Gallowgate Toon

He was 17 in October.

Probably because Butt was fucking awful in possession, and most shots... off target doesn't warrant a high rating. I agree Zoggy was useless today, lost the ball alot etc but Duff however i thought looked pretty sharp.

He is poor away from home, as he runs round like a headless chicken and leaves massive gaps in the midfield.

How many times has he played on the right wing? He's played right side of a front 3 but that's hardly the same as a right winger. Its actually pretty similar, your expected to go out wide and put in crosses, but also come inside and shoot too. did you not see the formation? who was going to stick out wide when you had Barton, Smith and Butt playing in the midfield, they are all very central players so Martins and Milner were expected to do the wingers dirty work. However he has played on the right wing proper only a couple of times when Smith and Viduka were upfront together.

Oba has scored 24 goals in 55 starts and 62 appearances overall. With some of these starts being on the right wing. So basically your looking at a goal every 2 games with Oba. He is a good striker his goals to games proves it.

Get help. The only thing Martins has over Smith is goals Oh, so not much then? The point lost on you it seems is goals as infrequent as they come from Martins I might add, are not enough. We need more from Martins than the odd goal. yeah, we could've done without Martins' odd goal last year.. wonder how Smith's creative genius would've fit next to Sibierski.. or from the right wing.. oh wait, we've seen that this season What Martins did last year doesn't matter in regards to this debate. Lets re-sign Andy Cole because of what he did in 93-94... No. i wrote it, because you keep saying that the odd goal is not good enough yeah, surely, if we are Real Madrid, it's not good enough.. but we are a team that lacks flair so much it hurts my eyes watching model pros like Smith playing their pointless side passes.. Martins' goals were good enough to save us from certain relegation last year, playing in a team that created even less chances than this season's.. in my eyes, he has proved here that he is a good striker and a danger for every defense.. sure he has his shortcommings, but who f****** doesn't.. if only Allardyce had some common sense to play him more regularly instead the lost cause of Mickey Owen, maybe his form wouldn't have suffered so much.. He's an average striker and an average goalscorer too, and he's a poor footballer full stop. This sin't opinion, it's based on clear and present evidence. He's poor in almost every department to ever be a top striker/footballer. As for your other comments, he's featured more this season than Owen so what the hell are you talking about? He looked a pretty decent footballer last season and he has this season when played in a 4-4-2 (playing upfront). He has featured more than Owen by a few games but alot of the time has been played way out of position. Whenever he has played in a 4-4-2 this season and been played up top he has scored goals. Thats all the facts you need with a striker, goals.

No point in selling, good striker with alot of potential just keep him here. Would be a huge mistake to get rid.

I think we all know Martins is really a pretty good player. If you watch Newcastle train before a match you can see he has good technical ability, he is a raw player with Raw talent which CAN be coached. Just play him upfront in a 4-4-2 and he is guaranteed to get you goals, as we saw last season (which wasn't 17 in 54 btw it was 17 in 43 with a couple of those being substitute appearances). He is a very good 4-4-2 player, if he was played there consistently he could be an excellent player. Comparing him to Torres is stupid though Torres has had alot more practice as a footballer then Martins. Torres practically played every game for Atletico for 4 seasons, Martins played sparingly for Inter. This could be a reason for the inconsistency and lack of confidence. Oba has all the attributes, he is just misguided nothing which some coaching and an arm round the shoulder can't solve. When on form everybody has seen how well oba can play, and what he can do. Keep him he's a good striker for a top 8/top 6 team.

