brummie

I was referring to last year. Have you not noticed the big hoof to Crouchy? There's nothing wrong with that, KD, it just kind of invalidates your proselytising about other teams not matching your pure brand of football. You did it against us last season, you did it against us yesterday. It's a bit like listening to Josef Fritzl pontificating about child care.

I thought you were the one crying and moaning, to be honest, calling us the anti football and what not. The point is, I don't come on here and make us out to be the purest form of football. You, and Spurs fans the internet over, do. That may or may not have validity as a claim, but I suspect it doesn't when you spend so much time hitting it long to Crouchy. Your regurgitating that quote again proves that, one year on, you're still hitting it long to the big lad, just like you did against us last year. That long ball thing is something I noticed lots of people mentioning last week, when i had a peek at Glory Glory. Even MON didn't resort to that sort of stuff. Wingers witlessly banging it into the box and hoping for the best, yes. Hoofed balls from defence towards a 6'6 striker, no.

© me, here, 2006 - 10

I went yesterday. That hoof it to Crouchie and look for the knock downs thing is horrible to watch, but it works. We played very well and deserved a point. I could cry and moan like you did when i mentioned your style of play in this exact thread but i won't. You played well first half, second half we played much better than you (taking of pavlychenko and going 4-5-1 did wonders). You was up against our 4th and 5th choice cb's and 2nd choice rb so naturally you'd have a few chances. Btw Richard Dunne has been rather crap everytime i've seen you lot this season. I didn't cry and moan, i mentioned that it was a bit hypocritical for you to talk about us hoofing it (and as a critic of MON's style of play, even I thought that was harsh) when you yourselves have a propensity to lump it long to Crouchy. My point was that if you make yourselves out to be the modern incarnation of total football, you don't really want to be turning in to Blackburn when it suits you.

I went yesterday. That hoof it to Crouchie and look for the knock downs thing is horrible to watch, but it works. We played very well and deserved a point.

to be honest you couldn't see anyone beyond liverpool back then. You could, though. In the 80s Everton won it, we won it (closely chased by Ipswich Town), and shortly before, Forest had come from nowhere to win it. How much money you have has always played a part in football. Back then it was much easier to have success if you had money. The difference now is that it is impossible to have success if you don't have money.

Here's another thing. Say you're in your early 40s (age picked with reference to people who can remember the 80s) Look at clubs like Newcastle, Villa, Everton, Sunderland (sorry), Leeds - traditional clubs Barring the arrival of a money-no-object trillionaire (being billionaire isn't enough now), would you bet that any of those clubs will win the league in your life time? I wouldn't.

You're not in a minority of one, the only difference is that I haven't been tempted to stop going. I didn't live too far from you in the late 70's and early 80's and worked and lived for football. I found it much easier going to away games as the travelling distance was much less. I travelled back up to Newcastle on a Friday for the night out, only to travel to London and places like that on a Saturday for the match. 3 hours travelling each way for a home game was a bitch especially if we travelled by train as we would have to leave 5 minutes early to get the last train to Stalybridge so that we could get a connection to Birmingham and then a connection to where we lived. I made loads of friends in the midlands just by travelling to games by train as Newcastle fans were probably the only ones at that time to wear team colours, especially to away games. I didn't like Newcastle Brown but I felt that I had to dring it because of its association with the area and club, we'd down 8 or 12 cans on the train then go straight to the first pub when we got off the train, they were mental but happy times. The other thing I miss about those years was the feeling of being on edge, being careful when going to away games. I remember going to Ayresome Park in approx 86 (our second division year), and being absolutely scared shitless from start to finish, it was an intimidating place to go to back then. Nowadays, a trip to whatever it's called now, the Riverside or whatever it is, strikes me as about as tense as a stroll around IKEA on a saturday afternoon (except with less people, obv). It's not about the fact that there are more people now at games than there were back then - of course there are, attendances are way higher - it is about the way the game has changed entirely since those days. Two things worry me. The one is that a lot of the old school supporters will gradually fall away - they've got a frame of reference for ticket prices and will have a point at which enough is enough (as opposed to younger fans who have always only known high prices). The second is that, in the PL era, the vast sums of money to come into the game have gone straight into the pockets of players and agents, rather than towards subsidising tickets and preserving the game for the next generation. Fuck only knows how families with kids who want to go to matches regularly afford it nowadays. I look around my ST seat these days and i see very few kids. Back in the day, there would be loads of kids at football matches. I'm aware that there are competing interests now - games consoles, internet, stabbing each other and taking drugs - but that suggests that football should be working *harder* to make sure future generations of support are there, not driving them away with stupid ticket prices.

