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Are you taking the return of Beye and Faye into account when you say that? I actually think we may have more of a chance of getting something at Villa than we did today. ...actually, that's a huge exaggeration, but still with Beye/Faye coming back I don't think it's half as dire as it looks.

sshh...don't let the facts get in the way of a good slagging. Give your head a shake man for God's sake. Sorry but I don't see the point in complaining about Owen when he's scored two goals even though our attacking play was blunt at best. I'm not just talking about today. In the Premiership, your centre forward has to be able to do more than just score the odd from a set piece. With the ball at his feet these days, Owen is totally impotent. He just won't put chances anymore. It's a matter of accepting that rather than categorising it as "a good slagging." I find it insanely comical that the only goal Michael Owen seems capable of scoring these days is a header. He's like shorter pre-WC2006 Miroslav Klose Yes cos he's missed SO many chances on the deck hasn't he? About 3. Who cares what his goals are like? So what if they're headers? f*** me. I just find it funny that what used to be a small part of his game (his superb set-piece positioning) is just about all he has left to score goals. The worrying thing isn't that he's missing chances on the deck, it's that he has no ability whatsoever to create them anymore. Even then, he's missed far more than three easy chances with his foot this season. Honestly mate, what do you expect a player to do when the ball is constantly played to him in front of the defence? We next to never really get in behind teams, Owen gets the ball 'in the whole' because he's forced to drop in search of the ball. Owen in a team like Tottenham would be awesome. That's what they try to do every attack. Get the winger in behind and lay or chip a ball in. He ffeds off s****. He isn't the same player as when he joined us even, but still has it. Have you considered that he's only getting the ball in front of the defence because he's not fast enough/not mobile enough to make piercing runs in behind them anymore? Our central midfield may be incompetent, but they're not completel idiots. If Owen moves into a good position they will try the thru pass. It just hasn't happened a lot and when it has, it hasn't worke dout.

sshh...don't let the facts get in the way of a good slagging. Give your head a shake man for God's sake. Sorry but I don't see the point in complaining about Owen when he's scored two goals even though our attacking play was blunt at best. I'm not just talking about today. In the Premiership, your centre forward has to be able to do more than just score the odd from a set piece. With the ball at his feet these days, Owen is totally impotent. He just won't put chances anymore. It's a matter of accepting that rather than categorising it as "a good slagging." I find it insanely comical that the only goal Michael Owen seems capable of scoring these days is a header. He's like shorter pre-WC2006 Miroslav Klose Yes cos he's missed SO many chances on the deck hasn't he? About 3. Who cares what his goals are like? So what if they're headers? f*** me. I just find it funny that what used to be a small part of his game (his superb set-piece positioning) is just about all he has left to score goals. The worrying thing isn't that he's missing chances on the deck, it's that he has no ability whatsoever to create them anymore. Even then, he's missed far more than three easy chances with his foot this season.

Appiah is more of a box to box, or even attacking midfielder, than a DM. reckon he'd work alongside a cultured, defensive playmaker tho. Futilely suggesting cultured foreign central midfielders who we never get has become a tradition for NUFC fans over the past few years. The club will obviously just go for some top4-reject who will flop. Steve Sidwell or Darren Fletcher for 8m next up on our agenda?

sshh...don't let the facts get in the way of a good slagging. Give your head a shake man for God's sake. Sorry but I don't see the point in complaining about Owen when he's scored two goals even though our attacking play was blunt at best. I'm not just talking about today. In the Premiership, your centre forward has to be able to do more than just score the odd from a set piece. With the ball at his feet these days, Owen is totally impotent. He just won't put chances anymore. It's a matter of accepting that rather than categorising it as "a good slagging." I find it insanely comical that the only goal Michael Owen seems capable of scoring these days is a header. He's like shorter pre-WC2006 Miroslav Klose

Honestly, the way Sunderland/Birmingham and Reading are playing we could probably fail to win for the rest of the season and still be safe. For us to get relegated, we would literally have to lose every single game while all three of those teams hit a sudden vein of good form. I'm not saying it's impossible, but it's relaly not as likely as we've been making it out to be for the past few weeks.

What amazes me was that Alan Smith was being linked to Cardiff for a season-long loan during the summer. Then we go along and buy him for 6m. Staggering.

I'm strongly considering just refusing to watch the rest of the season. I think we're going to survive but it sure as hell won't be pretty.

I don't think anyone's going to disagree with the topic. Just amazed how much people bigged up Butt last season.

I think we can all agree that Dean and his band of fools just had a lot of questionable decisions all around tonight. It's silly to think that they had a vendetta against any particular team of course. Bad refs are like the weather. Their calls can be good or bad, but you can't really do anything about it either way. We've just had more than our share of bad weather this season.

