ikri

Wonder how long it'll take for someone in the post match analysis to come out with the these decisions all balance out in the end line. They absolutely do not balance out & they played a part in getting us relegated last time around (non existent penalties, free kicks, corners, etc.). Considering who we were playing, £180m+ worth of players + a shit ref, we did well & were unlucky in the end. Jonas did well, Shola played his part as well as he could, the defence were well organised for the most part. Nolan was missing again for most of the game and if Carroll's poor performance against Stoke saw him dropped then Nolan's performances in the last couple of games should probably see him put down.

"Open to debate" What debate? Their pen wasn't a foul & was outside the box, our claim was a clear trip inside the box. We've been robbed by this clown of a referee

46 minutes & Nolan's name has finally been mentioned.

Great goal

Am I allowed to be devastated that for the first time in ages, I've lost all hope the the team I'm supporting might be more than a bunch of grafters holding on for dear life? Ridiculous foul by Williamson. What a worthless match this is shaping up to be. Won the ball as shown on the replays, never a pen.

These tossers on ESPN keep going on about how fair a challenge it was, but now they're refusing to show some of the replays due to how bad the challenge actually was.

Just bizarre. Carroll was poor because the entire game plan against Stoke failed. Plan A (get crosses into Carroll's head & hope for a flick-on or header on target) didn't work because the Stoke defenders were better than Carroll in the air and there was no Plan B. When we played the ball on the ground we looked comfortable in possession and we were always going to get chances from free-kicks around the box but we kept on persisting with the same tactics for 90 minutes even though it was obvious they weren't going to work after 10 minutes. If Carroll has been dropped because he was under par against Stoke what the fuck is Nolan doing on the pitch. Carroll's failure was down to the team & tactics, what's Nolan's excuse for his abysmal performance?

Our lack of a Plan B was what killed us today. Stoke beat us to almost every ball in the air, or where we did win a header it was inconsequential. When we played football on the deck they had nothing to counter us other than backing off some more, why we continued to pump balls up in the air even when it was clear that it wasn't working is beyond me. The best crosses for us today (other than the pen which the keeper would have claimed easily even if Carroll hadn't been fouled) were all below head height where Stoke's heading & physical wasn't as effective. That being the case, Hughton's subs were even more inexplicable. Taking off Ben Arfa who was forcing them back all the time on the floor for a winger (who is notorious for his bad crossing) to cross more balls into the box for Stoke to defend with ease & taking off Tioté for Ameobi to help fail to win a header where it mattered. I don't think Nolan should play at home, he looks far too complacent and is dead weight for the most part. The comparison to last week when he was actually quite effective away from home is bizarre.

Did I blink & miss the SSN highlights or have they just completely ignored the goals?

Ha! fuck you you cheating bastards!

The last time the BBC said anything critical about a team was when they criticised an England performance. The FA were so pissed off with their criticism that they ignored the BBC's bid for the next set of qualifying games & handed the games to ITV. Since then the BBC haven't had the balls to criticise teams in case the players and managers stop talking to them (like Sir Alex does & Redknapp did) or worse, the clubs get pissed off enough that the BBC lose the highlights package. Sky can criticise all they like as they're the only game in town, there's no one else to sell the games to right now but the highlights are a different matter with the BBC, ITV and Five all bidding for the rights.

Great win & great performances from Tioté & Ben Arfa

Wow

Broken collar bone?

I'd rather see us win games by playing great football, if that's not possible I want to see us win, if that's not possible I want to see us try. That's why I detest Allardyce. Playing bad football, losing and not even trying to win games.

Or them and Hartlepool could move in with Darlo. At current crowd levels you could easily seat all the fans from boro, darlo & pool in there at the same time with a few thousand seats spare.

Yeah all very interesting, but What does he think of appointing a manager who had won four titles with two different clubs and 3 manager of the year awards?

The last time anyone on the BBC actually said what they thought about a game the FA got so pissed off that they ignored their bid for the next set of Euro/WC qualifier games, giving them to ITV instead. Since then the BBC haven't allowed anyone to say anything that might be seen as critical of the FA or Premiership.

Typical sensationalist media spin here. Anyway: defies belief. Add that to what Taylor said about Shearer being the only manager who had every given him any 1-to-1 training in 5 years and you begin to wonder just what some managers actually did in training.

If Man Utd were to fall into serious financial difficulty there would be no need for the government to step in, the banks would do so instead since it is their money that's at risk - not the tax payer's.

Who to believe? Known liars Ashley & Llambias or known liar Paul Stretford?

Great header by Ranger to set that up

£16m + Ireland (who also got £1.5m from City to leave) + add-ons according to most reports I've read.

Can't complain too much with that. Better teams will go to Old Trafford this season and come away with worse defeats. That said, Nolan was abysmal. Nowhere to be seen for the majority of the game. We cannot afford passengers in this team this season and that's pretty much all he was. We could have replaced him with a traffic cone in midfield and it would have had more involvement in the game. Alan Smith isn't a midfielder, he drifted in and out of the game far too often and spent too much time chasing the wrong players leaving huge gaps in the middle. Jonas wasn't up to much but the support around him (except for Jose) was non-existent for the most part.

He didn't critcise the team. He just said the team wasn't as good as in the previous season, which was talking utter common sense, considering the previous season we we're 5th and that season we we're 11th/12th at the time. The lil rascal eh? Absolute disgrace. Don't want a cancer like that anywhere near the club ever again. Give me a "proper" player who'll blame poor performances on bad luck and dodgy referees over that any day. However, though it pains me to say it, to be fair to Souness (), hindsight showed he was probably right to get rid of Robert when he did (even though it was probably as much for non-footballing reasons as good judgement on his part). The problem was not replacing him adequately. I seem to remember interviews from Given and Shearer at around the same time where they said pretty much the same things.