Ronaldo

For once he's nailed it.

Thought we looked OK (ie no worse than any other combination) with Lascelles and Mbemba in the middle, to be fair. I'm baffled as to why Rafa changed it for Steven fucking Taylor of all people.

He was proven to be a liar the day he took the job when he said he'd only been approached the week beforehand.

Let's not go mad. Colo was playing poorly and trying to force a move from the club long before Jonas became ill.

Pretty much sums up the whole mess, doesn't it? A 34-year-old who's consistently missed games with muscle tears/strains for the past 4 seasons gets injured and we're forced to rely on 2 kids from other leagues to stay in the PL.

He's utterly crap at his job in every rational sense. On the other hand he jumps when and how high Ashley tells him to, and gets paid very little.

Every time they fail: 'the task facing us was a difficult one'. You can guarantee we'll hear that one again at the end of the season.

If we hadn't hired Benitez I'd be back to wanting us to get dicked every game till the end of the season a la Pardew '14.

As a person he's fucking A1, like. No question.

Yep. We were so much better to watch when Routledge came and moved Guthrie into the middle with Smith benched.

We do not miss talentless cunts like Alan Smith in any way, shape or form, man. Raylor started 19 out of 46 games but it's nitpicking. Carroll, Nolan, Harper, Jose, Routledge, etc, we miss.

Is there any history of Ashley just cutting his losses?

Evasive, lacks credibility and looks like nature's idea of a sick joke.

I think it's pointless to put so much energy into debates comparing footballers from different eras, like. The modern athlete is far better refined. As are the boots worn, footballs used and protection given to players by officials. It's difficult to theorize how Pele and Maradona would have faired or vice versa.

There are a lot of great centrebacks who are not excellent in the air and are still top class defenders. Mbemba has the physical side and makes a lot of great tackles. IMO he has a bright future. People tend to forget how shit our back 4 is and how much it has changed during this season. Exactly. I don't remember Liverpool's centre backs being huge when Rafa was there, and they are not giants now either. I think you do need one big stopper though and we've not had that for about 6 years. A decent midfield in front of the back four can make all the difference as well. We've not had a stopper type since Keegan got rid of Faye 8 years ago. We really have had a plethora of physically inept CBs since Bobby left.

Smith and Raylor barely contributed to our Championship season, man. Smith was shit throughout and Raylor was rightly on the bench. Simpson was OK that season, no more.

Underselling him a bit there, like. Benitez is the best manager we've appointed in our modern history.

Or ideally let Rafa appoint two people to work with him for the scouting and day-to-day running of the club.

You can't really have expected the club to anticipate the possibility of relegation when we were 18th, like.

Mahrez, Kane.

Seem to remember him saying Cabaye was a poor replacement for Nolan in the summer of '11, too.

http://postimg.org/image/6gqeut0uz/ http://postimg.org/image/cmi9jzsrl/ I don't fib. EDIT: Ta.

Yeah, they and 1 other Spanish speaker were in from 8.30 till our group left at 11. I didn't take pictures but 2 of our party did. I'll happily upload them tomorrow. There were 3 waitresses working the tables, which are you, Penn?

Williamson was talking loudly and clearly for the benefit of the two Spanish speakers so the whole restaurant could hear him after he'd had a few. He did a cracking impression of Taylor trying to block a shot which had the other two giggling away.