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I disagree with the assertion that thrusting forth incisive long passes is a must for any great anchorman. Just take a look at Vieira, he isn't exactly a magical long-range passer (although I'll admit his short-range ability is class,) but he makes it up with his immense movement which gives him the capability to rush into the box and score the occasional goal. Something, incidentally, that Parker has shown that he is capable of doing. (Of course, he doesn't have Vieira's physical presence, but nobody here is accusing Parker of being one of the greatest holding midfielders in the history of football.) For that matter, I honestly don't see where all this "Butt is an amazing passer" talk is coming from either. Call me shortsighted but I honestly don't remember any instances in this season where a long-range killing pass from Butt has set up a goal for us. No, he's not exactly belting everything into the stands, but I'd only rate his passing ability as distinctly average. He seems to have marginally better vision than Parker does, but whether that makes him a significantly better player is debatable at best. Yes, Parker is not a distributor by any stretch of the word. His passing technique isn't exactly world class, and he seems to suffer from tunnel vision when he picks up the ball, only noticing players directly in front or behind him. But in my view these are weaknesses that can be overcome by his inherent strengths. The key to Scott Parker is his ridiculous spirit and stamina coupled with an instinctive knack for covering and constant off the ball movement. He knows where he has to be to stifle the opposing attack and he has the physical capability to get there. I think this is the main reason why he is so often slagged off as "invisible." All his good stuff happens off camera, where he's constantly running around and getting in the way. Couple this with some above-par offensive capabilities and I say you've got a potentially cracking anchorman. I won't dispute that Parker is suffering from some bad coaching, or that his leadership credentials are questionable at this point in his career. Both of those points are certainly true. However, I do not believe that they merit all this talking in absolutes, calling him "hopeless" and "must-sell." The way I see it, he's one of the only players in our squad that can honestly say that he is one of the best in the Premiership at what he does. The question we should be asking is not how to get rid of Scott Parker, but how to make him fit into our style of football. Until this is clearly a lost cause, I strongly argue that he should not be written off.

In my FM game, Bramble moved to Fulham and went on to be the core of their defense for 10 seasons. .... 8 of those were in the Championship. Lets hope this is a case of fiction reflecting reality

Better than nothing TBH. Look at our defense line. He's a body, SIGN HIM!

Souness had Shearer and even Owen from time to time. That, and even at his worst, his playing team was still better than his injured one. Roeder isn't class, but I say he's competent. Just a lot of bad luck all around really.

I don't care how smart you think you are, if you start finding reasons to piss on Shay, then your not just making sense anymore. soapbox.gif

We're blaming this on Parker AGAIN? Parker's DMFing yesterday was at least as good as Butt's best day, you know, the days when everyone is pissing all over themselves to call him Godly. We got slightly out-posessioned yesterday because they were Man-Frigging-United and we're just an average squad missing half our first team. NOT because of Parker. How does Scholes scoring goals immediately correlate to blame on Parker?

I don't think we were 'outpassed' in midfield because we've got crap players, its just that they've got better ones than us, simple really. When the teams were announced of the outfield players the only one of theirs who I felt wouldn't have automatically walked into our team today was Fletcher, and he's not too shabby to be truthful. It's not something to get too worked up about in my opinion (yet) as they are top of the league and playing like it, they are a very classy and attack minded team and at present we're not anywhere near them. They've been playing this type of football since at least the inception of the Premiership and it shows, especially when they have a settled and experienced team who all play in their correct positions ie wingers on the wing, fullbacks as fullbacks etc etc When they attacked, especially down the flanks, it was our tactic to double up on their winger, Milner & Solano, Dyer & Edgar, with Parker and Emre helping out too, that worked in one way but the downside was when we got the ball our wingers were behind the ball so Emre or Parker or whoever had the ball only usually had Sib and Martins ahead of them, who were both, in the main, well shackled by their defenders. The only option was to try and run with the ball and because we didn't have the bodies ahead of the ball, they could smother the ball-runner before he could get too far. While we did give the ball away a few times needlessly with an under-hit pass (Dyer and Solano stand out from memory), we also had some canny passing play, the build-up to Milner's goal especially. Granted they had the lions share of play but who to be honest didn't expect this, and overall, and under the circumstances, I think we did alright. Fantastic post. Aye, calling our midfield shite because it didn't live up to ManU standards... Sadly, that's expecting way too much of our lads. No team in the Premiership, or in the world for that matter, has been as fluid or graceful on the break as the Mancs have been this year, and we did what we could to stop them with what we had. You simply can't expect the same thing from us, we just don't have nor can we afford the talent. For a mid-table team with occasional European aspirations, I think our midfield is class. And until we make the step up, the like of parker and emre will more than do it for me.

