brummie

I wish.

Incidentally, this is very good. https://twitter.com/NeillOMartin

They weren't bothered what it cost as it got passed on to Chelsea, if they'd paid £5m Torres would have cost Chelsea £20m, or if Carrol was £50m, Torres would have cost Chelsea £65m, it's only been common knowledge for almost a year. This is complete nonsense man. If Ashley had accepted £20million for Carroll, then by this logic they would have sold Torres for £35million, even though Chelsea were prepared to part with £50million, thus screwing themselves out of £15million for absolutely no logical reason. It's a nonsense excuse designed to justify a ridiculous transfer fee. I thought only Liverpool fans would be thick enough to swallow it. Indeed it is. Regardless of what Chelsea paid for Torres, at some point Liverpool were faced with this conundrum: "keep this 35 million pounds, or give it to Newcastle for Carroll" I was a bit worried when their new owners came in that they'd start to get things right. That lasted right up until they spent 75m on Andy Carroll, Stewart Downing and Jordan Henderson. mind bogglingly stupid waste of money.

Unlikely. He likes a big man up front. Maybe he'll come in for the world's best defensive striker. http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2009/10/26/article-0-06DBE38C000005DC-830_306x425.jpg *prays*

Ah yes, Can't Control. That's a very good shout, I could imagine MON going in for him.

It's never nice selling your better players (I should know), but as an outsider, 35m for Andy Carroll is the most ridiculous transfer deal ever, and I think you got by far the better end of that deal.

Surely it'd be better if the spoilt bastard could just man the fuck up and realise he's earning obscene wages and that means having to do things you don't really want to do - like come off the bench or live in Manchester. It's not as if Manchester has undergone some gigantic transformation since he first arrived in this country, either. He'd been at West Ham for a start, and had even been in Manchester at United, so it's all a bit hollow, really. Boo fucking hoo Carlos and your hellish life. Take a look around you at the real world these days. People like you make me fucking sick.

Away from home, it was frequently brilliant. We won lots of games. I dont really care what anyone else says, I loved watching us break with speed, with Agbonlahor and Young. People sussed us out eventually, mind. The problem was, at home he tried to do the same thing, and when people sit back and don't attack you, you can't play counter attacking football. As a result, for at least two years, possibly three, the football at home was utterly fucking dire. Think in both his last seasons we scored 27 goals at home, except in both seasons, there were two 5-0 drubbings (of dross teams), which left 17 goals spread across 17 matches. It wasn't a lot of fun, to be honest. He had no plan B whatsoever, we'd just keep doing the same thing over and over, regardless of how it pans out. He's very much a man of the past in that sense, there's nothing even remotely modern about MON's ways. I've a funny feeling this is going to be a short dalliance. I've been trying to avoid his face since he took the job, but the few times I've seen him on the box, he's looked miserable as sin. Probably because Bibs and Cones aren't going with him. Well, Cones is, Bibs isn't

Surely proximity to Schipol makes Ajax the obvious move. You can get anywhere from there. Schipol. Not Ajax.

He's a fantastic man manager of players he rates. If he doesn't rate them - regardless of the fact he just spent 5m on them a few weeks previously - they don't exist. *points at training ground full of unshiftable MON dross on big money*

I know that RTG place is full of excitable 10 year olds, but I can not believe anyone is sufficiently retarded and bereft of football knowledge not to think about the fact that it was O'Neill who sold Cahill at Villa (to his shame) and replaced him with Zat Knight, as - and this is well known in Villa circles - Cahill likes to play it out of defence, whereas Martin likes a "row Z" defender. He is not going to go back and buy him again now, and even if he tried, Cahill would not consider playing for MON again for a nanosecond, and certainly not moving to Sunderland.

If Martin is going to be buying a striker for them, it'll be someone very disappointing for them. Heskey. Harewood. His record is not great. He only got Carew because Houllier offered him for Baros. In January, they'll go for at least two of Heskey, Petrov, Cuellar, with Cuellar being the favourite. He'll probably go for Aiden McGeady at some point soon, as well.

If you have to live away from home Milan's a bit nicer than Manchester. Surely homesick is homesick, I doubt he will have had the least luxurious life in Manchester either He'll save about 3 or 4 hours on his flight home won't he? He's just finding his way home, lucrative contract after lucrative contract. A wealthy form of hitchhiking or some such. Ha ha Not a big geography fan, i assume?

