granville

Yeah Zatman's right, he's shit like Zidane.

Favouring MMA over boxing is like favouring the decathlon over the 100 metres or gaelic football over football.

No not at all. The decathlon clearly separates all of the disciplines and tries to take an average of all of the performances to decide a winner, MMA combines all of the disciplines in order to provide as many possible ways to dominate.

Favouring MMA over boxing is like favouring a football match over a penalty shoot out, or a full English over a dippy egg, or a track race over a drag race, or a real fight over a standing only, punching only figh... You get the idea.

Why do you not prefer kickboxing or muay thai over boxing? I personally **** love BJJ but I understand some people don't understand it or are uncomfortable with their sexuality or whatever but I can't fathom a single reason why boxing would be considered better than KB or MT.

PS - I don't know where to start with the Gaelic football one tbh.

Have they signed him then or what? I think he's **** excellent.

Why tell people you won't be around for 2 days? Seems a little unnecessary dontcha think

Done it before Bri, last week infact i think it was.

It stops people who are unhappy with something loading their hate guns with ammunition in the form of claims that the General is ducking questions/criticism.

You know what, I think we pretty much agree, we were just arguing against opposite sets of extremists.

I agree that he could have made a difference to us positively in how we set up in some games where we were going to be overrun, just like how I think Cuellar should play RB against Stoke, Bolton and all the big (physically) sides. The one bone of contention I have now is about Ireland not being good enough defensively. I don't how good "enough" will need to be this season but he covers a lot of ground and puts in a lot of tackles.

A central 3 would be ideal but I'm not going to wet my knickers if I see Ireland in a two.

I agree he has improved, I agree he plays it simple now much more than he used to but IMO he still has a way to go and those forward bursts are no use at all as far as I'm concerned. The main thing that gets on my tits is reading comments like "we would of won that game if NRC played".

Nothing he has ever done suggests to me that he turns draws into wins. He stop draws from becoming losses on occasion but IMO no three points have ever been snatched through Coker's efforts.

It'll always be Reo-Coker 3 times, that's how it seems to work.

I know what you're saying, some players are flavour of the month and some get unfair criticism. Downing can put a cross in that's headed behind for a corner and he's a prick for not picking out a man, then Marc does the same thing and he's a corner winning hero. I get that. The thing is though that NRC's lack of on the ball ability (IMO at least) badly effects our forward momentum.

For example one of his passes might still go to our team but it will be behind them or too late, costing vital seconds in a counter or vital yards on a run.

One bad pass 'he constantly gives it away'....one bad touch 'his touch constantly let's him down'....etc..etc..he might not look good controlling or passing and might look very akward but he doesn't give it away anything close to as much as people make out.

Again, I sort of agree but he costs us fluidity of play without making easily definable errors.

Like I said I don't mind him playing but I'd much rather he stayed in our half and limited his touches and time on the ball.

Do you honestly think Reo-Coker is not the worst passer, dribbler and shooter in our team on Sunday?

But he doesn't give it away

He's completed 142/160 passes from this year and last year in his starting games. Of course though, that is every time.

I don't know where you got that figure from but I suspect it's wrong. Also passing isn't how NRC usually gives the ball away, miscontrolling the ball so badly someone else gets it and running forward until he has nowhere to go are numbers 1 and 2 on his list.

What about this? Milner off, Coco on and in 14 minutes we went from beating Man Utd away to losing.

We were also drawing with Blues before he went off.

To be fair I don't mind him playing but he provides nothing going forward and is generally poor on the ball. There is a place for him in our side IF he only plays to his strengths, but the fact he becomes some kind of midfield master/game winning messiah when he's benched gets on my tits.

For me, it's just lies because he looks uncomfortable on the ball. In the Everton game, I can't remember him being caught on the ball apart from once down the left, in fact a few times the ball didn't seem there to be won and he got his body in there and showed good touches to get away from his men.

I can't believe I'm even debating this. He doesn't show good touches to get away from people, he stabs at the ball and if it goes into space then he is fast enough to run away.

He constantly runs into dead ends with the ball, fails to make very simple but important forward passes and turns the wrong way because of lack of control.

IF (note: that is a **** BIG if) he was able to use his agility, balance, power, speed and energy to break up play and give the ball a short distance to someone who isn't club footed WITHOUT going on the multiple headless chicken runs and trying stuff he can't do (the fabled Makelele role) then I'd be a big fan.

