Chris_R

Well thank fuck it looks like it's moving towards completion. Might get to see him in action on Saturday.

Ronaldo is a world-class player playing in a team of other world-class players, something that we're nowhere near at the moment. I think comparing his role in the Man U team with Guttierez's role in ours is at best shaky. What we need is service from the flanks, and sticking Guthrie out there will not provide it. And the "Static 4-4-2" has not been bad because there's somthing inherently wrong with 4-4-2, but because we've been fielding inept players. For me it's: --------------------Given Beye Coloccini Bassong/Faye Enrique ---------------Faye/Guthrie Guttierez/Milner -------- Duff/Milner/Guttierez ------------------N'Zogbia --------------Owen Martins That's if we had to start the season tomorrow, but hopefully a couple more signings will change that around a bit. A creative mid is a must for me, then Charlie can play left wing if he gets his head screwed on correctly. And just because Ronaldo is world class he is allowed to move positions? mackems.gif Jonas an Argentinian international is not good enough to do that in your eyes? That's not what I said. In fact that's not even nearly what I said. What I said was this: "Ronaldo is a world-class player playing in a team of other world-class players, something that we're nowhere near at the moment. I think comparing his role in the Man U team with Guttierez's role in ours is at best shaky. What we need is service from the flanks, and sticking Guthrie out there will not provide it."

I didn't miss any of it. What I saw was an insipid, uncreative midfield that offered nothing at all, especially out wide. That's not because we didn't GO wide, we did. We just didn't have the personnel to do anything with the ball. The only reason we got any points at all in the last 10 games was because of the talent of the triumvirate of Martins, Owen and Viduka not because of the guille and creativity of our midfield.

Ronaldo is a world-class player playing in a team of other world-class players, something that we're nowhere near at the moment. I think comparing his role in the Man U team with Guttierez's role in ours is at best shaky. What we need is service from the flanks, and sticking Guthrie out there will not provide it. And the "Static 4-4-2" has not been bad because there's somthing inherently wrong with 4-4-2, but because we've been fielding inept players. For me it's: --------------------Given Beye Coloccini Bassong/Faye Enrique ---------------Faye/Guthrie Guttierez/Milner -------- Duff/Milner/Guttierez ------------------N'Zogbia --------------Owen Martins That's if we had to start the season tomorrow, but hopefully a couple more signings will change that around a bit. A creative mid is a must for me, then Charlie can play left wing if he gets his head screwed on correctly.

Not for me, don't want Jonas out of position as we need to be getting the best out of him from the wing, Harper in for Given and I wouldn't start Bassong just yet, lets wait and see how he copes in the Premiership first. How is that out of position? He can be darting either side of the strikers which will be much harder to double mark him. That would create so much more space for owen and martins It's out of position because he's a winger, and that position isn't on the wing. And Guthrie's not a winger, there's no way I'd want him on the right hand side. He'd be about as effective as other CMs have been there in recent years, witness the insipid performances of Bowyer and Barton on at right wing. Stick Spidey on the wing, and we need to buy a creative midfielder (Which we're all aware of). Failing that, I'd rather have Barton there or even Guthrie if it came to it, or else put Milner or Duff on one wing, Guttierez on the other and play N'Zogbia as an AM. If we've learnt anything from the last 3 or 4 years it should be that square pegs in round holes simply don't work.

Oh, and fingers crossed for the Everton move. £1.75m may not be a fortune compared to what we paid for him, but I'd take £1.75p to get rid of him and drive him to Liverpool myself if it helped push the deal through.

How do you know what Keegan says to Smith? What's said in private and what's said to the press are likely to be 2 entirely different things you know. Slagging one of your own players off in the press (Even subtly, like you suggest) is massively counter-productive, will damage team morale and will hardly inspire the player himself to better things or (MUCH more importantly in this instance) encourage other teams to come in and take him off our hands. You seem to want Keegan to slate Smith just to prove to you that he knows Smith is rubbish. That's not going to happen, but just because it doesn't happen, doesn't mean that Keegan is blind. Keegan will know Smith's deficeincies, and I'm sure he's made Smith aware of them. In private.

