Robbie Keane

[shackbleep 0]

Can't say I'd be too disappointed if we don't get Keane.

 

Maybe, but I'll be disappointed if we don't get a decent striker. Carroll would benefit even more playing off someone of Keane's style of play.

[JawD 99]

While Id liked to have seen a forward come in, Im wondering what CH's intention is with Hatem?

[Howmanheyman 32826]

Can't say I'd be too disappointed if we don't get Keane.

 

Maybe, but I'll be disappointed if we don't get a decent striker. Carroll would benefit even more playing off someone of Keane's style of play.

I agree with that to be fair but have a feeling Keane wouldn't be for us.

[manc-mag 1]

While Id liked to have seen a forward come in, Im wondering what CH's intention is with Hatem?

 

Basically you either Loven or Hatem tbh.

[Andrew 4721]

While Id liked to have seen a forward come in, Im wondering what CH's intention is with Hatem?

 

I think the idea that he'll play one up front for most of the season is about right, nolan/smith/barton will inevitably pick up injuries or suspensions throughout the season youd have to think if ben arfa and tiote are what they're cracked up to be they'd be getting in the first team so then we'd be looking at tiote/barton/ben arfa as that central three

 

its the WC formation and so far its working reasonably well for us so far, we'll see what the next run of a few games brings

[Guest alex]

While Id liked to have seen a forward come in, Im wondering what CH's intention is with Hatem?

He means to have him, even if it must be burglary.

[manc-mag 1]

While Id liked to have seen a forward come in, Im wondering what CH's intention is with Hatem?

He means to have him, even if it must be burglary.

 

 

Love that scene.

[Asprilla 96]

While Id liked to have seen a forward come in, Im wondering what CH's intention is with Hatem?

He means to have him, even if it must be burglary.

 

 

Love that scene.

Yep...."burglary"....

[Monkeys Fist 42129]

While Id liked to have seen a forward come in, Im wondering what CH's intention is with Hatem?

He means to have him, even if it must be burglary.

[spongebob toonpants 3956]

While Id liked to have seen a forward come in, Im wondering what CH's intention is with Hatem?

 

Basically you either Loven or Hatem tbh.

 

mancie on fire in this thread

[tinofbeans 91]

he plays on the left side of the forward line, or in a free role. kind of like a second striker. this is ben arfa by the way. he's much more mobile than nolan, so i'd drop him for ben arfa.

[Jusoda Kid 1]

Another thread fucked, nice one lads.

[Monkeys Fist 42129]

Sorry Wacky- I realise you look up to Robbie Keane.........

[LeazesMag 0]

manc-mag: good post, for the most part. I've never disagreed that appointing Souness set off a downward turn in fact see my sig, which has been there for a few years now. I only point out that the owners of our football club need to have certain characteristics [for want of a better word] which is mainly an appreciation of the size of the club [not easy bearing in mind we have not won a domestic trophy for over 50 years so a lot of the country doesn't realise how big a club we really are] and the desire to punch our weight at these levels. The Halls and Shepherd possessed this, despite their mistakes. Yes, mistakes, I've admitted many times they made mistakes, of course they did. What I find galling is a lack of appeciation of the club they found and the club they left and the massive strides they made, which is all that really matters. Even worse is the notion that certain people have that you can put together a good, consistently successful football team on the cheap. You can't. It costs a lot of money, and you have to be prepared to speculate and gamble or you have no chance whatsoever of doing it. The transfer window we have had is, in my view, nothing other than a stab at survival. Hughton may have done well bearing in mind his limited options, but that just isn't good enough that he has to operate like this. I think this window will be repeated every summer under Ashley ie just enough to stay up, hoping a few bargains will come up with the goods, but the law of averages is such that more do not come up to standard that do, hence a permanent struggle with survival the only goal. Certain posters don't understand this, basically because they haven't experienced it. It's easy to spot when you have though. I thought almost immediately from the rubbish spouted by Mort that we had an owner who didn't see how big the club was and wasn't going to capitalise on it. That makes him not good enough for this club, end of story. I can only talk about the Halls and Shepherd because unfortunately they are the only owners in my lifetime that have owned the club and understood the size of it. I wish that wasn't the case, but it is.

