KaKa

Singling players out is ridiculous.

The one constant in this team all season has been Butt. He takes the most responsibility in my book.

Everyone else has been dropped at some point, be it Duff, Owen, Martins, Jonas etc.

Nicky Butt apparently is our most important player as he is straight into the team when fit, this despite being one of the worst players at the club including the reserves and all.

Ultimately though, as I have said before, management must take the blame because butt cannot be expected to take himself out of the team. Every manager has failed u sin this respect.

distin is everything that coloccini, isn't

 

they have a very good defense

 

Coloccini had a decent game.

 

lucky not to give away another penalty this season, he's just a bramble is disguise, your waiting for 1 mistake from him

 

distin was awesome, handled everything we threw at their defence with ease, why the f*** did we not pay the wages ffs for him

 

I've not seen any coverage of the game but in real time it looked like a penalty to me. I couldn't understand why Crouch wasn't booked though if it wasn't a pen? Blatant dive if not. Other than that I thought he was alright, particularly considering the criticism he's had lately.

 

Watched the game on Setanta and although from the front it looked a certain pen when showed from other angles he actually pulled his legs back away from Crouch so didn't in fact touch him. He had a good game and Butt was excellent too both commentators said he put a great shift in. What was obvious is that the defence and midfield were constantly gesturing for the attack to make runs and come for the ball which simply wasn't happening.

 

To be fair to Pompey they played really, really well and I doubt even the top teams would have scored against them last night.  On a positive note we looked like a different team last night than what we usually do (loads more effort and desire). If we play the same way for the remaining games we should get something from them to keep us up.

 

Butt excellent? Put in a great shift?

We don't need good shifts we need him to maintain posession of the ball as much as possible and simple effective passing to players who can try to make things happen.

Butt has not had a single good game this season. He has delivered us into the hands of relegation.

I know crazier things have happened and am quite suprised with my whole glass half full approach to all of this, but we could actually pick up points against Liverpool.

 

I'm not suggesting we're going to win or even saying I think we will win, but there is still a chance we might nick a draw or even a fluke win against them.

Hey man, I like your positive outlook on things as I am generally a very very positive and optimistic person, but they will KILL us. Our focus should be conceding as few as possible and not damaging our goal dofference which is an advantage we have over some around us.

Rafa could play the likes of David Ngo'g, Lucas, Babel and Benayoun and these guys would absolutely still maul us to bits. We are a nothing team whose only hope of victory is against the teams most similar to oursekves who are in and around us.

He has been very poor lately, but at least he is still finding himself in these positions and trying to score. It's a shame he hasn't managed it.

 

Where are all our other strikers though? Who else is stepping up to the plate and trying to take some responsibility? Who else is getting shots in on goal?

 

Say what you will, and I do agree he has been poor of late but at least Oba isn't hiding.

 

Neither were the two other strikers who played last night, actually.

 

Owen is hiding 99.9% of the time he is on the pitch.

 

Viduka hasn't even managed to find his way on to the pitch and has been hiding in treatment rooms.

 

If Owen was hiding he wouldn't have stolen Martins's throughball to fluff that 1v1, and he was doing plenty of defending for us on top of that (not his job though, and should have saved his stamina for making runs to get on the end of things instead). f*** off with the Viduka comment, what is he supposed to do about that?

You know what you're right. Owen isn't so much hiding he's just become a really really rubbish striker who never gets attempts in on goal because he cannot shoot from outside the box, cannot go by anyone or make any meaningful contributions to general play (the occasional cute but non-incisive link up play DOES NOTHING!). You keep waiting on that perfect ball Micheael, so we can all watch you fluff it again with another one of those pathetically weak strikes of yours.

What can Viduka do? How about making a commitment to his team and taking better care of his body? He's a disgrace. All his fitness problems have clearly been down to the despicable condition he is in.

He has been very poor lately, but at least he is still finding himself in these positions and trying to score. It's a shame he hasn't managed it.

 

Where are all our other strikers though? Who else is stepping up to the plate and trying to take some responsibility? Who else is getting shots in on goal?

 

Say what you will, and I do agree he has been poor of late but at least Oba isn't hiding.

 

Neither were the two other strikers who played last night, actually.

Owen is hiding 99.9% of the time he is on the pitch.

Viduka hasn't even managed to find his way on to the pitch and has been hiding in treatment rooms.

It pretty much is all over ...

