Papa Lazaru

That's ok then. Both France and New Zealand would easily beat us, regardless of whether Wilkinson was playing or not. Anyone else worried that there is nobody of Wilkinson's quality coming through? He's pretty much a one off but hopefully Flood will be learning from him at the Falcons and can step up a gear in the next few years. We could beat france, not guarenteeing we would but they're nothing amazing and as has been shown already are beatable. Also New Zealand have been nailed on dead cert absolute favourites to win every single world cup since it began and they have only ever won it once, no matter how good they are, they tend to either choke or cock it up some how. Last time they said their reserves could win the world cup, and they went out to the aussies in the semis, so you can't ever guarentee they'll do it.

I was still shitting it at 12-10 because it only takes one break from the likes of Mortlock, Latham et al and a try kills it for us! But the handling errors, often forced by the England forward were crucial. I think England's best hope now is for France to do what they sometimes can and produce a one off great performance to beat the all blacks, and then folow it with a completely inconsistent effort against England and lose!

WOO! High five! Dat's what I'm talkin' 'bout! Spastic. He's american, so he's a spaz not a spastic tbh!

Oh will you please just shut the fuck up you tedious prick. And not that i'd want to go letting the facts and suchlike get in the way of slagging off Owen again, but the surgeon (and leadign expert on the injury) who operated on him and thus knows what she's talking about was interviewed and said the Everton game would probably be too early for him to play but the England games would be well within his timescale to play. But heaven forbid Owen should listen to her, i mean what does she know! To be perfectly honest, while I can't fault the logic of that comment, the truth is you'd find an entirely different outcome if this was say, Man Ure. If those circumstances threatened to arise there it simply wouldnt be allowed and it would be crystal clear that the club had to come first. Under Ferguson, he would be withdrawn on the basis that he might sustain injury playing for England. And in the circumstances described (potentially his first full game back), you couldnt criticize that decision. You could be pissed off with it, but you couldn't actually criticize it. At the end of the day, Owen is basically saying what goes and no matter how good he is as a player, that's not a good situation. I know what you mean, in the club vs country contest its club 1st and country irrelivent for me on every singel decision and if it were me he wouldn't be playing. But if he's passed fit by the expert and he wants to play then there's no way you can really stop him without it causing bad feeling. However if Big Sam and his team in tandem with the expert advice decide that he can't make it for Evrton and isn't going to be 100% and therfore at risk, then they should tell England to shove it!

What a performance by England in the rugby to beat the aussies, yet again in a world cup! They were written off by everybody but the pack absolutely destroyed the aussie pack for 80 mins and they just couldn't take it. So their managers efforts this week failed when he went crying to the ref like a girl saying England would be fouling and that they'd picked Regan because he cheats, and they call us whinging poms, bunch of tarts!

Oh will you please just shut the fuck up you tedious prick. And not that i'd want to go letting the facts and suchlike get in the way of slagging off Owen again, but the surgeon (and leadign expert on the injury) who operated on him and thus knows what she's talking about was interviewed and said the Everton game would probably be too early for him to play but the England games would be well within his timescale to play. But heaven forbid Owen should listen to her, i mean what does she know!

Cacapa has looked class from the first moment he started here and hopefully will be a fixture in the team for a good while to come. Also like Woodgate i think he will improve the players alongside him in the back four. I'm looking forward also to seeing Enrique get a few game sudner his belt and seeing Zog on the left wing in front of him where he can cause havoc.

Fan of many of the ones already mentioned but also off the top of my head: Dangermouse Count Duckula Top Cat Dogtanian Mysterious Cities of gold Ulysses 31 Battle of the planets Godzilla Thundercats Willo the wisp

I hope you're wrong! It would be strange when you think of the shite he's stuck here through, appalling football, complete morons in charge and won nothing at all, so why leave now when things at least seem on the up if at the moment slowly!

Big Sam out on N-O. I shit you not

To be fair, some people on the SMB were convinced they were signing van Nistelrooy and Scholes in the summer. Don't forget Forlan, he was nailed on from day one! Duff was practically a Sunderland player before he picked up that injury. Along with Nugent and Baines!

To be fair, some people on the SMB were convinced they were signing van Nistelrooy and Scholes in the summer. Don't forget Forlan, he was nailed on from day one!

I think its a bit of a mixture. There is a large number of fans who continually overreact and get on the teams back all the time when supporting them would be far more productive. But there's also a definite affect from several years of utter shit that has changed the fans en masse and made things quite unpleasant alot of the time. But the fans need to back off as its counterproductive and never does any good, even if they are pissed off with a performance. Getting at the team won't ever make them play better during a match, individually or collectively.

Its that simple really, unless players are ready to drop, you play your best team. Or at least you don't rest your best and most in form players, particularly striker who need runs of games for touch and confidence and to build up momentum. The prem should be interesting this year because Chelsea have fucked up by losing Mourinho, Pool never quite convince they can do it, manu are scraping by and Arse who people thought would be the weakest have flown out the blocks.