 

I asked for a bit of balance and that's exactly what that post was so fair play. And when you put it in those terms there genuinely isn't a lot I disagree with you on. And btw the bits in bold I agree with entirely.

 

I think the only area where we really differ is in the methods employed by Shepherd. You're right about it being pretty much impossible to put together a top team without spending serious money, but for me it's only half the story-you need massive discipline to engender respect too, and you do that largely by example. Again just my opinion but I think in the latter years it had become a case of spending money without any of the latter, which sadly contributed to the slide and rendered a lot of the money spent, money wasted.

 

Ashley I can't even get started on tbh. I'm sure there's a post of mine backing this up somewhere in the annuls, but after the first games in charge (where we'd done well and spirits were quite high) you'll recall he was out on the piss in town buying everyone drinks. I was fucking mortified at that bit. Ditto when he was necking pints with the crowd. I know some people think I bang on about the 'professionalism' thing too much, but that was honestly the last thing you want to see your top man doing. For me it signalled the fact he was here principally for a laugh and that was ultimately going to be to our detriment. Standards are a non-stop fact of life for the top clubs, boring as it is, but at the end of the day it's the only way any commercial organisation is going to experience success. Along with canny investment, I grant you.

 

Anyway we got pretty much what that sort of carry is going to get you in a league as competitive as the Prem has become and down we went. Things have changed now out of necessity. I'm glad of that but I can assure you it's not because I think Ashley is some sort of visionary in the same way that Shepherd and Hall very much were to beging with (on the contrary, it's just pure economics and he realised he'd lose his entire investment playing in the Championship). But I am glad of it because I think we needed a change to that complacent mentality of running the football club. It's just sad it had to come about through the harsh lesson of relegation.

 

Beyond that, as you say, I totally agree Ashley is no good for the club's long term interests. My hope (naive as it may be) is there's ultimately some future change of ownership which can capitalise on the move away from excess and wastefulness which had very much set in, to one of clear vision and professionalism, so that any future investment is good, sound investment backed up by a real focus on driving this club forward back to where it belongs.

 

It's the only way it's going to be done.

 

I agree with most of what you say, yes I can accept that the Halls and Shepherd weren't the best but I never said they were. Maybe you are right when you say the club wasn't, ultimately ruthlessly professionally enough, to jump from challengers into consistent winners, yes consistent winners, because inferior teams to us have won trophies ie smoggies, Leicester, Portmouth to name 3.

 

Put it into some sort of order. Bottom of the pile comes no ambition and useless, next up comes not much ambition, next up comes good ambition and backing your managers but lacking the extra mile, top of the tree comes good ambition backing your manager and finding the trophy winning manager. The point I always said was not that they were infallible, just that it would be difficult to find better, and that is still true because only a handful of clubs did better and we ourselves have replaced them with worse, despite a lot of people thinking it would be almost automatic to find better.

 

So. Yes I accept your points, the club lacked something to go the extra mile, maybe it was that extra bit of ruthlessness and professionalism and demand to be first, maybe it was poor performances on the day by players or poor selections by the managers in certain games. I would say its probably a combination of all of those, but sniffer also said in a thread recently that some of it also came down to bad luck. There is nowt you can do if thats the case, and certain things make you wonder.

 

I still find it galling that stupid people expect the unrealistic, they know who they are.

 

So, in short I don't disagree with you. I know they needed a change after the farce of Souness, but they tried and did their best I really hope someone comes in soon and has that extra ruthlessness or whatever the hell it takes to make the breakthrough.

 

Incidentally, what do people think would have happened to the club if we had won the league under Keegan ? Does that near miss come under lack of professionalism, lack of experience, or bad luck ?

 

Edit

 

I totally agree with the bold bit too, which I stated at the time on here, NO and skunkers and was roundly disagreed with - again - by the vast majority on all 3 forums.

Edited August 31, 2010 by LeazesMag

[LeazesMag 0]

While Id liked to have seen a forward come in, Im wondering what CH's intention is with Hatem?

 

I think the idea that he'll play one up front for most of the season is about right, nolan/smith/barton will inevitably pick up injuries or suspensions throughout the season youd have to think if ben arfa and tiote are what they're cracked up to be they'd be getting in the first team so then we'd be looking at tiote/barton/ben arfa as that central three

 

its the WC formation and so far its working reasonably well for us so far, we'll see what the next run of a few games brings

 

We need someone to support Carroll quickly, and get back quickly too.