It will hurt like hell, but probably not as much as most think it will, because if we are all being honest with ourselves this team, probably moreso than all the others deserves to go down.

They have been awful in every way shape and form throughout the season.

He has been very poor lately, but at least he is still finding himself in these positions and trying to score. It's a shame he hasn't managed it.

Where are all our other strikers though? Who else is stepping up to the plate and trying to take some responsibility? Who else is getting shots in on goal?

Say what you will, and I do agree he has been poor of late but at least Oba isn't hiding.

I must be the only one who thought the atmosphere was pretty damn good, at least for the first hour anyway.

It was never going to be sustainable as people began to realise how dire things were as we continued to fluff chances and make a mess of things.

Any fan even in the stadium gets credit for simply showing up in my book. The players on this team don't even deserve that much support for their performances this season.

For someone who relies on confidence so much it is not going to pretty watching him play in our current team of worthless cowards who inspire no confidence in anyone. The greater the pressure and the lower the confidence in our team the less of a player Martins will look unfortunately.

And yet he is still the most likely to score the goals we need to stay up.

Put him in a team that is playing well where other players around him can make things happen and it isn't all on him and he is dynamite. It's always been the case with this guy.

An Everton or a Villa would be smart to take a flye ron him in the summer for around £8 million. He would be a very good player in either of these teams.

People will cry their hearts out and weep uncontrollably when Redknapp comes back in for him and he joins Spurs on the cheap and puts in legendary performance week after week when he is in a team that can pass the ball effectively.

And boy o boy will I bump this shit then!

Anyone critisizing this guy clearly doesn't understand how ill suited he is to our tragedy of a team where not one other player has even a tenth of the ability or heart that he does.

Why are people talking about Butt putting in a shift or supposedly breaking up play and winning the ball back?!

Are you kidding me!

Yes he does try hard and actually seems to care, but at the end of the day his play is the most detrimental to the functioning of the whole team and it has been this way all season. Ultimately though, he cannot be expected to go to the manager and say he doesn't want to play because he is crap. The managers have all failed in this regard because they haven't taken responsibility of the situation.

So he puts the odd tackle in? Big fookin deal! Half the time he is unable to get around the pitch well enough and is just by passed. He never ever ever, not even once ever, uses the ball productively. This is someone that plays 90 mins every match by the way! Do you know how easy that makes life for the opposition? They don't even have to take account of him no pressure needed, just let him have the ball and get tight on everyone else as he will just lob it back to our goali alld day. It is ludicrous.

People talk about having no one else play there because we have no other DM. Well I would argue he has been so bad that it would have been worth trying anyone else in there DM or not. Alan Smith should have got more of an opportunity in there, Guthrie, Geremi and yes even Coloccini.

This season we have seen the likes of Coloccini get benched for a bad game, we've seen Enrique get benched numerous times for no absolute reason whatsoever in my book, we've even seen Jonas benched for supposedly not being effective enough (HA!!!) for goodness sake! Yet Butt remains. If Butt's name was Butticini he would have been fookin run out of the club by now and denounced as an epic disaster to football. It is laughable it really is.

This is someone who Souness had written off three/four years ago. Souness for crying out loud?! One of the lowest rated managers of this club in recent times.  Even he knew Butt was rubbish back then.

Here we are in 2009 and Butt is a first teamer week in and week out. No questions asked?!

Bollocks to that. No body on this Earth can justify this sort of decision making.

Still trying to figure out how a grown man can hit the ball no harder than a kitten would ...

Astonishing.

The only condundrum i have is who i dislike more- the insipid Owen or the circus clown Awfulfemi? Shameful that those two pull on the shirt, contribute next to nothing and bleed the club dry. Owen has lost it and Oba just lacks every single quality required to be a good footballer. These mongs don't represent us in anyway shape or form.

 

Pair of bar stewards and I can't wait to see them booted out.

Go with the guy who takes £100,00 a week from the club.

The guy who is supposedly our captain.

The guy who is invisible all game and then doesn't score the chances he supposedly always scores.

The guy who comes to training in a helicopter because he'd rather not live in the area.

The guy who is always injured or not match fit.

The guy who has no left foot, who cannot score from outside the box and who cannot generate the force of a feather on the ball when he shoots.

The guy who never wanted to be here in the first place and can't help but remind us everytime he is on the pitch it seems.

Go with that guy ...

A foreigner sure wouldn't play the likes of Butt and Duff just because they have a bit of good banter with him in the dressing room that's for sure.

