AyeDubbleYoo

Aren't sprinters usually considerably below 6 foot? I thought that Usain Bolt was unusual for just that reason - tall people are generally slower.

I wonder whether the fans want it? Will the Scots want to leave behind their inferior football and come and be mid-table in England?

I guess he is mixed race. I'd guess that. It's always interested me that someone with one black parent and one white parent so frequently gets called black. Why not call them white? If anything their skin's usually a light brown. Maybe I should head over to the stupid questions thread. It's a complex issue. I don't think of a mixed race person as black, I just think of them as mixed race. But then there are a million different shades of 'black' and 'white' anyway. Best just to think of them as the people they are I reckon, identity is a complicated thing. [/philosophy]

probably is as celtic and rangers rarely get out of cl groups so 10m is really as much as they can get compared to 30m a season guarenteed in prem Plus apparently the bottom Prem club earns as much as 15 times the top SPL club from endorsements, sponsorship and other extra income.

I guess he is mixed race.

I don't why there should be any possibility of this happening, or why anyone is entertaining it. So two teams dominate the SPL? So what, almost every league has a top 2-4.

I don't like the threads about race on here... they scare me :-[

I think we should get Paris Saint Germain and Bayern Munich instead TBH.

Aye, but do Baheng and Danquah have a catchphrase?

Not that long, this is his first season anywhere near the team.

Now you're just going mad.

Not sure, I've never seen us turn in such gutless and embarrassing performances as we did when we had all of those 'better' players. Aye, if they had suddenly decided to perform we would be destroying teams, but what reason have we to think that would happen?

Yeah, that would be great, Palacios is exactly the kind of second-tier player I was talking about. At least we thought he was when he arrived at Wigan almost unknown.

Beye and Bassong I agree, but the others I don't really think we miss.

That's the position we're in now! I know, except we're also in the Championship and with an owner who won't spend anything at all. Hopefully if we get promotion we will still be more attractive to the second or third tier of player than the likes of Stoke, Bolton and Hull. That's the best wecan hope for at the moment I reckon.

I agree, all I would disagree with is that our best players have left. Of the players we've sold (since relegation at least) the majority were a waste of space.

Let's not bother with a manager at all then, eh?

We've been stung by players coming to us just for the money many times anyway, we might be better off not being able to bribe them away from the top 6 or 7 clubs.

Not sure about that, most of the players that come through Arsenal's academy have been bought in from elsewhere haven't they?

Do you think any manager even thinks in the terms we're discussing this though? Their career is football management, a club is their employer... they treat it the same as any of us would if we were shafted by our employers, or our contracts were breached. I imagine the long-term best interests of the club never enter into it.

He's the owner, if he wanted to say "fuck it, I'm staying" nobody could do anything about it. Not that he will mind.

Basically what I was saying, could have saved my typing fingers.

I always thought Lampard got far too much grief for his England performances. Gerrard on the other hand possibly got off too lightly, some of his performances pre-Capello were woeful. Especially his cowardly and gutless performance as captain away in Moscow. He should never wear the captain's armband for England again (if the opportunity arose) after that night. I wouldn't be surprised if Spain fans wished they had someone as bustling and direct as Gerrard... I agree he hasn't always been great for England but to say he should never be captain again is a bit much IMO.

Do you think the actual plan was so wrong though? Don't want to derail the thread, but bearing in mind our recent history a policy of restrained spending might have worked. Even the 'Continental model', or whatever you call it, can work if the personnel are right. Just matching it with Keegan and Dennis Wise was a disaster, and presumably they were Ashley's appointments (guessing at that obviously).