Kitman

That, along with the Given sale, has to be the ultimate definition of false economy. Quite. Given for the rest of the season or Milner for all of the season, probably either would have got us 1 point. You have to hope some lessons have been learnt. Perhaps but I'd rather we weren't an educational project for clueless chumps.

If and when we go down, we'll be a case study on how to get relegated. Just about everything that could go wrong, has gone wrong this season. In a just and reasonable world Nuremberg style trials would be held and the guilty men would be pilloried and strung up from lamp posts by their knackers as a warning to future owners. As it is they'll all trouser their cash and head off for a nice holiday in Barbados to get over their upsetting experience. The poor things, they probably even feel hard done by and misunderstood. Bastards, every one of them - Ashley, Llambias, Wise, the other directors whoever they are, Kinnear, Hughton, Wise, Vitere, most of the couldn't-care-less players - useless, incompetent, bumbling, fumbling, buffoon, know-nowt, clueless, naive, lazy, cowardly, overpaid, greedy, talentless bunch of absolute TOSSERS. Most of them will shortly cart their wheelbarrows full of cash out of town as fast as they can go and they won't give us a second thought. The only comfort in all of this is that Ashley will lose a truck load of money, but in the end we'll end up paying for it and I dread to think what he's going to do next. He's like a biblical plague in a toon shirt sent to punish us for worshipping false idols. Except I'd rather have a swarm of flies, at least it'd be over quicker.

ditto

That article looks like it was written by a schoolchild. Shockingly bad tbh.

Canny thread * must stop posting from work *

Readings where I work, not where I come from. You don't even work in Reading tbf, it's Theale!

Kick off is at 5 am Monday morning here. To hell with Sky, by the time I get up we'll be relegated.

Danny B, I'd like to shit in my hand and slap you in the face. You cunt. He might interpret that as foreplay, mind....

Ashley is an idiot surrounded by idiots. Further calamity is inevitable imo unless there's a massive improvement in his cluelessness. Or he sells up, depending on whether the new owner is as idiotic as he is. I don't see the silver lining in being relegated therefore.

"Right Joey, this is absolutely the last warning. I know we said last time that it was the last warning....well this one is definitely the final warning. Don't think you're getting any more final warnings." etc etc

Howay the lads! Howay the lads! Howay the lads!

We should sell him in the summer imo. Only a matter of time before he does something stupid again on or off the pitch....

I'd be more in favour if this issue was about raising the quality of English footballers. However this new proposal will do nothing to get talented English youngsters onto the pitch. The whole thing seems to have been motivated by Blatter's dislike of English teams. Well boo bloody hoo. No-one was complaining when the Italians and Spanish dominated Europe. Maybe they'd like to start with making national leagues more competitive, now that would really be something.

It's called having scouts. no, you're wrong. Ashley was supposed to implement the scouting system that Fat Fred didn't, ie the one that found Zoggy, and swapping him for Ryan Taylor and cash was "good business" Come to think of it, it would actually have been a better deal for us if we got the same money and no RTaylor, no wages or shit player to deal with I suspect the R Taylor signing had nothing to do with scouting and everything to do with Joe Kinnear.

As everyone's saying it's a question of value. On large wages he's poor value because he's injury prone. The days when we can carry the likes of Carr and Babayaro are long gone. He's an asset to the team on his day but his day doesn't come often enough. He'd be great on a pay for play contract but I doubt he'd accept. Everything points to the exit door imo. Ashley will look to slash the wage bill next season whatever happens and Viduka and Owen are the obvious candidates. That would still leave us with Ameobi, Xisco, Martins and Carroll and I reckon we'll sell one of those and get one replacement in (ie 3 out, one in).

I'd like to think so, it sounded like the internet equivalent of Care in the Community

We should keep him. His value in our annual fight against relegation can't be underestimated. He's injured for most of the season, which means he's as fresh as a daisy in the last few matches. Ideally we'd put him on a lucrative annual contract, which means he can spend two thirds of the season on the sofa counting his coin and conserving his energy; then the realisation will dawn that the season is drawing to a close and there's just enough time to haul his capacious butt off the sofa, get fit and squeeze in 6-10 games.

Another must win game imo. We shouldn't rely on the bottom 3 to fuck up

This is the core of my argument. I'm surprised he starts ahead of Tevez. Wouldn't be surprised if Berbatov's ditched in due course like Veron

Well I've seen some shocking keepers but I wouldn't put Harper's performance anywhere near that list. Given's had some howlers at City btw.... Well done though everyone, I'm sure Harper'll be feeling on top of the world for Saturday now. Perhaps he doesn't browse on here?

If Kinnear hadn't had his heart troubles and he'd stayed on and taken us down would we be applauding Ashley for sticking with him? He's appointed 3 very average managers imo and stuck with them for too long (granted McClaren did okay with them in a UEFA and CCC). I take your point. I think the difference between Southgate and Kinnear is that Gibson sees/saw him as the young talent to take Boro forward over the next few years. Kinnear on the other hand is a washed up old never-was who was employed as a stop gap and then just stuck around like a bad smell. In Southgate's case maybe he saw potential and wanted to put in place a long term appointment.....I don't think it's easy to attract a decent manager to Boro. Like ourselves under Ashley maybe. I admire Gibson's loyalty here if not his judgement. Still I realise there's possibly a more cynical explanation for it.

He's a fantastic chairman from the manager's point of view but as TTW says, he's picked poor managers and stuck with them too long. If Boro go down then it'll be as much his fault as it is Southgate's, who really should have been given the boot long before now. Aye but he's shovelled in a large part of his fortune into a unfashionalbe Yorkshire club with 20,000 supporters and taken them from no-hopers to League Cup winners and a premiership club. If I was a supporter of theirs I wouldn't criticise him at all. He may not have chosen the best manager but he's backed him and stuck by him, something we are constantly criticised for not doing. Be interesting to see what he does next, I assume Southgate will resign if they're relegated.

It's not as if it was a derby or anything. For us