Kitman

Great dive from Rodriguez there. replay shows barton never touched him

Massive bad luck there

That would be truly depressing and I'd fear for staying up next season

Who mentioned £20mill? If that's the case we are fucked because we need a £10-£15mill striker before we even look at anything else. Post #109, this thread

It's depressing to see 35 mill become 20 mill in the blink of an eye. If we're talking about a budget of say 5 mill a player, I truly wonder what sort of calibre of player we're looking at. Especially in the striker dept. Hey ho.

Find it hard to see us getting anything out of this game. If only we had a striker to dominate their defence......

Fuck me

Blag it ! It's the Goldman Sachs way....."using your initiative" to make money

christ! I saw the last 4 on that list play........ And the two before that

Bucklebury, actually Snobby little village in West Berkshire iirc.

My experience tells me that when you buy a wow-signing, it doesn't improve the team at all, but turnst the club into a vehicle for the signing, rather than a club in its own right. There are exceptions, but I think what I say is the rule rather than the exception. And when we bought Keegan as a player. it took two years before we were promoted, and it was every bit as much thanks to Beardsley and Waddle, as it was to Keegan. I don't agree with any of that tbh.

I see we've slipped into 11th place now due to Fulham's 3 point win. Looking a little less safer and I wonder what position we will be in come Monday night. You don't think we're safe yet?

But if you have a Chinese, won't you just want another one afterwards?

I'd still be keen on signing him provided he gets the all clear from the medical. He's proved he's a good player, would improve the squad, knows the league and probably just needs a good summer/pre-season to get properly fit. I know it's a risk but his injury problems may be related to trying to get back on the pitch too soon or just bad luck.

Yes, it's not as if they've fucked it up before is it?

Andy - it doesn't make sense to me that the player of the season is in a team that's very likely to get relegated

In this thread? Haven't most people just said he's been average but let's judge him on next season?

The only thing I agree with there is that it was good to get rid of some of the overpaid wasters. In particular there's no way of knowing whether we would've gone into administration without Ashley, or indeed whether there was anybody else to sell the club to.

Couldn't agree more Craig. I don't think we've progressed under Ashley at all in 5 years of ownership. Most of the money put in has been to buy the club and the remainer has been to protect that investment. None of it has been out of the goodness of his heart. Having said that, if we reinvest the Carroll money well and kick on from here, we might finally progress where it matters, on the football field. We'll see.

We survived so mission accomplished. Full credit to the team for keeping us in the PL (so it seems). Thanks to Chris Hughton who was largely resposible for building the team spirit and getting us the results we needed. Jury's out on Pardew for me - we'll see next season, assuming he's not sacked in the meantime (you never know with our lot). The Board showed through the Hughton sacking that they will never have any class and will always treat their managers like shit. The selling of Carroll with no replacement lined up also shows they are still happy to gamble with the club's future. However IF that money's reinvested wisely, we might just kick on from here and it MIGHT be a good decision with hindsight. Looking foward, we should hope for more than survival and balancing the books. Keeping our best players and spending the Carroll cash is key.

Nooooooooooo! Tell her there's a bored bunch of strangers on a football forum who are waiting for the next instalment, that'll bring her running back.....

Personally I don't think it's providing a public service to show a real person at the moment of their death. I just don't see how it's educational or enlightening to show it, this is (was) a real person not an exhibit. For the same reason I'm against showing the autopsy of a real person, however interesting or educational that might be to viewers. I guess I dislike the idea of someone tuning in to watch someone else dying, whilst munching crisps in their easy chair, however well intentioned the programme. Nor do I think it's a matter of simply turning over if you don't like it. I think the man should be left to die in privacy, with his family, without a camera there and a bunch of BBC technicians to record the moment. Where you draw the line on what you show is a difficult issue but this feels wrong to me. I'll admit I haven't thought it through, no doubt the man and his family were happy with it, it's an important area of human experience, and I'm against censorship generally. Just my gut reaction is against it. Then again, I admit I've got a pretty dim view of the media and their vulture mentality.

In other words, a massive generalisation based on no evidence at all

I don't think we'll get relegated. We're effectively 8 points clear due to goal difference with 4 games left, and the reason those clubs are at the bottom is because they're shite.