If he WAS here right now, we'd probably be slagging him off to no end and blaming all our woes on his bad finishing. I mean, imagine if he had missed that penalty while playing for Newcastle. We'd have a 17-page thread titled "Louis Saha" with everyone and their mothers getting on the bandwagon to kick him in the nuts. The cries of "Saha Out" after every game would be deafening, and we'd probably sell him to Tottenham for 1.5 mil, where he'd go on to score 15 a season. Funny though, inconsistent, injury-prone, easy target for knee-jerkers.... The lad has all the hallmarks of a Newcastle player.

Dream day for Edgar. Pulled a Santiago Munez, he did.

Well yes, but if not for a few lucky clearances, not to mention the fact that my countryman is a really, really horrendous finisher, we'd have been down 4~5 goals. The result is all that matters tbh. And I'd be happy with this result if we were fielding a full-strength team, never mind a reserve squad

Nah, somewhere deep down, even Fat Fred has a brain. If this is at all true, Glenn should threaten to shoot himself unless it's called off. Liverpool offloading Crouch may be plausible though, considering that they'll have ample money in the window for replacements. It's just that 12m is a crazy-land fee.

Not too bothered. Amazing as it must seem, losing matches actually does happen from time to time. And it would just be a truly horrible reflection on our collective intelligence as fans if we took one bad day to mean that our boys are shite again. Going to a tough away fixture with a fourth-choice keeper in goal and a defense line with two reservists and no players over 24, something bad was bound to happen. If there was ever a game that we should've expected the worst from, this was probably it. What I'm more worried about right now is our "new" injury crisis, which is arguably scarier than our old one. With Given, Harper, and Krul still unconfirmed for both Everton and Manure, and Nobby apparently swept off into the twilight zone once again, it seems we'll be forced to face the most testing time of the year with a uber-makeshift defense that can't be termed as anything more than a disaster waiting to happen. Not to mention that Dyer and Emre both seem to be playing slightly injured as well. We're pretty much one unlucky training ground incident for Butt from going 5-0 down to Manure at home.

The way I see it, Joey Barton is basically just Scott Parker but with personality problems. (waits for the flames to fall) Definitely agree with Taiwo/Baines, but if the big clubs are on the prowl, I guess we wouldn't have a chance. Arsenal is looking desperate for a LB, so I guess they'll pick up Baines. Why the **** does Inter want Taiwo anyway? Don't they already have like 30 leftbacks on the first team? In a quaint bit of nepotism, I'd personaly like to suggest Lee Young-Pyo. Was a good preformer last year, and is in my opinion a good deal less shaky defensively than he gets blamed for. Jol was a crazy bastard to ditch him for Ekotto TBH. He wants out of Tottenham and would probably come on the cheap (3 mil at most). Deal to Roma in the summer fell through because he didn't want to move out of England, so we'd be an ideal spot.

Admittedly, he's been rather impressive every time I've seen Watford play. Did a cracking job against the Manure early in the season tbh. Definitely not the kind of complete package we need though. Chances of turning into Bramble II = 35%

Finally showing all that Football Manager promise This is blatantly knee-jerk, but I could see this being a 15-goal season for Martins. Go Oba!

injured but nearly back. Targetting a weekend return if I recall correctly.

