Papa Lazaru

I think there are less of that kind of centre forwards about like Sir Les and Big Al, plus alot of players these days are complete tarts! I'd need to see it again to be fait to Taylor as maybe he had no chance to reach it, but at the time i did think, why no diving header, especially as one thing i would say of him is he is willing to throw himself at things!

Always loves Wenger whingeing about dirty teams ruining his team, this from the man who brought us a team who broke records for getting red cards, there was a spell where if they finished a game with 11 men it was a shock, but then to be fair to him, he didn't actually see any of the 30+ incidents that lead to his players getting red cards!

Then you would be wrong. To be fair their is only a gap of 6 points... but that's less about Spurs being any good and more about everybody in the league beating each other and small clubs getting massive results recently. Mate neither of our teams are any good. However I would put us both on a par with everton, who have looked equally rubbish this year and are currently sitting 7th. I'd put us both above Everton to be honest, the second Cahill gets another injury and if Arteta struggles they turn to complete shite. As for the prem, Chelsea and man are impressive, by the sounds of it Liverpool are now effective though nobody is raving about their performances and Arse go from impessive to shite when the nasty bullies kick Arsenses delicate little flowers off the park! Everyone else ranges from decent to mediocre by the looks of it, and with a run of wins you can get yourself to 5th in no time, a run of defeats and you're favourites for relegation! If we'd had our first choice team out this season we'd be laughing, but we've missed both our fullbacks, leaving us with CB's playing there, we've lost Barton and Jonas and thus all the drive and energy, and creativity in our midfield, plus no Viduka at all, and injuries to Owen and Martins, all 3 of who'm were vital to our good run at the end of last season. If we were to manage wins against Fulham and Wigan, people would seriously be looking to sneak a uefa cup place, struggle in those 2 games and you'd be in fear of relegation again, its mad!

Great effort from the whole team, with the midfield four getting through one hell of alot of work and running. Thought Colo was class at the back yet again and Taylor much improved on recent disasters, stuck to doing what he does well and nothing stupid. And great to see that spell at 2-0 when we knocked the ball around confidently and took the piss for a few moments. If we can take this into the Fulham game and then Wigan we could be feeling alot happier than we have been. But ive always said that even with all the complete chaos at the club and the threat of the unknown, if we'd had our best players fit and available i was always confident of us doing fine. We're now seeing what happens when we get our first choice RB and LB returning and gaining full match fitness and the difference Jonas and Barton make to the midfield. Throw in the fact Shola is looking like a footballer and putting in some effort under JK and its no wonder we're looking better. Still alot of hard work ahead though!

Why? Wise would still be telling him who he can buy and keep. That's whats so annoying about Ashley. He said he wanted us to follow the Arsenal model and i agree with him, shame then that he didn't isn't it. He put in place the kind of scouting system Arsenal have trawling the world for young players which was all a good idea, but decided to ignore the more cruical part where Wenger has complete say on any incoming/outgoing players and nobody is ever allowed to interfere with his wishes! If we had followed their model with KK it would have been great. They could identify loads of players, reccomend them and KK takes a look, meaning somebody like Jonas would come in as clearly KK would love a player like him. In the meantime KK would be doing what he does so well, identifying other players himself and being involved in the deals himself as who in football is better than KK at talking players into signing, into his vision for a club? So Ashley could basically have had it so good here and fucked it all up!

Whilst Wenger has a fair while to go yet where fans still want him there, eventually they will turn on him. You can't keep ignoring the need for proven experienced class players and players with a bit of backbone and you can't keep saying game after game that you played the best football and deserved to win, it just doesn't cover the truth. Also i read an article today responding to his claim that they're kids and they'll learn, poitning out the average age of the team against Spurs was 25 and the defence about 28 i think. Also they're players with dozens of games in the CL not a youth team, so eventually fans will lose patience there, they expect a trophy or 2 every season and have 1 FA cup in 4 years! And if they drove him out i would take him here if he fancied it like!!

One of the depressing things about this is as usual the politicians of this country show what a bunch of useless fuckwitts they are. Are they concerned with the global economy in meltdown, or the credit crucnh at home, no they're all banging on about a radio show prank as if it were of global importance. And as usual with these things, initially there was hardly a complaint at all until the media started bitching and shit stirring it all up so the types of people who devote their lives to being offended can start phoning in and whingeing invariably without having heard the thing itself! Personally i don't think they should have done it and they deserved a bollocking/warning and he deserved an apology, but you'd think it was the single most important event in the world at the moment.

yes, and the way he took on the responsibility of that penalty last night proves he's got the mettle for it. I like the fact he was all fired up and aggressive (in the right way) and big celebrations after the goal, but for the pen he was cool and calm about it, waiting for the keeper and placing it nicely.

