Papa Lazaru

Stupid thing to do really, he was about to get his chance to show what he can do in a pretty easy game if England hit any sort of form and he blows it, you wouldn't catch Wilkinson doing this, he'd probably still be doing kicking practice at that time of night knowing him!! What's daft though is Ashton dropped Balshaw (rightly) from fullback and brings in Cipriani, but now he's brough Balshaw back when he has Tait there to play fullback.

I agree with Alex that as a young English player, regular for the U21's and with a pretty good reputation in football, (despite what we've seen this season!) he'd command a decent fee if sold.

"Five minutes into Jimbo's solitude.... he gave in and had his second wank" fyp

With the few that think applauding them at the end is more important than actually putting in a performance. Glad to see the .com boys picking him up on his cringeworthy act in the Man U report... God forbid they should acknowledge the fans, damned if you do... Have to agree there, sometimes people can't win whatever they do. Fans slate players for not having the guts/decency or whatever your choice to come and acknowledge the supporters after a shite perfomance and just running straight for the tunnel. But if they do stay back and applaud the fans they get hammered for that as well as it has to be attention seeking and proving you're the biggest geordie going in Taylors case and i'm not exactly sure what their criticism of Smith is...it seems to be having a go that he still applauds us despite having been on the end of stick from the fans???

I'm glad Habib managed to restrain himself from hitting the kid properly as much as I'd have liked to see it it's not worth loosing him for three games. Mind it was our throw in. He has done well to get as much in as possible for just a yellow to be fair to him! And much though you can't condine the players and everyone elses behaviour it all started with a piss poor decision from a linesman who ignored a clear throw in for us and gave it to them which kicked it all off.

Sad isn't it that we're so happy at Bolton going 1-0 down these days! Hopefully Liverpool will do what they do best, turn in one great performance (today) and follow it with a shite one against us! They're playing West Ham before they play us Damn, my whole theory has fallen to pieces now! Not that i expect us to get anything from the game really, but i do think they blow hot and cold and it can be better to catch them after a good performance sometimes strange as that sounds! Obviously what i meant to say was Liverpool do 2 good performances then one bad one!

we simply must beat Fulham at home now, to set us up for the Reading game to follow. If we won both of those, we would go into the game against the mackems looking much better than now. It would seem that 37 or 38 points will be enough, but these games are all 6 pointers now. Keegans approach is always likely to conjure up an away win and the best place to do this would be at Birmingham. Totally agree, a win against Fulham and the confidence from that should be enough to go on and beat Reading IMO, and if you have 6 points from those 2 games things will be looking that little bit better! Also agree that KK is capable of pulling an away win out of the hat sooner or later just because his teams are usually win or bust, lose a fair few away but win one suddenly and Brum could be that game hopefully. But the Fulham game has really become the big one hasn't it!

Sad isn't it that we're so happy at Bolton going 1-0 down these days! Hopefully Liverpool will do what they do best, turn in one great performance (today) and follow it with a shite one against us!

I genuinely haven't been worried about relegation at all, not so much a great belief in us but mainly down to there being some shocking teams in this league. I did however think we'd win yesterday and to be fair we really should have but for finishing. Come the end of the Brum game if we've lost to them and Liverpool then i would start to worry as depending on what other teams have done we'd be in the bottom 3 quite likely. Our aim sadly has to be to emulate the mackems and that means beating the bottom teams at home. If we beat Fulham, Reading and the mackems themselves a home and pick up a point or 2 away from home we'll be fine. Lose any of those games and it won't look good at all! But i don't think we'll go down and would put money on us to stay up if i was the gambling type.

Yeah, for 90 mins you have to say it would not fall for us at all, especially in the box. Fair enough the Blackburn players threw themsleves in front of everything and got loads of blocks in, but everytime they did, it deflected over the bar, or just past the post or dropped to their player, and Friedel also made 3 good saves. But ultimately we should have scored 2 or 3 and not given him the chance to save them which meant their goal was a real sickener when we should have already had the game won.

Got to love the press, they talk some bullshit and completely contradict themsleves all the time. All the cockney media have Keegan down as a huffy spoiled brat who walks as soon as anything isn't to his liking. Yet now they deceide that all these decisions and staff choices are nothing to do with him or worse that he is against them. Well if their view of him was right then he'd have walked in a huff by now at things not being to his liking, they can't have it both fucking ways! The fact is i doubt Keegan came up with Wise at all, why would he, but the people above him would have coem to him and said how they see the club being structured, discussed it with him and mentioned Wise and KK has agreed. With Hughton it'll either be the same as that or even KK's choice. But that doesn't shit stir or sell any papers!

I don't think he's ever looked bad, i think potentially he could do very well. What annoys me is not only has he been ok, but the people they've stuck in ahead of him have been ludicrous, playign Carr there or completely wasting N'Zogbia who also struggles positionally. I'm not saying Enrique has been a world beater, but he's done enough to be picked ahead of a useless right back in Carr and a winger in Zog, who also is needed attacking in the other half.

