David Kelly

It all sounds unfortunately plausible. Personally I doubt whether any of our sigings were what Roeder had wanted. I suspect his list looked a lot more like Bridge, Huth, Graveson/Malbranque and Bent but we are a club so poorly run that we couldn't make any of these happen when in reality they could have all been bought (with the possible exception of Bent).

Do you want him to sign these short term players and slag him off, or do you not want him to sign them and slag him off ? Or do you - as is normal - naively believe the club can afford to buy half a team of superstars every summer...although you would then say there are "too many trophy signings" Canny laugh anyway honestly. why do you insist on putting words in people's mouths in a feeble attempt to justify your cretinous defence of shepherd? where have i said i expected us to sign a team of superstars? all i expected was our chairman and manager to have some kind of plan in spending our limited budget. that means: * not spending it all on two attacking players, one of whom despite being a good player we didn't really need. * not leaving the majority of our business until the last few days of the window AGAIN * not panic buying the likes of siberski, bernard and rossi * investing a good chunk of the budget on some quality at the back. something we have failed to address AGAIN honestly, i don't know how you can defend it. we missed out on free tranfers like sol campbell, hasam tabelsi, jimmy floyd hasslbank and many more that would have added depth, quality and experience to the squad. instead we approach the window with little or no strategy AGAIN and the end result is a wafer thin unbalanced squad. answer me this: are you honestly happy with our defence going into the new season? don't you think we should have added more to that area of the squad than oliver bernard, who frankly has been shit since he left us. Spot on tbh. Mind you that still doesn't mean I can blame Roeder for not being interested in any of the free players mentioned at the start of this thread.

That's going way over the top tbh Dan. Emre and Moore both had good games, Parker and Rammage (in the centre) were both solid, Duff did well playing way out of position and the Sib did well considering he's nee good and wasn't match fit. Carr was his usual poor self, Bramble continued to look very iffy, Given needs to improve his distribution because his and Bramble's long punts are preventing us from playing any football, the Zog faded when Duff went behind him and Martins looks well short of match fitness and is struggling to adapt to our kick and rush game. It was a poor match to watch but were weren't as awfull as is being made out.

I think our new super signing will be playing just off Martins. The biggest concern for me is that Bramble will be still playing so we can pretty much forget about the midfield!

That's Geordieboy Lee Clarke I'll thank you to remember!

Fuck me I go away for two weeks and all of a sudden we really have gone tits up.

What's happened with Craig like?

They were saying Taylor was unlikely to play yesterday weren't they? I suspect the back four will be the same as Saturday, Butt will be in for Parker and our new super signing will replace Shola.

I would say that Rossi is the only signing we have made that shows any sort of considered thought or planning (ie we didn't have much cash and we need someone to cover a period while Owen is injured). The rest are all poorly concived or panic buys and the list of players available for free or next to nothing totally confirms this. It's interesting to compare our transfer window activity to that of the makems (who only had a manager a couple of days before the deadline). They saw that they needed to spend an amount of money on players in the short term to get them out of that division (and they may well of done that). It appears they have money to spend but rather than blowing it all now on big names now they have spent a reasonably small portion on doing the job that needs doing first and keeping a fair amount for if they go up so that this time they stay up. That shows a hell of a lot more planning than we have managed in the last five years. If we had been so considered there is a fair chance we would be playing european football yesterday or today rather than just managing to scrape through to playing tomorrow. Fuck me praising the makems planning ahead of ours is not something I ever thought I would be doing!

The sooner he's out of the team the better tbh. He's looked poor right from the off this season and the last two games he's cost us goals we should not be conceding. Also by all accounts we were pumping long balls into the front two again on Saturday (fortunately I didn't get back from my hols in time for the match) and I assume that as usual Bramble and Given were the major culprits for this. Getting Taylor in might not just strengthen our defence but also improve our passing. Oh and sorry to go off topic but why the fuck did we sign that plank from Citeh? Not good enough for the makems from what I've seen of him!

I read the link wrong and thought we were having an In The Know prediction league and was waiting to see Kris storming it!

We were also taught how to construct a comprehensible sentence. 184179[/snapback] gets=gits, not the verb, no? 184181[/snapback] Well done that man. I admit it doesn't work as well on paper as it does when you say it.

I sometimes wish I went to uni beacuse you gets seem to do fuck all.

Broken Social Scene - Broken Social Scene

Fucking brillian film. Nicholson and John Huston are both superb! I started watching Dr Strangelove last night. I got about forty minutes in and I am enjoying it but I can't say that I've found much of it funny so far. Obviously there is the 'you can't fight in the war room' line and George C Scott's general character but so far it comes accross a lot more serious than I was expecting.

In some ways it's the ideal move for Keane though. He doesn't have to do much to improve on where they already are and if it goes tit's up everyone will say they are shite so he didn't really have a chance. It could go either way and I suspect he will be a shite man manager but Kidd may well be an excellent appointment.

I have to admit that I really have no idea of whether or not he is much cop or whether he will be any good over here. But if you believe that he is 21 you have to say that he has an excellent scoring record in what is probably the most difficult league in the world to score goals.

Againt West Brom when Jack Charlton was manager (85?). We won 1-0 thanks to a Pedro freekick. The only player I knew in our team before the game was Waddle (I wasn't interested in football til after this game) and the useless fucker was injured. That was the only game I went to that season and we sold him in the summer before I got my first season ticket the next year so I never saw him play for us.

Aye, an old head like Sol Campbell is exactly what we need/needed. Is Huth any better than, say, Taylor? 183432[/snapback] Which makes not signing Sol all the more stupid. If only the fat man hadn't had that pasty

The whole idea of having some sheik taking us over doesn't sit well with me at all. I have to admit that I do in principle like the fat mans idea of the club being run by people who have a vested interest in it. But the reality is that the face of football has changed immesurably since Abramovic took over at Chelski. It simply is all about money and (for the moment at least) unless you have bundles of it you're going to get left behind. So unless there is some multi billionaire Geordie out there who's interesting in buying us, I think that sooner we get this sultan in the better.

That was the very words that I heard. The story must be doing the rounds then

As I say, I agree it sounds complete bullshit but I can never discount anything I hear about that numpty.

No offence DK, but that sounds like some of the worst bullshit I've ever heard. At first I thought it was Patrokles posting it as a wind-up until I checked the username. If, and it's a Hollywood-sign-sized IF, it's true, then Shepherd is a bigger prick than I thought, but I'm not buying that tbh. 183359[/snapback] I'm not convinced about the source and if it was anyone else I would just dismiss it out of hand. But with Shepherd I really can't be sure!

I sincerely hope they're right. I would be delighted to hear it from himself today though; until we hear it from the horse's mouth I will be a little nervous. 183361[/snapback] I don't think Van Nistelroy will comment on it tbh!

Wouldn't be too keen on Huth though. We need a quality player with experience to help improve the likes of Bramble, Taylor, Rammage and Huntington (has he gone to Plymouth on loan?). The reason our young defenders never improve is that they never have any decent experience next to them. Bring Huth in and the same thing happens all over again.