leffe186

Sorry, we got three - but would still have been second.

We would have been expecting 10 points minimum from the last four games. We got two. Win them all and we'd have been second. This has been such a weird season. Nobody is particularly good, nobody is totally bad. If we'd played this year like we played the last we'd be in with a shout of the league.

Quite. Well we could have had Real at home! Jesus, what an incredible miss by Fuller. Stoke should have won this.

Christ. We're not going to get 5th at this rate. Dive from Lampard.........no booking.

Enjoyed that. Took me far too long to remember Chris Powell's name. Missed Nicky Barmby too, which is a little embarrassing.

You'll not have seen the Alan Smith thread then. IIRC there was a fair bit of wage discussion after relegation, and understandably so. FWIW here's what one Arsenal fan apparently said about wages: ""Arsenal's year ending 09/10 shows the spending on wages at £111m, marginally (approx £20m) below Man Utd and City, with Chelsea being the top spenders. If we look down the list we will see Spurs at £67m for the same period. This is an extraordinary statistic and it needs some pause for reflection : Arsenal spent £44 million more than Spurs on wages in one financial year. This is shocking. Many gooners complain that Spurs seem to outspend us in the transfer market (which they do) and many neutrals and gooners alike think that Arsenal's brilliant book balancing in the transfer market is one of the main reasons why he should not be sacked. At the same time we all know that the addition of 3 or 4 good quality players would probably be the difference in winning the league this season and possibly 2 or 3 previous seasons in the last 5 years. So the question is two-fold : a) why does Arsene spend so much money on wages and b) why do Spurs spend so little? The fact that Arsenal reward their huge swathes of mediocrity should be a source of grave concern amongst us fans. Players like Rosicky on £80k per week, and on a long contract, Denilson, Bendtner, Diaby & Almunia not being far behind is criminal. Spurs on the other hand pay a top whack of £60k per week and the top earner is Robbie Keane and he is currently off the wage bill altogether! OK, perhaps it is not going to be possible for Spurs to remain with such a low top wage, especially if they want to keep some of their best players such as Bale & Van Der Vaart, but what it shows is that Arsene has totally lost it. He is wasting millions and millions of pounds on garbage players and this is restricting him from spending that money on better players. Make no mistake, this is his decision and his alone."

Agreed. Conjo, saying that selling Carrick allowed us to buy Berba, then selling Berba allowed us to buy Modric etc is kind of true, but only after the fact. We didn't want to sell either Carrick or Berba. We didn't buy them to sell them, we bought them because they made us better, and we could afford them. It's exactly as Ian W says, the prime motivation in buying them was to make the team better - but that doesn't exist in a vacuum. When getting Carrick we were rebuilding an entire squad, so despite spending a lot of money overall we couldn't spend a lot on an individual. When getting Berbatov we were only tweaking our squad, so we had more money available, but we weren't quite at the level to spend silly money. In both cases, we were constrained by our wage structure. We could only buy players who would accept good money, but not great money. That will naturally mean you are looking at younger players (Carrick, Lennon, Huddlestone) or players from low-paying leagues who are not yet proper stars (Berbatov, Modric). That in turn will generally mean that you are going to pay a bit less in transfer fees. The OP specifically talks about Newcastle though, and does ask whether you genuinely have a buy-to-sell policy irrespective of a player's worth to the team. That was clearly never the case with Spurs. We bought to improve the team, only selling if (a) it seemed that we had to (Berba, Carrick, maybe Keane) (b) the player was considered to no longer serve his purpose (Bent, Malbranque, countless others). If you want to suggest that Newcastle have a buy-to-sell policy you have to have transfers that don't fit into either of the above. I'm not absolutely sure you do. Bassong can be explained by relegation, Carroll by silly money. Buying at low prices is surely simply a factor of the amount of money you have available. I think Gosling can be justified because he's young, probably on reasonable wages and if fit will improve your squad. The real test will be the next window or two. If you were really buying-to-sell then a big offer for Tiote (say 15-20M) would mean him leaving, and the money generated would go into five or six players. You can talk about silly money for Carroll and the need to rebuild your squad but Tiote, Barton, Ben Arfa and just maybe Coloccini, are the remaining players to build your team around. Selling one of them for not-silly money would speak volumes.

They missed Henry through injury too. I watched a bit of the game, completely played for the draw the whole way through. I purchased MLS Directkick or whatever it is, really enjoying my Saturday's with it now. How did the Crew look? Boring, no creativity. I think you could put it down to the Red Bulls style though, they did well with what they had. Sounds about right. Schelotto was our creativity. Someone has to step up this year, and I'm really not sure who it's going to be. I hoped Rogers and Ekpo would play a bit like Bale and Lennon, swapping wings etc, but Rogers didn't even start in the first game.

They missed Henry through injury too. I watched a bit of the game, completely played for the draw the whole way through. I purchased MLS Directkick or whatever it is, really enjoying my Saturday's with it now. How did the Crew look?

Good. Fuck em.

Surprising that. A quick look at our results shows that the closest we came to buggering that up was against Tunisia in 1990 - saved by an 89th minute Steve Bull goal. Oh, what halcyon forward days. Didn't realise that Turkey had never scored against us, in ten matches.

Seriously? Man, you could walk it in less than that.

I respectfully disagree. Blindingly thinking we wont ever go down is akin to being borderline fanatical. You can support the team but acknowledge that the squad isn`t good enough to stay up. I havent placed any bets but I still think we are in the dangerzone given our injuries and current form. ...and isn't it more like taking out life insurance in case you get cancer? Not that it's like that, but that's closer to the truth. I don't bet, but I can understand someone betting against their team. People bet for all kinds of reasons. Some people apparently only bet on things they feel comfortable cheering for, some occasionally bet to soften a blow. Don't people sometimes lay bets off halfway through to protect their money - less of a risk for less of a win? I think that Fantasy Football is more insidious.

Only just seen the goals here. Jesus, lads, that second goal, wtf?

Hadn't seen that on the BBC site, looked again and it's buried. I thought that was a fairly big story, am I missing something?

Where from, his head?

Well obviously I hope we don't get mullered, but I'm actually chuffed with the draw. I wanted ManU first, then Real. I reckon the best three sides are in our side. I've expected to get knocked out at every stage, so now it's just a blast. Taking out Inter, then Milan, then playing at the Bernabeu? As you say, it's magical. I just wish we were playing better, and that everyone was fit.

I think I'll wait a bit before going onto RAWK. Let them simmer nicely.

For the handball, could the goal-line official be unsighted or did he bottle it?

He's specifically said he doesn't want to be just a squad player. We'd have been happy to keep him as that.

Why didn't they let us have Dzeko, if they had no interest in using him?

Gauntlets already off I see.

TBF, that sounds like a reason to warm to someone.

UEFA suspends Nasri, Wenger.....and Jordan. http://www.uefa.com/uefa/footballfirst/matchorganisation/disciplinary/news/newsid=1608513.html?rss=1608513+Wenger%2C+Nasri+and+Jordan+suspended+for+one+match

I know what you're saying......but somehow I see the CL being the one point this season where they get found out. We've been fairly shit at times this year but have squeezed through. United always seem to get players back from injury when they play us - maybe this time will be different.