manc-mag

There are 5 teams with significantly greater resources than us: Man C (bankrolled), Man U (bigger natural resources), Chelsea (bankrolled), Arsenal (bigger natural resources) and Liverpool (bigger natural resources and bankrolled), so we're not doing badly to be 7th in our second season back. It's fair to say it might not last and it's fair to say we need to bust a gut to retain key personnel, but we all have a healthy dose of cynicism about that, nobody is deluded no matter what Leazes tries to make out. Ashley could clearly spend more as an owner and it would make a big difference to us as fans, but that difference might only be one place in the league, which means absolutely nowt to him. He won't spend CL money to get amongst the CL that's for certain, as that would mean saddling himself with extra (essentially personal liabilities) of hundreds of millions of pounds (tens of millions in transfer fees and hundreds of millions in wages over eg 5 year deals) for perhaps only one appearance in the competition if we fail to repeat the fate of qualification. Leazes has already said he doesn't advocate that we compete with the top teams on spending anyway so theres not a massive amount of difference between his position and Ashley's in that particular sense. So the only route left is to try and get amongst it on a moderate trajectory and to that end Tottenham are the beacon. If they get a season in the CL it will make them, if they miss out it won't matter to them (financially). That's the absolute height of Ashley's ambition in any sane reality. I'd love to see us push on in the manner Tottenham have but I don't for a second assume it'll happen. For that the austerity we've seen will at some point need to move more towards the happy medium that Alex and a few others have referred to previously. The timing of that will be massively important and even failing to do so on time will cost us dearly. It will result in plateau and the end of footballing 'progress'. If it doesn't happen at all then timing is neither here nor there. In any event, I intend to enjoy the fact we have a team which fights for the shirt and is looking up rather than down, because that's how it should be and for too long we had players who just took the piss. And I mean way longer than any genuinely 'big club' would tolerate, hence why we'd long since ceased to be anything of the kind.

Tap ins, long rangers, set pieces, shots on the turn, shots running through on goal, headers. The lot.

Utter fucking class.

Can't see any of his responses in this thread but I'm guessing nowts changed.

aye.

His account is locked so only his follows can see, but his official line is Liverpool is a nazi club and he brandishes them "racist scum" on a daily basis. He's obviously had the biggest irony bypass in history. He must have sacked his old PR man (the bald Man City lad) and gone with a London agency.

Speaking of Paul Wyn, what's going on with his Twitter at the mo? You'd have thought he'd have been all over this new racist trend/got himself arrested at least once.

This one now firmly in the 'anything could happen' category with a new manager. Not remotely straight forward.

Richard Blackwood is my favourite actor and recording artist but I wouldn't have him in the house. Same goes for baggio.

I think games against 18th, 15th, 12th, 11th, 9th, 6th, 4th, 2nd and 1st is pretty representative. A good breadth of the league there. The discussion was November/December so we only played Man u once in that period. Well if that's the case then obviously the 'easy start' stuff gets put into perspective too as that becomes 'representative' also when you take half the seasons fixtures as the sample. Doesn't really bother me either way tbh, I just think most people have a very realistic critical view of things (with some disparity of emotional responses, given natural optimism/pessimism) but sadly the debate always seems to get hijacked by the very few lunatics at either end of the spectrum who insist on misrepresenting those very reasonable views.

Can't think of a football related man I dislike more like ever. Even Souness. "eeets a fact that Nyowcaasul arent beeg cloob, and eets alsoww a fact that Aston Veelur are the third beegist cloob in the countroi, give us a call on 0845.." mug

I didn't even see it as much of a blip to be honest as we knew going in to November we were in for a tough run of fixtures, you can include the away game at Stoke in that too if you like as I didn't expect to pick up 3 points there. The blip seems to be losing away to Norwich, at home to West Brom and a draw with Swansea, the Swansea game we were dominant in and deserved to win and I didn't think we deserved to lose to West Brom either even though we were a little open in search of a winner but it happens, if we had picked up maximum points against them we would be sat in 4th on 40 points. Other than those 3 we had Chelsea and Everton at home and Man Utd, Man City, Liverpool and Bolton away so as I said not an easy run. But you expect to finish above Everton, Liverpool and Bolton. I agree it's not an easy run, but once you add Swansea, Nowich and WBA, then it's a pretty representative run of league games, not paricularly difficult. 4 of the top 6 in 9 games obviously isn't 'representative' and one of them we played twice so that's 5 of 9 fixtures. It's simple mathematics alone. You also can't have an 'easy' run to start with and then a 'representative' run. Really basic stuff this and showing a bit of an agenda bias if I'm being honest. That or stupidity and I don't think it's the latter. We lost other games we might have expected to win and that's where it hurt, but that happens when you lose key personnel and an established core. People wouldn't have it that we had an easy start though...Spurs, Arsenal etc. meant saying the start was easy was to be unfair. So equally you can't have it both ways now and say it was easy and the hard run excuses the lack of points from the last 2 months. Where I was willing to give due credit to the team for their results over their first 9 games irrespective of (what I thought was generally easier) opposition, I think it's perfectly reasonable to now say that 3rd bottom over 9 games is not good enough, irrespective of opposition. I agree, those 9 games were harder than the first 9. But taking a third of the points total is a massive and worrying drop off. I'm not having it both ways tbh. I didn't buy into the 'easy start' stuff to begin with. My view was always that they were a favourable sequence of fixtures but that we would ordinarily fail to take full advantage of them in the circumstances. The credit due was in actually taking advantage of them. After that we had a hard run of fixtures and it was the consensus on here that we were going to struggle and would definitely drop points. We did. My post was more aimed at putting to bed the complete misrepresentation that's rife on the board. ie we "had an easy start/people are just deluded etc etc" The reality is we had a favourable start that we took advantage of-we almost always never do that (shambolically, the unbeaten sequence was a Prem record for us iirc?) and then we all knew we would lose games going in to the next phase. People are massively realistic about the pros and cons on here imho. Wasn't intended as a personal rebuke by any means, but what you said in response to Baggio just wasn't worthy of your usual output from a critical point of view.

