mrmojorisin75

I understand that there's a lot of sympathy for Mowbray's "style of football," but I've never found him particularly impressive. Then again, I tend to be biased against managers who shaft my countrymen. only doubt about him is how good he is in the transfer market.. Mowbray + the TRANSFER TEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAM then? woop!

so you're saying we have to compare a squad with owen & barton (not fit then but was due back) to one where they're badly injured and not replaced you mean? for example harsh indeed if that's what you're getting at Spurs reacted to Defoe's injury - we are relying on one bloke with a dodgy groin to score all our goals for the next two months at least. The injuries didn't happen on Sunday they happened with 4 or 5 days left to react - I don't think its harsh. i think it's harsh in the sense that we needed 4 or 5 players before they got injured if you see what i mean...to sign the ACM, LB, RW, DM & ST we needed plus then also replace barton and owen is harsh but point taken, we've barely reacted and we will pay for it imo

so you're saying we have to compare a squad with owen & barton (not fit then but was due back) to one where they're badly injured and not replaced you mean? for example harsh indeed if that's what you're getting at

i think we have improved, but only a little, maybe not enough to keep us in the prem. we may have strengthened the squad (very slightly) but we haven't strengthened the fight against relegation because our rivals have strenghtened considerably more than we have highly impressive contradicting yourself dude!! -esque!! but i take your point, we've strengthened the least and perhaps needed it the most, so net strengthening is in the minus figures or summik!!

i think we have improved, but only a little, maybe not enough to keep us in the prem. this, in a nutshell

explain how we've weakened then EDIT: strengthened because nolan should get better, and when guthrie comes back (or barton) we'll have a better CM than we did before with butt not in it....also because the addition of taylor will mean that duff should be out of the team with taylor one side and spidey the other, taking duff out of the side increases our players on the pitch from 10 to 11 imo...or 9 to 10 if shola is playing all of that assumes a competent manager making the choices but we have strengthened albeit slightly, which is a huge assumption as for given i'm not convinced he'll be the loss some make out, harper will be fine

I hate to say 'I told you so', but I told you so. To those of you who feel the need to 're-assess' every time Ashley comes out with another empty promise, please be aware you are stupid, and he's taking you for a ride. There is overwhelming evidence that he paid far too much for the club, and is now determined to get his money back regardless of the impact to the club in the meantime. Please do not embarrass yourselves any further by falling over yourselves to give him a chance when he makes an announcement in two months time that he recognises the squad needs improving, and will be acting in the summer. Its all lies. Freddy & co. ripped him off and he'll burn this club to the ground if thats what it takes to get his money back. To be fair, I reckon the majority of people supporting Ashley are those who have read and understand the accounts and realise what a complete mess the club were in financially BEFORE Ashley took over, and appreciate that given the absence of anyone prepared to buy the club and keep it afloat, he is the only one available. Not sure you can say that this equates to those with a low IQ. Conversely, the Anti- Ashley activisits and the "Cockney Mafia Out" brigade don't seem to be the sharpest tools in the box. The allegations that Ashley is only in it for the money and that he is "asset stripping" are ludicrous. Incompetent decision making and poorly advised certainly, but can you point out one profitable football club please? They're all fucked - apart from possibly Man Utd with their global turnover. he's not asset stripping no, but he's certainly allowing the dilution of quality in the squad to presumably rake in some money towards keeping us running rather than invest more of his own money a fair assessment? i'd call this the short view myself 'cause if he's hurting now he's gonna be hurting a fucksite worse come may

1. yeah but what were the bids for those players? a used iphone or summik? 2. he appointed kinnear 3. he appointed the transfer team who should have been able to identify good quality targets regardless of how inept #2 is 4. we'll probably get relegated now so the money won't be spent by shearer or bruce anyways, 'cause there won't be any

suppose strengthened, just it'll only count if martins & owen return in time to play a decent part in proceedings and duff/smith don't...as average a midfield nolan/butt/taylor is assuming they have at least one mobile striker making decent runs we could be in with more of a chance than we were before the window

yeah, but then what he seems to be saying (& i agree) is that we'll only get to a certain point with the 2 x 40k players, trying to go beyond that will take signing the right 80k player if you see what i mean...started with the destruction of bobby's team by souness imo, we were basically a current villa of that time then & the club backed souness to make take us on as laughable as that now sounds by signing 'quality' imagine if we'd invested the souness 50m in 10 x 5m up and comers, as unrealistic as that would be! life would be a damn sight sweeter than it is now imo basically we're going through a purging process to attempt the exact same thing again an undetermined time in the future! we hope

horrifying wasn't it? if ashley knew a single thing about football he'd have sacked him the moment the teamsheet was released

