Hughesy

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.

See - potential!!!

Said it in the Ben Arfa thread - but I'm convinced there's potential in a song about Ben Arfa to the tune of Copacabana.

Unforgiveably camp though it would be... I'm sure there's potential for a song for Ben Arfa to the tune of Copacabana. I'll work on the lyrics... ;-)

Loving the assumptions you make.. 1) There would have been a fans' revolt if anyone else had been appointed; 2) Ashley put the club up for sale because he couldn't cope with another hypothetical fans' revolt (?!?!?!) That's just comical reasoning.

No. Just no.

Bar mentioning who exactly he spoke to, it's pretty clear...

Agreed - Speed was so underrated when he was playing for us, it was unbelievable. No way could his passing be regarded as atrocious.

Regardless my real point was to state that he clearly isn't crap now and was never regarded as being crap in Spain or Argentina. So to label him as such is ridiculous.

Well - I just told you where I read he was highly rated?! I am not really sure how me saying people in Spain thought he was highly rated can be classed as tosh yet Ronaldo giving a stereotypical OTT personal opinion about Jonas is ok??

Fair enough - that is completely contrary to everything I remember reading about him before there was any speculation about him coming here. Sources I remember commenting on him were Sid Lowe (Spanish correspondent for World Soccer) and Guillem Balague (admittedly his opinion can't really be trusted). I seem to remember Tim Vickery talking about him fairly favourably as well.

You want me to find example of people saying 'Jonas was highly rated'? It was pretty well known that Jonas, Arango and Guiza formed a pretty amazing trio for Mallorca. I'm not going to do a series of web trawls for an exact quote ffs.