OTF

Xisco's got nothing to lose. Play, do nothing and people will think he's shit, play and be ok and people will think he's shit, play and have a blinder and people will think he's got lucky. Wasn't hold up play his speciality in Spain? Granted it was in Spain, but Ranger is far too raw to start. I think we'll still see Carroll anyway. If Shola's not ready to come back it will be alongside Nolan otherwise Shola will be back. I'd probably prefer Guthrie in the middle over Nolan so wouldn't mind if Shola's not fully fit.

Xisco's got nothing to lose. Play, do nothing and people will think he's shit, play and be ok and people will think he's shit, play and have a blinder and people will think he's got lucky. Wasn't hold up play his speciality in Spain? Granted it was in Spain, but Ranger is far too raw to start. I think we'll still see Carroll anyway. If Shola's not ready to come back it will be alongside Nolan otherwise Shola will be back. I'd probably prefer Guthrie in the middle over Nolan so wouldn't mind if Shola's not fully fit.

Your a bit all over the shop. Loving lovenkrands, Enrique's no1 fan and now you gonna go to Colo Definitely Enrique's no. 1 fan Never loved Loven, just liked the way he celebrated some of his goals. Colo's emotion in his celebration of his equaliser against Wigan was fantastic.

Lovenkrands isn't shit. He's not great though, and is a bit of a lightweight. If we got rid of him we'd struggle to replace him with someone as good for less than 3 million. Came mighty close to scoring on the weekend, which I know is not much of a consolation but it does show that with minescule amounts of first team football this season he was able to pick straight back up and get into dangerous positions, and only not have his name on the scorers sheet because of some very good goal keeping. Didn't do great with a headed chance, but did good work in the leadup to that, having earlier had the ball first making the pass then timing his run to be in a good position to have the header. At any length I probably look like I'm in love with him because of the pic I have as my avatar.. I'm not though only put him there because I love the way he so passionately celebrated scoring some of his goals. I should change it to Colo.

Football's about the only sport stupid enough to suffer from it, firstly because the players are largely pricks and secondly because officials and the people running the game do fuck all which encourages it. We had a chance to cross into the box with Fulham struggling and get a shot in, instead one of them fakes an injury the ref stops it and we end up not with a chance to score but the ball hoofed up to Krul and 11 men back defending. Then you see the rugby and a guy with an actual real injury is practically trampled over as he gets treatment by the rest of them getting on with it, because thats what you do. Yeah, Danny Murphy hit in the face with a ball. Could only improve his looks TBH. Getting hit in the face with a ball is not a legitimate reason to stop a game. Any other sport and it would be business as usual. Football players are some of the biggest overreacting soft cocks and most fully deserve the bad reputation they've garnered through their excessive dramatics. The FA and FIFA must share the blame because the facts are that players are rewarded for overacting. A challenge that the ref may have missed or not called, with a little bit of overacting becomes something that's quite obvious. In the box the amount of players that plan to go to ground, just waiting for the slightest contact is embarrassing (Steven Gerrard I'm looking at you). Even when there's absolutely no contact the absolute worst that can happen is that they get a yellow card. Conversely, if there's even incidental contact if the attacking player can sell it well enough, and the ref is a big enough fool to buy it (this will unfortunately come down to the profile of the player, big profile forward = penalty, big profile defender = no penalty) then the penalty is given and a yellow or even red card could be given. That's far from fair and with such an advantage to the attacking side it's going to keep on happening. Stay on your rfeet and get a shot off and you've got a chance of scoring, or go to ground and you've got a better chance of scoring (from the spot) plus a good chance at getting an opposition player sent off, or at the very least yellow carded. Some players (again looking at Gerrard) have the hide to dive to the ground then get up and get in the referees face in an effort to get the other player sent off. Absolutely disgraceful, fucking cheating cunts. /End Rant

What I really hate this season is the ones that got away. However, the season is 1/3 gone and I'm able to lament the ones that got away whilst we sit in the top half of the table.

