Papa Lazaru

Its true, whilst our defence get slated from all sources (and sometimes rightly!) most of our problems come because we cannot keep possession and put ourselves under pressure and because we give the balla way in stupid positions and at the woerts times possible. In the first half there were a few times when if the likes of Barton or Butt had played a good ball we were in with a chance of a goal instead we end up at the other end defending against a break.

Mostly fair i'd agree. Left back was fit and available to play LB and i'd have started Faye as well, but in fairness Keegan hasn't seen him yet and so didn't rock the boat, though he did chuck Beye straight in! As for Smith i think managers will possibly prefer his battling to Viduka's incosistent talent away from home maybe?

Aye, good point, they'd have got 2 goals each no problem. Don't even know what you're on about now. It was crying out for a change at 2-1 and Viduka for Smith and Emre for the woeful Barton were the obvious ones for me. No one is saying they'd have definitely won us the game but just sticking with what we had was tantamount to conceding the match imo. Alex has saved me arguing but the basic, simple point is if the team are playing shite you try something else. The player(s) coming on may not be world beaters but they could turn the game. O'Neil brought on Harewood to change it, hardly a world class talent is he? And another aspect of it is fresh legs and maybe a bit of impetus from the new players, and it tells the players taken off and those still on that they need to improve. And finally i don't see how anyone can argue that Emre could have been worse than what Barton was producing therefore he should have been on and likewise Viduka can turn matches, he may not always do it, but he can and he was more likely to score than Smith. As for saying the likes of Fergie have better squads, that's not the point, the point is they throw everything they have at it to win, whether that means changes at halftime, playing late on with 3 strikers or whatever they'll do it. If through injuries or whatever the quality of their bench wasn't as good as normal they'd still chuck somebody on as they don't stand for platers not doing what's required on the pitch.

So you predicted a 4-1 win after we went one up.... genius If you're going to be so pedantic then i think you'll find its a 4-1 defeat i would have predicted...genius! And no i didn't, what me and a mate watching precicted was if we didnt keep it tight and conceded early that we'd fall apart and get a hammering and we did, you don't need to be a genius to predict that with this team.

I'd say since Souness onwards we have been mostly shite in the 2nd half of games, its been going on for years now. Speaking for myself i'm never in the slightest bit shocked when we look like a different team 2nd half. Also i'm not surprised that when we concede a goal that its followed by our confidence plummetting and the performance getting steadilly worse till we throw it away, that has been going on for far too long as well.

Sadly that was so predictable even at 1-0 up and having looked decent first half. The fact remains if we have 2 central midfilders who can't manage 1 pass on target between them we'll struggle, Barton was again appalling, doing nithing but try to concede penalties! And yet again we gave the goals away for free. First one Carr and Duff should have cleared but fucked about and we paid for it. Second goal, all Duff had to do was stay ont he fucking post and he stops it, After that it was a joke at the back but for Harper. And i had forgotten that as brilliant as Keegan was last time round he is and always will be shite with substitutions. At 2-1 down he sat motionless whilst we got worse and never once warmed Viduka up and brought Emre on only when the game was lost. We may not have won with them on, but i['d like the manager to at least try everything he has to win, and Emre had to be better than the jokers on the ptich and Viduka (whatever people think of him) can turn a game. Other than that i think Owen did well with what he was given, ie next to nothing to work with, and Milner was far and away our only threat and covered the whole pitch forward and back to help out. But Keegan has to look at O'Neil who saw it wasnt working and made 2 changes at halftime and saw his team change the game, whilst we sat and did nothing to change it back. All the top managers, Fergie, Wenger and Mourinho when he was here make changes, often at halftime if needed and often more than one, and they know what they're doing.

Its absurd and for that reason i CAN see it happening! As somebody said, if something will make money and most importantly make money for the big clubs then there's a damn good chance it'll happen!

