gjohnson

Mendieta turned to garbage after leaving Valencia....probably the most Benitez midfielder in existence

Nah.... Obviously good at internationals, but then so was Ali Daei. (yes i know it's not a fair comparison) However Peles club career (not goals scored) is pretty feeble even by 70's standards

They'd be awesome now, and were in the mid-90's but there was a long time in between where they would have been considered liabilities

Smells like a new thread to me....."crap players who turned it up to 12 when against us"

And Victor Anichebe would become prime Shearer whenever lining up against us

Controversial one.....Pele

This exactly....he was a good effective striker in a team playing to his strengths, but he never really did anything particularly memorable apart from maybe the hattrick against Stoke.....he doesn't have anything like Shearers volley against Everton, or the bizarre curling volley against Villa, or even a Carroll 30 yard job against Liverpool. Good player though, and certainly did a grand job for us and will be remembered for it.

Think he's only talked about as amazing as everyone thought he would be terrible(yes you did!)....free, potential exploding knee, not having a superb record. Turns out he was pretty damn good for us, whether that was a big purple patch or not.

One from down the back of the sofa....Alvaro Recoba. Once the highest paid player in the world on the basis of one amazing free-kick

Del Piero. Thought he was great at the time, but looking at the team (and officials assisting) he had around him should have been so much better

If we put him up for sale for 35m now there would be a queue...we need to catch up with current buying and selling prices and not the Ashley ones which were still stuck thinking on

He'll get the time as long as he's sitting in the top 4 come 6 month review time.

His misery should be compounded by our rise up the table....it's like being dumped by a someone you thought you were too good for only to find out after they're actually a stunner when not being treated like garbage, compounded by the fact that that they are also massively adventurous in bed and pretty much can choose who they want. That would have me crying myself to sleep

It'll be Sabic...not sure on the amount though

Xavi was a great cog in a perfect machine and justifiably considered one of the best. Modric is a totally different sort of player...one who runs the team rather than just making them tick.

He is/was...could pull a superb long range strike just as well as sending it into the upper crowd. Could bury an instinctive lash in the 6 yard box as well as shanking it into the corner. Still, 1 in two cant be argued with, and is difficult to find. Hard to place him really....in some games he looked like he could take on the world and win, and in others looked like a toddler Ameobi

just everything i've seen and heard from him. You know when you get a gut feeling from a player that they wouldn't fit in....he's one of them

Zaha has London boy written all over him...had his big chance at Man U and didn't do it. He's just one of those players that ego won't let go anywhere beyond the capital. Not right for us, never will be. Too much ego

This....picking a cat up is difficult at the best of times. Drop-kicking one and letting it out on twitter is gross cruelty combined with stupidity. I mean really how on earth did Zouma or his friend even contemplate that it would have a positive outcome? Pissed/stupid/ignorant? At least one applies

A Pickford moment of madness due to his rage or t-rex arms would be so much more sumptuous

They've gone full NUFC 2008-2009. Thinking a manager change will save them (didn't we have 4 including caretakers that season), with fans thinking they're too good to go down, and big name players playing at the minimum thinking they're too good to go down. Think they'll stay up, but it looks so like our 08/09 its almost comical

It would not be surprising, and plenty of people have and still are questioning the integrity of the game

How so, VAR has pulled/ignored some true shockers this season? 2 spectacularly bad ones for us, and no doubt every other team could quote a couple too. FIFA will want Qatar to go through to justify going there in the first place, and we all know what happens when the organisers of a tournament want a certain result.

What's the odds on them pulling a South Korea/Italy kind of result to ensure they don't go immediately out in the group stages? Calling it now, they'll have some spectacularly dubious referee calls go in their favour.

He was supposed to be at some talk in, but just didn't show up.