Their only premiership quality player (perhaps excluding Ashley Young) is out injured for the season. Quite frankly, this is almost as imbalanced as us v. Chelsea, only favoring us this time. It's even a home tie. Should be able to smash them comfortably. Then again, Sheffield United... bluedead.gif

Them jumping in was stupid aswell. They are 17, teens do daft things without thinking, footballers especially. Coaching staff should of never allowed them to jump in, but saying that, are we sure it was during a training session, most likely is but... Mate I am 13. So technically I count as a teen but I think the term teen demines ur capabilities and make you sound like an idiotic child who's becoming an adult. Well, that's kind of what a teen is I was one till just a couple years back, so no offense, but a few years down the road you'll probably realize that those years of your life were a very "interesting" time to say the least. I'll probably think the same thing about myself now 5~10 years later as well.

He's signed for Man U, actually played for them in the preseason a lot this year. They basically just had him loaned off to Antwerp long-term because they couldn't pick up a work permit for him. He's a good player IMO, better than he gets credit for. But I don't think he'll every be a first-teamer for the manure. Mostly a signing with an eye to Chinese shirt sales I think. Still, hope he proves me wrong. Always nice to see more asians in the prem.

this is golden. I'm Christian but really not offended at all. I'll probably use this as my ringtone for a while.

Just an interesting thought experiment that occured to me. This is our injury list at the moment. Harper (second choice keeper) Krul (third choice keeper) Moore (starting centerback) Bramble (starting centerback) Solano (starting rightback) Carr (second-choice rightback) Bernard (second choice leftback) Parker (captain and starting central midfielder) Emre (starting central midfielder) Duff (starting left winger) N'zogbia (second-choice left winger) Dyer (starting central midfielder/striker/winger) Owen (best striker) Ameobi (3rd~4th choice striker) If a similar thing happened to Chelsea, they would probably lose Cudicini, Hilario, Terry, Carvalho, Boulahrouz, Geremi, Bridge, Lampard, Ballack, Robben, Joe Cole, Shaun Wright-Phillips, Drogba, Kalou Which would probably leave them with the severely damaged (although admittedly still impressing) lineup of... Cech Ferreira Morais Essien Cole Makelele Diara Mikel Ballack Shevchenko Sinclair Not to imply that our players our analogous in quality to theirs, but this should give you an idea of what sort of injury situation we're in. Even the most ridiculously deep squad in the premiership would be hard-pressed to ride out this sort of crisis. These are the conditions under which we played and fought well today. I suppose they deserve a round of applause, no?

Fighting preformance. Sheer force of will + shite finishing from Kalou and Sheva almost handed us a most deserved point. The boost of confidence we should recieve from this game is probably worth far more than just a point in the long term, as long as Roeder capitalizes on it in the locker room. Solid preformance from all of our regulars, and Babayaro showed some definite improvement. Perhaps Nigel Pearson is indeed our blessing in disguise? Huntington obviously had butterflies raging in his stomach, but he did a solid job in what must have been a tough first start. He'll look back on tihs day with pride if he goes on to do great things. Pattison still looks unready for first-team football. Mostly invisible with some shocking mistakes in between. Understandable though, and hope the lad doesn't take it too hard. Overall, I'm happy that we showed the cocky overpaid diving ****ers that we're no pushovers. Hope we kill them next week at home. We might not have the multi-million-pound players (outside of the physio room anyway,) but we've got more than enough spirit to be ten times the team Chelski is. Just hope Zog and Sib are ok Proud to be a fan. Howay the lads.

Wait. If you find out that the final scoreline is 6-0 beforehand, you just might burn your TV before you get to watch the game.

I almost ran an analysis of Newcastle's # of injuries compared to the rest of the prem each season for my intro statistics final project this term. Thank God I didn't. I don't think my sanity would have survived the ordeal.

He tends to be a smarmy ass in Football Manager though. Always asks for a transfer for no good reason or picks fights with Martins or whatnot...