ponsaelius

Nah I've got a season ticket there.

Aye I'm going along.

Atrocious man management.

I reckon he'd start well but go the way of Arshavin and mope off back to Koln again in a couple of years.

Lukas Podolski has agreed terms with Arsenal according to newspaper Bild.

Yeah what Vogel has done with tiny Basel is nothing short of a miracle. http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2011/dec/06/heiko-vogel-basel-manchester-united Worth crediting the previous bloke too. Plus like any successful club they have the infrastructure in place to make the job as easy as possible, particularly with the youth setup.

Just been organised. on .com

Called up to play friendly vs Guinea

He's scored twice from how many free kicks? 2 free-kicks in 3 years now. Not really a free-kick specialist. Sunderland, Scunthorpe, Chelsea and Ipswich off the top of my head.

He can't really run with the ball.

Club is fucked same way Chelsea are. Need Capello and a refreshing of the side.

The only person calling for his head as far as I'm aware is HTT and even he's willing to give him to the end of the season.

Possibly, but I also think we're more likely to lose the game because of other reasons. Such as afformentioned tactical issues and the fact Sunderland are better than they were.

Not really. Outside of set pieces and striking a ball I'd say he is a very poor player for this level.

Agreed. Very annoying.

In that sense I agree and you're right we don't have somebody like that. However I don't think we've had somebody like that for a few years, for example for all that Nolan was a supposedly excellent leader in the dressing room and on the pitch he's not somebody I would ever take that much of an interest in during interviews or ever felt embodied the club in the way Speed or Shearer did. Maybe that's down to grudges of him as a player, I dunno.

I just don't think it's been a problem for us at all this season, not that they're not important in the sport in general. Somebody summed it up well when talking about Ba that they much prefer his type of character to the 'laddish' attitude we've had in recent seasons. More professional, more genuine and it rubs off on the general attitude of the team. I think the problems we're having now are almost entirely tactical and with our fundamental approach to games, which appears to be regressing as the season goes on. I don't think we're crying out for somebody to shout and ball at players or tell people what to do during games, we just need to be improving our football as a collective before we even step onto the pitch.

Not meaning to shit on your thread with the first post Keef, but I actually think this is way down the list of problems we have. Certainly don't think it's affected us this season. We don't have maybe the vocal characters we had last season but people like Colo and Ba lead by example, and it rubs of on the rest of the team encouraging them to raise their game.

Can't be that. I did a piece on Simpson using Opta stats and he still comes out poorly compared to Santon and other right backs in the league. He's improved compared to last year, but he's not good enough if we want to progress. http://www.eplindex.com/10411/simpson-santon-compared-to-rivals-opta-stats.html Does that mean you have a subscription on there? If so, can you do something on the frequency with which we use the long ball and how that has changed throughout the season? Was just thinking about that this morning. Would be good to see. Represented with graphs too

Exactly. Liverpool should be in minus figures for the Suarez scandal.

Btw it's probably redundant anyway because as of January England was 9th in the 'league of leagues'. Top 3 get to hand out a place based on their own domestic ranking system. http://www.uefa.com//MultimediaFiles/Download/uefaorg/Respect/01/74/16/83/1741683_DOWNLOAD.pdf

No, it means we're the worst. Absolutely no idea how that's the case but apparently we are.

I don't think people are that reserved with their celebrations like. Most around where I set gan mental.

Eh? Are you being sarcastic or do you think being bottom is good?

Yep, just a complete nonsense.