brummie

"I was going to award it to England, but then i saw the Birmingham derby and realised that there's a good chance Richard Dunne will attempt to eat me at some point if he's still around in 2018, so I've changed me mind"

Oh, please. I was at the game tonight, and yes, it was a deeply unpleasant experience, but it's nowt compared to what happens in places like Russia every week. Hooliganism is one front where England has nothing to worry about.

Nah, you're better off that way. `Being able to effect a disattachment from both sides is an advantage. If it is real, doubly so.

There is always trouble when we go there, but never when they come to us. I think part of it is that they all arrive by coach, but there is no doubt that the police attitude at St Andrews seems really, really lax. You're right, there was a very low key police presence before the match. It's not like you needed to be Nostradamus to predict that a 7.45 weekday kick off in a high profile match was going to involve trouble.

Piss. From the seats above.

I've had quite a busy afternoon / evening. Start off, gangs of idiots looking for it around the city centre pretty much all afternoon, the walk up the hill through Digbeth and to the ground was like the road to Bagdhad. Cups of piss, coins and fuck knows what thrown at us from the sides and above, constantly - and I mean constantly - during the match. I travelled away an awful lot in the 1980s when things were hairy all the time, but I can't remember being subjected to a stream of abuse and barrage of coins like that before. Flares - flares for fuck sake - thrown into the crowd after the final whistle. A few of our idiots decide to reciprocate by throwing seats back at them. Out of the ground and into the area directly behind the away end, the coppers decide that, actually, they might start holding us back after all, and while they do so there is absolutely all sorts getting lobbed over at us. At which point the coppers change their mind again and let us out. Cue it kicking off pretty much immediately. I know it's like their fucking cup final, I know it's payback for our good luck with late winners in the past, I know the second half didn't suggest it was going to happen, so they were all overexcited, but honestly, what a bunch of fucking idiots.

Now Man United have been knocked out, thus removing our remaining one gigantic mental block. I am getting even more nervous about our game tomorrow night. We haven't lost to the Dogshit in any of the last eleven meetings, but this is their best chance in a long, long time with our crippling injury list and lack of form. If they don't beat us tomorrow, they never will. Taken the afternoon off for city centre boozing (which I suspect is going to be tense) and then down to the ground, surgical mask and rubber gloves on, all my innoculations up to date and what not. I won't sleep tonight. I'm a grown man, incidentally.

I wish it had come when we played you at your place. The league this season is absolutely all over the place. Teams are both winning and losing matches they shouldn't. Look at some of the freak results - Arsenal losing at home to Spurs (not beaten a big four side away from home in 69 attempts), to Albion, to, errr, you lot, you lot beating us 6-0, Birmingham beating Chelsea, Sunderland going to Stamford Bridge and making Chelsea look shite. Last week there were about 19 teams in joint sixth. There are far too many teams moving up and down the table five places in a go with one decent result at the moment, and whilst it isn't too early to identify deficiencies and weaknesses, it is way, way too early to talk about which teams are going to be in a relegation scrap. To my untrained, neutral eye, you've done more than alright since coming up, and it is way too early to be punching panic buttons just yet.

Not being funny, but I've got 5030 and I don't even support Newcastle *wink* Bring back Johnny Hall. He's one of the good guys.

Barry has always been a player who drifts in and out of seasons for months at a time (as I've said on here for years now), so there's no change there, but I think he;s gone downhill since he went to Man City. I suspect it was partly to do with being taken out of his comfort zone. The problem is that he's now going to start to find himself on their bench quite a lot, and will struggle to get a decent move elsewhere because nobody else is going to match that 120k a week with 4 years left to run contract. He's not even 30 yet, incidentally. It seems a bit of a waste for your career to wind down so early and like that, but I bet that's exactly what happens. Incidentally, James Milner is a very good player, but only when played centrally, so it is amusing to see Man City wasting him out wide at the moment. It's like they never bothered to look at him before buying him, they just knew he played for a rival, was meant to be good, so they'd better spend 26 million pounds on him, just because they've got to have everything that people view as "good", and get to destabilise a rival whilst they're at it. Barry, Milner, Adam Johnson, Lescott ... potentially important players for England, but they're really not doing anyone any favours long term by going there - except for their bank balances, obviously

