Gallowgate Toon

A team should sell one of their current best players to open the door for superior ones to come in, surely? AC as aplayer was going to limit our ambitions in the future because he's an average striker who is only suited to a one dimensional style of play. The timing of the sale was shocking to but the opportunity was too big to miss. Te second point is moot tbh but recent windows suggest the club can do smart business.

I'd say the club was lacking ambition if we hadn't accepted the deal, limiting ourselves to a stupidly overhyped, glorified battering ram of a striker who, if anything limited our style of play. We can get players a on a different level to AC with that cash. Seriously what is with the clamour for Carroll on here, he's not that good and never will be, he wasn't even the best player in our squad. What tools apart from heading does he really have to make it as a great player? His skill is average, as is his pace, intelligence and finishing. People need to give their heads a shake saying he was going to be a PL great (not specifically you Dave), after scoring 11 goals in one of the worst standard seasons in the league's history, a season where Leon Best has scored a hattrick and a newly promoted club has hit 5+ goals in 3 matches and lets not forget Kevin Nolan already has 10 goals as well. We now have a great chance to build a good footballing side with some higher level players, with this money we can get 6/7 Ben Afra/Tiote like signings ffs, If Andy Carroll had stayed we'd have been confined to alot of boring route 1 stuff and i wouldn't want a team to be built around him for long as he can only take you to a certain level as aplayer. Onwards and upwards i say.

Lost due to an awful midfield yesterday. Teams like Fulham are our achilles heel tbh well organised defensively and very hard to break down. Our midfield was so inept, our defenders were forced to punt balls up the pitch which our strikers were never going to get anything out of, due to Hangeland being a monster in the air. With Tiote in the side, he'd have come deeper and sprayed the ball out wide but he wasn't playing forcing Barton to come deep instead, narrowing our play.

Clean leg breaks never affect a player's speed in the slightest, see Cisse who had the same break twice but actually came back quicker than before. Ben Arfa has virtually the same break, he'll be fine and he's not some soft shite mentally either, he's far too cocky to let something like this get him down, if anything it'll work the opposite way with him, making him stronger.

Not going to panic, Fulham have an excellent defensive record this season, Tiote providing the extra option deep would've been vital tonight.

Would really like Sturridge and Hoilett to come in this Summer. Both are young, versatile, good players and would be available at a fairly reasonable price.

@WarrenBarton (I'm on my phone so can't quote) The way we play, we don't need Andy Carroll and we've already proved that this month. He's the best of our striker bunch no doubt but his replacements are carbon copies in terms of style who can do a capable job imo. As I said in my first post we will survive, we're too strong defensively and in the middle to not win 4 more games or so. I'm still optimistic, we've got the likes of Ben Arfa and Ireland to come into the fold yet, who are exciting and productive players when on top form. We'll be fine and the club will move forward.

Why should anyone believe anyone over anything in football, pretty much everyone is dishonest in this industry and Carroll has quite a track record of being a bit of a pleb, he will try and cover his own back in this as will the club, we'll never really know the whole truth so it's pointless debating what really happened. I'm glad we took the money tbh the lad is hugely overrated and we could buy 2-3 far superior players with that cash. It's even more ridiculous when you consider we bought Ben Arfa for a 7th of what we sold Carroll and he has a track record of being a better player. Now we just need to reinvest and I think we will, we could quite easily spend 20m on a really decent striker in the summer and have a fair bit left over to get a couple Tiote-esque players (in terms of price not position) coming in as well, as long as we survive, which we will imo, then this will be a bigger step forward for the club.

Don't really rate him that much tbh and absolutely ecstatic with the fee, i'm just furious at the tiny amount of time we now have to get a replacement.

Is there a more technically gifted CB in the league? This guy is sheer class on the ball, it seems to me that when he gets a bit older a natural progression to DM would suit him a lot, he could pick out some passes from deep that's for sure.

Pleased for Kaka, has been going through the motions for a couple of seasons. Hopefully the Mourinho factor can rejuvinate him a bit, he was impressive in that little spell with some good passes and a great cross for Cronaldo's goal, great pass and take for his own as well.

Barely played at all. Don't think he's stepped onto the pitch this season. He was poor at the end of his Marseille career, so lack of games has only caused further decline, From the sounds of it, the epitome of a confidence player then? I am surprised mind, i watched him against England in the World Cup and he was really decent against us, had only heard bits about him before that but i was always under the impression he was still a good player.

How often does he play for Wolfsburg? Is he a regular starter? or a squad player?