In any other language these players are s*** and would be treated like such by a foreign manager.

To continue to trot out the likes of Nicky Butt game after game even after going back and analysing the game tapes is phenomenal to me.

f***ing incompetency from every single one of Allardyce, Keegan, Kinnear and Shearer I'm afraid.

No British manager will ever drop Butt, Duff or Owen. Unlike these dumb fookin foreigners they play with passion man! They got premiership experience man! Used to play for Man U, Chelsea and Liverpool man! They're good for a bit of banter and are good lads around the place man!

FUCKING TRAGEDY!!!

The truth is no team in this league deserves to go down more than these bunch. No one has played worse football over the whole season.

Hoping for a miracle but in all honesty it would be quite undeserved.

£100,00 a week ...

Team Captain ...

Supposed world class finisher ... Mr. One chance and I'll score ... and does nothing else

Mr. Invisible man ...

The weakest weak as piss strike I have ever seen in such a position. The tissue paper man strikes again.

Abomination of a player.

Diop?!!!!!!!! I didn't realise he was playing.

Duff and Smith are going to be falling over and losing the ball as soon as he so much as breathes on them.

Duff will screw everything up by falling over and losing the ball in midfield as soon as he faces any physical pressure.

Butt will be the perpetual mess that he is, but at least we have someone capable of holding up his diabolical limps forward.

Smith will be our best midfielder today.

With the front three we should still win this regardless.

Duff ahead of Guthrie or even Nolan is a mistake for me.

Guthrie has proved he is our best central midfielder and if Nolan is decent at anything it is playing as part of a tighter midfield three.

Macheda does genuinely look like he's going to become a cracking player.

 

Welbeck however looks painfully average.

 

Where's the Danny Rose report i was promised?

 

He's s***, I hope we don't keep him for next season. Headless chicken who can't finish, erratic on the wing, invisible in the centre. Missed two sitters and scored an own goal so far, I'd rather be playing our own headless chickens rather than someone elses.

I thought we saw something very different in the last half-hour or so. As soon as Viduka and Martins came on, we offered something in the last third and with Gutierrez and possibly Barton playing behind those three in the forthcoming games, we'll get goals.

 

First half was poor, but mainly due to the fact that Shearer got his selection wrong again. We have to play with a flat back-four, it's way too confusing for our defenders to shift that formation in this critical time.

 

I'd like to see this formation for the Pompey game, if Barton is fit:

 

----------------Harper----------

Beye--Bassong-Taylor--Duff

--------------Smith--------------

--------Gutierrez-Barton------

-------------Owen--------------

--------Viduka-Martins--------

 

Smith can't pass the ball, can't shoot or anything, but he has a bit of spirit in him, and his legs aren't as tierd as Butts. I'd give him a go.

 

Btw. I think Duff performed OK at LB today and should be played there until Enrique is back.

 

Keep the faith!

Smith's passing was really good today actually.

His passing is a lot beter than people give him credit for you. He doesn't try to do anything too ambitious, but he look sof rthe forward pass to the player closest to him and therefore he is practically Riquelme in comparison to Nicky Butt.

It cannot be underestimated how much Butt negatively affects the whole team.

You just cannot have him in central midfield playing the way he does. He kills us defensively and going forward.

The likes of Nolan, Duff etc who are not that great in the first place are made to look a million times worse as he puts them all under pressure time and time again with his questionable play.

Taking Butt alone out of the team for Guthrie regardless of what formation we play will se us improve about 50% right off the bat.

Still he will remain even after today's performance.

You really have to wonder what it is all about when the guy continues to feature in the game every single week. It is criminal.

There's absolutely no chance in the world of Owen and Butt not being in the starting eleven for the rest of the games this season, barring injury.

FYP

We've just watched 90 mins of football and what has Owen done in this whole time?

You can talk about his goal record all you want but I find it alarming that he doesn't even manage to get any attempts on goal.

He either plays behind a front two or not at all.

The difference Martins made up front was crazy. You can talk about how frustrating he is all you want but we had Spurs o the ropes from the moment he came on and that handball against him before he scored was just bollocks. He should have had a goal there.

Martins and Jonas have to be the first two in the team.

Martins has to play every game from now even if he is on one foot.

The difference he has made has been startling.

It's a joke that anyone compares his effectiveness to Owen's ineffectiveness.

We have actually had strikers on the pitch this half.

Smith's passing has been worlds better than Butt's.