Revolution Number 9

Fuck off, really?

I'm like a bairn on Christmas eve here for some reason

Said the poster with the avatar from a Final Fantasy film. I'm a geek not a nerd. There is a difference. ...

Said the poster with the avatar from a Final Fantasy film.

That's a weird swap.

Massive commentators curse there. Talk about how great Junior Hoilett is.

"" There's my attempt. Edit: damn, you put the link up.

It turned out to be a disasterous signing, which cost us a fortune and left us with a crocked c*** who didn't care less about us. It was also a case of putting all our eggs in one 'Shearer-replacement'-shaped basket. Even the transfer fee was suspiciously high, IMO purely so it would break our transfer record and I'm pretty certain I posted that on this forum at the time. I'd never deny any of that, it worked out very wrong. You can't get away from the facts that at the time he was 25 years old, England's best striker and fully fit. Nobody could have predicted what happened. Exactly, under the old system, a transfer mistake could have the club losing about £40m on Michael Owen, with the way things are now our only real transfer disaster off the top of my head thus far was James Perch, who's costing the club comparitively nowt, doesn't seem to have a huge ego and could be thrown in the reserves with little worry when it didn't work out. Mike and co have certainly made a lot of mistakes but this absolutely isn't one of them IMO. I'll take a great scouting system, a strong youth academy, sustainability and the type of players we're bringing in now ahead of the old ways of giving uninterested big names a big payday every single time. You'd think Michael Owen was the rule rather than the exception though, like we never brought any excellent bargains in or promoted any youth until Ashley turned up. I was totally against us losing him in the end, but how much money has Joey Barton cost us for what we got? Xisco? Smith? Campbell even? Coloccini was £10m and is apparently on £80,000 per week. Signed, paid and kept at the club by the Ashley regime. He's turned out to be a great signing, but as things stand we wouldn't take that risk and wouldn't get that player. If he'd had a serious career-threatening injury shortly after arriving he could have easily been 'another Owen'. My overall point was never to directly compare and say player X we have now is better/cheaper than player Z we used to have. Ultimately I don't think we're particularly any further forward as club and that's why to me, particular praise of Ashley and his methods is unwarranted. I thought it was well-documented that our youth system was a bit wank before the new regime decided to improve it? And exactly how many 'excellent bargains' did we bring in under the old system, because I can't remember any more than two or three? Our scouting system seemed like utter shit tbh. We aren't necessarily further forward as a club yet in your opinion, but even you can't deny that our potential for improvement is so much greater now than it was back then. We were the absolute definition of a dead end club man, with a big-money but not big-talent aging team going nowhere but midtable at best and wasting money left right and centre. Now, we have arguably a much more talented team, the majority with their best years ahead of them, with what seems to be genuine quality youth coming through, a scouting team that's absolutely amongst the best out there at quickly spotting and taking advantage of an opportunity, and more important than anything there's genuine optimism about what could happen on the pitch. Sorry like, but how you can still pander for 'the good old days' is simply beyond me.

Man United It's a fucking conspiracy.

He isn't quick. I certainly wouldn't say he's slow either though.

The things they've done well have happened for the wrong reasons. It wouldn't be a problem if that happened for all areas of the club. He could still not give a s*** but run things properly. That hasn't been the case. I'm not saying he's a good owner, just that IMO this is one thing they've gotten right.

It turned out to be a disasterous signing, which cost us a fortune and left us with a crocked c*** who didn't care less about us. It was also a case of putting all our eggs in one 'Shearer-replacement'-shaped basket. Even the transfer fee was suspiciously high, IMO purely so it would break our transfer record and I'm pretty certain I posted that on this forum at the time. I'd never deny any of that, it worked out very wrong. You can't get away from the facts that at the time he was 25 years old, England's best striker and fully fit. Nobody could have predicted what happened. Exactly, under the old system, a transfer mistake could have the club losing about £40m on Michael Owen, with the way things are now our only real transfer disaster off the top of my head thus far was James Perch, who's costing the club comparitively nowt, doesn't seem to have a huge ego and could be thrown in the reserves with little worry when it didn't work out. Mike and co have certainly made a lot of mistakes but this absolutely isn't one of them IMO. I'll take a great scouting system, a strong youth academy, sustainability and the type of players we're bringing in now ahead of the old ways of giving uninterested big names a big payday every single time.

TBH Dave if buying 'next level' players is what got us stuck with Michael fucking Owen then I'm happy for us to not bother with 'next level' players.

For starters, if he was English he probably wouldn't have his perm, which I suspect is the source of his powers. He'd be half the player at most.

Aye, I saw those on their forum. Not sure where he gets that about Simpson mind, for all his faults I think we're all agreed that he doesn't really lack for pace.

All the full backs in this game seem to be shit tbh can see this being a fairly high-scoring game.

witty, short and succinct, really rolls off the tongue.

Pardew's showing him how to control a ball, Sammy's wondering whether custard creams are actually made of custard.

According to Blackburn fans, they have a fairly weak central midfield. That suits us right down to the ground.

6-finger handshakes all round.

There's quite a mess in Pardew's office tbh. Shola went in there for a bit and started fiddling with a pen, that's the resulting chaos.