Not necessarily, we're likely to sign another CB when Cahill leaves. Think this is more to replace O'Brien than anything. He can play right-back too, so not necessarily. Anyway, I'd rather have them than Coloccini and Williamson On the contrary, Coloccini is a massive step up on either of those two. Don't be fooled by the game against your lot he's been top class in every other game he's played in this season, putting in excellent performances against the higher opposition as well.

City could quite easily go 4-3-3 tbh with Dzeko the focal point of their attack with Tevez and Balotelli switching as the wing forwards. Mancini would never do this but having De Jong and Toure as DMs could protect Silva who would be the lone playmaker for the front 3. Kinda like this: De Jong Toure Silva Tevez Balotelli Dzeko

It's pretty clear McKay is stirring the shit atm just to get Joey a contract extension as the article states he only has 18 months left.

Squad player for me, even with our current starting XI. I don't want to get rid of Routledge tbh he gives a very different option on the wing which could be very useful, especially when the game needs a pace injection, he's as much a useful squad player as Larsson.

I've watched him for 4 years. He's s***, hugely frustating and inconsistent. Not a good player by a long shot, or he wouldn't be at West Ham. I can't claim to have much knowledge of him as i've only seen him this season but he's always looked decent enough with 2 good feet, an improvement over Jonas or not?

Such a shame Obinna's only on loan there, i'd take him here in a heartbeat as a left winger.

Adam is like a quarterback footballer, can't do much more than launch it hollywood style albeit accurately. His short passing, stamina and intelligence just isn't quite there compared to someone like Barton.

Chuffed for him, always maintained he was a decent player. I don't think he's much of a goalscorer a la Carroll but technically he's a really efficient target man, who wins a lot of headers and keeps the ball well.

Ben Arfa should be our link man between midfield and attack and as a consequence we should just keep the midfield the same with Barton on the right, Jonas on the left and Nolan and Tiote in the centre midfield with a 4-4-1-1 formation. We should really build our attack around HBA and keeping that midfield would create a really fluid offensive set-up imo while keeping a solid defensive structure. I wouldn't consider HBA a 'direct threat' in terms of goalscoring as i don't think he has a consistent striker's instinct. To compensate having only one striker in the box, in Carroll, Nolan can play to his own strengths which is arriving in the box from deep a la Tim Cahill. I think this'll be fairly safe in terms of defence as Tiote as we've already seen, is perfectly capable of covering Nolan's position. Having Barton out wide means we keep a consistent source of ammunition for Carroll's aerial ability but also someone who has the ability to feed Ben Arfa through, if he gets on his bike. As Barton is a deep winger, he can always help Tiote with tracking back by covering inside without exhausting himself. The player who i think HBA will have the best impact on is Jonas, i think he'll be a lot more positive in his play when he isn't constantly double marked, HBA will free up space for him, isolating him with the fullback which should hopefully let Jonas get to the byline/edge of 18 yard box, meaning his poor crossing ability with his left foot is nullified to an extent. The other positive for Jonas is that Ben Arfa will provide some movement up front, particularly in the channels, HBA can get wide and deliver a ball again preventing Jonas from having to use his left (as much). Ben Arfa can roam and i think he's the sort of player who pops up literally everywhere. He's got the dribbling ability ability to come deep and run at defenders, has the intelligence to use space well and the pace to run off the defender's shoulder opening a variety of possibilities and most importantly space for our other offensive players. In theory, it could be awesome obviously football doesn't work that way but imo on paper, that's a really decent attacking line up that would give a lot of defences a tough time.

He's only effective on the wing when the game is stretched. As we saw against Stoke, his natural instinct is to head inside and when we're playing packed opposition it has a negative impact on our play because we need to stretch teams but cutting in makes it more congested, playing into our opponent's hands.

I would rather have Welbeck than Ben Afra on the footage I have seen this season and I'm not having a pop at Arfa as I haven't seen a great deal of him to make an accurate assessment but Welbeck is going to be a top player. I've seen Ben Arfa twice when Newcastle have been on the box,once was a Sunday afternoon game and he got took off early in second half(can't remember who it was against) and in all honesty thought he was very average and the other game was Man City when he got injured so obviously can't judge him on that. Your criteria for the comparison is massively hypocritical, you've based Ben Arfa on 2 matches where he's in a new country etc, in the same period of matches Welbeck had done nowt, looked incredibly poor and your fans had already written him off. Even the best players have off games but Welbeck's had some time to swing your head around. Ben Arfa is on a different level of player, literally could be one of the world's top players if he gets his attitude sorted accordingly, Welbeck at best can be a nothing more than a Euro League player.

Fair play, must have made it up!