Arse are fucking useless at times. I say this every season, they're a bunch of soft as shit fannies and spoilt brats who piss away far too many chances trying for a perfect goal to get out of sight of teams and too soft to grind games out like the rest of the "big 4" when not at their best. The other top 3 would have had that game finished after an hour with ease, but they actually have some players with a backbone! Its why they keep losing out on trophies while Wenger whinges that they play the bestest and prettiest football in the whole wide world! Still probably swap their team and manager for our like! All Redknapp needs to do now is snatch something off Liverpool and he's a had a dream start and they'll be flying up the table in no time.

I agree, i said to my mate that recently he's actualy been improving as instead of being found behind Given he's started to mark him from the front now! Against the mackems he cost us the first goal by deciding to watch Given instead of Cisse and on the 2nd whilst Butt committed his usual stupid foul, if Taylor hadn't pulled out of his tackle about 15 yards earlier in the run we'd have been defending an easy freekick instead of what we got. His best effort this season has been at Everton where he attacked well from fullback and being in that position meant he caused us a hell of a lot less trouble in defence than when he's in the centre. Whereas i think Collocini is looking good considering what he has alongside him and the fact we've had everybody in and out at fullback due to injuries. I know he slipped against West Brom for the goal but he played well and in general has done well for his start in the prem.

They should shave that fucking wig off his kid brother and send him out for the second half. No-one would know the difference tbh. It is seriously annoying though, that even when he is in decent form he can't sustain it for longer than 60 mins! He's just so frustrating because even if he is playing well and i think he has in patches he still does the usual getting caught offside time and again because he isn't concentrating and he still can't strike a ball cleanly, in fact twice now in the last 3 games ive seen him hurt himself shooting, having to be subbed against Man City because of it! But i do think he deserves some credit for his performances under Kinnear which have been alot more than i was expecting.

At least when Bramble made yet another fuck up you didn't see him waving his arms around and pointing at everyone else as if it were their fault! Every goal we concede now seems to find Taylor in scarecrow mode, way out of position and often marking Given for some bizzare reason, or he'll either dive in too early when not needed or pull out of a tackle when it is. Even simple things like last night when West Brom deliberately put a striker right in Given's face,a pretty common tactic and all thats required is for the CB to stand between the striker and keeper and protect him, but Taylor left the guy free to block Given who needless to say couldn't get out to clear the corner and it could have cost us.

I had no problem with this change at all, like you say he was knackered, and the difference was clear between the first half when he was by a country mile better than every other player on the pitch and into the 2nd half whe he tired. And since we'd lost control of the game i'm guessing Kinnear thought bring on and old head in Geremi to try and retain some possession. I would have brought Zog on myself at some point, but Jonas needed to come off.

Theres also the important fact that he didn't want to leave his home down south where he's happy and he doesn't have to for Spurs. Sadly its bad news for us as he'll sort them out, organise them better and move them up the table, if they'd kept Ramos they'd have lost to Bolton no question. On the plus side i think they have Arse and Liverpool next so that will negate a bit of the new manager effect hopefully.

To be fair to Kinnear in his brief time he's used subs better than pretty much any toon manager before him. He brought Jonas on at 1-1 with all to play for, sadly they scored the freekick before he could touch the ball! I'd have given him half an hour myself and had Butt off earlier with Barton coming on, but if they'd missed that freekick i doubt his subs would have ended up looking that bad.

As Renton said, the fact that the mackems act like this is about the single greatest thing to have happened in their lives tells you the state of them, its one home win in about 30 years! I was watching on tv and long after the match was finsihed loads of them, many grown adults had nothing better to do than stay next to the toon fans to annoy them for about half an hour, how empty does your life have to be for that! As for the game, they deserved the win, they took their chances we didn't and we gave away our regulation stupid goals, with Taylor at the forefront as usual. Why he thought for the first goal he should mark Given and not Cisse is anybody's guess and on the second goal was it Taylor who pulled ouf of a tacjle on Diouff long before he got to the edge of the box where but narrowly avoided conceding his 3rd stupid pen of the season, but ended up giving away a goal anyway! What's most annoying is losing to such a mediocre team, they're nothing basically and if Owen and Viduka had been fit and Jonas fit enough to start we could have won comfortably even with our defending! And SHola showed why he's so frustrating, scored an impressive header having won the freekick himself with a bit of fight and agression to get past their defender, and just before halftime he made a perfectly timed run and if Duff had the brains to pass we'd have went in ahead. Then second half Shola missed chances and hit that one cross embarassingly into the crowd, you just don't know what to do with him!