He's been suspended for drink driving, the silly boy. He started on Saturday, but it's pointless playing passing midfielders if all he gets us to do is defend.

There's no place for passing ability in a McLeish midfield.

Stats today show that Darren Bent has had fewer touches of the ball than any other striker this season. Gabby is also right up there. It is just too horrible for words. I have never had to sit through dross like this. The bloke is utterly, utterly fucking hopeless. When he took over, a lot of us said "can't believe they've appointed him, but so long as he doesn't get us playing like Blues, I'll give him a chance". Now he has got us playing exactly like Blues.

McLeish is an absolute disgrace like, I've watched your last 3 games and been appalled every time. I went to Spurs and the Man United game, and left both thinking I never wanted to see another match again. Indefensible garbage.

Honestly, it is fucking shameful. Spurs away was the low point, but Man United wasn't much better. Against what is the worst Man U side i have seen for a very long time, we were shockingly unambitious. Round where we sit (the expensive, hardly revolutionary seats), people were just absolutely losing it over the style of play. It's horrible, horrible sub Stoke stuff.

Don't worry, Lerner is rapidly turning us into Everton. I'm so utterly gutted about football nowadays. I hate it. I hate what we're being turned into. I'm a rational enough bloke, and have seen some really disastrous managers at our place - Billy McNeill who relegated us AND Man City in the same season, Graham Turner who destroyed the remnants of a European Cup winning side, Jo Venglos who was 10 years too early for English football, the horrible shitbag O'Leary - but this current bloke is the only one who has made me feel like I never want to go to one of our games again. It's so utterly, utterly terrible. If you asked most Villa fans, they'd use the word "embarassing"

Oliver Holt is the most revolting of all MON fanatics in the media. "drip feed of criticism" my fucking arse. He's not even signed his contract, and already I'm getting wound up. I think I shall retire to bed.

He's a good man manager of player he likes. With us too often he'd sign players, then soon after decide he didn't rate them, and treat them like they didn't exist.

We never sang Daydream Believer at Bruce, but it always used to tickle me that whenever we played them at our place, every single time he stood up from the bench, there'd be a chorus of "Sit down Potato Head"

Dave makes a good point (can't be arsed to go back a page to quote it). He's a good manager who gets good results. There's no getting away from that. They haven't appointed Avram Grant. On the flip side, that stuff from the bloke in Leicester is so spot on, i almost nodded my head clean off my shouders. He's very far from being any type of messiah. He'll get them to 8th to 10th, I reckon, which for Sunderland is quite the achievement. Actual fact does not bear comparison to some of the media fawning. Henry Winter the other day described him as "a stellar manager". Not wanting to sound snooty, but if he's that, having been out of work for over a year, why on earth is he about to take over at Sunderland? My advice to you lot is to marvel at the forthcoming press fawning, because it is going to make you vomit. It made me vomit even when he was with us, the suggestion being that we were Martin O'Neill's Aston Villa, that we were lucky to have him, and that should overrule any complaints we might have about the awful football or the profligate wasting of money. Had I known we'd still be getting it today (and we are), I would have opted never to have had him here at the first place. I have personally never had a problem with Sunderland. Sure, RTG is the mongiest place I've ever seen on the internet, but on the flip side, my best mate at uni was a mackem, i watched them with him a lot in the third division. Now MON is going there, however, and thnking back to how he shat on us gigantically, and wanting to see how his press fan club would react to it, I wish them absolutely nothing but ill.

The reason he built up such a massive wage bill - or one of them - was that our entire scouting network consisted of one man, Ian Storey-Moore. Genuinely, zero scouting network. When he came, he was supposed to set all that up, but didn't bother. So what he'd do would be to shop in the UK, players he knew, and usually wait till the last minute, insuring we got raped on transfer fee and wages. It really was lazy and dereliction of duty. There's a piece by Pat Murphy which really is a perfect example of how the media will ignore all this, though. It's infuriating.

He loves two really big men at the back, in the middle. None of that ball playing centre half nonsense (which is why he got rid of Cahill and replaced him with Zat Knight), he's very much of the belief that centre halves should put it in row Z. Which is something which fills me with optimism and hope, as there's nothing I'd like to see more than MON come in for the ginger leg swinger, James Collins.