[LeazesMag 0]

Leazes you have to disassociate the two arguments though, that's the thing. You can't forever keep reading each post looking for a Shepherd/Ashley comparison.

 

Shepherd and Hall turned the club round in the early 90's-nobody disputes that at all-and we had fabulous football. The sheer pleasure of that period simply doesn't have an equivalent for most posters on here. But the fact of the matter is they then failed to capitalise on those advances and Shepherd (by the final stage acting alone) basically had zero strategy left at all and it was a complete shambles. You have to look at it in the same way as you sometimes hear some managers say that they'd: "taken the club as far as they could." Now Shepherd never said that obviously but the truth is everything was going backwards and (imho) we'd never have got back to where we had been. The Prem was getting more competitive and we'd got ourselves left behind.

 

The great tragedy for me is (and I know you disagree with this but I'm not trying to persuade you, merely stating my opinion), I think Shepherd's professionalism was ultimately miles off what was required for a top club. When you say about him trying to bring top names here and ambition etc, I genuinely do think players were coming here from top clubs and once they'd got here, they thought the place they'd arrived at had become a joke. Thats just my opinion and I know you disagree, but I do genuinely believe that players had seen and been accustomed to much better standards of professionalism elsewhere, with massive demands of pressure to achieve and then arrived here to be paid the same money (if not a fair deal more) with none of the high standards that should go along with that. It had effectively all just become a show of matching or outspending other clubs with nothing to back that up in terms of direction and, which is worse, chaos behind the scenes as far as managerial appointments were concerned. Ultimately theres few things more demotivating to a player of a top calibre-they can get the cash anywhere, it's top standards and expectations they respond to.

 

Turn then to Ashley. Now for me personally I actually think he came on board largely because he saw it as being a purchase that would enhance his lifestyle (vanity/ego/etc). I also think that was partly because he thought you could follow the Shepherd example of (by that stage) just aimlessly chucking money about (which he did) and that would at least preserve your Prem status, in which case he could just continue to enjoy himself as owner of a 'top' club. He could also happily sit tight enjoying himself fr a few years and then sell on for an added couple hundred million simply because the prices of football clubs just keep going up don't they?

 

Well that all went to shit pretty damn quick, and where I will agree with you entirely is that Shepherd would have made purchases in the crucial January window where Ashley ultimately didn't and we ended up down the spout into the Championship as a result. Gutting. However, long term for me by that stage that would have just carried on forever and a day under Shepherd and the culture of the club would have kept disintegrating.

 

So where we are now is full circle. Ashley's now doing everything on a shoestring which is galling, or at least hard to take in one sense, and I too ultimately want to see the back of him, but what has to be seen as good (and what I think was desperately needed and long overdue) was that we got rid of the complacent, gravy train attitude that was just absolutely pervasive at the club. A complacency that ultimately didnt even have the laurels of one trophy to fall back upon might I add. That was actually born of necessity of dropping down a division. Now that might not seem like a lot to be massively thankful for after the 'glory years' of Shepherd and Hall, but the truth is they were long, long gone, were never coming back and we really did need a new direction.

 

I repeat, I don't believe that long term direction is Ashley, but it wasn't Shepherd either. So how about some balance to your opinions after all these years?

There are paralells to when you first tell a lass you have feelings for them. You say it 100 times but have to find a different way of saying each time, same with this FFS bollocks on here.

 

haha. How do you tell a lass you have feelings for her then

[manc-mag 1]