If that's the case the i'll expect to see them standign up to these players and booking them for dissent, surroundign refs and screamign abuse at them then. I'll also expect to see blatant pens not ignored agains man u at OT and i'll expect them to struggle to get them sometimes. I'll expect refs to actually give pens for incidents like what happened to Rozenhal vs Derby instead of taking the easy option and ignoring it, but i won't hole my breath. The myth that our refs are any good is a wonder, just because refs in other countries are shit as well. But its not just being shit people get annoyed by its their inconsistency, their favourng of big clubs and home teams and their gutless nature. They are shit so i'll say they are, when they're good i'll say they are. And as a matter of fact the linesman today was good, he saw things and stood his ground agaisnt that prick Reilly who continued to ignore him because he thinks he knows better. Every single week if you watch your teams game, the live matches and MOTD you will see a string of ludcirous and scandelous decsions that have affetced/ruined games every sibgle week, its toally unacceptable and if anything just gets worse. Human error where you miss something is fine, nothing you can do about that, but the number of piss poor decisions when they've blatantly seen what happened and know fine well what the rules are is embarassing. Look at the Derby game, from point blank range the ref allowed Rozenhal to be bear hugged and thrown to the ground twice with no penalty, the linesman gave Owen offside when he wasn't last man and was in his own fucking half and Smith should have walked for two yellows, thats about the only 3 real decisions they had to make and all were wrong, yet easy to see.

I think Smith should definitely be used up front sooner rather than later. Owen is looking unlikely to feature much and Viduka will miss games with injury so Smith should start up fron alongside Martins when Viduka isn't available. It'll give Smith a chance in his favoured position and a goal would do him good if he could get one, plus i'd rather have him up there than Shola and it would improve ouir midfield as Smith is struggling out wide.

Cowards somes up prem refs pretty nicely, they all are and it ruins games. They bottle big decisions, they take easy options at all times, they shit themselves where the big 4 are concerned, they pander to them and when players of the big clubs are in their face shouting at them and surrounding them they do fuck all, when a few yellow cards each time woudl kill it within weeks no problem.

i agree it would be harsh on harper but given has to play for me. your best player should always walk back into the side. martins looked lively too. shame he couldn't take his chance. Yeah, i think no.2 keepers are unlicky as it is the one position where the top guy can straight from injury be ready to walk back into the team no matter what the udnerstudy has done, but that's football. As it is though, Harper has responded excellently. Martins does look very lively if still erratic, but he's a threat and i think will work quite well with Viduka and his pace along with Zog's pace if he's pushed up is a massive threat.

Usually after 6 games we'd have 4 points max and be in the shit, so this is a great start by NUFC standards! It makes the Derby game even more annoying as you look at it and think we could be sitting on 14 pts in second place and still have a game in hand on some of the teams around us! But the good thing is we responded instantly to the Derby peformance by beating West Ham and just need to follow that up with a few more good performances.

Viduka on song is probably about as good as anyone, but as you say, you won't always get that and he does miss games with injury. But his performance is even better as all game the defenders were allowed to foul him at will and he got punished for it! And i think we'd all like to see Enrique with Zog in front of him runnign defences ragged from the wing, and Millner on the right where he should be able to swing crosses over with pace better. I have to say i really can't fault Harper this season, aside from his distribution and he totally deserves his place in the team, yet i'd still bring Given back! But i can't knock Big Sam at all for keeping Harper in on current form.

This is the key factor. Before today's game i was fine with the plan of playing on if able and getting the op later, because its important for us to get the season off to a good start for confidence and Owen can help with that. However he's went off injured again and therefore isn't going to be able to do anything for us, so get him operated on right now as that's the best option. Since he' an employee not something the club technically owns in the truest sense you can't force him to have an op when you say, but if he isn't able to finish a game for us untill he has it then i'm afraid he has to have it now.

They won't win the prem if he keeps messing about with the team and particularly dropping form strikers all the time. Yes you have to ocassionally rest players later in the season if you're going well in 3 or 4 competitions, but this early you don't piss about with your best players. That said i'd take a manager "just" winning us the Champions league up here!

Solid performance with for me, Butt, Zog and Viduka the top performers. Viduka showed what a quality performer he can be despite being fouled continually by their defenders and penalisedhismelf for no good reason. Zog has been on form all season and most goals look like they'll involve him in some way and that's playing at left back! Meanwhile Butt, especially first half was everywhere, winning the ball, covering for others and passing it about nicely. Good debut from Beye i thought, solid and looks capable going forward. Also got an ar,/elbow in the face early in the first half as a defender blocked him off from chasing a ball going out for a goal kick and he just jumped straight back up and didn't bat an eyelid, so looks like he'll be able to mix it in the prem And finally a word for Mike Reilly, the man is a fucking clown who shouldn't be anywhere near the top flight of refereeing. Whether it was continually ignoring his linesman (who was competent) when he was telling him he'd fucked up a decision, or letting their strikers/defenders continually foul when jumping for the ball, and bizarrely punishing our players for it, or stopping our attacks to do fuck all but allowing them to play on he was just a waste of fucking time. He also has zero authority as for both teams he'd count out ten yards, they'd barely move towards where he pointed, he'd ignore that and then they'd shuffle forward 1 or 2 yards and he'd ignore tha as well absolutely useless.

One of my mates reckoned somebody had fallen down the stairs and that it took a fair while for stewards/st johns lot to react and do anything. But i saw him return and from the glimpse i got he had a a swollen eye and forehead area but seemed fine as he sat down.

His dad was a bit of a prick going public and coming out with some of the stuff he did, but if Taylor is asking to be at the same level as Milner and Zog then i think he's entitled to ask for that, he's in the same age bracket, has played more than Zog in the first team last season and has just been called up to the full England squad (albeit a bit too early). If he was asking to match Owen's wages then we'd have a problem!