Just like last season, and the one before it. Reminds me of this restaurant in my neighborhood. They were getting a decent amount of customers but they just keeped renovating and chaning their menu every year trying to get better. They never did and their renovation costs ended up driving them to the ground.

any decisions on Keegan will have to be reserved until next season when he has his own players and has had time to impose himself on the team. Have to say though, the rush of good feeling that was one of the biggest strenghts of his appointment has now truly and completely disappeared. He'll have to stand purely on his own merits now.

Both have been injured a lot so they haven't been featuring that much I think. Although Nobby at leats has been key on the right wing when he does start. Remember him having a great game when I watched them against Spurs in November.

And I'm not saying he'd be a great player now, just like how I wasn't calling him one last season. Just pointing out how I'd much rather have him than Butt/Smith/maybe even Barton at this point.

Aside from not having a striker who can actually score goals, Boro really are a team superior to us in every aspect. (Well, maybe not Schwarzer. Worst goalie in the Premiership IMO) Any one of Wheater, Huth, Rochemback, Arca, Downing would walk straight into our team. Arca would have been a canny winter buy, actually. Hold on, they're superior to us in every way because they have 5 players who would get into our team in your opinion?.. Don't you realise that means we have 6 players who would get into there team? mackems.gif Individually we're about at the same level but as a unit they funciton far better. It's a silly point, but Pogatetz - Enrique, Gary O'Neil - Milner are debatable anyway so really only Given, Owen, Viduka/Martins, Beye would probably walk into their team. Not sure if they'd consider Beye a significant upgrade over Luke Young either.

Boy do I wish we still had them right now. I don't think I need to talk about why we're missing Solano. Would've been an amazing help for us right now. Granted, his departure was forced upon us so it's not like we had a choice in the matter. As for Parker, he got slated while he was here as a hard worker with no skill who defended well enough but couldn't distribute the ball. What people didn't notice was that Nicky Butt, who was being universally praised last season, was just about the same thing, just older. Now that Butt has lost his legs completely, the prospect of a midfield grafter who might not be the best passer in the world but definitely helps us keep posession doesn't sound too bad at all. I think selling Parker immediately has to be one of Big Sam's larger mistakes in the summer market. There were various contributing factors (falling out with the fans, needing the cash to get Barton etc.) but I think we let him go much too soon. Certainly would rather have him than Smith at this point.

Barton was very good in the middle. But he needs an extended run in the team to truly be comfortable in that position. You can understand why that might not necesarily happen.

Aside from not having a striker who can actually score goals, Boro really are a team superior to us in every aspect. (Well, maybe not Schwarzer. Worst goalie in the Premiership IMO) Any one of Wheater, Huth, Rochemback, Arca, Downing would walk straight into our team. Arca would have been a canny winter buy, actually. Agree besides Rochenback,hes a complete donkey! He's a pretty decent player who has a lot of suspect patches. Their version of Emre. Would still have him over Butt or Smith in midfield.

Carr hasn't looked too bad. Keep him, put Beye in the middle of defence and ave Faye in midfield. Even though Jenas and Parker got slated for their square passes at least they kept the ball... Butt was terrible. I think we're actually missing Scott Parker a lot. He would have done well as a DMF in our current system I think. Hastily selling Parker/Nobby to West Ham was probably our second biggest mistake during the summer after buying Alan Smith for 6m.

Aside from not having a striker who can actually score goals, Boro really are a team superior to us in every aspect. (Well, maybe not Schwarzer. Worst goalie in the Premiership IMO) Any one of Wheater, Huth, Rochemback, Arca, Downing would walk straight into our team. Arca would have been a canny winter buy, actually.

We're sorely missing Enrique btw. Zog still goes forward far too much (can't blame him) and leaves open acres of space. Gary O'Neil almost ripped us in half twice today.

Barton in for Butt, Faye in for Cacapa. I know Barton isn't strictly a holding player, but Butt isn't really much of a football in the last few months, i think he's lost it. Geremi, maybe KK can get something out of him? Geremi would be just as bad as Butt playing in the central midfield IMO. I wouldn't mind playing Faye in the midfield and Baye as a central defender since Carr seems to be doing passably as of late. Of course, things turned out so fantasticly the last time we played everyone out of position , so that might not be the best of ideas.

That's a very high mark for N'Zogbia IMO. I think he was pretty poor. Are people honestly saying we couldn't have brought in a better player than Nicky Butt in January??? We could've brought in someone better than Butt. The point is we didn't want to buy someone we'd just have to replace again in the summer. This season was written off from the start. Things are going as planned as long as we're not relegated. Reminds me of our last "keeping our powder dry" incident, although this time the result could be a lot worse than not consolidating a place in the top 4. I'm not necessarily saying that it's a good idea, but it seems to be Keegan/Mort/Ashley's plan.

The dilemma: does Faye replace Cacapa in defence or Butt in midfield? Which piece of shit do we excise from our team first?

Cacapa 3? have a word 2 then. Cacapa had good moments, but the only reason he was called upon to make wonder saves was because his horrible positioning put us into trouble in the first place. Faye can't come back soon enough