manc-mag: good post, for the most part. I've never disagreed that appointing Souness set off a downward turn in fact see my sig, which has been there for a few years now. I only point out that the owners of our football club need to have certain characteristics [for want of a better word] which is mainly an appreciation of the size of the club [not easy bearing in mind we have not won a domestic trophy for over 50 years so a lot of the country doesn't realise how big a club we really are] and the desire to punch our weight at these levels. The Halls and Shepherd possessed this, despite their mistakes. Yes, mistakes, I've admitted many times they made mistakes, of course they did. What I find galling is a lack of appeciation of the club they found and the club they left and the massive strides they made, which is all that really matters. Even worse is the notion that certain people have that you can put together a good, consistently successful football team on the cheap. You can't. It costs a lot of money, and you have to be prepared to speculate and gamble or you have no chance whatsoever of doing it. The transfer window we have had is, in my view, nothing other than a stab at survival. Hughton may have done well bearing in mind his limited options, but that just isn't good enough that he has to operate like this. I think this window will be repeated every summer under Ashley ie just enough to stay up, hoping a few bargains will come up with the goods, but the law of averages is such that more do not come up to standard that do, hence a permanent struggle with survival the only goal. Certain posters don't understand this, basically because they haven't experienced it. It's easy to spot when you have though. I thought almost immediately from the rubbish spouted by Mort that we had an owner who didn't see how big the club was and wasn't going to capitalise on it. That makes him not good enough for this club, end of story. I can only talk about the Halls and Shepherd because unfortunately they are the only owners in my lifetime that have owned the club and understood the size of it. I wish that wasn't the case, but it is.

 

I asked for a bit of balance and that's exactly what that post was so fair play. And when you put it in those terms there genuinely isn't a lot I disagree with you on. And btw the bits in bold I agree with entirely.

 

I think the only area where we really differ is in the methods employed by Shepherd. You're right about it being pretty much impossible to put together a top team without spending serious money, but for me it's only half the story-you need massive discipline to engender respect too, and you do that largely by example. Again just my opinion but I think in the latter years it had become a case of spending money without any of the latter, which sadly contributed to the slide and rendered a lot of the money spent, money wasted.

 

Ashley I can't even get started on tbh. I'm sure there's a post of mine backing this up somewhere in the annuls, but after the first games in charge (where we'd done well and spirits were quite high) you'll recall he was out on the piss in town buying everyone drinks. I was fucking mortified at that bit. Ditto when he was necking pints with the crowd. I know some people think I bang on about the 'professionalism' thing too much, but that was honestly the last thing you want to see your top man doing. For me it signalled the fact he was here principally for a laugh and that was ultimately going to be to our detriment. Standards are a non-stop fact of life for the top clubs, boring as it is, but at the end of the day it's the only way any commercial organisation is going to experience success. Along with canny investment, I grant you.

 

Anyway we got pretty much what that sort of carry is going to get you in a league as competitive as the Prem has become and down we went. Things have changed now out of necessity. I'm glad of that but I can assure you it's not because I think Ashley is some sort of visionary in the same way that Shepherd and Hall very much were to beging with (on the contrary, it's just pure economics and he realised he'd lose his entire investment playing in the Championship). But I am glad of it because I think we needed a change to that complacent mentality of running the football club. It's just sad it had to come about through the harsh lesson of relegation.

 

Beyond that, as you say, I totally agree Ashley is no good for the club's long term interests. My hope (naive as it may be) is there's ultimately some future change of ownership which can capitalise on the move away from excess and wastefulness which had very much set in, to one of clear vision and professionalism, so that any future investment is good, sound investment backed up by a real focus on driving this club forward back to where it belongs.

 

It's the only way it's going to be done.

 

I agree with most of what you say, yes I can accept that the Halls and Shepherd weren't the best but I never said they were. Maybe you are right when you say the club wasn't, ultimately ruthlessly professionally enough, to jump from challengers into consistent winners, yes consistent winners, because inferior teams to us have won trophies ie smoggies, Leicester, Portmouth to name 3.

 

Put it into some sort of order. Bottom of the pile comes no ambition and useless, next up comes not much ambition, next up comes good ambition and backing your managers but lacking the extra mile, top of the tree comes good ambition backing your manager and finding the trophy winning manager. The point I always said was not that they were infallible, just that it would be difficult to find better, and that is still true because only a handful of clubs did better and we ourselves have replaced them with worse, despite a lot of people thinking it would be almost automatic to find better.

 

So. Yes I accept your points, the club lacked something to go the extra mile, maybe it was that extra bit of ruthlessness and professionalism and demand to be first, maybe it was poor performances on the day by players or poor selections by the managers in certain games. I would say its probably a combination of all of those, but sniffer also said in a thread recently that some of it also came down to bad luck. There is nowt you can do if thats the case, and certain things make you wonder.

 

I still find it galling that stupid people expect the unrealistic, they know who they are.

 

So, in short I don't disagree with you. I know they needed a change after the farce of Souness, but they tried and did their best I really hope someone comes in soon and has that extra ruthlessness or whatever the hell it takes to make the breakthrough.

