Dr Gloom

born in the general but i live dahn sahf

i'm not a massive fan.

compare the likes of: owen martins duff viduka emre milner n'zogbia, butt given and others, plus the number of coveted players we've had at the club in recent yearsd who've now moved on, to the squads of most of the teams that have finished above us in recent years and i think you'll find we've under-achieved. we consistently beat teams like pompey, everton, blackburn etc to the signatures of big players in the transfer windows and most of their fans covet a lot of our players....until they sign for us when they seem to turn shit overnight. whether that's because of poor management, poor fitness coaching or whther we are signing players who only turn up for their wages, i don't know. but something's up. we are underachieving and have been since sbr left You're the one who constantly moans about (along with everything else) there being no creativity in midfield and yet you're saying at the same time we should be doing much better than we are. You're that obsessed with complaining about everything that you don't even realise the contradiction. honestly, what are you talking about? our 'creative' players haven't performed in a toon shirt. that's my point. don't you get it? the likes of duff, emre etc (who all looked decent creative players for their former clubs), have failed to reproduce that form while at nufc. that's not me moaning for the sake of it. it's an undeniable fact. it seems that you have taken to disagreeing with me at every opportunity recently which is slightly strange given that i'm always right about everything.

Not the Baines chap I hope.

This is a very interesting point. I've got nothing against us playing a 4-3-3 but doing it with the wrong players in the wrong positions makes no sense at all. I actually do think we have a number of players who could make the formation work but they aren't playing where the need to. N'Zogbia should be left wing and Milner should be on the right. It's not rocket science but Allardyce seems to be dead against it for some reason. aye; there's that plus him contiuing to play zog at left back where he contributes less than he does further up the field when he's spent £6m on a left back that's actually looked decent when he's started. Enrique must be scratching his head tbh. Does N'Zogbia contribute less? I can't remember the last game where he's done anything of note when starting out on the left wing, I thought he looked decent at left back earlier in the season, especially going forward and like most people thought he would look better if he moved back up onto the wing, when he did though he looked like he struggled to find the space he needs to run into and offered very little. I think the N'Zogbia/Milner combo down the left has a decent chance of working out, mainly because Milner has to cut in which leaves plenty of space in behind for Zog to run into unmarked, I presume he's leaving Enrique out because he's still adjusting to the Premiership, nothing wrong with that and it's good management compared to throwing him in at the deep end, Wenger is doing the same with Eduardo at Arsenal and has said it'll take him a good 6 months to get used to it, the only downside was we didn't have a natural left back apart from Babayaro who was always injured to play until he is ready. i think so; yes. his best performances have come for us at left wing

compare the likes of: owen martins duff viduka emre milner n'zogbia, butt given and others, plus the number of coveted players we've had at the club in recent yearsd who've now moved on, to the squads of most of the teams that have finished above us in recent years and i think you'll find we've under-achieved. we consistently beat teams like pompey, everton, blackburn etc to the signatures of big players in the transfer windows and most of their fans covet a lot of our players....until they sign for us when they seem to turn shit overnight. whether that's because of poor management, poor fitness coaching or whther we are signing players who only turn up for their wages, i don't know. but something's up. we are underachieving and have been since sbr left

i daren't open that link at work but kudos on the thread title

as always, we look half decent on paper but ultimately we underachieve. it's been like this since sir bobby and imo reflects the quality of manager we've had since he was sacked. look at our squad now (on paper) and you'd expect us to be doing far better than we actually are. sadly it seems that players seem to lose either their talent or their motivation when thet

stephen carr? whoop-de-fucking-do. i thoguht duff might be close to a return. a fit and on form duff is someone we could really do with having back in the squad, especially given that he hasn't been either in his two seasons at the club.

Yes but what use will he be when the manager plays him as left attacking midfield in a 3 man front line?

This is a very interesting point. I've got nothing against us playing a 4-3-3 but doing it with the wrong players in the wrong positions makes no sense at all. I actually do think we have a number of players who could make the formation work but they aren't playing where the need to. N'Zogbia should be left wing and Milner should be on the right. It's not rocket science but Allardyce seems to be dead against it for some reason. aye; there's that plus him contiuing to play zog at left back where he contributes less than he does further up the field when he's spent £6m on a left back that's actually looked decent when he's started. enrique must be scratching his head tbh.

