Dr Gloom

how can a bar with Carling, Coors, Grolsch and Worthingtons as its house beers be the best in town? shocking selection tbh.

£17m...fuck me sideways. i remember people on here screwing at the thought of bobby signing him for £1.5m a fwe years back

i'd be tempted to keep martins but £13m might be too good a price to turn down. i think we paid over the odds for him personally.

getting rid of those two wasters will be the best thing sam has done so far. thank christ he can see what we all can. i can't believe the two of them have managed to bleed the club for 40 grand a week in wages without putting in a half decent shift between them.

the yanks don't give hatton enough respect but i reckon mayweather would beat him up pretty bad.

Much better is a stretching it a bit. mildly better? Aye. He isn't getting loads of stick either though to be fair. My beef was more with the assertion he is obviously quality. He hasn't shown it here. i like him because he's got touch and skill. i agree that he's been disappointing for us but i wonder if that's largely because he's played under two shite managers. maybe big sam will get him back to his best - i think he's worth keeping though because unlike someone like parker, he is clearly capable of more than he's shown since he's been with us. Don't see why Parker doesn't get the same excuse then (I wasn't too sorry to see him leave but fair's fair). And if anyone gets unfair stick it's Parker who has had a lot more decent games for us than Emre. i never really saw much more than effort and work-rate from parker - he's very limited compared to emre in terms of technical ability and natural talent. the problem with parker is that he's an average holding player and a below average attacking midfielder. nicky butt's performances last season showed how limited parker is. at least with emre, there's flashes of skill and a sense that the best might still be to come.

Much better is a stretching it a bit. mildly better? Aye. He isn't getting loads of stick either though to be fair. My beef was more with the assertion he is obviously quality. He hasn't shown it here. i like him because he's got touch and skill. i agree that he's been disappointing for us but i wonder if that's largely because he's played under two shite managers. maybe big sam will get him back to his best - i think he's worth keeping though because unlike someone like parker, he is clearly capable of more than he's shown since he's been with us.

Much better is a stretching it a bit. mildly better?

i dunno why emre gets so much stick like. he was much better than the likes of duff and parker last season. not that that's saying too much.

You're a right misery guts of late Dan. Clearly missing Leazes imo. maybe the most miserable june on record is taking its toll - i reckon we've made some solid squad additions but i don't think we've added too many players that will help fire us back towards the top 4-6. i do think this place misses leazesmag btw

bring back shepherd tbh

i'm finding it hard to get too excited about geremi and viduka like, although there's no doubt they're an improvement on the likes of le sib and bernard.

i'm sure that if there was even a remote chance of this deal going through before july 1, the media would have picked up on it by now. all i've heard about this deal is that sam doesn't fancy him because he isn't tall enough

longest in the shower too apparently

i'm optimistic about our long-term future under ashley but i'm not that excited about big sam and his new signings so far.

a bit slow and old i reckon. we should be able to attract better players but he'd still be a vast improvement on the likes of ramage, bramble etc

good going forward and at set pieces but i think he's a little suspect defensively. boro fans used to say that he rarely turned up away from home iirc.

Dyer on the left? If that's our best team by the start of the season we're in for another long one. assuming we don't sign another left winger he'll probably start there ahead of n'zogbia considering duff's injury. that or he'll play on the right and milner on the left.

aye. it would be nice if we had a decent start for once. our last good start iirc was when we played the intertoto under sir bob and we'd just signed robert and bellamy. too often in recent years we've had shite starts that have set the tone for the rest of the season.

----------------given solano----taylor----rozenhal----baines milner----barton---emre--------dyer -----------viduka---owen EDIT - i can't see big sam going 4-3-3 as long as owen is in the side.

i wouldn't be surprised if there's some truth in this. sam seems to be going for fewer high profile signings than his predecessors. might not be a bad thing tbh

it's only a matter of time until the fat man is shown the door too. it might take a while for ashley to get the right chief exec in but he doesn't want a rudderless ship until then. shepherd is just keeping the set warm in the interim. i wonder what leazesmag makes of all this. has he boycotted this board or what?

with a serious number of takeovers and shedloads of new money flowing into the premiership, does anyone expect next season to be the most competitive in some time or will the top 4 remain in a league of their own? with our new chairman and manager in place i know a few of us are optimistic about getting back into the top 6. but surely so will fans of villa, pompey, west ham, man city and others. will next season see the gap betweem the have and have-nots reduce or will one of man u or chelsea run away with it yet again?

i think they'll do well under him, assuming thaksin doesn't go under

for all the money ashley is bringing into the club, it's interesting to note that sam hasn't yet made a big money signing or been linked with the kind of trophy player that managers under shepherd often brought to the club. a sign of things to come i wonder?