Jaqen

:lol:

Could have easily been double figures.

It’s true for all the City attack to be fair. It’s a risk picking any of them unless you have decent options in the bench.

When has asking for a thread to be locked ever worked? When we sell our best striker there’s obviously going to be people following his progress, it’s easy enough to not click the thread if you don’t want to read about him. The Ben Arfa thread is constantly bumped to the top of the forum and he doesn’t even play for anyone.

His biggest asset is his positioning and movement in and around the box IMO. His finishing is quality but the majority of his goals are usually simple finishes because of how good he is at being in the right place. He’s just ruthlessly efficient. He got like 4 or 5 assists as well last season including that one for Lacazette against us so he seems to be a good fit for Arsenal.

Vrsaljko to Inter on loan. They're after Modric too according to Di Marzio.

Doesn't he have to pay to get out of his contract? I think he could walk but if he’s employed again before his contract is up he’d have to pay the £6m.

Youre obviously not that frustrated if you continue to attend and help fund the decline of NUFC . Yes there are many teams worse off ( Hartlepool , Gateshead and Sunderland come to mind ) do you really want to measure our status by comparison to such small clubs ? How low are your horizons ? Youre not happy but youre happy enough to continue to fund your own unhappiness ... It would seem that for you the pleasure is simply funding Ashley in order to watch any old shite ... did you have the same attitude in the Seymour / McKeag era ... did you not get behind the SJH takeover at the time ? Did you not notice the difference under the SJH regime ? Or are you just another fucking muppet ? Mate. Even though I probably exactly the same sentiment when it comes to what is needed you have absolutely bot all clue about how to go about creating unity and solving this. Aye, everyone has their own justifications or reasons for going to the match and whilst you might disagree with them you kind of have to sort of respect their decision. Going around trying to shame them and/or labelling them as selfish or cunts etc isn’t really the right way to go about things. There’s no consistency to it either, if you want to go with Rafa in charge it’s acceptable but if he walks it’s not? It’s still the same owner, still the same lack of ambition, still the same unwillingness to compete financially with teams around or even below us. As great as Rafa is he can only do so much when the club actively don’t want success beyond surviving relegation each season with as small as possible outlay. I personally won’t be spending a penny on the club as long as Ashley is there but it doesn’t make me more of a fan than those that do. Whenever one of these protests or movements come around too many fans get on their high horse and slag other fans off. It would be great if every fan was on the same page but it’s never going to be realistic and trying to convert the others via abuse is never going to work.

Was injured at the start of the season then acted like a knob when he couldn’t walk straight back into the team. Think Lazio have done well to get £42m for him. Don’t think he he’s consistent enough to justify the hype and he just seems a bit of a knacker.

The OX when he moved from Arsenal seemed to look out of place at Liverpool. But once he got fit and got in the team he looked a different player. I rate Rashford, criminally underused at Man Utd but as long as Kane is up front I don’t see a starting place for him. Wellbeck would give us more in that sense who I also rate, but just isn’t ever fit enough. Rashford would work if we set up in a 4231 like Man U often do. Would allow Alli and Sterling in there best positions too. For how well we've done we can't overlook this system is not getting the best out of our attacking talent, even Kane has struggled to be much of a threat. 2nd lowest attempts on goal from open play in the whole tournament says it all.

The fact you can get an exact replica for £15 from China shows £80 isn’t value for money. The quality of football shirts seems to have dropped a lot yet the prices keep going up and up, not to mention they’ll be half price come the end of the season. If you spend £80 on a decent branded top you’ll be getting higher quality and something you can wear whenever and get more use out of.

He’s been chipping in too.

Personally think we were crying out for a change in shape/formation in the second half. Croatia took a while to adjust but their manager sussed it and we never reacted to them at all. We had to deal with their fullbacks particularly Vrsaljko and we ignored it and it ending us costing us the equaliser. The formation worked well against lesser sides when we could dominate the ball a bit more and use our wing backs to stretch sides and bomb forward. Once Croatia got a hold of the ball they just had us pinned back and we had no wide players to cover or track their overlaps or to offer a threat in behind them on the counter.

Trying not to be too reactionary but I’m not convinced by him as a manager still. Nearly threw the game away against Colombia with the Dier sub and totally failed to react to Croatia after half time, it was painfully obvious Vrsaljko was going to hurt us by allowing him acres of space to whip in crosses anytime he wanted. Think we win that tonight with a more tactically astute manager. Obviously it’s great to make a WC semi final and he and the team come across as a lot more likeable than previous squads but when you take each game into isolation we’ve not been that great, just extremely fortunate we had an opportunity to throw a game to give us such an easy draw.

Been awful since half time. Defence has been asleep on at least 3 set pieces too so the warning signs were there.

Unbelievable Croatia are going to make the final winning 3 penalty shootouts

It's not as simple as that imo. They've started getting runners in the space between full backs and centre backs pulling us all over. That's opening up space in the middle. Aye they’ve adjusted well to our system at half time. Front three a lot more narrow and using the fullbacks for width is giving us a lot of problems.

Game over.

Aye, not the most attractive but it’s been a really good performance from them. Lloris barely had a save to make.

Aye, they definitely have the quality like. They’ve looked a bit disjointed to me though. Mandzukic often left really isolated up top and the lack of top CDM or number 10 really hurts them in terms of balance.

Have to fancy ourselves against Croatia after that.

Croatia have looked fairly gash last two games against average opposition.

People tightly packed standing up whilst holding pints watching football. Even if you don’t throw it, it’s going everywhere once everyone starts jumping around in celebration. It’s a bit different from people pissing in pint glasses and throwing them at gigs/festivals. Think the footage of Newcastle makes it pretty bloody obvious that people are throwing it for the sake of throwing it rather than doing so inadvertently. I'm very much in the camp that it's a tedious and dickish thing to do. Aye, there’s obviously going to be both but it kind of comes with the terrority of going to a venue like that. I mean I got drenched watching the Colombia game in a relatively relaxed bar in town, everyone was too happy too care. If people can’t get a bit too carried away celebrating us reach a World Cup semi I don’t know when they can. There’s nothing wrong with not liking it or wanting to be part of it but people were complaining on behalf of people who chose to go there and knew what to expect and aren’t even complaining themselves.

People tightly packed standing up whilst holding pints watching football. Even if you don’t throw it, it’s going everywhere once everyone starts jumping around in celebration. It’s a bit different from people pissing in pint glasses and throwing them at gigs/festivals.