David Kelly

Aye that's fair enough. I was thinking more conversationally that we wouldn't use it so yes, totally agree with NJS. I also agree with NJS about the songs, but then again we can barely ever get a decent rendition of The Blaydon Races going at home or away matches these days which is far more concerning.

Would you have said something like "did you see how united played on Saturday"? Not being old enough to be in pubs til the mid 90's, I might have missed the boat on that time but I honestly can't remember such talk. Tbh I would just expect someone to say did you see the match and everyone would assume you were talking about us, I don't think you have to really refer to us by any name most of the time if you're in the city. I suppose with the sheer volume of matches on the telly these days (not even counting the fact that you can see every match if you have the right access to streams) it's more possible people could be unsure which match you meant.

In what context? I'm not doubting you here btw, I'm just interested in how you would do it. I honestly can't think of a time when I've heard anyone say "I'm off to see united today" or something like that. I suppose I could envisage someone saying "for fucks sake united come on" or something like that I suppose. I certainly would never dream of saying that I supported united if someone asked me. And not just because I would expect them to assume I meant Manchester. Newcastle would be the name that always immediately came to mind.

Do any of us actually refer to us as United? Obviously there's the United chant at the matches but I don't think I've ever heard anyone from here or anywhere else refer to us as United. I mean it annoys me a much as the next person when the press and sky pundits refer to Man U as United as if they're the only one, but I think the reality is, we don't use it for ourselves either.

Can't see us letting Ashworth take him to Manure. I'd hate to see him go to Liverpool but lets be honest, they're way ahead of us at the moment. What I wouldn't want is to see him go to someone that he helps move miles clear of us. PSG would be the preference.

It certainly suggests he should have had the operation earlier in the season. Oh well at least this means he's one of our star players that won't be sold this summer! This makes me think even more now that Bruno will have to be sold so that we can spend some money on the squad (real money I mean).

Come on, give us a clue.

Cue Ashworth taking up the role in Manchester next week after we've accepted a couple of mil compensation.

I think we're seeing the effects of having Gordon on the left and not having Willock for basically the whole season and missing Joelinton a bit too. We're not the defensive unit we were (Pope's injury is hurting us too) and Burn in particular seems to be suffering from it. The change in how we are going about things in an attacking sense has certainly weakened us defensively. Howe still seems to be struggling to find the right balance, we're having less games where it looks like we can't score but we're not keeping the clean sheets that we were, particularly earlier on last term. And I can't see that changing this season without having Jo or Tonali back. Even when they are, it still seems to me that we need a proper number 6 instead of playing a flat midfield 3.

I think the 4th innings was a pretty good effort, Root aside, and don't think we can have too many complaints about it (other than the iffy ball tracking for Crawley's dismissal). It's the first innings for both teams where it went wrong. We were a good hundred runs short of where we should have been looking to get to. I suppose we have to consider the inexperience of our attack too mind. The three spinners have done incredibly well when you think about how little first class cricket they have under their belts. Obviously Leach's injury has hurt us (again) but you have to wonder whether it would have been better to take another more experienced spinner (I know we're not exactly overstocked with them but surely Liam Dawson was an option) or play Wood/Robinson along with two spinners and Root.

Missed opportunity against them without Kohli, Jadeja, Raul & Shami. I still don't understand the way Root is playing. He was the one player who didn't need to change anything about the way he played to meet Stokes and McCullum's MO but he seems to have just gone too far. He should have been the player who won the match for us but instead he was our lowest scoring batsman in the match.

I was calling him it years ago but cunt seemed more fitting so I just moved onto that.

Couldn't be happier about this but it does mean that there is absolutely no chance of me watching any sky sports football programming between now and August. Everything will be about the cunt.

Totally agree with this. We fielded a weakened team with a 17 yr old starting in central midfield and basically no substitutions that we could make to positively effect the game and those lads did us proud. We were on the wrong end of a poor refereeing decision and that's disappointing but they happen all the time and sometimes we get the benefit from that, this time it went the other way. We can still qualify, I'm confident we can beat Milan (how amazing is it to be able to say that!) but if we don't we haven't let ourselves down in any way.

We haven't and that's the problem. Even when we have we haven't really looked to play our best team (although I'm not sure anyone knows what that is any more). Think Robin is spot on, in that there isn't a standout candidate to replace Butler as captain and god know who the options would be as coach. They probably won't be very interested beyond T20 any more. Mind that's the only real interest we're showing at the moment full stop. It's a real shame that we've finally climbed to the top of the mountain and then we've just forgotten about it.