Act Yeh but he doesn't use it Where is this 'pace' that people keep talking about? Butt put him through in the first half at Chelsea, he had a metre on the defender and was caught with ease. It appears if has two options he'll choose the wrong (the selfish approach) one. Actually i think if you watch that again, you will see he and Alex were level on the half way line, Butt played Martins through Martins gets 3/4 yards ahead of Alex but slows down to take a touch to shoot, it's quite clear. I watched the highlights vs Chelsea on quite a few occasions. Regarding last night, i personally thought he looked quicker on a few occasions than i have ever seen him before. Regarding his general play yesterday, i thought he did some good stuff with the ball, he held it up well went on a decent dribble, and did some nice passes and forced a good save from Hart. His famed 'gash' play is just plain untrue he is a better player then many make him out to be, technically. Martins is just a striker that takes more risks and is more selfish but he's a striker right, so thats his job force the opposition, do the unexpected. He is however inconsistent and while his finishing when on form is explosive and very impressive, when off form its quite poor. However this is as much the managers fault by not giving Martins a proper run and not playing him in the right position, up front in a 4-4-2. Imho he is our best striker in a 4-4-2 and its the only time he should be played. The last word though is to the fans, its just amusing going back 3 months to some threads when Martins was on form, coming off the bench and scoring goals and setting them up too to people on this forum were purely jizzing about Martins saying he was the saviour, better than Owen blah blah just shows how fickle some of our fans are.

Owen won't start according to The Mail.

i think we'll win tbh and it could really kickstart the season. 2-1 Martins and Emre in the dying minutes.

Yeah performance wise but we haven't got too many points out of them so far. Well nows our chance to get some pay back then.

Aye its a bit harsh to not put Anderson in there he has been an absolute beast for Man u, i was speaking to some of their fans and they absolutely love him.

He could be so good, watching those Chelsea highlights again you can see how much pace he has. The chance where Butt just placed it through, he was level with Alex at half way but by the time he had reached the ball (this is also after slowing down so he could go on to his left) he was yards ahead of Alex who is also a pretty nippy CB himself. You just feel though if he could just do that 3/4 times every game he would get a goal at least. You can see why he might not do it now as we have no creativity through the midfield but if we bought a Diego or a D'allessandro in January he might start to do it, which would be massively beneficial.

Its a massive shame, he is a very good footballer, such a waste of talent.

the fans at all those clubs (with the exception of man utd maybe) will tell you there clubs improved in the first 6 months. being patient pays off...should we have given souness,roeder,bill mcgarry longer ? Exactly all those clubs could see improvement, so far we have been terrible with no sign of improvement. FFS our fans aint moaning for the sake of it or because their standards are sky high its because the football has been dog s*** and tbh our league standing doesnt reflect how bad we have played, we have had a bit of luck I think its fair to say we've seen slight improvement in the least, i believe that we had our best start in the PL ever this year? and this is a sign of no improvement at all? We do have better players and a better squad, we've got more away points this season so far than last season. We're not in a total injury crisis like last year and we are comfortably away from the relegation zone and pretty damn close to Europe still. Aye we're f***** aren't we, i'd hate to be a fan of any of the teams below us. we had a dream start in terms of "look at that opening group of games" have you seen our remaning away fixtures? Bullshit, i bet we wouldn't have won as many under Roeder and tbh we've had easier starts to the league than this one. Yes its going to be a difficult second half to the season, but i'm convinced we will finish top half, which i'd be happy with.

Blackburn were within days of sacking Souness before we took him away from Ewood and paid them for that so don't use them as a reason to hold onto Allardyce. How long has O'Neill been at Villa? I'll give you Everton. Pompy have had Redknapp since 2005. They have all had more than one season in charge now, yes? (Sam has arguably a much bigger task than the above managers bar ferguson). Which proves it does take at least one season to steady the ship, Sam as i'm sure you have noticed has only been in the job for 6 months and we are only 4 months into the season. You have to give a manager 2 seasons at least unless you are in serious crap (relegation fodder which we aren't) then judge him. You must have known that Sam would have to fix the whole foundations first? do you think it was going to take him a couple of weeks to sort it all out?

the fans at all those clubs (with the exception of man utd maybe) will tell you there clubs improved in the first 6 months. being patient pays off...should we have given souness,roeder,bill mcgarry longer ? Exactly all those clubs could see improvement, so far we have been terrible with no sign of improvement. FFS our fans aint moaning for the sake of it or because their standards are sky high its because the football has been dog s*** and tbh our league standing doesnt reflect how bad we have played, we have had a bit of luck I think its fair to say we've seen slight improvement in the least, i believe that we had our best start in the PL ever this year? and this is a sign of no improvement at all? We do have better players and a better squad, we've got more away points this season so far than last season. We're not in a total injury crisis like last year and we are comfortably away from the relegation zone and pretty damn close to Europe still. Aye we're fucked aren't we, i'd hate to be a fan of any of the teams below us.

