Hughesy

No footballer is worth 200k a week, f*** me man, the game will seriously suffer if this is the s*** thats happening with players an agents. The clubs, the owners of the clubs, the players/ players union/TV all have a collective responsibility to keep the league competitive. Paying greedy one track minded footballers 200k a week is not one of the ways to do this. Whats going to happen when UEFA enforce the new rules? How will Man City and other funded clubs like themselves resolve rediculous wage structures? Dont just sit and think "this is great its man citys turn now". It not great for the league as a whole, it will turn fans away. Who is to say the next TV deal with Sky wont be less ?? We have massive cuts and peopel losing jobs coming up. f***ing thinking about it for a second man. I have 'fucking' thought about it. What I don't understand is your view that players shouldn't be paid what they are worth in the market. Wages are, like it or not, affected by whatever clubs are willing to pay. If clubs don't think Rooney is worth 200k a week - they won't pay him 200k a week and Rooney will have to be happy with whatever Man United are willing to offer him. I also still don't understand why you think football should any different from certain other entertainment industries? Football is an entertainment industry. When people think football costs too much, people will stop going and then revenues will fall. Then there will be a realignment of wages etc etc. It is the nature of most, if not all, economic cycles. And quite why players should have any sense of moral obligation not to be paid as much as they want is beyond me. The players don't owe the fans any sense of moral obligation. They are employees of the club and perfectly entitled to negotiate a contract in any fashion they wish.

I just don't get that. We live in a free market, where people are paid what they are worth. Who are you to say no footballer is worth 200k a week? Are film stars 'worth' £10 million a film? Are pop stars worth £4 million an album (plucking these figures out of the air now...)? Are F1 drivers worth £20 million a year? Are basketball players worth £20 million a year? Do you think the above are all sitting there doing it for the love of cinema/music/ sport? No... and why should they? Football is a global business. This whole idea that footballers shouldn't be allowed to maximise their earnings is outdated and overly simplistic.

I'll never quite understand how or why people criticise players for leaving for money. If I was Rooney and was acknowledged as being one of the top 10 players in the world and saw other such players being paid double what I was, I would want parity with them (see Messi, Ronaldo, Ibrahimovic's wage for example). It's the same in any job - if you are not paid the market rate for your skills, you are bound to be unhappy. I would be pretty annoyed if someone as good as me was being paid double my salary. People just seem to apply a different set of rules to footballers and I can't work out why. Football is a job to most footballers. End of.

We pass the ball around fine, we just can't ever seem to find that creative spark to unlock a defence. I would say the football is better than what we saw under Fat Sam.

I agree.

If you go beyond the win = good game, loss = bad game then there's a bit more to it than that. Like the rest of our central midfielders apart from Tiote, Barton doesn't sprint, he casually strolls along then stops after passing the ball. It's why he never gets beyond the forwards to get into the penalty area. He's got goods ability on the ball but in the premier the opposition won't allow you to play at half tempo and that's what Barton does. Believe it or not, I wasn't actually analysing Barton's performances simply on whether we won or not...

Me too, I had them in my accumulator for each league's winners. As did I...

I think Barton has played well this season. He's not a world beater and not the player he seemed he might become 4-5 years ago, but let's face it - he is the best we have in that position. I want to see Guthrie put pressure on Barton, but at the moment, Barton is the better pick. Let's see how he plays in the next few games before we start casting him out of the team.

So he's had some good games early on this season, and had, god forbid, 2 bad games in a row and people are suddenly saying he is rubbish? The fickleness of some people on this board sometimes....

Arsenal, Chelsea, Fulham. Seems very London-centric...

Think is - it really wouldn't delay the game. Such a non argument.

I still don't get the argument against video technology in certain circumstances. Take Man City game for example. Tevez 'penalty'. Ref sees it - isn't sure - asks 4th official to look at video. Ensure 4th official has only 30 seconds to decide. If 4th official can't decide in that time - clearly it is a borderline decision so you go with the original decision. Same with Ameobi decision. Can't think of a single downside to that kind of system.

Thought we actually played ok on Sunday - but have to agree with you on certain points. I find that we seem to have this air of negativity in our approach. The first touch of a lot of our attacking players is back towards our goal and they rarely switch the play with any kind of pace (usually a ponderous 4 pass move to get the ball from one side to the other). It is almost like they've been told to play a safety first kind of football.

Exactly that. Absolute madness taking Tiote off.

Agree - I don't think Jonas should have been dropped in the first place as I thought he was playing well. But, in addition to that, he links up brilliantly with Jose and brings the best out of Jose going forward. He also covers Enrique well, meaning our left hand side is pretty solid. Ben Arfa always goes inside looking for the ball (an admirable trait at times) - which means Jose is often stranded defensively and restricted in an attacking sense. If you give Ben Arfa a 'free role' in the middle, it allows Ben Arfa the freedom he needs to play as well as he can and strengthens our left hand side. And gets the fat waster out of the team.

Buy a better right winger?

it's alright - I've seen them before and don't feel the slightest bit daft.

Except that Routledge really doesn't offer more. Never in a million years. Just about the only thing Routledge does better than Jonas is being short.

Exactly - bar one bad pass - really can't see what he did wrong. He actually injected some directness and urgency into our play and had Stoke pretty worried.

Jenas - wrong. Genuinely thought he would be a class player. Enrique - right. Kept saying he would come good. Carroll - right. Bar thinking that he should have been disciplined more heavily over the Taylor incident, I've always said he had the potential to be a quality striker. Bellamy - wrong. Didn't think he would make much of an impact to be honest. Duff - wrong. Thought he'd be awesome for us.

Awesome night - didn't get out of work until 7.35 so had to dash across London for the second half - just amazing. Went that 4th went in...

Was just reading on nufc.com that today in 1997 we had Massimo Oddo (of Lazio and AC Milano fame, as well as Champions League and World Cup winner) on trial. We obviously didn't buy him. Was wondering if anyone knows of any other players we've had on trial who've gone on to be pretty good.

Not really sure that Shearer can be lambasted for the Ben Arfa point to be honest. I reckon I know a decent amount about European football (I don't slavishly watch the French league for example, but I read World Soccer, watch some European domestic games etc etc) - certainly more than your average fan - and I wouldn't say my knowledge of Ben Arfa went far beyond the fact that he was linked to a few English clubs over the last few years, Lyon sold him to Marseille, he was a skilful player and he was on the fringes of the France squad. So to be honest - really not that fussed if Shearer says people in England don't know much about him - because, let's be honest here, not many people do. Whether it's Shearer's job to know this is a different matter, but I don't think it's realistic to expect each football pundit to do a load of research on every signing a Premiership club makes. Even if they do do some research, it would only be research of a fairly superficial kind - anything more can't be gleaned from a few wiki articles and youtube clips. Which is pretty much the sum of the knowledge of the majority of people on here, bar French league enthuasists.

To be honest - football is a pretty simple game. There isn't that much analysing that is possible or warranted.

That's brilliant. I'd love that to catch on.