I didn't even see it as much of a blip to be honest as we knew going in to November we were in for a tough run of fixtures, you can include the away game at Stoke in that too if you like as I didn't expect to pick up 3 points there. The blip seems to be losing away to Norwich, at home to West Brom and a draw with Swansea, the Swansea game we were dominant in and deserved to win and I didn't think we deserved to lose to West Brom either even though we were a little open in search of a winner but it happens, if we had picked up maximum points against them we would be sat in 4th on 40 points. Other than those 3 we had Chelsea and Everton at home and Man Utd, Man City, Liverpool and Bolton away so as I said not an easy run. But you expect to finish above Everton, Liverpool and Bolton. I agree it's not an easy run, but once you add Swansea, Nowich and WBA, then it's a pretty representative run of league games, not paricularly difficult. 4 of the top 6 in 9 games obviously isn't 'representative' and one of them we played twice so that's 5 of 9 fixtures. It's simple mathematics alone. You also can't have an 'easy' run to start with and then a 'representative' run. Really basic stuff this and showing a bit of an agenda bias if I'm being honest. That or stupidity and I don't think it's the latter. We lost other games we might have expected to win and that's where it hurt, but that happens when you lose key personnel and an established core.

If we won the FA Cup I literally couldn't give the first fuck about finishing 7th btw. Although Stevie has already given it the kiss of death by predicting a Toon win this year, we really do have to give it everything. City and either of Liverpool or Man U will be out by the end of the 4th round-that's two of the four most likely finalists already. Mackems I can actually see going far in it with that little moaning twat in charge. He's adept at cup runs with bobbins clubs and their season has already been dead and buried so they've got that classic cup profile of a team that comes out of nowhere to win it.

I didn't even see it as much of a blip to be honest as we knew going in to November we were in for a tough run of fixtures, you can include the away game at Stoke in that too if you like as I didn't expect to pick up 3 points there. The blip seems to be losing away to Norwich, at home to West Brom and a draw with Swansea, the Swansea game we were dominant in and deserved to win and I didn't think we deserved to lose to West Brom either even though we were a little open in search of a winner but it happens, if we had picked up maximum points against them we would be sat in 4th on 40 points. Other than those 3 we had Chelsea and Everton at home and Man Utd, Man City, Liverpool and Bolton away so as I said not an easy run. Would go along with that interpretation for the most part tbf. Everyone said we'd start to lose games going into that period; as it happens we lost players too, with the consequence being that we dropped points in the other fixtures we'd come to regard as likely wins.

just clocked that.

This tbh. The Manc derby has got a bit tetchier in recent years because Man C are now actual rivals and Man U don't like it, but by and large every group of lads going down to Wembley for their last derby there, every supporter of either club would have had loads of mates going down on the opposite team's buses. Any group of lads out on the piss around Mcr on a weekend will always be a mixed bag of blues and reds. It's nothing like the same in the NE.

don't reckon it would tbh the amount of police there for non-derby games is staggering. went for the Playoff final when Burnley were promoted, closest I saw a sheff u fan was on the motorway, another coach on the drive in. the groups of fans were either kept very seperate or in the places they could mix the police presence was really big I think you underestimate it to be honest. It's different to any fixture in this country. There's been one night game against Sunderland in 21 years, there's been two three o'clock kick offs in 20 years. It's not a Blackburn v Burnley, or even a Tottenham v Arsenal or a Man Utd v Man City/Liverpool, there's no fixture like it in English football. There's no game that I know of where a city centre is cleared 90 minutes after the game to allow safe passage to the station. There'd be absolute murders in every train station, every service station, every tube station, every pub, and anyone who's from up here knows I'm right. Logistically it just couldn't happen. I'm trying to imagine walking round Wembley and up Wembley way Newcastle fans and Sunderland fans it's a fucking impossibility. Like I say ANYONE from up here knows I'm talking sense. This x 1000 tbh.

If this is being posted in real time I'm about to be sick.

Irrespective of formations/systems/flaws to his game etc etc, the other irrefutably good thing about his goal the other day aside from us progressing in the cup is that if he starts again he's in goalscoring form and that's massively important going into our first league game without Ba. Not from a confidence point of view, (because he's not a confidence player, he's an arrogance player and will try the same things whether they're working or he's been dispossessed 10 times in a row), but from the point of view of goals begetting goals. A burst of form in front of goal is exactly what we need in Ba's absence basically.

Sidney Poiter is one of my favourite actors. That has to be one of my favourite posts ever. Delete my account and turn off the internet tbh. Superb thread!

Our quest to make banking better starts here "Branch closed for the day due to fish death. Sorry for any inconvenience"

Language, Noelie!

I'm not averse to segregation from Stan Collymore mind. Or Robbie Savage for that matter.