Jayson

Uh Viduka = tall and strong Carroll = tall and strong Martins = pacey off the ball Owen = runs through the defence requiring accurate passing Now work out which one might struggle in a side that plays long balls & inaccurate passing. Regardless, Martins doesnt touch the ball barely any more than Owen he just holds it for longer when he drops deep.

OMG! Owen was one on one with the goal at his mercy, a top class finisher would have taken a touch, looked up and lifted over the keeper. What did our so called best finisher do? Panicked, slidat it and scuffed straight at james, good save my arse! and for the matter, i have no doubt Viduka would have ha the poise and class to slot it hime. Pretty clear your an Owen fan, which i fnd hard to believe at th mo, but keep on playing him and let him continue to be the worst best finisher at the club! Wjhile we are at it, Geremi played for real Madrid at one time and is known as a first class set piece taker and crosser of the ball ,lets get him playing every minute of the run in! This is getting boring tbh A top class finisher isnt normally put under the pressure of playing in a side as shit as ours that gives him once chance every 10 games, between which he barely even gets to touch the ball. You along with many others have no ability to actually look at the situation clearly and with consideration, you are to busy looking for someone to blame. I was as fucked off as anybody that owen didnt score, same with Martins & Viduka. Im not actually even actually a massive fan of owen, i just think its pretty clear hes our best finisher at the club and the guy most likely to save us from relegation. There are endless logical reasons to come to this conclusion, ive been through them all a lot of times....its pretty basic stuff. The comparison to Geremi is laughable as you surely know.

Martins had by far the easiest chance so its all irrelevant anyway. Owens chance was a good save, simple as that. Against another keeper its through his legs and in the back of the net.

What did martins and viduka do "of significance" ? The only significant thing they did was miss their sitters just like Owen. Martins was on the ball more yes, he also gave the ball away far more because of that. We have no one better, its a simple argument. You need your best finisher on the pitch, he still is.

Has something happened to viduka, lotsa people leaving him out. He was one of our main strengths v pompey, cant leave him outta it.

Bit of a difference between "class" and decent. Id say he was clearly decent, if you think thats class you have very very low expectations for him.

Hey based in a s*** team that cannot barely pass the ball to eachothers feet, a guy who has based his whole career off getting the ball mostly at his feet on runs isnt as effective as he used to be. He very rarely actually even gets the ball to have a chance to be. What a mindblowingly confusing f***ing suprise. Lets all decide hes actually s*** because hes not playing as well as he used to in a team hes in doesnt play atall to his strengths. Brilliant brilliant logic.

And in every game he doesn't score, he'll do absolutely f*** all. No club with aspirations for the CL will also sign him because he's too limited now. Sorry, but he's done. Based on.............................

Chelsea to win

Wasted the ball yesterday a few times, still better than anyone that could replace him. We're all dissapointed with them yesterday, they all could have done better. But dont fool yourselves into thinking that means we have anyone more capable than those front 3. You cant always change things to make them better...sometimes your putting out the best youve got and you just gotta hope its good enough. Thats what the rest of our season will now be. We couldnt improve that side yesterday much.

Its all kneejerkin gthis hate against owen, hes our top scorer as i say. Without him we'd be in a far worse position this season, the fact that hes our top scorer would suggest that we have no one better at scoring goals...yet its all his fault. Not very logical. Its far more the fault of Butt, Nolan, Geremi, Colo, Rtaylor than it is anyone else. Theyre the lads who have been bringing us down, not our strikers...let alone Owen.

Yesterday he had a chance through on goal & was key in setting up Viduka for a similar chance. He also linked up play quite a few times, though first half he was to deep for me. Think you're one of the few saying no passion/no graft. Please explain why you think Owen is our top scorer this season/last season & who you'd replace him with/why. Owen is doing nothing, so it's not hard to find a replacement. Carroll or Lovenkrands should have started in his place yesterday, not that i'm massive fans of either, but one will work hard and frighten defenders with pace and the other will at least rough up the less physically capable defenders in the league - Sol Campbell an obvious exception to this. as a footnote to all those who are so confident that Owen is more of a goal threat than the lad, Carroll has scored 3 goals since Owen's last. He isnt doing nothing though as i stated. You cant just make up nonsense and then pretend its reality to fit it into your argument. Carroll looked far more out of it yesterday than Owen did, thats with tired defenders marking him. We've far more chance of scoring with the 3 upfront being viduka, martins & owen...the fact they each had a clear chance yesterday showed that. Lovenkrands would be the most likely to replace him & as i say he's missed far worse sitters. You could say he makes up for it with his improvement in pace, but i have yet to see why this would offer us anything extra in a 4-3-3 formation which yesterday showed is clearly our most effective as our midfielders are useless so the less of them the better.

