see the full picture of things. Understanding it’s not just about the strength of a squad of players on paper that’ll determine your season. It’s hard also for those that have only been with us through the premiership times to recognize the signs. NUFC have only been relegated something like 4 or 5 times in our history and the last time it happened was 20 years ago, to thoroughly appreciate what caused our demise back then you would need to be in your 30’s at the very least. The signs were all there for us that were old enough to remember to see early season. I had gone in to that season full of hope, OK we lost Beardsley in the summer but we had got good money from him and we had made some what looked like decent signings. Dave Beasant looked like the dominant GK we had needed for a while, Andy Thorn the strong CB that we long be short of. John Hendrie was a hugely exciting prospect on the wing and John Robertson had scored goals for fun up in Scotland and looked a good bet to fill Beardo shoes. Unfortunately only John Hendrie lived up to their billing, we were beset by off the field issues as the crowd who were already antagonised by the sale of yet another star in the summer saw the money wasted on underperforming players. John hall was making his first moves to organize some sort of resistence. The Manager for the large part of the season was clueless and the board too late at replacing him. The club was unstable off the pitch and clearly not good enough on the pitch. Those were the same things we could see in 2008/9,we were obvious unstable (even more so than 89) off the pitch, we had fan dissention as we did back then, we had the same type of manager clearly not up to the job and we had a paper thin squad of over paid players of question character (slightly different from 89, as the first team should have been more than capable but the history of injuries meant we had to look past the first choice players). If you're only old enough to have known Premiership football then you’ll have seen us sometimes flirt with relegation, but at the end of the day never been in too much danger of going down. You've also seen other “big” clubs, Aston Villa, Man City, Everton, Spurs etc, have similar flirtations but ultimately be fine. So it’s hardly surprising that some thought the situation wasn’t as dire as it was being made out to be.

Fulham have had a great season, and it will be a tough game but lets not make them out to be world beaters. They are much much more potent at home than they are away. And remember our game with them at their place we took the lead and were cruising until Cacapa decided to prove he's not really up to top flight football. There is no reason in the world why we can not beat Fulham at home. I'm confident we'll get something out of the game and if we play with the same amoubnt of effort and desire as last night, I think we'll win. We never took the lead. Even after we equalised, they scored straight away again. I guess my memory is playing tricks on me, I could have sworn Shola put us in front, but you're probably right being a young whippersnapper. Anyway I remember being not too impressed with them and feeling they were fortunate we had Cacapa in our team or there was no way they were winning that game.

It's amazing how they still harbour this grudge against us and shearer, we are a non entity to them now, we are in no shape or form any sort of a challenge, we are not a local rival to them but their fans still seem to act as if we are. When they were playing boro recently, they sung for long periods of the game, that song, that they copied from us who twisted it from the mackems original version. They've also got other fans singing it now. Unbeliveable, why do they care ??

Going through your team and asssuming we are in the PL next season. I don't think a GK should be a priority at all, more than happy with what we have. In terms of the defence I agree with you on the need for another left back, we may also need to look at replacing Colocinni, with someone that actually knows how to play CB. The rest are fine. The midfield is where I see most of our activity needing to be focused. We need a younger defensively minded midfielder to take over from Butt when he retires, probably at the end of the 2010/11 season, I think the management will try to get one more season out of him. Smith could be that option, but I'm not convinced, Guthrie I don't think is a DM at all. We also desperately need that creative midfielder we've failed to pick up in the last few windows. And we need a back up for him too. Barton of course will leave, Nolan and Smith should be moved on for me. The wide men need revisiting, I would give Jonas one more season to see if he can add an end product to his willingness to work. Duff's contract probably prevents us from moving him on, and his versitilaty would come in handy. So we need a left and right winger, of sufficient quality to be pushing for a first team place right away. Up front, Owen will most likely be gone, Viduka probably too, I think we need to move Martins on too if we can get our money back I would take it in a shot. If we could get rid of Shola to some championship team, that would be a bonus. Xisco too needs to be moved on, there's got to be a reason why each of the managers this season has failed to even offer the guy a place on the bench. If that all happened of course we are kinda screwed for strikers. Lovenkrands should be offered an extension, Carrol maybe moves into a more prominant role. But we'll need 2 more strikers, I would like a small fast one with excellent finishing skills and a strong one able to hold up the play and bring other players into play. Both those players would cost a lot of money, but maybe we can find a bargain in some obscure league somewhere. At the end of the day to make the necessary changes to the squad we need serious funds. A budget of 25 - 50 million needs to be released. I can't see Ashley doing that, so unless we get real lucky finding more bassong type players, we'll struggle to improve on this season.

Viduka's contract technically does not run out this year, there is an option for a 3rd year. I'm not sure what the terms are but I would imagine it would be on the same money as he is now. I guess we would have to release him from that contract and then attempt to resign him if we want to change the terms of his contract to a pay as you play one, which would be the sensible course of action.

Vital that we beat Fulham and hope that Bolton wake up and put on a performance for their last game at home this season. Then we won't give a damn what team Manure field.

Rugby Union is a great sport Rugby League is wank. Would be great to see the world cup played at SJP. The pitch will be fine. I doubt we'll win the bid though, probably go to Japan, but we'll get it next time we bid for it, which will probably be 2019. And btw, it's not a combined England and Wales bid, it's just England bidding on it.

One thing is for sure with this game, we must match or preferably better Hull result. Going in to the last game back in the bottom 3 could by a pyschological killer for us.

I was pleased with his contribution last night, except the stupid block at the corner, could have got the goal chalked off and there was no need to do it as Taylor had lost his marker anyway. That's all I really care about for now. In the summer we can think about his future.

I was reading some threads from around transfer deadline day back in September. I was being my usual pessimistic self and described the deadline day deals as underwhelming, while others were much more optimistic. But even I did not think they would turn out as badly as they have. Their combined playtime this season would be barely over 1 and a half games. Shocking waste of the last day of the transfer window, luckily for us we made amends in the January window