got to love those golf courses

"You never count your money, when you're sittin' at the table. There'll be time enough for countin', when the dealin's done." Fuck some days I wish you'd just fold'em! Forget all this attractive football shite, we haven't played attractive football consistantly since SBR took the team to third. How are people going to react when at home against Derby Allardyce sets his team to stiffle the opposition? "we have to stop the opposition playing" etc

all 30 pages worth

quite an interesting piece. maybe the lads on newcastle-online should get another dossier together Clicky Timing is everything in comedy, and Jürgen L Born so nearly got it right. "Bayern have spent €70m - to be one point in front of Werder," Bremen's CEO proclaimed to rapturous applause at the club's AGM back in November. If only Born had waited another month, the Northerners (along with rest of the league) would have enjoyed his sarcastic calculation even more. €70m, it's turned out, hasn't bought Bayern any more points than their fiercest rivals could muster at all, merely a better goal difference. Both clubs are level on 36 points at the top, so the new, bigger and supposedly much better Bavarians have taken the so-called "Herbstmeisterschaft", the autumn championship, by the smallest of margins. (It's neither a proper title nor actually won in the autumn but has some psychological as well as statistical relevance - "autumn champions" end up winning the real trophy nearly 90% of the time). Their 0-0 draw away to an exhaustingly defensive Hertha - Bayern's fourth scoreless draw in seven league games - felt more like a defeat on Saturday. The Berlin wall stood firm in the face of eager but woefully clueless attackers. On the rare occasions they actually made it into the box, Ottmar Hitzfeld's men still couldn't work the keeper. Genuine attempts to get behind the defence soon gave way to desperate long-range shots. Daniel Van Buyten, their Belgian centre-back, nearly took out a flock of migratory birds with one effort. "We dominated the match and I'm very happy with finishing first," said Uli Hoeneß. "We have to stop being dissatisfied all the time". It was a nice bit of play-acting, meant to divert attention from the y exacerbated the team's fatigue.fact that the story hasn't quite followed the script. Once again, they are turning into FC Hollywood: arguments and intrigue overshadow (relative) success on the pitch. Before the season, Hoeneß had predicted a massive gap between his team and the competition. "They will need binoculars to see us," he had claimed, with only a hint of irony. But it is Bayern's general manager who has been peering enviously through the looking glass in recent weeks: his team are now miles away from the compelling form they had shown at the beginning of the campaign. The gulf between aspiration and reality has become so wide it threatens to gobble up Bayern's entire season. Ever since Kevin Davies scored Bolton's second equaliser at the Allianz Arena back in October, a palpable air of crisis has pervaded Säbenerstrasse. "There is so much pressure that the club's about to burst," said Oliver Kahn last week. This downward spiral started with Karl-Heinz Rummenigge undermining Hitzfeld's authority ("football is not maths") in the wake of the Bolton debacle, continued with Hoeneß's rant against critical fans at the AGM ("who do you think you are?") and culminated in the suspension of captain Kahn for the Hertha game. The keeper had criticised a lack of effort from Luca Toni and Franck Ribéry ("Bayern is not Florence or Marseille, they need to do more") but then left the club's Christmas party a couple of hours too early: he had told Hitzfeld he had to get home to take care of the kids, only to turn up in a club with his on/off lover instead. Hitzfeld fined him €25,000, claiming that such lack of discipline could not be tolerated, lest they would all "end up in a madhouse". Kahn was perhaps merely careful to avoid the pitfalls of hanging around too long: a few years ago, president Franz Beckenbauer famously fathered a child with the club secretary on the very same occasion. Anyway, French (read: impulsive and moody) right-back Willy Sagnol, who was supposed to inherit Kahn's armband next season, is unhappy and wants to leave. In addition to that, local tabloids have exposed a rift between Germans (including Mark van Bommel) and José/Jacques/Gianni Foreigners, pronounced the tragic death of the "Poldi and Schweini" double-act - "we are actually very different and hardly see each other off the pitch," Schweinsteiger confessed recently - and hinted at players being envious of Toni and Ribéry's special privileges. Dozens of articles point to a lack of clear leadership from Rummenigge and Hoeneß, who are evidently nervous about their investment of €100m, wages included. "Bayern: a palace without a roof," is Frankfurter Rundschau's verdict; the Berliner Zeitung sees the club as "a giant building site". The two architects must indeed shoulder the main portion of the blame, albeit for slightly different reasons. Rummenigge and Hoeneß's real mistake was not being radical enough last year. They embarked on a cultural revolution - by spending big on big players - but unwisely chose the safest pair of hands to be its leader. Hitzfeld, the hungry, ruthless moderniser: it was always wishful thinking, a contradiction in terms. When the 58-year-old was reappointed 11 months ago, he was advertised as a revitalised man who had bravely caught up on all the latest training regimes. An initial flourish of attacking football moved Rummenigge to call him "the perfect manager for Bayern", but Hitzfeld's dignified, non-confrontational management style soon ran into trouble again. At Dortmund and during his first time in Munich, he had been unable to motivate teams that had won everything. When this team began to believe they were going to win everything, Hitzfeld uttered public warnings but obviously could not find the right words in the dressing room. Even more worryingly for the bosses, the players have shown little, if any tactical development under his tutelage. Everything seems contingent on individual sparks of genius; they haven't developed any discernible system of play. Free-kicks and corners have been embarrassingly harmless, too. And even Hitzfeld loyalists can't figure out why the manager never seems to make any decent substitutions. Against sheepish Hertha, he needlessly persisted with two holding midfielders until the very end and made his first and only change in the 82nd minute: a striker for a striker. Maybe he's a prisoner of the past and has developed a bad case of cainophobia as a result of terrible experiences: in the Champions League final of 1999, he put on Thorsten "mis-hit of the century" Fink for Lothar Matthäus with five minutes to go, whereas he took off Ribéry much too early against Bolton. But whatever the reason, the strange paralysis on the touchline has certainl Hitzfeld's shortcomings have only been discussed obliquely by the press because "the General" is an eminently nice, decent guy, whereas the brash pair of Kalle and Uli are much easier targets. The point is, neither party wants to continue the relationship beyond May 2008: the classic lame duck scenario looms large, as well as a long, complicated search for the next manager. Bayern will still win it, of course, mainly because Bremen are more open at the back than a diarrhoeic humpback whale. Please come back in six weeks to find out the details. Frohes Fest und guten Rutsch. Results: Cottbus 5-1 Hannover, Hertha 0-0 Bayern, Bremen 5-2 Leverkusen, Karlsruhe 1-1 HSV, Wolfsburg 4-0 Dortmund, Bielefeld 2-0 Stuttgart, Schalke 2-1 Nürnberg, Rostock 2-0 Bochum, Duisburg 0-1 Frankfurt.