That's the best we've played in along while, we created alot of chances which we haven't done for ages and we even defended reasonably well all match. Of course all that counts for fuck all when you lose! Bizarrely Barton played two perfect passes better than anything we've managed in ages but people didn't score from them, yet he was absolute dogshit for 90 mins aside from that. How the management cannot see that mentally he just isnt there to play prem football at the moment is beyond me. He's obviously got his mind on jail as anytime a defending player is up his arse he panics! Sadly the fact is if you don't take your chances you will pay for it late on and we certainly did. Though i've heard from a few people that Zog was fouled in the lead up to their goal and if that's the case then we've been shafted yet again. All comes down to the home games against Fulham, Reading and the Mackems now, win those and we're ok, struggle in them and we're in the shit. But looking at the last 3 games we really, really don't want to be in big need of points!

My worry about Carroll is that he went down a division to Preston and got something like 1 goal in 12 games which you'd have expected him to do better than. However when i've seen him, i've liked the look of him enough to say i'd give him a shot ahead of Smith and Shola to see what he can do, but if fit i'd be starting with somthing from Owen/Viduka/Martins.

The Belgrade match is a very good shout. One way to assess it though is the season that finished with us and Liverpool practically identical, fighting for 4th place and little to separate the two clubs at the time (in the league. Obviously they'd won soem cups before that year!) They decided correctly things were goign backwards with their manager, moved him on at a sensible time with a plan of action already in place to get a top european coach in and give him the time to get his players in and work with them pre-season for the year ahead. They won the CL and (this season apart) are a fixture in the top 4. Our fuckwitt of a chairman kept on Bobby when it was his time to move on, or even up to another role at the club. He then got rid of him at a stupid time, with no plan at all in place causing chaos. He followed that by making the most moronic appointment possible seeing us spiral downards faster than ever. Then somehow concluded Souness should start the next season, ruining us further, and then dumped him and decided to make Roder the long term choice after that! We went from being top 5 and just needing a new top manager brought in then to fine tune things and get us moving forwards again and turned into what we are now!

As has been said who we/Keegan want and who can be talked into coming will be interesting to see. I think and hope what keegan will try to do is very early on make as big a signing as he can as a statement to other people out there that we/he means business and hopefully that will attract others to join. But we have the big problem that loads of clubs now have cash to burn and many of them will be in europe. Also we have to hope KK can supplement what he's given by getting some people out the club, like Sir Bobby did when he took over. I'd definitely want an attacking midfielder and defensive midfielder, a centrehalve and another striker as priorities, but there are many posotions we could improve in lets be honest!

I know it's bordering on blasphemy, but if Keegan again starts Butt and Barton in the centre against Blackburn, you will have to question his sanity. Barton not only has no confidence whatsoever, he seems to have forgotten he's a professional footballer altogether. I know that football fans always claim to know best and all think we could easilly manage a team better than people emplyed to do so...but there are times when basically 100% of the fans can see something and yet the manager (or managers) seem oblivious to it. And this is one of those times where we cannot continue to play central midfielders who can't pass to a teammate if more than 2 yards away! We create about 2 real chances a game max these days if we're lucky and continually surrender possession leading to goals flying in at our end.

Me too. Its clearly not the same as it used to be to win a cup as the big teams don't play their best teams and even lesser clubs rest people for these games now until the later stages. But for us to win anything at all would just get the whole "never won anything" types to shut up for a bit! Even though you can guarentee if we won it (which we won't!) it wouldn't count and would be completely mickey mouse so we'd need at least the FA cup or possibly the league before they actually shut up!

That's what i'd go for as well, anything really to get rid of the current players doing nothing in the middle. We are so 1 paced and incapable of retaining possession that we create nothing and put our defence under continual pressure. Manu may have taken their goals well, but everyone of them was handed on a plate by us giving the ball away. Faye can do the DM job and looks like he can pass a football which already puts him ahead of the likes of Barton, and Zog whether he ultimately belongs in the middle at all or not will at least make something happen occasionally! Or as somebody said elsewhere you could always chuck Milner in there and see how he goes.

Happy birthday Cath

Its not hard to do really, as Alex said there's nothing wrong with people swearing to themselves in frustration at say missing a shot or something, but any abuse or swearing directed at officials should be a yellow followed by a red if it continues or you do it again. And any grown adults who claim they can't manage to not swear at a ref are as J69 said either thick or have an incredibly small vocabulary. Of course it would never work in the prem because the refs will never book the main culprits from the big 4 like Rooney who frequently scream abuse at them for a sustained length of time, because they're spineless bastards basically.

I'm getting the word...nonce!

Sneaky freekick from Sheff utd there, pretending they'd ran into each other and when boro aren't paying attention take a shot, certainly looked deliberate anyway. And Wheater has continued his bizzare ability to be immune to getting sent off or have freekicks given against him from when we played them and he committed about 4 yellow card offences on his own.

Personally i'd ban drug cheats for life, but that isn't the rules and so having served his ban he should be allowed to compete. What makes them all look like complete arseholes is what Meenzer said regarding Ohuruogu who repeatedly defied the rules to attend tests when she easilly could have on numerous occasions and has whinged on as if she's the victim throughout. If you continue to miss tests you're a drug cheat, there's no other reason why you're repeattedly avoiding them.

To be honest i think i'd just stick Faye and N'Zogbia in there. The rets of them have been shite for the vast majority of the season, but Faye looks like he can play the defensive mid role and pass a football reasonably and Zog is capable of attacking/creating which you can't say for most of what's been playing there. And if people say Zog isn't a natural central player or doesn't belong there do they really think he'll be worse than Barton et al?