How? Try and answer it if you like lad. Unless you think he would have still broke his leg if he was here? Of course he wouldn't, but I doubt he'd be a picture of health either. We're well shot of him and his injuries, whatever they may be or however he sustains them.

wont have much of a squad left We'll not be playing 4-4-2, it'll be more like 2-1-2

Yeah, hoped he'd been given the push but I quess that was too much to expect when he's only had the job for 5 minutes. Still, not beyond the realms of possibility, this is McClaren we're talking about here!

Owen, then probably Beye. Martins is up there in the top 5 as well but he's a mile behind Owen.

I'd never heard of him until he came on trial and didn't see his runout at Doncaster so I have nothing to go on, but hope he turns out to be a good signing. Best of luck to him and welcome to the club. I'm guessing he's signing as a backup DL/DC so it's primarily about getting numbers in for the start of the season. I trust Keegan's judgement of players and if he likes the guy then that's good enough for me.

Seriously Translates as: However, Lendoiro seeks compensation for the summer of investments that will be futile if the proposed transfer to Newcastle Coloccini continued: "Depor have spent thousands of euros population towards the shelves of stores club with Fabricio wigs. Dennis Wise 'll have to buy all those wigs, and compensate our fans for the emotional harm of accidental purchase of cross-dressing products. " Mental.

Throw in Shola? Surely we should be trying to get CLOSER to their valuation?

Ouch.

To manage to contradict yourself in the same sentence as you're making your point is quite impressive.

Well as I'm getting made redundant from work in a few weeks, I'm not exactly at my most productive during the day. So I tend to refresh horribly frequently. Once home though, perhaps just a couple of times on an evening to see if anything's happening.

Horrible news. Really feel for the lad, hope he's OK and that he has people round him to help him get through this.

Especially as Owen will miss 30 league games through injury.

That's pretty hilarious.

Can't see past Hull, West Brom & Stoke tbh. Would love to see the mackems dragged into it though, but I honestly can't see that. Sadly.

Well Smith has the most improving to do, so I'm tempted to say him. However in all seriousness I'd hope N'Zogbia improves a lot. He's got a lot to offer and if Keegan can get him running at men down the left flank then I think he could achieve what we all suspect he's capable of. Mind you, a lot depends on how he is mentally. Martins is another one who Keegan will hopefully get good things from. But I must admit, I don't see Keegan turning average players into great players. What he does is get teams playing a certain way, and the reason that I've picked out Martins and N'Zogbia is that I think that Keegan's way of playing will suit them and they'll play well, rather than that Keegan will turn them into better players.

Once again, Keegan manages to single-handedly restore my faith with a few words and make me feel foolish for allowing doubts to start to enter my mind. I feel so bad.

Cautious. I flit between content and concerned though, depending on the day.

Or perhaps Benfica offered better wages, so he decided to go there. Then he announces that he always wanted to go to Benfica in order to endear himself to his new employers / fans. So it's not "End of" at all really, is it? better wages my arse, the max wage in portugal is 30-40k and that is for the queresma's etc, he decided to go there to play in europe and because he old manager is there we still haven't been named as the club, and the club hasn't came out to say they we're interested until that happens we didn't try and sign him if we try fine, but it was always gonna be an up hill struggle unless we offered stupid amounts Haha, head in the sand - proper "ostrich mentality". Love it. Why would we come out and say it was us? What do we possibly have to gain from that? We've been named by every news source going, in this country and abroad. There's no guarantees, but it's fairly likely it was us. And when I said "Better wages", I apologise. Maybe they DID offer better wages, but I should have said "Better package", which encompasses everything from European football to better wages to nicer weather. The point still stands though that him saying he always wanted to go to Benfica is not worth a thing. He's bound to say that once he's agreed to join his new club.