brummie

This is just absolutely word perfect repetition of what we used to hear from some of our fans when he was making lazy, inexplicable signings:

I know I'm a neutral on this, but fuck me, they don't half have some idiots posting on there.

Villa are a far bigger draw though, this is going to be hilarious. It isn't half bringing back some memories, reading that RTG thread. Christ. The "I trust in MON, but ..." stuff is pretty much exactly what we used to say.

Stephen Ward, eh? Christ, that's a level below some of the fucking dross he signed for us.

Except Guzan. He's good. I'd add Richard Dunne, James Collins and Stephen Warnock to that list, too. It's all very well Dunne and Collins having one superb season, but it makes the whole three or four year contract look piss poor if they're not capable of anything more than that and inflict a couple of dreadful season on you afterwards. Warnock in particular has been just atrocious. Oh, and when we needed a striker to have any hope of pushing on from sixth, who did Martin get in (in the summer Darren Bent went to Sunderland for 10m)? Marlon Fucking Harewood for 4m.

£51.5 million spent in 1 summer, on THAT. TBF Milner and Friedel were both good signings. Too right. Milner was fucking brilliant for us. I'd kill to have him back here now. So was Luke Young. But he'd had been a better signing had we had him for 2.5m the year before when he was going begging rather than opting to play ANOTHER season with no proper right backs, then paying double that the year after.

I've never known a player look so terrified by the proximity of the ball. Like a rabbit in the headlights. I remember one occasion, think it was Man U at home, and he was terrified. At one point, the ball was hoofed up in the air about 50 yards up-field towards our defence. Curtis Davies was in position, and stood for what felt like 3 minutes just watching the ball come towards him, out of the skies. All he had to do was bring the ball under control (there was no other player within at least 20 yards of him) and out of danger - simplest of procedures. So he stands there, watches it come down, and it bounces literally about 15 yards behind him. The best thing, though, was that at that very instant, 40,000 people all *sighed* at exactly the same time. It was poetic.

There are many who think he'll be our no 1 keeper by the end of the season.

To be fair, there was also Brad Guzan, a rookie keeper brought in from the US, and Moustafa Salifou, who MON decided to get in from the Swiss third division for some bizarre reason, give him 10k a week for three years, then forget about.

Actually, they do, they've one of the better academies in the country and are surely right up there in terms of developing talent. Well, they were but they won't be now.

Trust me, it's overrated. Tangent - Man City fans yesterday singing "you only left for the money" at Sturridge. Kinda ironic.

Fletcher is not a bad player at all, he got a decent tally at a relegated club. However, 15 million is stupid money. 7 or 8m is more like it.

Nope, us too. That's why we can't get anyone in. At our level, players who can improve the team are simply costing a fortune in fees and wages, unless we take a punt. We are as well. In fact, I think this close season more than any for a while, there are quite a few clubs only interested in value signings. Then there's Liverpool, and their reported activation of Joe Allen's £15m release clause. Fifteen million pounds.

I can't blame City, Chelsea, or any other club. The way top, European football is designed creates massive gaps in spending and monopolies at the top that are exacerbated over time. Aggressive spending is the mst efficient way of success. It is the system itself more than anything else. There's a certain amount of truth in that "the system" thing, in that the game is now more than ever totally skewed to money. Don't get me wrong, the richer clubs always had an advantage in the past, too, but the gap was never, ever as wide as it is now. What we have now is more or less a direct correlation between money spent and success gained. This probably won't get much agreement on here, but whilst the PL has been good in some ways, in bigger, more important ways, it has seen the slow ruination of the English game, as money decides everything. We now can no longer realistically have an Aston Villa, Newcastle, Everton style club winning the league without a gigantic financial windfall. When i was a kid, I remember Cloughie taking Forest from nowhere and winning the league and European Cup. I remember Villa using 14 players all season to win the league. I remember that brilliant Everton side of the 80s (who would no doubt at all have won more European honours had it not been for Heysel). None of that can happen now, and it has made football much the poorer sport. I don't blame Man City for doing what they're doing, if they can afford to do so, and I don't begrudge any of their fans their success, either. I just don't like what it has done to the game. I also get particularly annoyed by the fact that, with our game awash in money, there's never any question of using that cash to subsidise ticket prices - the clubs would rather spunk it straight into the gaping mouths of agents and players, rather than the people who - through generations - have kept the game going, even when it was on the brink of collapse a few decades ago.

Talking of Ravel Morrison: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2184678/Ravel-Morrison-seven-teeth-removed-emergency-surgery.html Losing seven teeth at that age, and it not being due to them getting punched out by Marlon King?

Where I'm sure that other fine, upstanding citizen Marlon King will take him under this wing and lead him along the path of righteousness.

