Dr Gloom

of course. we are his team

mark bright - a championship level co-commentator at best. piss poor

i can't pick them up. what are they?

oooh. unlucky ranger

lost one nill to palace

"we are top of the league"

great strike from taylor. wright was flapping all over the place at it mind

keane not looking happy

it's the nolan show. piss poor defending from ipswich mind

good ball in by taylor too tbf

get in there nolan. great head

this was so predictable. is lovenkrands not worth a shot so we don't have two defensive midfielders in. butt seems to have been given some kind of playmaker role. bizarre given he can't pass forwards

our midfield can only pass backwards and sideways it seems. butt looks awful playing in a more advanced role.

as stupid as playing butt and smith together in the centre of the park? might sound crazy but putting our centre mids in the centre of midfield rather than upfront seems to make sense to me so you agree with me then? smith up front and nolan in centre mid alongside butt. smith has done well as a holding midfielder but i think if you asked him what sort of player he is, he'd say a striker that's being used in midfield rather than the other way around. smith and butt together in cm seems way too defensive to me against the second bottom team in the league, even away from home. and nolan isn't a striker either is he? smith has played more up front than nolan in his career surely no I don't how did you arrive at that conclusion? I've not advocated playing nolan up front either, I think it should be nolan and smith in cm today with the strikers used as they are being ah, fair enough. my originally post was in reply to the suggested team sheet posted earlier in the thread which had butt and smith in the centre of the park and nolan playing as a second striker. looks like we we do agree after all. smith to start in the middle as long as butt isn't playing alongside him.

as stupid as playing butt and smith together in the centre of the park? might sound crazy but putting our centre mids in the centre of midfield rather than upfront seems to make sense to me so you agree with me then? smith up front and nolan in centre mid alongside butt. smith has done well as a holding midfielder but i think if you asked him what sort of player he is, he'd say a striker that's being used in midfield rather than the other way around. smith and butt together in cm seems way too defensive to me against the second bottom team in the league, even away from home. and nolan isn't a striker either is he? smith has played more up front than nolan in his career surely

as stupid as playing butt and smith together in the centre of the park?

doubt villa will will want him back. he's probably ours for the season if he works out

fuck me. smith AND butt in centre mid. why doesn't smith ever play up front anmore? surely no need for two defensive midfielders even away from home. why not swap smith and nolan around?

that stadium is class. the yanks should definitely get another world cup.

yeah. fair enough.

maybe. maybe if robson had been kept in his job, he would have addressed it. we'll never know now. even if he hadn't addressed it and the likes of bellamy and dyer kept acting likes tits off the field, they were still doing the business on the field. that's why i never understood his sacking. you dismiss your manager, in my view, when you're in trouble. if we'd still been at the bottom of the table at xmas there might have been an argument for it but we were four games in to the new season. i don't get how i'm being selective by the way. the main argument given by you as far as i can see (and by most others on here) for why robson had to go was the fact that he'd lsot the dressing room and we were on a downward curve under him. i never saw that tbh. we had a team that was peforming better than any other in my lifetime bar keegan. and shepherd sacked the man, a move largely backed by the support. goes back in my view to the point that success breeds impatience.

is he registered to play in time for ipswich then?

Can't really argue with that one to be honest. We'd all accepted that his time was coming to an end and most expected a natural handover to Shearer at the end of the 04/05 season. IIRC that whole month of August 2004 was an unmitigated disaster. We sold Speed without SBR knowing, then he found out that he was going to be replaced at the end of the season through the press. Then we sold Woodgate with no viable replacement lined up, the we had the incident where Dyer threw the armband away at Middlesbrough, then the ridiculous bid for Rooney. And then we sacked Robson - 36 hours before the transfer window closed. Utter madness. not me. i never thought he should have been sacked. i thought at the time that we were had been spoiled by the success we had under him and the majority on here assumed dark times like we're in now were not possible again. problem is the grass isn't always greener. we had one of the most revered managers in the game at the time and we didn't treat him with the respect he deserved. of course the whole situation was made much worse by several baffling decisions by shepherd - timings of sackings, appointing the likes of souness and roeder etc but if you ask me the problem with the kind of success we enjoyed under robson is that it breeds impatience among fans (and in our case, the board). it may be some time again until we're finishing in and around the top 4 for three consecuitve seasons. i wonder if we'll be as fickle next time....assuming there is a next time The problem was basically a lack of 'planning'. It was though. He had his 70th birthday when he was here and there should have been something in place whereby he handed over the reins but, as was ever the case with the previous regime, managerial appointments were reactive decisions taken without foresight. You only get rid of someone like Robson if you have a better replacement and you don't do it at the start of a season just before the transfer window closes. Obviously you can't plan for every eventuality but to not have a firm plan in place for the eventual replacement of a septuagenarian in your employment is nothing short of reckless. Presumably they thought managers would be knocking their door down to come here but that wasn't the case at that time so we ended up with Souness and the rest is history. Saying he should never have been sacked is a massive oversimplification though. is that really the case? i think it's simple really. sack a manager without good reason, replace him with numpty like souness....you can only expect to reap what you sew. in my view (the same now as it was then), you don't sack a sucessful manager, not least one whose main fault was to drop out of the top 4 by one place after two seasons in the top 4. it is all the more galling when you consider our relative success before hand and since. were we really in a position that we could demand sir bob's resignation after years starved of success - or even mixing it with the big boys for a brief period like we did under robson? time has proved that shepherd, and a majority of our support's judgment was massively misplaced. i was one of the few on this board that defended robson when many were saying his time had come, he'd lost the dressing room etc. bollocks. you can't sack one the best managers your club has ever had after he has re-establisged you as a major force just to dismiss him again as soon as soon as things don't go as planned.....and bear in mind the majority of us these days would consider 5th place a massive achievemennt, not a blip.. You seem to have ignored most of what I said because you've repeated some of it. You said he should never have been sacked, my point was - ok maybe not 'sacked' - he needed to be replaced at some point because of his age. I think it's a weak argument to say that what has happened since disproves the need to have brought in a replacement. All it showed was the timing was wrong and there was a lack of foresight. We're where we are now because of mismanagement, not because we should have held onto Robson indefinitely / until he was ready to leave. He clearly has lost the dressing room to a degree as well imo, no matter how you dress it up. Again, I've already said he shouldn't have been fired when he was and he shouldn't have been replaced by Souness. And yes, I know 5th would be a major achievement now but look at how the team actually played that year, it showed signs of a declining performance. With that in mind I'd say he either needed to be backed to re-invest heavily or replaced the previous summer. Failing that, we should have given him until the end of the season and looked at it again (barring a disastrous campaign which I think was highly unlikely anyway). nah, i don't reckon he lost the dressing room. never bought that argument. the players that apparantly lost confidence in sbr finished 5th under him in his last full season in charge. that felt like a slight underachievement at the time but it still had to be put in context. i was enjoying our success with sbr as manager and although that season represented a blip compared to the previous two, we were still one of the top clubs in the country at the time. i could never understand why more fans didn't see that. and it's not just the case of me arguing now with the benefit of hindsight. i was saying the same thing at the time of his sacking. it never should have happened. agree he would have needed to be replaced at some stage but there was no reason at all to sack him when we did - the whole decision was made even more ludicrous given shepherd wielded the axe days after the transfer window closed. robson could have gone on for another couple of years at least i reckon. he certainly wanted to. it was only in the last couple of years of his life that he became too sick to work.

