Ronaldo

Not quite sure how you can argue Martins has more mental strength than Cisse, like.

first team. the squad is rubbish. and that's not excluding Pardew from blame. The first team is crying out for at least 2 players to solve the goals and creativity problem. The first team is unbalanced and the squad is poor.

The strikers of today are far better athletes; stronger and quicker. It's not about who likes elbowing defenders.

Based on your own conjecture. It's not like Taylor is some sort of Vidic type that dominates big burly centre forwards either. Benteke had a field day against him at Villa Park. Wasn't that Taylor's first game back from injury?

Not to mention Cisse as a winger and Jonas as a footballer Nowt'll ever top the visionary idea to use Shola out wide though. To be fair it was Souness who discovered Shola could play on the wing. Away to West Ham in 05-06 against Pardew, I was there. He gave away a penalty and looked the square root of shite all game. Won 4-2, though.

Toptoon's not the brightest poster on the wall but he's right about Taylor and Colo being our best partnership and certain strikers having a field day against Colo and MYM.

Actually I didn't think much of Carroll at all for his first year or so in the spotlight, so he's a good example of not judging a player too early. That said, when he was 21 he was our number 9 and scoring lots of goals in the PL.

Support Leeds or Liverpool then, and spend your spare time developing into a classless prick and devising plans to attack opposing goalkeepers.

Fair play to Pellegrini, didn't know his English was that good.

Far more chance of that than him turning out to be a PL player, sadly.

I'd say ours is significantly wider than average.

Big gap between first teamers and squad players.

I think there's a pretty good chance he's 5 years older than he claims, like.

Wasn't it Shola who hit the bar in the 0-3?

For a 21-year-old he's woefully underdevloped physically, technically and mentally. A lot of that is the club's fault, but there it is.

Nobody touching on why he was so poor in the Championship, then? He might turn out to be a decent player but he's got no natural instinct for scoring and has no end product. League One would be fine.

Ruddy hell. It's Soft Cell.

West Ham are aiming for Europe.

Yep.

Ask a Boro fan who had to watch him in the Championship instead of just assuming he's good enough because he's ours.

He's League One standard. Championship is too much for him.

Gouffran's more competition for Cisse, I think. He's not much good wide left.

Aye, similar players tbh. They are if you used to listen to the Three Legends. I'm sure Malcolm McDonald said something about 'get Ryan Taylor on the wing, running at fullbacks'. I remember Slaven saying that during Taylor's time at LB.

Why would they? He's just the club's ringpiece.

Today or yesterday is the safe bet.