Rayvin

He's different to many other footballers who are ultimately all going out of their way to be totally vanilla. He cost Man Utd the title the first year that City won it by elbowing Aguero in the face (or was it Tevez?) I found that hilarious At the end of the day, he's an utter cunt, but I find him pretty entertaining for this reason. I basically just think he's a lot more honest than your average footballer.

Agreed - plus he seems to have retained a soft spot for our fanbase, which I approve of. And he was an integral part of that 4-4 against Arsenal which may have been one of my favourite games of the last few years.

That'll be it.

I just can't dislike Joey Barton...

I think we'll win it. Palace are balls and Pardew's 'new manager bounce' seems to be winding down just in time. If Carver plays a cautious 'avoid losing' game though, we'll lose. We always lose when we do that. We need to attack the game. Would enjoy seeing Cabella score one.

I'm not even sure it's really Van Gaal's fault. The truth is, you can't just buy a collection of good players - even world beaters apparently - and turn them into a functional team. You need to take the time to build a philosophy. I think Van Gaal's problem is that he's abandoned his philosophy due to the pressure to get better results. Thus he's compromised the long term for the short. Man Utd are never going to be what they were until they go through the long and painful rebuilding process properly.

Fucks sake, his return was about the only thing I was looking forward to for the rest of the season...

Wilkinson has been utterly invisible all season and you're accusing Janmaat of cowardice?

Fuck...sounds like one of the few owners who makes MA look good.

I wonder what they posted anyway... presumably it was some speculation about motives at the board level that can't be proven. I doubt it was just for random insults.

I wonder if we'll ever get sued by NUFC... I wouldn't put it beyond Ashley but then his utter intransigence may mean that he's not even bothered enough about what we think to pry into message boards.

That is slightly concerning. Given how things have gone with Blackpool over the last year or so, I can imagine that their fanbase is pretty pissed at the club anyway. Not sure how this action is likely to help...

Pardew didn't know enough about the side to put players in their correct positions. I think we'll be fine.

Ah some of the others were talking about there. Sounds good! What was wrong with Les Arcs?

Yeah we were really lucky as the day we arrived they got 2-3m of snowfall. It started icing over through the week though as no more fell while we were there. My experience was the same as yours though - two days of falling over and cursing followed by 3-4 days of feeling pretty competent. We got one two hour lesson just to get a grounding in the basics, but we went with friends who showed us some stuff as well. All in all was a good holiday, would go again. Did you go to La Plagne?

La Plagne in the French Alps. Was good but I'm a total novice, so I'll probably need to go back a few more times before I see it all.

So I was on holiday skiing last week with no access to internet or anything. Did I miss anything? I see we picked up 4 points while I was away... should probably go away more often if that's the case.

Maybe Parky is right, having Leazes back would be such a drama boost

You need to be registered to be able to see it, it seems. What was the meltdown about...?

I think ewerk is basically referring to the democratic political model here - we have to trust that the government knows what it's doing without it necessarily telling us all of it, 'for our own protection'. Same as if clubs revealed everything - they risk putting themselves at competitive disadvantage.

But would a UEFA/FA agent work for them as well as their own agent/self would? If there's no fee being paid to the UEFA agent, it's not in his interests to drive the price up, just to get it over with. I'm not saying it wouldn't help like, but it's not as though ordinary people need assistance in negotiating their pay. Although I wonder if we'd all be doing a lot better if we had agents.

I think a number of lower league players actually represent themselves to be honest. Although my source for this is Football Manager...