Ponky

I love watching Merlin with my kids. It's great fun and once you get your head around the anachronisms and massive amount of licence they take with just about everything .. it's quite a watchable show.

It was a disappointing result but encouraging performance. This game last year we sat back for 90 mins and let them batter us - yes we got a point there and nothing here but I think the attacking intent is something we have all wanted to see for some time. Unfortunately we lacked the sort of clinical finisher that VDV has proven to be, diving word removed though he may be. I thought Heskey was once again our best, followed by NRC. Carew I thought really battled hard but was so rusty it wasn't funny. Ashly Young had a pretty decent match until about the 85th minute when he completely ignored play going on 5 metres behind him to go and scream at the ref about an unpaid foul. It really shits me when players do that.

True. Paki is not a slur in the slightest here, it's just how we refer to the Pakistani cricket team, no different than Windies or Kiwis. Lebo is definitely a slur here though, although as you say, a lot of it is to do with intent, but in Sydney where there are large communities of Lebanese people and xenophobia rules the waves it can get you into quite a bit of trouble. "Wogs" used to be a slur aimed at Italians and Greeks (mostly), then the wogs started calling each other wogs in a fun way and the slur lost its sting. To say something is woggy or call someone a wog is generally harmless fun these days unless there is a bit of a sting in the tail.

Yam Yam comes from the way Baggies fans speak. As in You am. Yam awright yew. Dingles is a nickname that Baggies fans gave Wolves fans referring to the Dingle family off Emmerdale the telly series. Basically a family of **** ups and retards. Incidentally, Molineux also has the highest concentration of beards anywhere on the planet. Even the birds have beards (it's true). Indeed. Effectively backwards simpletons on both accounts. We have a name for those over here. Tasmanians.

Dingles, Yam Yams? Anyone care to explain to those not from the magical midlands?

Warnock needs some competition for his place. It worries me that he is a bit of a loose cannon and we don't really have the ability to cover him apart from by moving Luke Young across.

A fortunate win, perhaps, but Wolves had plenty of opprtunities to put us away and the best they could come up with was a misjudged cross that somehow eluded everyone, whereas we crafted two absolutely superb goals. Got to be some credit in that, in my view. NRC was man of the match for me, covered a phenomenal amount of ground and contrary to his reputation played some really nice passes. Heskey was superb also, lost the plot from about the 60th to 80th minutes, but chose the best time to get back into it! Albrighton was very good in the 1st half but got monstered by Elokobi when he came on. Subbing Gabby on for Marc actually turned the match in our favour a bit, because Gabby presented them with a bit more strength and pace and managed to hold on to the ball pretty well. My main overall impression of the 2nd half was the players were struggling a bit for ideas with playing a passing game rather than long balls over the top. They looked to be thinking too hard about their passes rather than instinctively knowing where their teammates would be, which I think is something that we will just have to be patient with until they start to feel a bit more natural about it.

I thought this was what was meant by "trunks":

I think 3 months playing 90mins twice a week in the Championship might be just what he needs. I think he needs to toughen up a bit and learn how to impose himself on contests. Reserve matches and 15-minute sub appearances are not going to get him that, especially if he needs the odd reminder of how hard he needs to work.

Bloody history has a habit of changing suddenly like that.

Karma, irony, or just a hazard of the job? Cow crushes meat worker

Good man!

You can watch the League Cup show on the BBC iplayer but unfortunately not available to those of us outside UK - hopefully someone will extract that & post on 101gg or somewhere

Commando at home, boxers in public. Except when I am commando at home while wearing only boxers.

If anyone happens to have the capability of uploading a link to the highlights (that would be likely to work outside UK) I'd be grateful.

Warnock is a worry actually. He does some great stuff mixed with some pretty silly stuff. He gives the ball away repeatedly too. We also miss Ashley Young's defensive work on the left. Cuellar looked pretty solid given the circumstances.

It was only what he'd been doing to Gabby for an hour, it's just that Carew had the strength to get away from him (albeit at the cost of a shirt). Most refs would notice a shirt pull in open play that almost pulls the shirt into two pieces. Last year he was briefly demoted to the Championship after two dreadful performances back to back - he should still be there. from the Telegraph report

Agree about Dean OBE - 15 fouls to 6 - WTF? And did you see what Knight did to Carew's shirt? rocket polisher.

We have been like a rudderless ship - no real guidance or direction. Hopefully Houllier can steady the ship and get us playing with purpose again because that was so frustrating to watch us holding on grimly at home against Bolton. One problem is having two wingers with no-one to cross the ball to. Gabby was so ordinary it's untrue today. We may as well play Heskey at the moment because Gabby seems slower than a wet week at the moment. Admittedly it didn't help that Knight was mauling him every time the ball came down but he just didn't seem to be interested all the same. Ireland made several great runs today that were completely ignored because we were too busy passing backwards. I thought Luke Young was very good today, probably our best & he along with Friedel saved our bacon several times.

I think Cuellar has been behind the 8-ball being injured during pre-season so it's probably more a case of not trusting his match-fitness. I reckon he'll play against Blackburn instead. I am hopeing this match will be Ireland's chance to announce himself and although it's KM in charge don't forget Houllier will be in the stands. i suspect the players will be busting their arses to show him what they are about. Villa by a cricket score.

If the current club refuses to allow the manager to break their contract then there's nothing you can do, unless there is some penalty clause or release clause written into the contract - my understanding anyway.

It was - basically they cheated their way to the win, but it doesn't change the fact that we should have cleared the ball. There are so many if only's in a game like this though, and most of ours happened in the first half. A 0-3 half time score would have been pretty safe even for us.

People having a whinge just for the sake of it. Nothing to see here.