Judge Holden

I like Ritchie but I think he's served his purpose here - got us promoted, kept us up, chipped in with the odd goal. He's a steady enough and grafts plenty, but any club with an ounce of ambition would have replaced him with better by now.

Souness dropping Robert because of an interview he gave to the Chronicle the day before. Am(a)dy Faye missing a sitter late on. Few days later Robert was back inside for the hammering against Man Utd at Cardiff in the FA Cup. It was also a few days after the useless tosser had fallen out with Bellamy. We had Kieran Dyer up front. To make matters worse their back four had a combined age of 153. We would’ve torn them to shreds on the counter. As for the Marseille semi-final, Woodgate had Drogba in his pocket in the 1st leg. I was praying for Bobby to rest him before the 2nd leg but he played and the rest, as they say, is Andy O’Brien. Even more crushing was when we brought on Darren Ambrose to shake things up in the 2nd half. Think Bellamy was loaned out to Celtic months before Lisbon, unless they had another public spat.

Souness dropping Robert because of an interview he gave to the Chronicle the day before. Am(a)dy Faye missing a sitter late on. Few days later Robert was back inside for the hammering against Man Utd at Cardiff in the FA Cup.

Edwards used to be decent. Never got excited over any takeover links, always had a stern word to say about Ashley and his NUFC. His ITK was usually reliable as well. Then out of absolutely nowhere he started creaming himself over Steve Bruce.

And good on Hope for doing so.

Benitez got us to a Qtr Final in his first full season too.

This tweet will come back to bite us in the arse at some point.

Good on Hope. We need more journos like Craig to drain the swamp and stand up to Ashley's yes men.

Not building my hopes up over him. He's got bags of potential that can't be denied - think the problem lies with the fact we've got Bruce in charge and as such he won't get the best out of him. Wouldn't be surprised if he went the same way HBA did under Pardew. And should the unlikely happen and we do turn him into a cracking player, we'll only be looking to cash in on him regardless.

Yeah he has more end product than I thought he would based on the reports on him in France. He isn't the usual head down and run type, even though he sometimes obviously does that, he actually quite often looks to pick a pass at the right time and there is often a lot of quality in his passing. Has a good shot on him too as we've seen on a few occasions. He's got bags of potential. He does still overdo the dribbling sometimes, but he's a young lad. When he gets his head up he can hit a sensational pass. With the right coaching he could go on to be one hell of a player, because not only has he got the killer pass in him, he's also got that thunderbolt shot in him as well as you said. Therein lies the problem

Thats what happens when the clubs policy is to sign cheap; end up with crocks like Carroll or players like Bentaleb who havent played in months before of discipline issues. Was anyone else trying to sign him in January?

No he called Hope out for the liar he is. Hope backed down completely. Gutter press. We could do with more journos like Hope stirring the pot

We were awesome that game. Think the first pic is off the 3-3 draw at the end fo the season that cost us a CL spot. IIRC, that's Shearer missing a sitter. Bottom pic is the FA Cup game when Dyer ran riot

Are they actually Bruce's buys though? Isn't the point of Bruce being here is because he'll accept any garbage chucked his way from Charnley & Nickson as long as he gets to stay in the managers job in return? No denying they're crap, though. But that's hardly surprising given the staff we have managing them.

I thought he looked slightly overweight the other week v Arsenal.

Bentaleb doesn't look that good.