Ronaldo

Good luck with that.

It was an unbalanced squad severely lacking pace and a partner to get the best out of Shearer, let's put it that way. Robert and Bellamy transformed the way we played and we shot up the league.

No. It was fairly obvious in this case. I'm just over the moon "Nelson Muntz Ronaldo" fell for it. You've actually said far more ridiculous things being perfectly serious. That's the genius of it.

Have our fans ever caused trouble in Europe? Not sure I can recall any, even with 2 trips to meet the lovely Italian police in 02-03.

Are you all there?

I fancy us to win by the odd goal. Leeds definitely have the ability to overpower teams but they've usually been tactically naive when I've seen them this season. If it's 0-0 after 55 minutes they'll start to lose their shape a bit and we'll take advantage.

For years Leeds were the only PL club within 100 miles of us.

Kicking myself I didn't put serious money on tonight's result. So obvious Palace were going to win that at a canter.

There's far too many awful consequences of failure for it to be savoured, like.

You've got to be kidding? My main issue with shit like that is the presenters who 'debate' said calls are always dumb a fuck and totally unequipped to put them in their place.

Without knowing the exact figures we've picked up noticeably fewer points since his injury in January. We've drawn 6 games this season, 5 of which happened after his injury which imo pinpoints where his contribution is felt most: grabbing goals against the run of play in tight games.

I think they're already there. They aren't the team they were a few weeks ago. I watched some of their game against Norwich and the latter pushed them and were a little unlucky not to take the lead. Once Huddersfield scored they were canny but not so much before that. You're joking aren't you? Huddersfield should've been 3-0 up before they scored the first.

Yep, a lot of good stuff there.

We all know how bad Colback is but Shelvey's had just as many good games with him tbh. Neither Hayden nor Colback can be his partner next season.

Sam Allardyce taking Palace down or Paul Clement taking Swansea. I think we both know what's far more likely.

Bassong was our best central defender when we got relegated that season. That was one of the reasons why we went down. He was well rated in that season though, Spurs poached him on the back of a decent showing that year. Aye but he was actually pap. He was a poor player in an even poorer side so he impressed. He's never been a consistent midtable perfromer. He wasn't pap that season though. Aye, he was our best player by a distance. At home against Spurs, in particular, he was colossal.

The fact it happened to the biggest cunt in the Premier League makes it sit a little better.

Thing is with Shelvey, his contribution is always going to be provided in isolated moments of brilliance. I want him in the team but it's absolutely vital we partner him with the right player next season because when we don't have the ball he's a weakness.

Well done, he's 58.

Exactly. He's a winner. There's no way he'll go into a season looking to finish 17th and above. We're wasting our window with him if we don't back him completely from the off. Given our financial situation there's absolutely no excuse not to.

By all means tell us which of our players beyond the obvious 4 are PL quality. I think that would be a lot funnier. You could look at the Burnley starting XI from yesterday and do the same. You're a smart enough lad to know football doesn't work like that. Rafa Benitez is probably the best manager we'll see here for decades. I'd rather not waste his talent expecting him to get the most out of average and abject players when he should be allowed to spend serious money and mould a squad into something competitive.

By all means tell us which of our players beyond the obvious 4 are PL quality. I think that would be a lot funnier.

Come on man, at least attempt to have a normal conversation. You can't relate what happened last summer to what needs to be done this time round. We need a complete diversion from every single window we've ever had under Ashley, basically.

Exactly. Sick of seeing people whinging their tits off about the lack of Premier League quality. That isn't an issue until August and will be massively irrelevant if we strengthen as we should. This argument falls a bit flat when you consider that of the 4 players we have arguably of PL quality, 3 of them were bought last summer 'for this division'. You can understand people being little uncomfortable with the fact we basically need to buy at least 7 players for the starting Xl. It's not ideal when you're taking into account the need for immediate team cohesion. I'm sure we'd have liked better players coming in last summer, but probably not that easy to attract to the championship. In January those above Rafa decided we could do without strengthening, not much he could do about that. What in the christing fuck does that have to do with anything I've said there?

Yeah, last summer we made a massive profit selling our best players. I'd love that to happen again.