That is the simplest and best one, since the answer is something like 1980! This is probably the best chance they'll have, we're in chaos, injuries galore and/or players just back and not fully fit and a possibility of Beye suspended, and to be honest before Kinnear and the 2 performances under him i thought nailed on defeat. However he has very quickly got some fight and spirit into them which was vital away to that lot, and with the return of Martins, likely Jonas and an outside chance of Owen making it, these players on form are a good distance better than anything they have and could turn a game on their own. I still think it'll be very tight and pretty much no enjoyment for 90 mins as i don't see us being comfortably ahead at any point so there won't be any chance to sit back and actually enjoy any of it!

Its true, all ex manu players who play for another club or manage them, you can see them expectign every decision and being furious when they relaise that normal clubs don't have refs up their backside giving them everything and initially they can't handle it. But i remember one of the ex manu lot, and it may actually have been Hughes after a match at Old Trafford saying the exact same thing, that now he was on the other side you notice you get fuck all there, which did surprise me as they invariably never dare to speak up against their old club.

I like Bassong, looks like he'll be able to do a job at CB and LB which is very useful, is pretty athletic and has enough pace, looks pretty strong and is a young lad who can progress. Don't think he's a world beater but a good player to have in the squad, and who should get better over the years. I hope to see Enrique get fit and get a run in the team at LB again as i rate him, but at least Bassong will provide cover there and maybe even competition depending on the managers opinion of both players.

Aye, regularly gets himself on 5 Live in the evenings. I don't mind that in itself, it's more the way he's goes on. He's come across as a very arrogant bloke. He was on a flight back to Stansted I was on after we played Liverpool about 6 years ago and a couple of scousers had a chat with him - nothing dodgy just mild banter and it took me about 20 seconds to see he was at a level of arrogant wankerness which it would be hard to surpass for normal people - really thought he was a football star. Was it Poll or Winter (i cant distinguish as both are arrogant, self delluded cunts) who ended his final game as a ref a tiny bit early at Anfield and claimed part of the applause at the end was for him from the "knowledgeable Anfield crowd" or some other load of laughable bollocks. I'm thinking it was Winter though!

I was just thinking that, if it had been Terry, they would, it probably wouldn't have been a penalty or a red and if it were it would be rescinded. Well Terry could rugby tackle him and it would be rescinded! The fact is Beye made a great tackle to get the ball when you see it in slow mo and TV and they should rescind it so we arent punished further after the match, and they dont even have to slam Styles for it because to be honest at full speed i said pen straight away at the match, and to Styles it would look like a certain pen. I'd have wanted a pen for it if it was us and even seeing it wasn't one, you'd still be thinking 99/100 a ref would have given it without benefit of TV replays. The linesman should maybe have seen more and spoke up, but i think it was something that sadly would look all day like a pen at full pace and as he was last man would also be a red card. But they should do the decent thing and rescind the card ad he got the ball, and no amount of crap from Poll can change that.

Typical crap from Hughes, just like when he whinged every week that people called Blackburn dirty, ignoring the fact people said it because they were! What more luck does he want than a free penalty and playing against 10 men for practically the whole match! And it was their own fault that they weren't good enough with the extra man and ended up resoting to aimless long range shots and set pieces and their only chance of scoring...unfortunately until the move for their equaliser.

I'm certainly not going to completely dismiss a player based on what little weve seen of Carroll, but last night he was shocking. All he had to do was give 10-15mins of energetic running, and effort to relieve some of the pressure we were under and he lumbered about as if he was half asleep, i just didn't get it from a young lad with everythign to aim for at all. As for Shola, he'll never be good enough but fair play to him, he played well last night, offered something of a physical pressence at times last night, did some work and scored a vital goal and deserved the applause he got when he had to go off with an injury. Something ive noticed about Kinnear albeit from just 2 games is he seems about the first ever toon manager in my time to know how and wehn to use substitutions, ie they don't have to be left till the last 5 minutes when its too late! Against Everton i was watching on tv and you could see Geremi's legs had gone (surprise!) as he chased a player and had to bring them down for a yellow and straight away Kinnear had somebody warmed up and brough Geremi off. And against man City he kept the players on the pitch whilst we were still doing well, but as MArtins was clearly tiring due to just returning from injury, off he came and Zog was on to provide fresh legs and pace on the break. Long may it continue!

Chris Kamara will come with Jeff from SSN!

Yeah, still my favourite LB too, getting Bez and Venison for the price he did, and the years of service we had from them was great work from Keegan.