Jackie Broon

Yet the board let him spend 6 million on Smith, on a whim with no real idea how he would fit into the team, and 6 million on a unproven teenage leftback. Doesn't really ring true, Sam.

He is good. it´s just that he cant pass a ball But isn't that a slightly fundamental aspect of being a good footballer?

Maybe they'll change the system. Maybe they will, but I can't really see Defoe and Baros working well together in a 4-4-2. They're both players who like to play off a 'big man'.

I think Portsmouth have made a bit of a mistake swapping Benjani for Defoe. The 4-3-3 they play relies on having a big, strong and mobile striker in the centre, like Benjani. Defoe isn't that and I think he'll struggle to fit into the system they play.

Bloody great - can't believe we haven't even bought one player in, especially when the likes of spuds are flashing the cash on seemingly decent buys.. Spurs have probably been working on those signings for a month or two. We've only had two weeks, two weeks when a whole new senior management structure has come into the club. Be patient, we're never going to get into a European spot and once we have Beye, Faye, Martins and Emre back we'll have plenty enough to pull clear any relegation danger. We can start rebuilding in the summer.

Good players don't want to play for us because we're s**t. We're s**t because good players don't want to play for us. Catch 22.

There are good players in the team but none of our central midfield players are good enough.

Rozehnal and Butt in midfield, great! We'd be better off playing with 9 men than with those two passing it straight back to the opposition at every opportunity.

For what Keegan has done for our club he deserves another crack at it. If it ends up going tits-up, so be it, there's nowt we can do about it. What we mustn't do as supporters is be influenced by the cockney press, who would 'love it' if it all goes wrong and are already trying to get the ball of negativity rolling. We can either help Kev by being 100% behind him or contribute to our own downfall be thinking negatively.

No it isn't. If you have become chemically dependent on alcohol and quit cold turkey your brain goes into overdrive which can cause seizures, your blood pressure also increases which can cause heart attacks or strokes. People can and do die from alcohol withdrawal.

You need all of it in todays game. Fergy and Wenger are massive examples. Fergy on the one hand uses a combination of huge potential signings and a pretty simple but massively effective 442 system. His main priority is having quality players that are highley motivated and this shows on the pitch. Wenger is different. He motivates players, sure but there motivation comes from the fact that most of their players know they are playing for an experianced manager who has won almost everything in a beautiful way. Mainly uses tactics and style of player, i.e signing players that can pass and run and then incoporates that into his football. Both can be very successful but a lack of either will get most managers caught out. On the one hand you can have an Allardyce on the other dare i say you could have a Keegan. Man U haven't regularly played 4-4-2 since they had Cole and Yorke up front. They play a sort of 4-3-3 which allows the front three lots of freedom to roam. Which I agree only works because of the quality of players he has.

Under Keegan we tended to play a 4-4-1-1 with two wingers and two fairly solid central midfielders. Not exactly an all out attacking system! He clearly understood that a team needs a solid base to attack from, he didn't just pack our team with attacking players, there were the likes of Batty and Bracewell there to do the dirty work and allow the attacking players to attack. And for a team that supposedly couldn't defend we didn't conceded that many goals: 93/94 - 41 (only 3 more than Man U, 5 more than Blackburn) 94/95 - 47 95/96 - 37 (only 2 more than Man U) All of those seasons were played over 42 games. When we finished 3rd under Robson we conceded 48 in a 38 game season.

Aye, I had a lump in my throat when said he was "happy to be home"

wasnt it keegan that picked him for england when he was a lad? Nope, that was Hoddle in 98. By the time Kev was England manager Owen was an England regular and apparently had quite a difficult relationship with Keegan.

So is Kev going to fly into the ground at half time in a helicopter?

I welled up when I heard the news. My head says it might go horribly wrong but I'm over the f*****g moon There's been a feeling of unfinished business hanging over the club since he walked. For what he's done for this club in his two previous spells, he deserves another go at it.

How anyone can say the sacking of a manager who persuaded his chairman to part with 6 million for a player with an upcoming criminal trial, who is then s**t on the pitch and gets himself arrested again is 'a bit unfair' is beyond me. Sam took a massive risk with Barton and it predictably backfired. That alone should've been good enough reason to dismiss him.

Well that's not saying much! He's far from good enough to be the creative player in a top half central midfield.

Barton has a good footballing brain and a knack for being in the right place at the right time (on the pitch anyway ) but his passing has always been a bit wayward.

Our playing staff is severely lacking in some vital areas IMO Sam was desperate for us to play a 4-3-3 with a lone striker and two wingers-come-forwards supporting him. But the players he inherited weren’t suited to that, you need an Anelka/Drogba/Carew type striker who is both big/strong and mobile. He didn’t manage to bring that sort of player in, yet still insisted on playing 4-3-3 in many matches. But fundamentally I think our problems boil down to just having too many central midfielders who can’t pass. This has been an issue for years, maybe even since Lee left, but has been exacerbated by Sam’s signings. Butt’s passing is dreadful, as is Barton’s, Geremi’s and Smith’s when played there. Our one central midfielder with some level of technical ability, Emre, was clearly seen as too lightweight by Sam. His demise was down to his signings and selection rather than his sports science approach.

Mark Hughes has done a fantastic job turning Blackburn around from the mess Souness left them in. He'd do well here as well but he'd be off to Man U as soon as Ferguson retires. Out of the above options Hitzfeld is too negative and Houllier wasted too much money on shockingly bad players while at Liverpool. I'd love to see van Gaal here but would he leave AZ mid season?

Pros: He could turn out to be a great manager and that's the only way we're going to get a great manager. No proven top class manger would be temped by us, the only way we will get one is by taking a chance on someone unproven. In terms of the football played and results we had our best period since the departure of Robson while Shearer was Roeder's 'assistant'. How much of that was Shearer's influence? I don't know, but it disappeared when Shearer left. He may have the same effect as he had then. Cons: It's a big risk. But, we're not going to get back up in the top six by playing it safe.

That was Allardyce's team and I don't believe the result would've been any different if he'd been still in charge.

The more we train ourselves to accept sh*te as "acceptable" the more we get. But we haven't been sh*te.

We've generally played pretty well. We've just come up agaist a much better side on a ground we havent won at for 36 years. What did you expect?