Agree, the crowd were a fucking joke but i won't expect numerous articles and columns slatign them for ages! You do realise though that an ENGLISH newspaper isn't going to take on THE WHOLE COUNTRY!! They can slag us off because we aren't the only people who buy their papers..... ...now as for the international press, I'm sure there are plenty of articles about how England expects to win everything and take the piss.... To be fair they'd only be taking on the 60,000 (or whatever the crowd was!) who were there acting like dicks! I imagine most newspapers have a wide readership of people who weren't at wembley and thousands who don't even like football at all! Anyway to be honest football fans in general get on my tits these days, from england fans, through most other clubs to some of our own. Its par for the course most of the time for either 1 or 2 players or a team as a whole to be getting booed before, during or after a game, the atmosphere up and down the country is invariably crap and not a patch on what it used to be. I think Keegan is in for a bit of a shock now that he's back here as whilst the fans will give him more patience than other managers, he'll be surprised by how quickly the crowd goes silent, then how quickly the moans and angry shouts start when things arent going perfectly, and how regular it is for the team to be booed off at half and fulltime. Obviously he can help with that by building an attacking team that wins alot at home, but it won't be the crowd and ground he remembers!

Agree, the crowd were a fucking joke but i won't expect numerous articles and columns slatign them for ages! As for the performance what i saw it was poor first half and much better second half, hopefully something to build on in that. Though personally i've never thought English players seem to suit 1 up front at home, just never really liked it. Once Capello gets some time with them and a few games under his belt we'll see what he can do and the players won't have any excuses left as he's privem time and again he can do the business.

I think Keegan will be the right manager for N'Zogbia and hopefully he will get a settled run in an attacking footballing side in 1 position so we can finally see the very best of him from next season. I've always liked him as a player since he arrived here, but there has obviously been the odd problem, occasionally from his side but not helped by previous managers as well. But we need to keep him that's for sure, we have very few players with pace and potential for creativity and an ey for a shot as well.

Same here, few syrup ones then some lemon/sugar ones. I keep meanign to try something else but never get round to it. Mind i'm having some distant memory that as a kid i may have tried them with chilli and/or bolognese in, but can't really remember what i thought!

Saw Southgate on SSN saying he won't likely have a visa in time for sundays game, whether or not they have any other issues, so it looks like we won't be his debut game, which considering the toon's record with these things is good!

I agree with that. Maybe Preston didn't suit him? Look at Owen under Allardyce. Good striker, but the team didn't suit him at all. Could well be, i didnt see any of their games or really read about wha he was doing, just the odd mention here and there.

The thing with Carroll is i was disappointed with when he was on loan. Before he went, what little i'd seen of him he looked a good prospect, but in the lower division where i thought he'd flourish i think he only managed 1 goal, unless i'm mistaken. So i was a bit surprised at that. I'm still not against giving him a crack though, or any of the others if Keegan thinks they're ready, but maybe 1 at a time, ir start as subs, and best introduced in the "easier" games or when we're doign well. But as we're hardly setting the world alight it can't do any harm to give some young-uns a shot!

100% agree, the way the media and "tv experts" bang on about mind games in regards to prem managers is embarassing. Most of it is just childish petty insults or whingeing and the rest doesnt have any effect on the other managers or teams because they're the best teams out there and don't get bothered by crap like that. Managers can help their own players, build them up, protect them from the media etc. but the mindgames stuff is laughable at times. As for the start of this thread, i think Fergie is a complete cnut, but he's done/said nothing wrong here at all and i can't see why anyone would get worked up about it. I don't know if you remember, but KK sort of went mental on television. Now as a fan and viewer I for one thought he had lost it at that point, but that's neither here nor there. What is important is what the players take from incidents like that. They absolutely have to believe their manager is in control of a situation otherwise they're going to lose confidence in what he's telling them. Now how much the psyhchology or that outburst had to do with us losing the league is something that nobody will ever know, but I'll tell you this-if I was a player going in to the last few weeks of that season and I was looking to my manager to give me the unswerving belief to eek that last few ounces of energy and bottle out of me, I know which manager I would have had more confidence in. I'm sorry but any other conclusion is just complete nonsense. I said in my post players take things from their own manager, thats obvious or why have one, so i don't know why you're explaining to me that Keegans outburst affected us, everyone knows it might have. Though some players would probably (like many fans) thought it was funny and/or showed passion and loved it, who knows unless you ask each one of them. I also said the mindgames stuff was bollocks and it is. Fergie was having a moan as usual, in this case because "teams try harder agains manu than Newcastle",the next week probably some percieved refereeing slight or timekeeping he didnt like. He was being an arse, it wasnt an attempt to drive Keegan mad as who would think it would, he was just being a pain in the backside. Fergie is an arsehole at times but he is intelligent, he knows fine well that saying teams try harder wasn't going to make everyone in the league suddenly break their backs to beat NUFC nor would it stop them playing hard against manu. And as i said there isnt a chance in hell Fergie thought a little aside about teams efforts was going to see Keegan errupt. I imagine Keegan was ready to go at anything because of the pressures of losing the title we should have won and that comment happed to be the thing he went for.