But that just doesn't seem to happen. He has never provided anything close to an assist IIRC and his shooting is worse than his passing. Are you telling me he wasn't comfortably the worst passer, shooter and dribbler of the ball in the team on Sunday?

Stoke have resigned Salif Diao.

He is so **** shit.

I'd say his footballing brain is average, he knows what he's doing on the pitch, like Agbonlahor, Agbonlahor is vital to us but isn't the greatest player when it comes down to skill, football brain etc....

One good thing about NRC is that he makes me really appreciate just how skilful gabby is. Sometimes with Milner, Downing, Young and Petrov sliding balls all over the place Gabby looked a bit wooden and unnatural on the ball. However, with Nige about you can see that his first touch dribbling and even passing is actually quite a high standard.

Somebody needs to introduce Coker to keepy ups, just so he can begin to understand how to control the ball like a professional.

He has a very poor first touch, reasonably poor second through to last touches, clunky dribbling, terrible decision making, shite passing, next to no creative ability but he covers a lot of ground, provides a good physical presence, is disciplined positionally and well drilled in pressuring the opposition.

He's pretty much a midfield Heskey.

I can't say I'd be distraught if he didn't play very often tbh.

Calling it 'gay shit', misses the point completely and displays fanboy-ism.

This is essentially what it boils down to.

It's sort of a shame because it creates a "Us vs Them" mentality from some 'boxing only' fans against MMA, which is ironic because that's what MMA was created as; an arena where techniques from all professionally contested combat disciplines are allowed in order to allow practitioners to compete against each other.

I can appreciate that some people prefer standing fights but it puzzles me that they can in no way appreciate that a world class boxer can be so easily dominated in a fight, whatever techniques are used.

Another thing is that I can't really see how boxing can be someone's outright favourite sport. What is so detestable about kicking (or kneeing and elbowing) that stops them from favouring kickboxing (or muay thai)?

Haye is a massive MMA fan though. His dad was a Karate instructor and he reckons he does a fair bit of grappling. He's also repeatedly talked about entering MMA in his early 30s. I'd more than welcome the Klits to try their hands at it as well though, maybe a fight with Overeem or Badr Hari?

Has anybody mentioned Big Phil Scolari yet? Where he these days?

Selling hamburgers on the costa del sol

He's actually living the good life back in Brazil managing Palmeiras after him and Rivaldo mugged some clueless Uzbeki team for tens of millions.

Stuart Pearce.

With Pearce as Manager and MacDonald as his assistant I think we'd thrive come to think of it. No giving up like we saw yesterday and the first team still benefit from Mac's excellent coaching.

Everyone's a winner. That's a great shout IMO.

Very passionate post General, thank you very much for your efforts.

Some (hopefully most) of us are extremely grateful.

Sorry, £2.5m

That's more like it. To put that in perspective that equates to less than 30k per game so far.

Given has cost at least 98k per game (possibly 133k depending on if the 2m add on has been paid).

If we can cash in on Friedel now we might aswell, he's not getting any older, he's 39, and he's not exactly world class. A couple of million to Fulham should do it. We should put a bid in for Given or a young keeper who is decent because Guzan is nowhere near PL standard.

I might be wrong, but didn't Friedel cost us around £500k? If so, then I really doubt we could get more than that if we sold him on.

£3.5m

No

4-0 to us is my prediction. They are going to be gunning for it considering its their first home league game and we relegated them and they are just the kind of pace lacking team that will be ripe for counter attacking rapeage IMO. Albrighton, Ireland and Young all to score and assist.

I'm happy with that team. I think we'll nick 2.

No, accusing Wenger of child molestation and hoping that Campbell has HIV isn't banter.

He is an easy man to like. KM speaks

He seems more confident and it looks like he's enjoying it more than a few days ago.

Although I did notice when asked whether he wanted the job permenantly he replied that he was enjoying working with the players and other coaching staff, which suggests to me their are certain aspects he is does not like... probably the media/ being in the public eye side of things.

Yeah I agree but he seemed to be enjoying much more this time. Besides, he could just do a Sir Alex and send his assistant to do it.

I agree. Just pulling your plonker (so to speak...).