I am probably in a minority of one (or possibly a handful) on this thread, but I think I enjoyed football much, much more in the mid 1980s when hardly anyone gave a shit about it. Treated like shit in piss soaked grounds we might have been, but it cost feck all, the league was competitive, and you didn't have to put up with the ubiquity of know-it-all-but-never-go Lovejoy-inspired types on the internet I once went to see us at Nottingham Forest. When we got off the train, the police herded us out of the station and put us in - quite literally - a cage for 90 minutes, before sticking us on a train back to Birmingham with the people who'd been to the match. If it sounds weird that someone could be nostalgic for a period which involved regularly getting treated like an animal like that (and I know loads of people who feel similarly) then maybe the question should be how football has managed to make rational people think like that. It costs too much - not just a little bit too much, but way, way too much, the players are cunts with an almost total detachment from the real world, the league is incredibly uncompetitive, the media coverage is predictable, cretinous, and an insult to the intelligence (oh, and fucking expensive, too), there's no atmosphere because the whole experience has been sanitised and had the passion squeezed out of it - all CCTV cameras, "sit down and shut up" and high vis jackets I still go, I've got my season ticket, I do a 100 mile round trip every home match, I fork out a decent amount to do the odd away game, more importantly (for me) i hand over a lot of my free time (going to matches, watching matches, arguing about matches) to football. So do lots of members of my family, and so have said family members for 100 years now, but I would not for a nanosecond point the finger at anyone who decided "fuck it, it isn't worth it" and stopped bothering. I've been tempted myself.

This is the first time we've had a truly fucked economy in the era of sky high football ticket prices. Lots and lots of people countrywide are now looking at the price of going to football matches, weighing it up against everything else and the economic uncertainty we're living with and opting not to bother. I don't have kids, and have got a season ticket, so I'm lucky in that sense, but I wonder how blokes who have a couple of kids feel when they're weighing up 90 minutes entertainment against the absurd cost involved.

In fairness to Routledge, though, being labelled the worst player offensively in a game you won 6-0 strikes me as the most forgiveable of criticisms.

Would make sense, knows the players (although he sold most of them) and has the horrible local accent. Can't see O'Neill stooping that low, will walk into any Premierleague job as soon as one becomes avail At least they'd be used to signing shit players from Scotland.

I said when you signed him that he wasn't good enough, and got ripped to shreds (although to be fair, i wasn't really clear about whether I meant good enough for the top flight specifically), but what we saw here was a player who seemed totally bereft of confidence, and didn't want to run at people. Admittedly, he didn't get much of a chance here, but when he did, he didn't look anything like up to it. I saw him play for the reserves a fair bit, and he didn't look the deal there, either, mind. He comes across as a shy bloke (thought that whilst watching the press conference when he signed for us), and he's got form in flopping in the top flight elsewhere, so maybe the current issue for him is just that - ie about confidence to have a go, confidence that he can do it. Maybe the fact he looked so poor even in the reserves suggests tha is the case - pressure to perform, to deliver, that affects him.

I really can't stand watching Stoke play. I'd rather have my eyeballs injected with molten lead than watch that dross week in, week out. That Delap throw in is one of the most horrible things in football. They also seem to have some sort of hex on us whereby they fuck us up in the very last minute. However, having said that, if Tony Pulis's job is looked at in terms of keeping Stoke in the top flight and establishing them, he's doing a fucking excellent job. Despite looking like a very minor member of the Soprano crew with that tracksuit / baseball cap look. You really can't knock the job he's doing.

Ha ha ha, that is absolutely briliant.

YES. What the hell is it? It is something Blues fans do, too. It is the Wolves fans chanting Villa Villa in high pitched kids voices, the suggestion being that impressionable children support us.

I've no idea.

"Have you won the European Cup?" Different tune. That's "Yellow Submarine".

He's becoming one of my favourite players. Everything you could ask from a winger. Skill, crossing technique, pace but most of all relentless workrate. Two years ago, he had a fantastic pre-season, and we all hoped for big things from him. He got ignored till about - I think - Jan, might have been a cup match, then got injured. After that he struggled to get into MON's first XI. Although in fairness, you'd struggle to break into his first XI if you were Lionel Messi towards the end.

When should we get worried 10? 15? 25? 37? See edit.

It must be disappointing, but it is only one game. You won your previous home game 6-0. There's as much reason to base your expectations of the rest of the season on that as there is on today's result

19 pages suggests otherwise, BooHoo. Oh, sorry, BooBoo.

Can you even begin to offer some rationale for this logic? It is a good appointment, as good as we could have made given the circumstances MON left us in. Just watching Merse on SSN. What a fucking idiot he is. Great player, and did very well for us, but fuck me, what a moron.

Any preference who do you want in, Brummie? To be entirely honest, I find it hard to choose who I'd prefer, it changes every day as new names are mentioned. The betting market on this has been insane. However, I know who I don't want: Curbishley, Southgate, Bradley, McDonald. There are some I'd accept: Svennis, Houllier. Then there are loads more who sound decent, but I don't know if I want them because they're names, or because they're sensible choices. Either way, it really is an amazing period. There's someone on VillaTalk who works at Bham airport and has access to plane movements and passenger lists, and has been listing Lerner's plane's movements the last two weeks. He's been all over Europe by all accounts. Was, intriguingly, in Paris yesterday. Milan two weeks ago. The carbon footprint of this whole process must be immense.

Donadoni interested. http://www.skysports.com/story/0,19528,11661_6355015,00.html This has the feeling of the longest running managerial saga ever.