NJS

I thought that was supposedly the case anyway - I remember Shearer getting booked by Rennie for asking him why he'd booked Lua Lua for diving when the Bolton player had admitted fouling him and Shearer said "I spoke to him as captain which I'm allowed to do".

Definitely - despite Shearer's and Bellamy's best efforts. The thing that brought the original point to mind was remembering a game against Liverpool in about 85 - I remember John Bailey retrieving the ball from the crowd and tossing it in a friendly manner to Steve Nichol to take a throw and him launching the ball straight back over Bailey to a Liverpool player who went down the line and crossed for a goal - typical of that 80s team.

And Shearer. Didn't play 95-96 but he does epitomise what I was talking about - a top cunt.

One of the reasons we failed in 96 was that Keegan wasn't true enough to his scouse training and had a team of too nice players (Batty apart). Think of Liverpool under Shankly/Paisley - Man U under Ferguson, the Aussie cricket team, the Italian football team - one thing in common is being "professional" - a nice way of saying unsporting, cheating twats - and winners.

As someone said its about having a footballer's brain combined with a killer instinct - the classic being Mick Quinn's "I'm faster than anyone over 2 yards" - see the goal on Monday as a perfect example. Owen looks good deeper just because we've become so used to having no footballers in the team in recent years - see also how Viduka's half-arsed football intelligence has made a difference after a couple of years of Shola/Sibierski/Martins.

I hate them all but only Man U and Liverpool get a tiick at this level. Sunderland don't count either because they are the enemy (and I don't mean a Jam tribute band).

Bolton's run-in is a factor but looking at the fixtures over the next 3 or 4 weeks there are a lot of 6 pointers eg Brum Vs Reading on Saturday. In that context I think another 7 or 8 points will do it.

Don't overdo it - Martins was at his frustrating worst in the first half.

Agreed, didn't put a foot wrong. Apart from the yellow card

I think Viduka's problem is that we don't have anybody around him with a brain who can see what he's doing and where to go - this makes him look worse than he is imo. Geremi was canny as well apart from the corners.

Aye, meant to say the best thing could be that the players will be a little "proud" of how they fought back. I mean that in the context of their confidence levels and how shit we are generally btw. I was also desperate because of that that they didn't win it late on.

Considering how shit the first half was, and how we've faded badly in games, I'll take a point (with a tinge of disappointment) 8 more draws will be enough

So how much in pound per millilitre of spunk swallowed does that work out at then?

£46 to change my flights. BASTARDS!!!!

Which is how I've read Spurs work now - any shit stirring articles being written about them?

No account of fixture list. What evidence of good tactics did Allardyce show? What evidence of good buys? I have concerns but on the whole I disagree with your view.

Speaking personally I see Keegan's job as being to make me fall in love with football again - if he gets us going in the right direction with a few good players that's a start - then we can build on it.

Because we were having problems with the SJP pitch at the time and the premier league introduced a rule that 75% of the games had to played on your home ground. A few teams threatened to do what Keegan did but in the end they bottled it and waited for the rule to be revoked a couple of years later - by which time Keegan had left.

Without wanting to sound patronising, I'm all for people finding their own place in the world but thats their choice - I'm sure a lot of deaf people want to live as normal a life as possible and would love to be able to hear. The idea however of giving a kid this problem deliberately is going way too far in celebrating a culture. I'm very much opposed to male circumcision on lack of choice grounds (and I'd consider nuking countries which practice FGM) but thats small beer compared with this.

I'd have the fuckers shot for that comment/idea.

The fact that there were no comebacks on Riley for that goal at Chelsea proves to me the system is flawed. Anything now is just tokenism.

As I said last week they're still in deep shit - they were getting all positive about winning at home without realising that Everton, Chelsea and Arsenal were still to come.

And of course the press laughed when Keegan said it was possible for someone outside the "Top 4" to win a cup.

I agree that Keegan isn't blameless and I would say I expected more points (though not today obviously) but the fact that we have to cling on to last weeks improvement shows how low we were which I still don't think people get. I think the Barton situation will be resolved next week as I don't think he'll escape a jail term.

I'm worried that the "nothing to play for" teams like City, West Ham and spurs might have a say - I know we have some of them to play but so do the mackems and we saw what Brum did to Spurs last week. Six pointers are potential nightmares but at least you live or die on your own efforts.