rjshare

He picked the wrong option and well over hit the pass. do us a favour please trent if you wouldnt mind. dont bother replying to anything i write because today you have to be the most argumentative, nit-picking pedant that i have ever seen on this forum. your opinion may be different from mine but dont call it wrong.

that was a great ball from downing - but just as he hit it whoever it was making the run on the left wing stopped!

guess thats why downing is still worth his place. that should calm the nerves a bit.

if we can give four to blackburn and still beat them i'm sure we can give this lot a one goal lead.

no - it should have been retaken. friedel still made a dogs dinner of it though!

i wish we wouldnt give the ball away stupidly by making pointless risky passes. when we play to feet we look like we could control the game from start to finish - and then aimlessly knock it to their defenders. delph looking good though - ball sticks to his feet!

good start for us this - hope we can get a goal early though so we dont have to play at full whack for 90 minutes

wasnt happy about us wearing white for the lc final, but watching today it just looks so 'rotterdam' that i dont mind anymore!

great run from warnock - should have hit it though

if was warnock i would play two at the back, eight accross the middle to strangle our midfield, the hold out for the draw>replay>cash - keeps me in a job!

I suggest you take a look at todays team. So you agree we don't have a rotation policy... oh by the way Cuellar is on the bench today as one of a couple of changes. And as I've said we aren't Man Utd or Chelsea and we don't opporate in the same way or have the same depths so don't expect the same approach. for your first reply - i would refer you to our fantastic uefa cup run this season. secondly - the original post that sparked this debate was in reference to rotation for league matches. i agree we dont have a squad rotation policy - despite the manager suggesting the contrary. no one would be talking about it if mon hadnt said that he would use his squad. finally - we arent chelsea or man, i am fully aware, but not doing something doesnt mean we arent able to. cuellar, dunne and collins are all three very capable centre halves and any two of them could do the job - especially at home against just about any team in the lower 14 of the prem. beye is also a very good full back as he proved against liverpool - so we DO have the players to allow us to rotate. not all over the pitch i admit, but for certain areas. delph played against man utd because heskey was injured. you dont change your formation just because you want to rotate the players a bit. delph played because carew is a waste of space, heskey was out injured and it wasnt the game to be chucking the fonz in. rotating a squad is what allows you to use your big players right the way through a season, NOT just have back up for them when they are all sha99ed out come march.

I suggest you take a look at todays team. So you agree we don't have a rotation policy... oh by the way Cuellar is on the bench today as one of a couple of changes. And as I've said we aren't Man Utd or Chelsea and we don't opporate in the same way or have the same depths so don't expect the same approach.

three starts in 25 is hardly a good way to highlight a policy of squad rotation though is it?

Yea, like Delph who's just started against Man Utd after impressing in the cups. surely the exception that proves the rule? how about beye sat on the bench despite not having a right back on the pitch playing at right back? the three fit centre backs we have are all playing every game - instead of picking any two of three and rotating them, keeping them fresh? there is a fine line betweening rotating a squad and fiddling with a winning formula, but delph coming in because carew is horribly out of form and heskey was injured is nothing to do with squad rotation.

What a totally daft comparison, its just totally pointless. so is comparing how we approached fixtures four seasons ago. (look at the comment i was replying to) mon has done a good job, but its not like he has done something on a par with what moyes has acheived at everton . he has taken everton from being in a similar position to where we were and turned them in to a club er, well, just about where we are now actually. on a shoe string. mon has done it with more money than chelsea took to buy a championship winning team. yes they were in a better position to start with, but it is statistically true. 4 years ago we were running scared from the big teams, but 5 years ago we finished 6th in the league, so the original point was also interpreting a statistic to fit an argument. mon has had a lot of money to spend and done well, i'm a fan, i think he's doing a good job - but i dont think he has done unbelievably, amazingly, logic defyingly well either. things could have turned out a hell of a lot worse than they have done, but at the same time it would be totally blind to say "look where we were, look where we are - the man is a genius, he could have done no better, how can anyone say he has done less than a perfect job?"

that is because we had spent ten years steadily declining since last winning anything. a chairman going slightly senile and refusing to invest in the team, capped off by a couple of terrible managerial appointments. at that point we hadnt spent more money than chelsea did in their first premier league winning season under mourinho.

i hate man utd. with a passion. i dream about them going bankrupt. and that is why it really pains me to say it, but they did well tonight. they had to play for an hour with ten men, away from home against a team that they have already lost to this season and yet never once did they look like they were happy to shut up shop and take a draw. i know we did everything possible to make it easy for them but the belief that they had that they could still win the game right until the last minute is something that we never once showed from the minute they equalised.

actually - i dont think that there would have been much negativity if we had just got turned over heavily. we would just shrug our shoulders and say "thats how far off the top we still are" as was the case after the arsenal game. the difference tonight was that two players couldnt make a simple ten yard pass to feet when under no pressure. the unforced errors and basic lack of application was shocking.

I pretty much agreed with this. Don't know where all this "worst performance ever" stuff is coming from. We played a lot worse against Spuds. so we were even worse against spurs makes tonight good??? actually i would say that when you are at home, against ten men, with both of their first choice central defenders out and you dont force their keeper into making a save for an hour qualifies as being pretty poor. they are the champions i know, but that doesnt mean we cant have a go at them. the result is acceptable - no one really is going to argue with that. the list of what was wrong with the performance could go on for volumes though. other than the back four maybe one of you two could point out a single positive to come out of the game regarding any of the other seven outfielders who played tonight - i exclude delph because he did enough to at least be spared a roasting. the fact that collins ran 60 yards then had to stop and cuellar was chasing down their keeper in the 92nd minute was fairly indicative of the rest of the teams performance.

never mind spineless, that was just brainless! i guess most of us would have taken a point before the game started, but just for a change, we look knackered, devoid of ideas and without a player capable of changing the game - and there are three months of the season left to play.

the thing is, on paper a draw wouldnt be a bad result, and neutral observers will look at us moaning and saying that it defies belief - but how could anyone be happy with this????

well at least phil mcnulty on the bbc evens things up a bit its always petrov that gets hit with them because he is always stationary when the tackle comes in and not quick enough to get out of the way. young gets fouled far more than he does but rarely as badly.

cant get my head around us tonight. we started off playing stupid 50 yard cross field passes and losing the ball up until nani got sent off and then we start playing 5 yard little triangles and get nowwhere until we finally isolate a player and end up giving the ball away. downing puts in a couple of good crosses and then plays utterly garbage for the rest of the half. we can win this, but unless they start using their heads a bit then i can see rooney beating us all by himself.

did you know that when you say "salifou" to a frenchman he thinks you are saying "dirty and stupid"? but then again jonny marr means "i'm fed up" and gwyneth paltrow sounds very much like "lesbian talks too much"

i dont see why anyone would hammer him for having an opinion - especially as he has taken the time to give his reasons. some might disagree with it though! i think you are being a bit harsh maybe, but i can entirely understand all of your criticisms. i think that the end of season report is the one that matters. if we finish fourth and win two cups then obviously we could never realistically hope for any more right now. we could also finish seventh and win nothing...