Don't know his name, but it was one of the twits that also did the Everton game as he mentioned a few times. Some pretty harsh assessments on here tbh. I don't see how moving Nolan forward would have helped in an attacking sense except that we may have had some more movement and defensive grit in the middle. Lovenkrands was quite decent IMO got into good positions frequently and forced two good saves out of the keeper. Considering he's not played much at all this season it was a solid effort with good link up play. A frustrating game where things didn't go our way. In isolation nothing to worry about but if we get a lot of results like this in similar games then it could be cause for concern. Means getting something out of the Bolton game is far more important.

As dull as it was it was still much better than the Blackburn game to watch. We should have won, didn't take our chances on the day and Schwarzer did well. To be fair to them I don't think they were blatantly negative about the way they played, didn't have anywhere the amount of niggly cynical fouling of other sides. Later in the game because it was still 0-0 they started with the time wasting and overly defensive play, but that's to be expected. Ranger was ordinary when he came on, don't think it was really the game for him to come on. Lovenkrands was getting into good positions and had forced a couple of good savces out of Schwarzer. Had also been wasteful on another headed chance after making an excellent run at the end of a flowing full field attacking play. Guthrie was quite good considering how poor he's done on the right. His free-kicks were not bad, and he could easily have had two assists - the first being the corner where Carroll's shot hit Nolan on the line, the second where he played a well weighted lofted cross into the path of Lovenkrands. Taking them off and in doing so changing our free-kick taker was an interesting move. Certainly Nolan and to a lesser extent Tiote had been of little influence. Nolan was largely anonymous. Guthrie could easily have moved infield to allow Routledge on if he wanted a spark on the right. It's worrying that Nolan seems impervious to substitutions, regardless of his performance. Carroll was good, unlucky not to have scored, but towards the end he tried to do a little too much himself, no doubt a result of frustrations.

And we're done. No goals, plenty of chances. Good scrmabling defense from them, good goal keeping when called on. Enrique MOTM. 2 points out the window. Mark Hughes looks pretty pleased with picking up the point.

hope the ref is adding time on for this blatant time wasting.

The number of chances we've had is crazy.

Ranger has no idea what to do out there. Jonas just made an excellent drive into the box and Ranger's movement was horrible, gave him no chance.

Guthrie off, Routledge on. Lovenkrands off Ranger on.

Referee just separated Dempsey and Tiote. Tiote could be off here.... stupid stupid challenge. Survives it, just. Dempsey should have been carded for the reaction.

Nolan's having another quiet and ineffectual game, hopefully this post results in a goal or a substitution. Good tackle in the box from Williamson. Geez, they just hit the crossbar.

And there's Tiote's ffth yellow. All of them, I reckon, for leaving a leg in.

Good lead up play just now, Lovenkrands header straight at Schwarzer unfortunately.

Not so much ball moving through Tiote again in this game.

Danny Murphy you twat goes down after getting a ball to the face.

Carroll almost just scored a corker. Good save. Schwarzer.

Carroll/Lovenkrands unlucky not to score. Nolan in the way for Carroll's first time left footed volley, then Schwarzer with a good save from Lovenkrands well hit follow up. We started really well, nice passing and movement but Fulham have come back into it. Credit to them they're actually playing so it's a much much more enjoyable game than the Blackburn one. 10 mionutes in and I reckon I'd already had more enjoyment than the full 90 against Blackburn. Enrique's driving runs are really troubling them. Lovenkrands is doing ok as well. Guthrie on the right hasn't been bad, likes getting his crosses in as early as possible unfortunately whenever he's done that they have been well read by the Fulham defense. It should be a good second half.

We've started approximately 400 times better than we did against Blackburn. Good passing and movement, and Enrique just let Andy Johnson know that he won't beat him for pace.

Guthrie really struggles out wide, don't recall him having any good games there. Hope he can turn things around. Routledge is well out of favor obviously!

First born daughter is called Ellen Shera. No, not really.

Barton has been good at floating them in and letting Carroll (normally) do the rest of the work. Guthrie normally tries to pit a bit more pace on his free kicks so they can be more dangerous but tend to be far less consistent. Hopefully he starts gliding them in like Barton because you just know that Carroll will cause them problems. Our free kick routines are very well rehearsed, so I'm sure Guthrie will have been working on them a lot as soon as it was known that Barton would be out.