rjshare

Really? and I guess you know more about football than a man who has owned a Premier League football club for more than 3 years and another man who as a player captained his country at the World Cup, won the league and the European Cup before spending 19 years as a manager? Just wondering what keen experienced footballing expert we are dealing with here. Just because a man has owned a club for 3 years doen't make him more knowledgeable than fans. of course it does - look at gold and sullivan - they owned a club for ages and, oh hang on....er, yeah......ahem

Really? and I guess you know more about football than a man who has owned a Premier League football club for more than 3 years and another man who as a player captained his country at the World Cup, won the league and the European Cup before spending 19 years as a manager? Just wondering what keen experienced footballing expert we are dealing with here. oooo you're out of hospital already how did your humour bypass go?

right, here we go - all got our lucky pants on?

no live links, only radio so cant be totally sure - but we won our first corner in the 44th minute...

its a good job for oneil that randy knows fkall about football!!!

are there five players called richardson in the sunderland team? he sounds like the only player who has touched the ball so far!

well, look on the bright side chaps - at least we arent having to watch us play this badly!

dont forget that we are all listening to a north-east radio station so they arent going to be bigging up anything we do.

i know it hardly makes a huge difference to anything, but can anybody think why on earth we have two right backs on the bench? half of our outfield subs are full backs!

do you reckon that was as in "painful to watch"?

well when the likes of ash and milner are knackered come march and we fade in the league only to get overtaken by the likes of fulham or sunderland we may look back think that maybe it was better to rotate the squad a bit rather than burn them out in the league cup.

totally agree with you on that. sunderland have just lost cattermole too which has got to be a good thing for us.

^^^^ not a bad report that and doesnt sound like it was written by someone who has never ventured outside of the m25 for a change. not sure about all of the ratings though as i thought bosingwa played better than a 6 and dunne and collins were better than 7s.

i think we need to bear in mind that as yet gabby has acheived a lot less than say vassell - and look at the direction his career went off in! gabby was only making his proper debut last week for england and despite the fact he is lightning quick he is not the second best striker in the country. he is looking great so far this season and is definately on an upward curve right now but lets not get too carried away. please dont anyone reply to this post as clueless "gabby-bashing" either because it isnt - he is good, but lets keep things in perspective. (one thing i will say though is if walcott had done enough to justify going to the last world cup then gabby has too!)

i think you are probably right on that. we cant have a midfield of solely creative/attacking players. our creativity is focussed on width and that is why i am disappointed with ash's contribution lately. he is putting the effort in but it just isnt really happening for him when attacking. in an ideal world we would have downing available now and the three of them (with milner) could effectively rotate the two wing positions regularly. having one single ball winner in your midfield is a bit suicidal i think, unless your name is ian taylor. at least we know that sidwell can hit them so its not like we pose no threat at all in the middle. i think sidwell is becoming like des bremner for us actually - you only notice his absence when he isnt there. i would persist with yesterdays line up and formation - especially at home because i think it covers all bases as best we can with the players available. we then have the option of bringing nrc in for carew and playing gabby up front on his own when away or holding on to a lead.

finally!

If you read my first post i agreed he isn't playing well. He isn't. You seem to think taking a great corner or free kick is easy thats where we disagree. I personally think Young has the best corner delivery in the English game ATM, and we have scored quite a few goals from them over the years. I think until Downing is fit, he is more than worth his place. I dont get the point in singling out 1 player after beating the team who was top of the table, after Young provided the ball for both goals. you have just agreed with what i said all along - he isnt playing well - i dont see why you are taking such exception to me pointing it out! if you look back through these threads for this season it has been said after just about every game - he hasnt played well - and doesnt seem to be getting any better. my opinion is that an out of form player is sometimes best taken out of the team for a couple of games. now that we have ascertained that we actually have the same basic opinion, do you think we can give it a rest and go and celebrate? Erm no you said he was a liability. Thats different to saying he isn't playing well. He is far from a liability. Infact he is still worth his place in the team and one of our most important players. yeah i did, i think he is, you dont, thats fine. I also think you know very little about football. thats fine too - its all about opinions. i bet ash doesnt go to south africa as a specialist corner taker though.