Better players get paid more though - the idea that we could drop all of the high earners and have a squad full of low/moderately paid ones is an unlikely dream imo. The main issue isn't the wages - its the "failure" of those players - if they had performed then nobody would be that concerned about their wages. Say the "plan" works and in 3 years time we have a team on (I presume) Bassong/Guthrie type wages doing moderately okay under a proper manager - taking a Villa style next step would still require a few Viduka/Smith size wage bills. you've hit the nail on the head so fucking hard it should put paid to 90% of the old board/new board shit 'cause it's bang on the money - i can't see how any rational human being can argue against it not taking the piss mind, its an excellent way of looking at things both past, present and future

add to that the 'one man band' factor as well...literally no-one else is able to beat a man or provide some creativity so everyone looks to gutierrez, that'll take it's toll in the end on the guy especially when he's getting kicked to fuck by teams like the mackems who know if they fuck him up then there's nothing else to really worry about by the way, fair play to the lad on sunday...foreign players get a bed reputation at times but he took a kicking and got back up for more every time, hope little mickey, viduka and duff were watching

i'd also say they have a pretty coherent game plan, a settled/balanced side and a manager who knows what they are doing. we all know stoke city are s*** but they have certain strengths that they play to and they make a half decent fist of it. we have more quality (when players are fit) but there's no overall vision, our squad is an unbalanced mess, a hodge-podge of signings from different managers or even scouts that doesn't really amount to a team. Exactly yep, all present and correct there gents - i'm moving from my original starting point of 7 to an 8 now, the west brom game will determine whether that becomes a 9 or remains an 8; anything less than a win it might as well be a 10 actually

There's barely ever a fucking pass on man. He picked out Owen no bother against Stoke... tend to agree with that, hardly like he's got tevez, ronaldo & rooney marauding about making runs into space is it? i think he could do better with his end product personally but he's suffering from what's around him to a degree

What have you seen that convinces you that we are better than 17th? I've seen 5 things in West Brom, Blackburn, Boro, Stoke City and Portsmouth that convince me we are better than 17th. But then again it seems you're depressed and distraught over our current situation so when you look at those teams I don't think you don't see them for the s*** they are, you see Barca, Inter, Man U, Madrid and Juventus. The situation isn't so dire as it's made out to be and for that reason I cannot reason with you that we are better than them because even though we're talking about the same teams, we're not talking about the same teams. Have faith. Take a look at the fixtures for all those teams and compare them to ours. Our next 3 games will likely determine if we'll stay up. We need 7 points from them. key point for me - all the have faith merchants are out again and aren't looking at a combination of (a) how we're playing, (b) our remaining fixtures, © our preposterous manager who the players can simply not respect nor want to fight for & (d) injuries to key players with the likelihood they've no desire for the fight... our prospects are as bleak for staying in the PL as they've been since i've been watching us play

Someone to out-mental the club, I like your thinking. To me, Ketsbaia, Terim and Bruce sound like the strongest contenders so far mentioned, for their differing reasons. Been saying this kind of thing for years now, but my true desire would be shaped by knowing exactly what Ashley intends to do with the club - who would be best suited to managing our club with him around. i like that too as it happens, "out mental the club", some total wack-job that will not be able to tune himself into the circus! got it's merits...still we'd need 11 on the pitch an all

so no-one yet sees this as just more of the same shite getting leaked? everytime we get fucked over in the market and ashley takes the money some story 'appears' that leads us to the next point of being fucked over, pacifies us basically yesterday was a perfect example, email sent to that sky cunt promising something for the yellow ticker (sales of 2 of our best players in the end) only for us to sign mediocrity now when everyone should be rightly up in arms start the stories that public enemy number one is being hoy'd oot and then in the summer goes with a Geordie coming in to take the reigns anyone think ashley would pay the compensation for bruce? me either anyone think shearer would take the job with ashley there? me either fuckin nonsense boys and girls, forget it oh and for what it's worth NE5 (i think) watch wigan...they're a good team man, play the game well and work hard as fuck, they can defend and attack!! - i hated bruce's team at brum but i guess everyone has the capacity to improve and certainly seems to have done so

I think its about getting people to medicals. yeah guess, but then it's not really being extended then is it? typical sky shite....basically they're letting the deals be finalised after 5pm today, nothing new should happen...guess they'll just need written proof of everything before 5pm today

Medicals, contract signings etc. can't be done any other way than in person. medical could be done at any one of a thousand approved clinics i'm sure*...contracts agreed in principle with a signed fax sent to the fa for confirmation as legally binding and physically signed at the first opportunity too easy? fuck it lets extend 24 or 48 hours *to be fair, if we're involved in any transfers i'd hope to fuck they WERE being done elsewhere!

telephone, fax, email, video conferencing, skype, fucking text messages, sign language...none of these methods of communication are sufficient to be able to complete a deal in the year 2009 huh? diabolical redknapp will probably sign half the fucking world if the window is extended

except for the great cross in the first half when Carrol hit the crossbar,right? yeah, except for that one

CM Butt Nolan Guthrie Barton Geremi JOHNSON? cm overload! you the have to assume the strikeout ones leave in the summer giving us 4 CM's who don't look that bad as a group...

harper taylor/beye-colo-bassong-enrique/fox taylor-johnson-nolan-spidey martins-carroll if that's what we end up with then wants setting on fire if we go down

he can pass a football though right? like to it's intended target? and can score goals...? doesn't sound all that bad to me at the moment, a priority for me to avoid relegation actually