ross magoo

Well done Hearts Reserves Serves the minky one-shoed toerags right.

Somebody's got money on Spain then The dutch will rest players and they will be happy to lose the game. They would rather face Romania in the semi final than France or Italy, which is why Romania are odds on to win the game!! I know but Spain are on the same side of the draw as France and Italy. I've got money each way on Spain and i'd be happy enough if they could avoid France and Italy. Spain v Holland would be the game of the tournament though. I really hope it happens.

Bang on the money. People are going on as if it's Holland's decision whether they win, lose or draw against Romania. It doesn't work like that.

Somebody's got money on Spain then

If Liverpool pay £10m for Milner then I wouldn't want to be a nurse in the "sew your cock back on after laughing it off" department at Newcastle General.

To be fair, he gets double marked everywhere he goes in Scotland because Celtic have nothing down the right hand side. That wouldn't happen if he was playing in a team with good quality players in other positions.

He was a lazy wee shite.

I would say arranged marriages are a lot rarer in Islam than you would be made to believe, seeing as they are specifically banned in the qur'an. Those that have arranged marriages often have them due to culture rather than religion. I think you have a very valid point though. In my short life so far, I have been able to see many national teams play at home, including the likes of Egypt ( quite good ) and SA ( rubbish). In Egypt for example, the people are football mad, the biggest club in Egypt and indeed Africa has about 50 million fans within Egypt and you will see tens of thousands of men and women go to both national team games and al-ahly games. Yet, the Egyptians I know in England are reluctant to attend footie matches in England, and I'm guessing your views on the assosciation with hooligan and drunken culture are spot on. Going a bit off topic here but I suppose it depends on your interpretation of an arranged marriage. Only one of the Muslim guys I know is married but he always keeps his family life really close to his chest that way. Of the Muslim girls I knew from university and work, most of them got married and the ones I spoke to about it all said pretty much the same thing along the lines of "It's not like an arranged marriage or anything, it's just a guy that my parents picked out for me and we took it from there". It kind of amazed me that they were married less than a year after meeting the blokes. I guess nobody outside the Muslim community really knows for sure just how much pressure is put on young Muslim adults to marry the person that their parents "pick out" for them. Pardon my ignorance if i'm wrong and I know that you find manipulative parents in all walks of life but it just struck me as being a trend particularly popular among British Muslims as opposed to the rest of us. Anyway, probably a whole new thread. Sorry

Ronaldo will rightly win it easily. Torres has probably impressed me the most out of the also-rans.

I was speaking to a Muslim friend about something similar to this the other day. He's not really big into all the religious stuff but he attends mosque, doesn't drink, obeys the rules etc because for him it's about his and his family's honour in a community which can be quite judgemental at times. Keeping your "honour" is also quite an important motivational factor for young men in a religion where arranged marriages are commonplace i'd imagine, although maybe some of our Muslim posters can clarify. I think the problem is the way that football in the UK is seen to be a part of a wider drunken, promiscuous yob culture and it wouldn't surprise me if that put a lot of Muslims off or even if it was discouraged by some Muslim parents. It might also go some of the way to explaining why (certainly where I live) Muslims are almost non-existant in low paid manual blue-collar factory type jobs that are mainly dominated by men who spend most of their day boasting about how many pints they drank on Friday, the size of the tits on the bird they shagged on Saturday and the state of the guy they kicked the s*** out of on Sunday. It's a cultural thing in my opinion.

Not sure if you're confusing him with someone else, but Doyle has never played in the middle where Sidwell operated. He's played on the right wing more than a few times, but never in the middle. That's fair enough, I can't say any of our individuals would better the ones you've got already (apart from Shorey and Little, and maybe Matejovsky and Harper, that is - I'd rather take Kitson and Doyle over Viduka by the way) but I reckon our lot have proven over the last two seasons to be a little better than guff! Our team is greater than the sum of it's parts....imagine where you'd be if you could say the same. I'm not having a go mate but you guys are happy with that and we're not. I guess that's the difference.

But the people did buy them so it's irrelevent. Exactly. It's like saying "We wouldn't have so many supporters if we didn't have so many supporters".

Reading are a load of old guff and there aren't many of their players i'd take. I don't think that's what this thread was meant to be about though.

It's good to have our form back but that's all it is. We're more or less safe so the summer transfer window is the next big test. A bit of optimism around the place is a nice change though.

He's just frustrated because he doesn't have Ruud Gullit to argue with anymore. Ignore him.

2-0 to them unfortunately.

No real surprise. They want the Champions League.

Is blooding youngsters really the right thing to do given the team's form right now though? I fear that it might only serve to get them used to losing. The ideal time to blood youngsters is giving them half an hour when you're 2-0 up or playing one or two of them from the start when you're in good form and the game doesn't mean anything.

Maybe it's because i'm not from Newcastle but I couldn't give a toss about Sunderland. I don't base my expectations for Newcastle on what Sunderland "achieve". It's not about them it's about us. Granted, I don't have to go into work and listen to them though.

That's who I immediately thought of. Swanson at Dundee Utd will also be a fantastic player in a couple of years but you're buying potential at that age. Scott Brown hasn't had much of a season at Celtic and they'd want their money back then some so I don't think he'd be good value. They could be persuaded to part for less than his market value in exchange for some of our unwanted players though, surely? It just depends. I think Strachan bought him because he thought he could build a team around him for the next three years so if it's his decision then I think he'd rather keep him. But if Rangers win the treble then Strachan might get his jotters in the summer so who knows.

That's who I immediately thought of. Swanson at Dundee Utd will also be a fantastic player in a couple of years but you're buying potential at that age. Scott Brown hasn't had much of a season at Celtic and they'd want their money back then some so I don't think he'd be good value.

this is where my math sucks...if this was a relegation 6 pointer, how does a draw figure in? what if we draw vs fulham? The Fulham game is at home though which will always change your approach. I'm obviously not saying that I didn't want us to win the game. I just think that a defeat would have been a disaster. A draw's better for us than it is for Birmingham.

A draw will do. It was more important not to get beat.

As if it makes any difference