That's the thing, mate. That's exactly what is happening. When it happened with us, we had the same hysteria. I remember when we got MON, I was talking to a Celtic fan at work, and he said "you need to get used to the fact that, although he's a good manager and he'll improve you, maybe significantly - he has these faults,and he will never, ever change. If you can put up with them, you'll be fine. If you can't, you'll hate him. So, so correct. If any of the RTG people are reading this - it's nothing to do with bitterness. We had some good times under MON, he is a good manager. He's also not a long ball manager as he often gets called, that's just not true. At certain aspects of the job, he's one of the best. I'm just saying exactly what he was like, and what happened before he joined us, and looking at how things have gone since, he's not changed at all.

do you think he'll get results under the possibly stricter financial regime ? I know this sounds insane, but I was most impressed with MON in our first season, when we finished 11th. That's because he was forced to make do with what he had, as he came in just before the transfer window shut, and only added Petrov. So, we saw a front three of Agbonlahor and Luke Moore either side of Angel, and it worked. He also had Laursen (injured at that time, mind), Mellberg, Sorensen and Barry available, so it wasn't exactly a squad of duffers, but he was forced to work with what he had. Then, next season, he got a decent amount of money and lifted us to sixth. That is where the problems started. Tactically, he's very limited, he really is. He just doesn't "do" tactics. To lift us beyond sixth, all he knew to do was to throw money at it. Unfortunately, he did so by throwing it at players who weren't good enough to take us beyond sixth. He'd then not play some of them, and just play the same team, week in, week out. That's why we always faded under him towards teh end of the season. That's why we went to Wembley twice and got nothing out of it. That's also why we've had to spend a lot less recently to get the mad wage bill under control. So, in answer to your question, he'll do ok with a limited budget, I think. It's just that as a manager, I think getting us to sixth represents the peak of his abilities (and bear in mind, O'Leary got us to sixth with next to no money to spend). To do the same with Sunderland, given the way the league has changed in the last few years, would be way, way more difficult. It'd take some exceptional transfer business, and some canny tactical nous, and these are the two things he lacks most, and it his deficiency in those areas which meant our glass ceiling was sixth at the time. Sunderland's now, under him, will be 9th or 10th

I can honestly say that, although we did well under MON, summer transfer windows were exactly like this for us - utter torture. The problem is O'Neill himself. Doesn't use scouts, doesn't worry about huge wages and transfer fees, leaves it till very late etc etc. He was exactly the same at Celtic too, apparently. This is why I have been banging on about how predictable he is. He gets results, yes, but if you're not happy to put up with the flipside of having him as your manager, you're not going to enjoy it. RTG posters view this as "bitterness" or "jealousy", but it isn't any of those. It is fact

But we all know that he's really a winger Also a "defensive striker". That RTG panic thread is exactly what our forums were like under MON at this time of year I like it how they think you are relegation candidates and see themselves way above you, that's gonna end well. They're deluded in many ways. When we signed Bent, they were up in arms as we were in the relegation area at that point, and they were 8th or something. I've got a mackem mate who was moaning at me, "how come he's left a team fighting for Europe for one at the arse end of the table". I had to point out that that is the kind of thing Sunderland should be worrying themselves with, how things like that happen. I then had to roll out the killer argument, that at that point, Villa had finished in the top six in half of the seasons since the PL came into being, whereas Sunderland hadn't even *been in it* for half of the seasons. Obv, at that point, I sat back, blew imaginary smoke from the end of the imaginary pistols I was holding, and accepted his surrender.

I thought he was a good player at Villa, but I didn't think we particularly needed another winger other than for back up. He had a fantastic start for us though but his form became erratic after a while. He's some way behind Nani and Valencia for me. He's English though. Pay more for less. £16m was a big figure, especially since he only had a year left on his contract. Young was great for us, other than a few things, which cropped up mostly in the last year of his contract. His diving and rolling around went haywire (it never really bothered me that much, but it pissed a lot of our fans off). Also, he started insisting on taking EVERY free kick, despite his free kicks being largely awful. I loved watching him play, though. The problem is, he's a confidence player, and he'll get the match time he needs to build that at Villa, as he would at lots of other PL sides, but he's not going to get that much time at Man United, obviously, and that's the down side of him going there. Downing is even more of a confidence player. With us, his first season (well, half season, as we signed him with a bad injury), he was utter turd. Last season he was excellent. Much as i have enjoyed laughing at the weasel faced wanker this season, if he stays at Liverpool, I bet he has a good season this year.

But we all know that he's really a winger Also a "defensive striker". That RTG panic thread is exactly what our forums were like under MON at this time of year

Sunderland need a striker. Three observations. 1. MON said last week their transfer deals had all stalled. 2. Emile Heskey has failed to agree personal terms with Blackpool. 3. MON thinks Heskey is a striker. Just saying, like.

Yes, definitely over the course of last season.

When I was 9, in 77, we had a brilliant side, better than the league winning 80-81 side. We won the league cup that year, then four years later, the league, then the year after that, the European Cup, and Super Cup. I mistakenly thought we'd always be that good, and that said success was an indicator of years to come. I also remember thinking in 77, "we've won the league cup again, so it really can't be long till we win the FA cup again, 20 years since last time is ages, must happen soon". 35 years after that, still waiting :-(