 

Incidentally, what do people think would have happened to the club if we had won the league under Keegan ? Does that near miss come under lack of professionalism, lack of experience, or bad luck ?

 

 

 

Fucking hell now there's a question..! What if eh?

 

I've always subscribed to the view that the first trophy is always the hardest. It's just speculation but you'd have thought that team (along with further acquisitions attracted by success) could have gone on to be a force in all competitions.

 

It was lack of experience as far as I'm concerned. The sad thing being a win then would have brought 'winning experience' overnight and we could have really built on that.

 

As for luck, much as I utterly despise Man U (to use the most potent example), while I always end up calling them for being lucky bastards, I do ultimately believe you make your own luck and they get the rub of the green mainly because their comittment to winning is second to none.

[LeazesMag 0]

manc-mag: good post, for the most part. I've never disagreed that appointing Souness set off a downward turn in fact see my sig, which has been there for a few years now. I only point out that the owners of our football club need to have certain characteristics [for want of a better word] which is mainly an appreciation of the size of the club [not easy bearing in mind we have not won a domestic trophy for over 50 years so a lot of the country doesn't realise how big a club we really are] and the desire to punch our weight at these levels. The Halls and Shepherd possessed this, despite their mistakes. Yes, mistakes, I've admitted many times they made mistakes, of course they did. What I find galling is a lack of appeciation of the club they found and the club they left and the massive strides they made, which is all that really matters. Even worse is the notion that certain people have that you can put together a good, consistently successful football team on the cheap. You can't. It costs a lot of money, and you have to be prepared to speculate and gamble or you have no chance whatsoever of doing it. The transfer window we have had is, in my view, nothing other than a stab at survival. Hughton may have done well bearing in mind his limited options, but that just isn't good enough that he has to operate like this. I think this window will be repeated every summer under Ashley ie just enough to stay up, hoping a few bargains will come up with the goods, but the law of averages is such that more do not come up to standard that do, hence a permanent struggle with survival the only goal. Certain posters don't understand this, basically because they haven't experienced it. It's easy to spot when you have though. I thought almost immediately from the rubbish spouted by Mort that we had an owner who didn't see how big the club was and wasn't going to capitalise on it. That makes him not good enough for this club, end of story. I can only talk about the Halls and Shepherd because unfortunately they are the only owners in my lifetime that have owned the club and understood the size of it. I wish that wasn't the case, but it is.

 

I asked for a bit of balance and that's exactly what that post was so fair play. And when you put it in those terms there genuinely isn't a lot I disagree with you on. And btw the bits in bold I agree with entirely.

 

I think the only area where we really differ is in the methods employed by Shepherd. You're right about it being pretty much impossible to put together a top team without spending serious money, but for me it's only half the story-you need massive discipline to engender respect too, and you do that largely by example. Again just my opinion but I think in the latter years it had become a case of spending money without any of the latter, which sadly contributed to the slide and rendered a lot of the money spent, money wasted.

 

Ashley I can't even get started on tbh. I'm sure there's a post of mine backing this up somewhere in the annuls, but after the first games in charge (where we'd done well and spirits were quite high) you'll recall he was out on the piss in town buying everyone drinks. I was fucking mortified at that bit. Ditto when he was necking pints with the crowd. I know some people think I bang on about the 'professionalism' thing too much, but that was honestly the last thing you want to see your top man doing. For me it signalled the fact he was here principally for a laugh and that was ultimately going to be to our detriment. Standards are a non-stop fact of life for the top clubs, boring as it is, but at the end of the day it's the only way any commercial organisation is going to experience success. Along with canny investment, I grant you.

 

Anyway we got pretty much what that sort of carry is going to get you in a league as competitive as the Prem has become and down we went. Things have changed now out of necessity. I'm glad of that but I can assure you it's not because I think Ashley is some sort of visionary in the same way that Shepherd and Hall very much were to beging with (on the contrary, it's just pure economics and he realised he'd lose his entire investment playing in the Championship). But I am glad of it because I think we needed a change to that complacent mentality of running the football club. It's just sad it had to come about through the harsh lesson of relegation.