100% agree, the way the media and "tv experts" bang on about mind games in regards to prem managers is embarassing. Most of it is just childish petty insults or whingeing and the rest doesnt have any effect on the other managers or teams because they're the best teams out there and don't get bothered by crap like that. Managers can help their own players, build them up, protect them from the media etc. but the mindgames stuff is laughable at times. As for the start of this thread, i think Fergie is a complete cnut, but he's done/said nothing wrong here at all and i can't see why anyone would get worked up about it.

With Barton you suspect there won't be a change and that he's basically got a serious problem and something will happen again. But, if anything is going to work and change him for the better, then a shock to the system like being put in jail is as good a bet as anything. I imagine something like that could impact on even an idiot like Barton!

I know we have no idea how these players will work out, but its great to see the club trying to identify young talent and bring them in cheap and nurture them rather than our usual method of pissing away millions on what often turns out to be shite!

He has definitely lost some pace and doesnt accelerate past them the way he used to and it is a bit worrying. On the plus side, he is still one of the most intelligent runners off the ball and his timing of where he needs to be is as good as ever and you'd expect under Keegan we will actually start to create chances for him, when i suspect he'll show his finishign hasn't changed much at all. So i think we'll see alot more from Owen, but not him at his absolute best because of the injuries he's had.

He may be somebody in football i can't stand, but he obviously knows what he's doing, you can't fault the work he's done with Leeds. It may well be he's one of these footballers who whilst not intelligent in the academic sense is intelligent in the football world and has observed and learned from alot of the top players and different maangers/coaches he was with at Chelsea. Because he was doing some impressive work with Leeds considering the points deficit and losing alot of players to clear debts etc.

Indeed. The press and sky sports news were gutted when Fat Fred and his mornic outbursts left the club. They've always made crap up about us (and pretty much everyone else to be fair!) but they lost so much when thet idiot went. Now if we could just exterminate the fuckwitts and charvas who appear on camera for every toon related story we'd be left nothing self inflicted and only have the press' bullshit remaining!

It is funny to see quite how much that theater gag has really got to the southern journo's. When Keegan said it i thought nothing of it, just laughed and watched the rest of the conference, but its really hit home with them and they are collectively coming across as the biggest bunch of sad, juvenile little pricks imaginable. Whats worse is none of the articles are ever well written, funny/witty and usually don't bare any resemblance to the truth. Still as they keep telling us every day in their papers, covering hundreds of column inches in the process, we're not important and nobody cares about us!

I'm also pleased about this. Whilst Big Sam didnt work out as i'd hoped with the first team i always said and still believe that he would make massive (and much needed) changes to this club from top to bottom. If Keegan can come in, use the best of what Big Sam brought here and add in his own skills and management of the first team it can hopefully be a good combination.

And apparently didnt pay any attention to Keegans press conference when he dealt with the whole rep he has for walking out on clubs. He left here because of the PLC and things beyond his control meaning the club wasnt going where he wanted. He left Fulham for England with the chairman's blessing, he didn't storm out because he wasn't happy and he left City because he told the chairman he wouldnt be signing another contract and was finishing with management, so they decided he should leave early to give the new boss (Pearce) time to settle in, basically. Hardly a serial bottler as the cockney press would like people to believe is it. The only real one is the "brochure" one with John Hall and the club benefitted from that as he got the players he needed and look where we ended up under him!

Truly laughable what the cockney gutter press will write about this club to shit stir, it really does amuse me. Of course some fans for reasons beyond me will treat it like gospel truth, though alot less now that its Keegan and not a manager they don't like when they would be only too happy to believe any negative press!