I'm not sure, he had a few decent seasons at Villarreal, but he looked pretty finished this last year. And the PL is way more physical than La Liga, where technique alone will tide you over a long way. We need bodies, our injury list is currently beyond belief. At the least he's an option. He's also going to be useful to mentor people like Albrighton and Bannan.

Thank god, another body in midfield. Our injury list is shocking right now. Plus he'll be a good one to learn from for the likes of Albrighton, Bannan and Hogg.

I feel sick.

Fucking Barton. Just when he's starting to get things back on track and winning people over, he goes and does something so fucking brainlessly unpleasant as that. Some footballers are fucking stupid.

The likes of Delfouneso, Bannan, Clark and Albrighton would probably have never got a look in under O'Neill. Well none of those players would be part of a 70th minute Heskey <===> Carew switch, so yep, I agree. 70-75 minutes: Heskey / Carew or something involving someone playing out of position at right back as a result. I am still not fully used to see us making substitutions at different times of the match.

The likes of Delfouneso, Bannan, Clark and Albrighton would probably have never got a look in under O'Neill. True. Although in fairness, our injury list is positively Evertonian at the moment. Agbonlahor (till tonight), Carew, Heskey, Petrov, Sidwell, Reo-Coker, and none of them are particularly trivial injuries, either. Entertaining match. I fucking knew that Harewood would score, and I knew that that pikey twat Campbell would too, when he came on. Fair play to Blackpool, some excellent counter attacking football played there, and I hope they stay up.

At least yours are available to actually buy. Nike fucked up something with the material in ours, and they've gone on sale today. At the original full price.

I would. He made a mistake going there. If he wanted to leave us, fair enough, but he should have sat tight and gone somewhere he was going to be more than an exceptionally well paid trinket owned by people who know the price of everything, but the value of nothing.

It is just a shame only one of them is English. Clark captained England U20s but has opted for the Irish at full level. Shame. He's very, very promising.

To be honest, Disco, this season was written off the minute MON decided to bail with zero warning five days before the start of the season (which, incidentally, is the same time he normally wakes from his transfer market slumber). There was no way we could look for, find and appoint a manager and get him in place with a load of players he's never met before and have the kind of season we had the last three. One thing I do know is that Albrighton, Bannan and Clark would have been - and were - nowhere near the team under O'Neill.

We're playing much better football under Houllier than we did under MON for two years. We're also undergoing our worst injury crisis for ages. Currently Delfouneso is our only fit striker. Carew, Heskey, Agbonlahor all out, and even our other promising kid, Weimann, is out long term. Plus Petrov and NRC are now bollocksed. I'm really quite buoyant at the moment though. We're playing some good stuff, we're keeping hold of the ball much better, and we're creating chances if not converting them. Plus, Bannan, Albrighton and Ciaran Clark are all looking excellent for us, so it's interesting times.

Carew is finished with us, sadly. He's a quality player, but produces only one in every x games. The problem with him is that x increases the longer he's with a club. Houllier, when Lyon manager, swapped him for Milan Baros with us. I don't know what worries me most about that.

Yup. Played some really good football again, too. We're converting one of every eight chances we create at the moment. Not the best.

Cracking goal from Albrighton for us today (older correspondents may recall me bigging him up as a future star two years ago) - our first goal in about 6 hours in the league.

I don't know if I've watched slightly less Spanish football this season or the fact I don't have SSN anymore, or whatever it is, but I haven't heard AS much about him. It's just accepted he's going to be utterly insane. Yeah it's pretty much expected that he's going to score shitloads. He's such a massive show off.