TheInspiration

Or Keith Chegwin. The place is run by jews and queers. Jews? Muslims, more like. According to Andrew Marr that is.

It was unlikely we would repeat the level of performance on Wednesday, coming only three days later. What is important though is they dug in and fighted until the end, getting the victory we just about deserved. On a side note, the defence still needs a lot of working on if we're to carry on progressing. Rozenhal is surely much better than what we've seen from him in recent games. Also our good friend Lawro pointed out how our formation and style is just like Bolton's under Allardyce. I'd be happy with that provided we had didn't have the players for more "attacking" football and it would gurantee more success. Oh well, got the win which is good enough for now.

I'm confused by the exclusion of Antoine Sibierski from these lists.

Couldn't even beat Arsenal. Allardyce OUT.

I don't know if I mentioned this before, but surely Cole and York must look at each other, remember where the were and what they achieved in 1999, and think "how the fuck have we ended up here, getting bumraped by Everton?" well they are in their mid-30s tbf, but they did kind of fall quite a bit after that season...

The fans have the right to express their opinions, however chants like "Big Sam for England" or "One Glenn Roeder..." are better than "You don't know what you're doing" hurled straight at the manager. The manager should no way be sacked, but I do wish he gets the point about his stupid tactics into his head, because everyone can see what is wrong.

Blackburn's morales must be down, and we've got a good recent record at Ewood Park (0-3 and 1-3 the past two seasons), so we should go there positively and get our skilled players causing problems for their defences. There's no denying we DO have the players to cause any team problems. It's just whether they are used correctly. Allardyce is just too stubborn and up himself also probably - he feels he must use his tactics here just because he was the master of the long ball at another club.

I've noticed he doesn't have much power also and I think it's what's made him score goals from very close up now, as he doesn't seem to beat the keeper from far out much.

You'll go down in history because of this.

Bob Paisley ? Joe Fagin ? True, "never" is an overstatement. Hasn't proven successful in recent years as the managers tend to get the sacking very quickly.

Gerrard was fantastic (playing for liverpool after all). Otherwise, good but hardly out of this world. Torres could have had four or five if he could finish - that on top of the three goals we conceded.

Last season O'Neill didn't do as well as expected at Villa. The difference between him and "Big Sam" is he has an idea of what the right thing to do is. He didn't use any insane tactics ala Sam. I'm losing patience with our manager because there's no good reason to think these five years he demands will see drastic improvements.

Basically any assistant manager or other staff member who becomes the manager. Never works.

Good move for him and for us provided we can get in some quality replacements. And we will need a few strikers with Owen and Viduka injury-prone, Martins probably off to the African Cup of Nations and Smith being rubbish. If it's a choice between Shola and Smith up front, it;s got to be the former. His goals/game ratio in his career is far superior to Smith's (sic) and he's shown many times he's capable of scoring important goals.

I don't in any way dislike Owen and honestly think he feels not repaying the club would be too indecent. However that's surely why he is here as opposed to because he actually wants to be here. If the club told him they didn't want him and he's free to join any club he'd have no complaints.

I honestly think it won't be good at all for us to not qualify - that is provided we sack McClaren whatever the outcome.

It's okay. Andy Carroll will return from Preston soon. He's scored, erm, loads there.

Happy birthday.

I totally agree with you about the first bolded, regarding the second bit, we're so much still in the short-term it's impossible to say. I've no idea what Smith's story is, so the following is just to illustrate a point. Say Allardyce brings Alan Smith in because he decides he's seen something about him that he likes in central midfield. Day one Smith might have had a row with the wife, might have been up all night with the kid, might be trying too hard to impress the new fans, or might just not have clicked with his central midfield partner yet, and as a result has a shitter of a debut. Explode that out to all the variables that go into a team performance, and you get an idea of why it's so crucial to judge things over the long run, but the reality is, two games like that and a lot of people think Allardyce is an idiot for not seeing how obviously bad Smith is in that position, when the only thing that we can be reasonably confident of, is that not one of Allardyce's detractors, could do a better job than him. Hope that makes sense, and can people try not to focus on and misconstrue the last ~15 words please. Definitely true - only the short-term. Just what I've noted so far. Hopefuly he can turn it around though but we'll see. Needs more time to be judged.

Of course he needs time. The problem is he can't make that silly excuse when the reason we lose/play poorly is because of the terrible tactics and team selection. It's more than a case of the players not gelling etc.

Brilliant at Bolton and clearly needs way more time, but the problem is I haven't seen much in him that suggests he can turn us around. He never seems to learn with his tactics and selection.

He was nowhere near as bad as you're making him out to be. Not a right winger but you can blame the manager for that. Always good to see a centre-mid busting forward when we have a counter-attack. Thought he was one of our better players in the first-half, even if that doesn't say much.

He's overrated anyway.

Eh? Why should he lose his position? Currently our best two strikers at the club are Owen and Martins, and Martins was certainly the better player in the previous game. But anyway, Owen and Martins should be our starting pair for the next game, regardless of whether Viduka or Smith are fit. If one has to be casted aside however, it shouldn't be Martins simply because Owen is a world-class goalscorer and Martins has a rubbish first touch.

Saw a bit of that yesterday - pretty stupid programme. It was just pretentious rubbish really. I've never been to Middlesbrough so can't defend or slate it (does look crap though tbh), but it's not "officially" the worst place to live because GCSE results are low and the people are unhealthy.