Yesterday he had a chance through on goal & was key in setting up Viduka for a similar chance. He also linked up play quite a few times, though first half he was to deep for me. Think you're one of the few saying no passion/no graft. Please explain why you think Owen is our top scorer this season/last season & who you'd replace him with/why.

like .................. Lovenkrands? Could just throw them all up there. Well id play him, wouldnt replace Owen with him though. Hes missed worse sitters than Owen...i remember two quite clearly that were far easier than Owens yesterday.

Id go for the guy who can score goals using magical mind powers, but we dont have that either so we'll have to stick with guy #1 wont we. Owen should stay in the team yes. However when people start talking baout him going to Arsenal or Man U next season I just find such things perplexing. The thought of Wenger playing Owen ahead of the likes of Adebayor, Van Persie, Eduardo ... I mean come on! Still debatable, depends really on the ability of the team. It could be argued that if you're a side that passes nicely, Owen is more likely to get more chances as his movement is better than Adebayors. Not something we could compare unless Owen was in a side as capable as Arsenal really.

like ..................

Id go for the guy who can score goals using magical mind powers, but we dont have that either so we'll have to stick with guy #1 wont we.

Yes, Coloccini had a dip in form, didn't he? And he was dropped for Edgar at Stoke. Ameobi had a s*** game at Stoke and he hasn't figured since, wasn't even on voyage yesterday. Do you see why people don't agree? Owen is still living off that late-season surge under Keegan. It's fair enough to say players have a dip in form - but we can't afford to accomodate it at the moment. We're on a knife edge and can't afford to carry passengers. I agree with you that he isn't finished btw, just find it baffling how you think he'll find some form. He won't, not this season. Colocinnis dip lasted the whole season, yesterdays performance was the first time i thought he looked half decent. The only time ive ever seen him win an actual header also, i was amazed. Ameobi consistantly got the ball, his control was just woeful....we should have been playing to his strengths for a lad that size. He doesnt have any strengths being the problem. Yesterday for the first time we started playing more to owens, fair enough he had a chance and missed it, i still think we give him that again hes more likely to put it in that anyone else. I wouldnt put Carroll, Viduka, Martins over him in that 1 on 1 with the keeper even after yesterday. Owens finishing is of higher quality, hes shown that before. He still more likely to come up with the finish. I agree with others that he needs to be given more chances to do this, but not because he'll never score unless he has endless chances.....just because it'll help him get his efficency back. His composure. Theres no way for a striker to have composure in a situation where your sides in a relegation position 4 games from the end & you have the 1 chance out of 9 games where you could single handedly change your sides predicament. Far far to much pressure there, no human would remain composed....as all of our strikers demonstrated yesterday. Maybe it wont be enough, i wish to fuck it was & we'll have to see. He'll never replace Owen with someone else & i dont blame him.

Apart from last season when he was linking up play just like yesterday when he set up viduka. Nonsense.

Still think you lot writing him off are talking nonsense. Your basing it all on him being in a s**** team, just like martins, with crap service for game after game after game compounded with apparently s*** doctors at the club hampering any return from injury. Reality is Owen scored something like 7 in 9 end of last season. He wasnt missing 3 for every goal he got, he just scored over and over with every chance. Same earlier this season tbh. Now he's started missing more yes, that doesnt prove hes miraculously turned into a useless player. Just a dip of form, as any player. Not suprising when he barely touches the ball in games which as many agree is because our teams passing ability is woeful. We hoped that when he finally got a chance hed be back to his best, reality is probably that he needs to be brought back into it a bit more & given more confidence before he gets back to where he was at...just like last season. He needs consistant service, not 1 chance in 9.

You what? You've been saying for weeks that we need to stick by him because he's the one who's going to put that chance away. Now he f***s it up and it's alright because he's not scored in a while? No ive been saying hes our best chance at putting those chances away, he still is. Yesterday didnt change anything as they all showed they'll miss given an opportunity. I wish it was different obviously, reality might be that even with owen being our best chance at goals....we still wont get very many.

No idea what the general arguments are here...but dont think we can blame Owen for much yesterday. Even the best strikers are going to struggle when they havent had a goalscoring opportunitys for endless games...hard to expect them to suddenly put in the 1 chance theyve had in the last 12 games theyve played. He was probably suprised to even have a chance, let alone the pressure that goes with that. The same for Martins tbh.. They're just desperate to score & not showing the same composure as they usually could. To much pressure, they just gotta handle it. The more chances we give them the more likely theyll be to achieve that, it isnt really about ability at this point.

If Boro and Hull lose all their matches, we only need three. If Boro and Hull lose all their matches, we dont need any more points to stay up. Yeah, realised that as soon as I hit post. huh, without any more points we're relegated

Hull got back to 2-1 against liverpool when down to 10 men. And we can just count them out against stoke & bolton..? Reality is we're most likely done. Obviously we'll all get hope again......but its not in our hands anymore...thats whats desperately sad about it. Even at our best we could be out of it.