Just look at the teams above us though, most of them stuck with a manager and they are doing really well now. Blackburn - Mark hughes had a more mediocre start to his Blackburn campaign for a couple of seasons, now they are European contenders consistently. Aston Villa - Fair to say MON had an average start last season, not massively improving Villa's previous League table finish. Everton - Moyes has had to work his socks off for a few seasons now, but also started off with some dodgy end of season table, now European shoe-ins imo. Pompey - Again Harry had to spend time and money but now Pompey are easily top half and contenders for Europe. Man Utd - The famous example Sir Alex Ferguson took him 3 seasons to guide his team to success and look at them now. It just shows that being patient pays off. We all have to be patient though, the fans, chairman and the players. Sam is a good proven manager, he knows the best let him do his thing.

I seriously doubt he will actually, if his story that his attack was provoked is true he probably won't get any form of a sentence, just a fine. Are you on glue!! His latest escapade was no doubt provoked, but he is already on bail awaiting the Dabo case (that alone could result in a sentence) which was adjourned a couple of weeks ago. No judge or magistrate is going to go easy on him now that he has broken those bail conditions. He going down No i'm not on glue, perhaps i was being too direct when i said that i seriously doubt he will go to prison, for me it could lean either way but provocation can reduce any kind of sentence given. If he did actually go to prison though he would only get a few months. I just don't think a court will send down a footballer for afew months when they know he has plenty of money to pay hefty fines and can do plenty of community service activities, instead of filling prisons even more.

I seriously doubt he will actually, if his story that his attack was provoked is true he probably won't get any form of a sentence, just a fine he has disgraced the club by being out at that time of the day. regardless of the outcome of these charges, he is a scroat and we should never have signed him. I seriously doubt he will actually, if his story that his attack was provoked is true he probably won't get any form of a sentence, just a fine. I seriously doubt he will actually, if his story that his attack was provoked is true he probably won't get any form of a sentence, just a fine. not a expert on criminal law but what has gone before and the fact that he decked someone and it was caught on cctv then started lashing out at passer byes is enough for me ,then the little case of assault coming up with a damn good chance of a jail sentance is enough for me to say he will not play for the toon again .Will our new owners and manager just say "hey joey calm down son and let your football do the talking " i think not hes gone to far this time imho. Yes but the fact that he was apparently 'provoked' into the attack is a huge mitigating factor, if somebody could testify that yes the man Joey hit assaulted a girl at Barton's party and made jibes about his brother (one in prison) then Barton could be let off very easily indeed. I agree with the being out that late part for sure and a club suspension is definitely necessary and a sacking could be used, but i don't think Sam has the guts to sack a player he bought.

He said when he first came here that it would take him 5 years to sort out this club and many on here were fine with that 6 months ago. Its an absolute mockery that people are calling for his head 6 months in, in fact its plain terrible. No wonder the average life of a manager is something like 13 months with all the ridiculous pressure put on the main man by the fans. why can't we be patient, we have no divine right to be better than the teams above and we shouldn't expect too much. Maybe if we were in the relegation zone i would be worried and consider bringing in a new man but for now we are totally safe and i'm sorry we might just have to deal with mediocrity for a couple of seasons until we get back to our old status. If we sack Sam now, what are we going to do? go on with this endless carousel of managers until we actually are relegated? because if thats what we do now, that is what will happen.

I seriously doubt he will actually, if his story that his attack was provoked is true he probably won't get any form of a sentence, just a fine.

I seriously doubt Sam will be sacked for the next couple of seasons.

Not in a court of law though, unfortunately. You can drink until you are paralytic, take as many drugs as you want, play your nintendo ds while driving, and it will still not be murder. True, a girl from near where i live was texting on her phone while driving and collided with another car. The woman in the other car died but the girl was only sentenced to 3 years in prison and obviously a driving ban.