David Kelly

The problem is (if there was any truth that he's under threat, which of course he should be but most likely isn't) who at the club would you trust to make a decision on his replacement? I don't really believe that there is no one decent that would come and work for Ashley because despite all of his obvious shortcomings, there are a lot of managers who jump at the chance to work for much smaller clubs with even greater restrictions. But since Ashley has been here there has been no evidence that there is any recruitment process that has any thought. Certainly no thought around how to make the team successful. Keegan was an easy choice to try and get fans on side as was Shearer. Neither of those appointments showed any thought to the ramifcations of appointing people like them (ie they want a certain level of autonomy and funding that he was never going to back). Hughton just ended up in the job by default because they didn't bother trying to find a manager. Pardew seems to have been appointed purely on the basis that he wouldn't rock the boat and just take whatever shit was given to him. And fuck knows what the thinking was with JFK. I can only assume it was to piss us off. So regardless of who is available, how can we expect an appointment that will actually benefit the team? We're likely to end up with Beardsley in charge! This isn't by any stretch me saying better the devil you know, I hate the bloke and don't want him near the club. But I find it difficult to believe we will get any improvement in ability unless we hit upon some massive luck.

Why the fuck do we even bother. The club couldn't give a fuck about what the fans want. I'm sure we'll sign a striker in January though since there's a good chance we'll be fighting off relegation by then!

And a fee I think. Still sounds weird like, including the fee we're probably still no better off! If he goes we surely must get someone in but I have serious doubts. Since the end of last season we've lost 7 members of the squad and we've brought 9 in with two of them going straight back out on loan and apparently that results in us having a full squad. So by that definition as of the end of last summer and as of January when Cabaye left and LDJ came in we had a full squad. I think that tells you everything you need to know about what this club is now all about.

I can see it like. Unfortunately it's not him as I'd take any chance to get him out of the club.

Their strikers and their keeper are currently the only acceptable parts of their team and this is who they're signing. They don't seem to have any strategy at all at the moment when it comes to transfers. Are we helping them out this summer?

No I think our signing spree has come and gone and we are left with another window where we look back and wonder what might have been!

The last couple of windows showed that we don't sign anyone at any time!

As has been said, it's the gift that just keeps giving!

I thought that was announced ages ago? They need to do something to try and make it worth competing in. Still think they need to cut the amount of games though.

I thought the new Inbetweeners wasn't bad at all. Probably didn't have any really standout hilarious moments like. There's good copies of it about by the way.

It could keep me entertained for hours!

It is a pretty poor looking England squad mind. I do believe we basically need to start again now that Terry, Ferdinand, Cole, Gerrard & Lampard are all out of the team but there's not a lot to excite you for the national teams future in that squad. Maybe Chambers, Stones, Sturridge, Chamberlin, Wilshere and Sterling. Addmittedly there is Shaw and Barkley missing through injury.

The amount of calls for Rodwell and Cattermole are hilarious. Rodwell's played about 5 games in three years. There's no way he could be picked. And they don't seem to realise that Cattermole will never get a game with his complete lack of discipline (well not without going a few years without coming close to a sending off). They all seem to think we think Colback is gods gift and should be starting for England just because we think he's had two decent games. The complete lack of awareness on that board is breath taking tbh.

Fucking brilliant. Good to see that they realise it's purely becuase he's moved to a much bigger club too. Love this quote " The FA is a fucking joke. He has done nothing to deserve a call up. Didnt think he even deserved one when there was a shout for him last season. England are missing the exact player cattermole is." Didn't realise England was missing a psychopathic little shitbag with his shorts rounds his chest!

Good goal. But the standard of opposition can't be forgotten. I've seen goals like that scored playing five a side.

We need to score some goals just to get us off the mark if nothing else (well we need to score goals to win the game obviously).

I'd like to see a couple of the fringe players (Aarons, Perez, Chucky) getting a game alongside a fair portion of the senior players. We don't want too many broght in together so they don't get a proper chance. I would assume Colo and Taylor are going to have to start as we don't have any other options in the centre of defence and for me it would make sense to stick with Janmaat, Cabella and SDJ to give them more team experience. But knowing Pardew as we do I expect all of the players who didn't start Saturday will start tonight.

I think the point about him making mistakes and brushing it off compared to others being afraid of making mistakes is a good one. Too many of our players wont take chances and that's why we get too few players into the box and aren't really looking like scoring much. They need to be braver.

Sin City 2. Enjoyed it much more than the first one (will have to give that another go) but with Eva Green getting her chebs out for a large portion of the film that was a given really! The Sweeney. Had it for ages and never fancied watching it before. Now I know why. It's fucking awful.

If he can reach his goal of improving Sports Direct without investing in us, why should he bother?

As someone who trudged through the 80's (albeit on me parents coin), I can safely say the current way I feel about things going on at the club is much worse than it was back then. I remeber back then there was very little in the way of hope that the board would invest in the club but there was still a much greater connection between the club and supporters. There was also a realistic hope that someone with money would come in buy it and invest enough to make a difference (which is exactly what Hall did). Now, the amount of money that Ashley would want to sell and the amount it would take to pay for the players we need makes it impossible for anyone local to do and almost impossible for anyone other than a small amount of people in the world.

A couple of my mates went along and thought Ben Arfa was pretty good but thought the praise was way overboard considering the opposition. They were also impressed with Armstrong like.

Never rated him at all. Can't believe he gets in the national team.

I'm surprised at how little so many people seem to rate Tiote. The only bad season he's had out of the four he's been here was when he tried to step up for Cabaye being injured/gash in the European season. As Alex says, he doesn't have it in him to play penetrative passes but he shows leadership in trying to take on the responsibility even when it's to the detriment of his own game. Personally I think he would be a big loss to us. I remember how long we were waiting for a decent defensive midfielder to be brought in (basically ever since Batty left) and how often the lack of one was considered to be the cause for us not being able compete with top teams. There's aspects of his job that Anita and Colback can do but particularly in away games I think he's essential.

If you'd taken predictions from before Souness was installed as manager it would have been very different mind you. But even though the predictions above don't really show it, I don't believe there was the sense of helplesness or the feeling that we could never get back to where we were under Keegan and Robson, that there is now. I don't think there is anyone that thinks that we will realistically compete for anything as long as Ashley's here. People didn't think FS was doing a good job, but they did expect that he would find the money to spend on players, they didn't trust he make a good managerial appointment every time but they thought we could attract a decent manager who wasn't just a puppet and they would never in a million years think we could have appointed JFK in any capacity. The actual league position we were predicting might not be much different to now, but the short to mid term future of the club was light years away,