Can't really argue with that one to be honest. We'd all accepted that his time was coming to an end and most expected a natural handover to Shearer at the end of the 04/05 season. IIRC that whole month of August 2004 was an unmitigated disaster. We sold Speed without SBR knowing, then he found out that he was going to be replaced at the end of the season through the press. Then we sold Woodgate with no viable replacement lined up, the we had the incident where Dyer threw the armband away at Middlesbrough, then the ridiculous bid for Rooney. And then we sacked Robson - 36 hours before the transfer window closed. Utter madness. not me. i never thought he should have been sacked. i thought at the time that we were had been spoiled by the success we had under him and the majority on here assumed dark times like we're in now were not possible again. problem is the grass isn't always greener. we had one of the most revered managers in the game at the time and we didn't treat him with the respect he deserved. of course the whole situation was made much worse by several baffling decisions by shepherd - timings of sackings, appointing the likes of souness and roeder etc but if you ask me the problem with the kind of success we enjoyed under robson is that it breeds impatience among fans (and in our case, the board). it may be some time again until we're finishing in and around the top 4 for three consecuitve seasons. i wonder if we'll be as fickle next time....assuming there is a next time The problem was basically a lack of 'planning'. It was though. He had his 70th birthday when he was here and there should have been something in place whereby he handed over the reins but, as was ever the case with the previous regime, managerial appointments were reactive decisions taken without foresight. You only get rid of someone like Robson if you have a better replacement and you don't do it at the start of a season just before the transfer window closes. Obviously you can't plan for every eventuality but to not have a firm plan in place for the eventual replacement of a septuagenarian in your employment is nothing short of reckless. Presumably they thought managers would be knocking their door down to come here but that wasn't the case at that time so we ended up with Souness and the rest is history. Saying he should never have been sacked is a massive oversimplification though. is that really the case? i think it's simple really. sack a manager without good reason, replace him with numpty like souness....you can only expect to reap what you sew. in my view (the same now as it was then), you don't sack a sucessful manager, not least one whose main fault was to drop out of the top 4 by one place after two seasons in the top 4. it is all the more galling when you consider our relative success before hand and since. were we really in a position that we could demand sir bob's resignation after years starved of success - or even mixing it with the big boys for a brief period like we did under robson? time has proved that shepherd, and a majority of our support's judgment was massively misplaced. i was one of the few on this board that defended robson when many were saying his time had come, he'd lost the dressing room etc. bollocks. you can't sack one the best managers your club has ever had after he has re-establisged you as a major force just to dismiss him again as soon as soon as things don't go as planned.....and bear in mind the majority of us these days would consider 5th place a massive achievemennt, not a blip..

Can't really argue with that one to be honest. We'd all accepted that his time was coming to an end and most expected a natural handover to Shearer at the end of the 04/05 season. IIRC that whole month of August 2004 was an unmitigated disaster. We sold Speed without SBR knowing, then he found out that he was going to be replaced at the end of the season through the press. Then we sold Woodgate with no viable replacement lined up, the we had the incident where Dyer threw the armband away at Middlesbrough, then the ridiculous bid for Rooney. And then we sacked Robson - 36 hours before the transfer window closed. Utter madness. not me. i never thought he should have been sacked. i thought at the time that we were had been spoiled by the success we had under him and the majority on here assumed dark times like we're in now were not possible again. problem is the grass isn't always greener. we had one of the most revered managers in the game at the time and we didn't treat him with the respect he deserved. of course the whole situation was made much worse by several baffling decisions by shepherd - timings of sackings, appointing the likes of souness and roeder etc but if you ask me the problem with the kind of success we enjoyed under robson is that it breeds impatience among fans (and in our case, the board). it may be some time again until we're finishing in and around the top 4 for three consecuitve seasons. i wonder if we'll be as fickle next time....assuming there is a next time