 

Beyond that, as you say, I totally agree Ashley is no good for the club's long term interests. My hope (naive as it may be) is there's ultimately some future change of ownership which can capitalise on the move away from excess and wastefulness which had very much set in, to one of clear vision and professionalism, so that any future investment is good, sound investment backed up by a real focus on driving this club forward back to where it belongs.

 

It's the only way it's going to be done.

 

I agree with most of what you say, yes I can accept that the Halls and Shepherd weren't the best but I never said they were. Maybe you are right when you say the club wasn't, ultimately ruthlessly professionally enough, to jump from challengers into consistent winners, yes consistent winners, because inferior teams to us have won trophies ie smoggies, Leicester, Portmouth to name 3.

 

Put it into some sort of order. Bottom of the pile comes no ambition and useless, next up comes not much ambition, next up comes good ambition and backing your managers but lacking the extra mile, top of the tree comes good ambition backing your manager and finding the trophy winning manager. The point I always said was not that they were infallible, just that it would be difficult to find better, and that is still true because only a handful of clubs did better and we ourselves have replaced them with worse, despite a lot of people thinking it would be almost automatic to find better.

 

So. Yes I accept your points, the club lacked something to go the extra mile, maybe it was that extra bit of ruthlessness and professionalism and demand to be first, maybe it was poor performances on the day by players or poor selections by the managers in certain games. I would say its probably a combination of all of those, but sniffer also said in a thread recently that some of it also came down to bad luck. There is nowt you can do if thats the case, and certain things make you wonder.

 

I still find it galling that stupid people expect the unrealistic, they know who they are.

 

So, in short I don't disagree with you. I know they needed a change after the farce of Souness, but they tried and did their best I really hope someone comes in soon and has that extra ruthlessness or whatever the hell it takes to make the breakthrough.

 

Incidentally, what do people think would have happened to the club if we had won the league under Keegan ? Does that near miss come under lack of professionalism, lack of experience, or bad luck ?

 

 

 

Fucking hell now there's a question..! What if eh?

 

I've always subscribed to the view that the first trophy is always the hardest. It's just speculation but you'd have thought that team (along with further acquisitions attracted by success) could have gone on to be a force in all competitions.

 

It was lack of experience as far as I'm concerned. The sad thing being a win then would have brought 'winning experience' overnight and we could have really built on that.

 

As for luck, much as I utterly despise Man U (to use the most potent example), while I always end up calling them for being lucky bastards, I do ultimately believe you make your own luck and they get the rub of the green mainly because their comittment to winning is second to none.

 

I agree with all of that completely

[The Fish 10779]

it's only taken 4 years and around a 500k posts. Luckily we've got that Scouse kid with all his Ram!

[Park Life 71]

On his way to Liverpool.

[Guest]

I guess Shepherd being forced to loan Rossi instead of actually buying a player isn't a sign that he'd spent-up then? There's always ways to make money...

[LeazesMag 0]

I guess I never appreciated the Halls and Shepherd handing their managers decent transfer budgets to help them qualify for europe regularly enough then

 

agreed

Edited September 4, 2010 by LeazesMag

[Guest]

I guess I never appreciated the Halls and Shepherd handing their managers decent transfer budgets to help them qualify for europe regularly enough then

 

agreed

 

 

So if there was still money, why did we loan a striker and sign an uncontracted left back?

[LeazesMag 0]

I guess I never appreciated the Halls and Shepherd handing their managers decent transfer budgets to help them qualify for europe regularly enough then

 

agreed

 

 

So if there was still money, why did we loan a striker and sign an uncontracted left back?

 

are you going to take my bet ie Mike Ashley will never match the league positions of the Halls and Shepherd ?

 

Put up or shut up.

[Guest]

I guess I never appreciated the Halls and Shepherd handing their managers decent transfer budgets to help them qualify for europe regularly enough then

 

agreed

 

 

So if there was still money, why did we loan a striker and sign an uncontracted left back?

 

are you going to take my bet ie Mike Ashley will never match the league positions of the Halls and Shepherd ?

 

Put up or shut up.

 

 

Look, you thick cunt, why would I take up that bet? I've never suggested it would happen. You miss the point completely, fucktard, Ashley won't achieve those league positions because he has to clean up the state that Shepherd left. We know the club was in a mess financially, that's why Shepherd started to loan players and sign uncontracted players, yet you criticise Ashley for doing it, when all he's doing is picking up where your man Freddy left off