Consortium of one

Redknapp's lads are starting to tune him out Newcastle 3 Roffleham 1 Ba 11' Tiote 32' Ben Arfa 66'

I don't want to stir up old shit but I have wonder how the Graham Carr scouting regime would have worked instead of Dennis Wise and his cronies. Keegan may still be managing.

On a side note, John Henry's little prize, the Boston Red Sox have not dealt well at all with their epic collapse. I can only hope that his leadership and direction produces the same results if Liverpool can't consistently find a spot in the top 4.

An article on the BBC site says that Sir Alex would be against this and good on him. Allowing that to happen would further the gap between top clubs and the rest. Any league has to function as a collective and the big clubs need the smaller clubs more than some are willing to believe. Just look at La Liga, if all but the top clubs have to walk a tightrope to pay their players how is competition maintained? You need to compete against quality week in and week out. I also think it would be prudent to see how much impact the Financial Fair Play rules have before jumping to any conclusions. If Man City are brought back into line a lot of angst will go away.

It was beautiful. He deserved to get mobbed.

Krul was awesome today. Made all the right decisions and kept his cool. MoM, IMO.

I had a feeling we'd score on that corner and then Ba headed it home. Jonas goal nearly brought a tear to my eye. As much as I thought we controlled the first half, Wolves didn't take their chances very well. The second half was horrible. We invited too much pressure and just when the announcers talked about taking Ba off and bringing in another midfielder, Pards took Ba and Cabaye off for Guthrie and Shitpants. In the end, Wolves are tough to beat at the Molineaux and I'll take the 3 points but that 2nd half was discouraging.

Better to get rid of a player a year early as opposed to a year too late.

Obertan is a work in progress. He's got bags of pace. He just needs more confidence and to work on his crossing.

I was real happy with the style of play. Some dodgy defending at times but there were also some real nice individual plays made by the back four as well. Cabaye is a real threat from distance and when teams catch on to that he'll have some nice passing lanes open up for him. Best was in the right place at the right time, once again. I thought Ba looked a more comfortable. Marveaux looked good. Tiote looked more like the Tiote of last year. Can't wait to see HBA get a nice run of games with these lads.

Reports are now circulating that HBA will be out and additional 3-4 weeks with a hyper extended elbow. "He tried to hug Derek Wright, screamed, and then crumpled to the turf. A subsequent scan has indicated possible ligament damage in both elbows", relayed bemused Magpie gaffer Alan (Pards) Pardew.

I enjoyed reading that. Guthrie is fat.

boycoutt

Pards needs to force the club forward, move away from the 442 and the shite players who have been starting. I like 4-5-1 that some people have posted: Krul Simpson Saylor Colo Santon Cabaye Tiote Obertan Marveaux Jonas Ba Keep the ball on the deck. Stop hoofing it, work the ball up and encourage more movement. I don't like the way Obertan stands around but when he is more involved offensively, he's more active overall (from what I've seen). McLeish is unimaginative and seems happy trying to scrape a win. No reason we can't win this game.

I still think Joey will have a major meltdown this season. The way he flipped the ball back at Sammy tells me he still has some anger issues. He did get a talking to by the ref after that too, so they are watching him.

Shola spent entirely too much effort falling down last night.

i was at work and couldn't watch the whole game. In the 1st half SWP played wide and was extremely dangerous, creating chances at will. Then it appeared that he played more centrally in the 2nd half and was no where's near as dangerous. Did I see that right?

They are playing more cohesively than we are.

If we win I'll pop a Pard-on

The NFL started doing this a few years ago with the idea being that it would help minority prospective coaches get used to preparing for and then going through the interview process.

I'm so happy to read that Pards was out scouting strikers that we won't sign in January. I will not be shocked if new Erdinc rumors start up in mid December and run right through the January window.

The Red Sox front office is one of the most sophisticated in it's use of statistics to evaluate talent so it would not be a surprise of John Henry would want a statistics driven approach for his football club as well.

I see no reason why can't be near the top of the Premier's financial table and, by golly, that is something to be proud of. Thanks to the Carroll money we'll probably be second to only Arsenal. The clubs net profit and PPW (that's "Pound Per Win" for you financial table n00bs) will be something to be admired!

I'd take Carroll back. We'd have to change the way we played a bit though. Probably what I'd do is switch Jonas back to the right side and start Marveaux on the left. Let Marveaux play as a classic winger and cross. Jonas can play much as he does now, perhaps look to cross a bit more since he's on the right. HBA could be devastating playing off of Carroll.

I disagree at this point. The point of these games was never to win (though obviously that's always something you want). The point was to figure out who will figure in the team going forward and to get them acclimated. For example, they were doing extremely intense 2-a-days for the last week in training. Knowing full well it might mean players were going to be too tired during the actual game, but he wanted to see who would be able to handle the intensity and who can play the way he wants to play even under adversity. These kinds of things take time - I'll be worried if qualifying starts next year and we still look so ramshackle. Until then, in Jurgen I trust. I hope you are right. I can't shake the feeling that the longer he stayed out of football the more his stature grew in the eyes of some. He certainly had success rebuilding the Germany squad but that was 5 years ago.