hard to disagree with too much in this except the bit about smith playing in midfield. Ugly Newcastle bank on rich festive feasts among the poor Mike Adamson at Craven Cottage Monday December 17, 2007 The Guardian The reporter from the Newcastle Evening Chronicle claimed it was the worst match he had seen in 30 years of covering the Magpies. Supporters joked that the TV in the dugout belonging to Fulham's manager, Lawrie Sanchez, would have been better used showing Strictly Come Dancing rather than the game. The 5-5 draw between teams of young boys and girls at half-time was far more enjoyable than the main event. Yet none of that could shorten the smile on the face of the Newcastle manager, Sam Allardyce, at the end. This was Newcastle's first away clean sheet since November 2006, and Joey Barton's injury-time penalty - converted after a foul on Alan Smith by Elliot Omozusi on his 19th birthday - was his team's second consecutive last-minute winner following the victory over Birmingham City. With fixtures against the league's bottom two clubs, Derby County and Wigan Athletic, next up, suddenly December looks capable of bringing plenty of festive cheer to Newcastle. "Winning late on shows the commitment we have," said Barton. "We keep battling and we kept a clean sheet, which we've been setting out all week to do. The lads have shown great togetherness and everyone loves playing with each other." They may love playing together, but it is clear not all of them love playing where they are positioned by Allardyce. The willing James Milner provided one dangerous cross, but on the left he is less of a threat than he would be on the right - Fulham's Hameur Bouazza repeatedly showed the advantage of reaching the byline before crossing rather than having to cut back inside on to a favoured foot. Charles N'Zogbia, too, is wasted at left-back, from where his incisive runs and crosses begin too deep. And Smith is surely better suited to a role in midfield or out wide rather than lone striker. Obafemi Martins and Mark Viduka are out-and-out centre-forwards, yet they are resigned to restrictive roles on the right flank and the bench respectively. The ongoing injuries to Michael Owen and Damien Duff have reduced his options, of course, but Allardyce is trying to adapt the players to his formation, rather than mould his style to suit the talents at his disposal. Newcastle's only chances in this game emanated either from set-pieces or long balls, the latter a strange tactic given that Smith, the tallest of their three forwards, is shorter than the smallest of Fulham's four defenders. Allardyce is not one to apologise for winning ugly, perhaps understandably so given the previous flimsiness of his side. "You can't always win pretty but we were effective," he said. What Sanchez would give for his team to be effective. Fulham's season has been a case of better to have led and lost than never to have led at all, but rarely did they look like taking a lead to lose here. Still, the concession of a late goal was all too familiar - this was the ninth they have given up in the last 11 minutes of matches, a statistic that has cost 12 points and lowered them into the relegation zone - and fans chanted for Sanchez's dismissal at half- and full-time. "I believe I'm the man to get us out of this situation," he responded defiantly. If Sanchez is to keep his job, Fulham will have to perform better in the second half of the season than they do in the second half of games.

we are playing horrible football at the moment like, possibly the worst brand in the league. but then, most people were happy to accept that when big sam came in. as long as it gets results. do we care? i think i do. i'm not one of those who the knobbers on sky reckon would rather see the toon lose 5-4 than win 1-0. i don't mind us grafting out the odd ugly win, but sam has got us playing a depressingly dull brand of football. i don't think you would hear too many complaints if we were sniffing around the top 6 but people are going to get impatient watching mind numbingly dull football as long as there's no improvement on last year's results.

oba's been our best striker since he's been at the club. not that that's saying too much

this thread is in danger of going down the pan

Would you shit standing up? no. wouldn't wipe me behind standing either. wht stand to do something you can do perfectly well sitting down? and you're sitting down anyway so...why get up?

...would you piss sitting down?

why would you stand? it's just weird

where's the punchline?

we never should have sacked robson. look at where we were under him and look at what we've achieved since he left.

why stand when you can sit? no brainer tbh