If you read my first post i agreed he isn't playing well. He isn't. You seem to think taking a great corner or free kick is easy thats where we disagree. I personally think Young has the best corner delivery in the English game ATM, and we have scored quite a few goals from them over the years. I think until Downing is fit, he is more than worth his place. I dont get the point in singling out 1 player after beating the team who was top of the table, after Young provided the ball for both goals. you have just agreed with what i said all along - he isnt playing well - i dont see why you are taking such exception to me pointing it out! if you look back through these threads for this season it has been said after just about every game - he hasnt played well - and doesnt seem to be getting any better. my opinion is that an out of form player is sometimes best taken out of the team for a couple of games. now that we have ascertained that we actually have the same basic opinion, do you think we can give it a rest and go and celebrate? Erm no you said he was a liability. Thats different to saying he isn't playing well. He is far from a liability. Infact he is still worth his place in the team and one of our most important players. yeah i did, i think he is, you dont, thats fine.

If you read my first post i agreed he isn't playing well. He isn't. You seem to think taking a great corner or free kick is easy thats where we disagree. I personally think Young has the best corner delivery in the English game ATM, and we have scored quite a few goals from them over the years. I think until Downing is fit, he is more than worth his place. I dont get the point in singling out 1 player after beating the team who was top of the table, after Young provided the ball for both goals. you have just agreed with what i said all along - he isnt playing well - i dont see why you are taking such exception to me pointing it out! if you look back through these threads for this season it has been said after just about every game - he hasnt played well - and doesnt seem to be getting any better. my opinion is that an out of form player is sometimes best taken out of the team for a couple of games. now that we have ascertained that we actually have the same basic opinion, do you think we can give it a rest and go and celebrate?

fine - if you think ash is playing well because he took two (well one actually - the second was only good because it was flicked on by a defender) good corners then i'm happy to leave it at that.

albrighton, warnock in mid with shorey at lb, gardner, nrc, hell even salifou - doesnt matter, according to you he only needs to take a good corner to warrant selection anyway. slams door on way out to pub...

you are absolutely right. someobody who can take a good corner is always going to merit his place in the side... actually our most potent weapon is gabby - he is fast, strong, scares opposition and has scored five goals already this season. ash is contributing very little at the moment (despite his gold plated gift wrapped corners of course) and it is painful to watch. it is not through a lack of effort - that is obvious to anyone who watches him. i'm not the only one saying it, and he has very quickly slid off the england radar at the moment too - i personally think that a couple of games out would do him good - you are welcome to disagree but playing him every week seems to me to be the footballing equivalent of flogging a lame horse. So you dont think that Ash's right boot being involved in 8 out of the 12 goals this season as our most potent weapon, because he's not playing well? Jesus open your eyes will ya. ha ha - open yours - he is only posing a threat from corners, thats IT! we are only scoring goals from corners full stop - and that is because there is fk all service coming in to the forwards from open play - and it is ashs job to provide that service. if we just need someone to swing corners in all game so the centre halves can score all of our goals we may as well bring back sid - get milner to push him around the pitch all game in a wheelchair until we need someone to hit a dead ball! lets drop it eh? you dont see it the same way that i do - or fabio capello for that matter. have a good night out and lets enjoy the win...

Agreed, though I thought he went down a little easily in that touchline incident. it will be interesting to see what the daily mail say about it...

you are absolutely right. someobody who can take a good corner is always going to merit his place in the side... actually our most potent weapon is gabby - he is fast, strong, scares opposition and has scored five goals already this season. ash is contributing very little at the moment (despite his gold plated gift wrapped corners of course) and it is painful to watch. it is not through a lack of effort - that is obvious to anyone who watches him. i'm not the only one saying it, and he has very quickly slid off the england radar at the moment too - i personally think that a couple of games out would do him good - you are welcome to disagree but playing him every week seems to me to be the footballing equivalent of flogging a lame horse.

That liability got 2 assists tracked back and worked really hard. Im becoming a little tetchy with the growing Ash bashing, yes he is hardly on form, but he is still a very important player to the team, and is getting assists when not playing his best. Comes from people who don't really understand football (or life for that matter), and in a society which has grown to enjoy nothing more than putting the boot in at every opportunity, and for whom the evidence of the past is just an inconvenience best ignored when it comes to forming an opinion. If you believe the media at the moment Rio Ferdinand is suddenly a sh#t player, as opposed to a world class footballer who has just had a couple of poor games. I suspect with Ash it's a case of him not being quite as good as he was built up to be (i.e. not "world class"), and hitting a spell of low confidence - as long as he ignores the knee jerk bashing he'll be back on form sooner rather than later you want a hand to get off that horse or can you manage?