Mornin’.
Positives have to include Crouch’s game efforts to cleanse himself of the Real Madyid fiasco, Modders scored, Dances With Scones was back to an extent and it emerged that Super Romancrazypavinchenko is quite good at playing football.
Negatives to be factored in would be quite simply if we are unable to hold a two goal lead againist Stoke City, then perhaps the task against Joso Mourinho’s boys ought to be undertaken in Bernie Clifton ostritches and at least we could say we were doing it for charity.
We’ve now scored I think about half a dozen goals less than Citeh, which even to twitching wannabe tax exile says we have not so much a scoring problem – although Defoe should be swapped for someone with more to their game than ‘under me right foot and piiiing!’ – but a defensive one.
Citeh are quite frugal with how many they score, but this is compensated by the fact they conceed very few. We do not.
The Woodgate and King thing needs to be addressed once and for all and before a ball is kicked next season and without fail. Sod the ‘Long Live The King’ brigade. He’s finished. Lots of love, respect, kudos and lingering hugs, fit some platinum castors on him and send him out to stud and graze in the Essex nightclub scene. Woody should be given a VW Campervan, The Hair Bair Bunch Collection on DVD, a suitcase full of money and a map of the world.
Word today is that HisNameIsRioAndHe’sAlwaysInTheStands was approached. Wonderfully ambitious. Who next, Frankie Lampard? Let’s stop fannying about and shore up Kaboul and Dawson and get on with it. There are lots of top notch defenders out there. And much easier business than trying to land a striker.
That is all.
King is done and has been for about a year now our problem is we are far too sentimental for our own good tighten up the ship send him off to the training academy and be done with it woody is done too so it should be 2 out 2 in this summer! If he has arthritic changes in his knee there is only a few alternatives and one isn’t continuing to play top flight football unfortunately. Jenas’ days are numbered Bentley is a gonner 2 saints is offski and kenae lost it a long time ago following the birth of his 1st kid. Trim the dead wood and set sail for greatness again. As some prophet once said ” No one is bigger than the club”
You had to ruin it for me with this post HH. I was on cloud nine after yesterdays reunion of Modders and Thudd and our great performance.
If Dawson and Kaboul are our future, than our future does not include any cup or league success.
The defending performance yesterday was shameful. Especially by Dawson. Kaboul was not far behind.
I was hoping with the England experience that Dawson was going to turn a corner, and it certainly appeared as if he had given the performances against Milan, but we now have too much evidence from performances sandwiched around those, that Dawson is not a PL level defender.
The defending by Daws on the first goal yesterday was as bad as I have seen all season in the PL by any defender (only second to his performance against Fulham).
Dawson was ball watching, ten yards behind his other defenders and then when a weak header came his way he froze. He let Etherington get on the ball, unchallenged. Then he proceeded to open up his body, and worst of all, he did it with his back to the touchline, giving Etherington a free path to goal. Had he made the mistake of opening up the other direction, Etherington would have had to go wide, and Thudd would have been able to make up the ground and take him out.
The second goal saw Dawson again at his ball watching worst. When Bale made the bad turnover, it looked like he was saved because Dawson was standing back in his own box. Unfortunately, Dawson never moved. There was no other threat, except Kenwyne on the ball, yet Dawson just sat there and watched him march all the way down the pitch and launch his shot from just outside the box.
If Gallas or King were on the pitch, they would have covered for Dawson when he was sliced apart on the first goal. Without a world class defender next to him, Dawson is exposed time and time again.
We all now that King and Woody are toast. We have to go out and add one or two world class defenders if we want to seriously compete at the highest level.
cock
ru goon?
thudd make up ground you killing me stop it hurts when i laugh so hard
cmon yu bindipper poo
Actually Hary we are 15 goals adrift of Citeh which means we need to beat them by at least 7 1/2 – 0!
Looking at the full table is interesting in that it shows one thing very clearly. The current top 4 have a goal difference of 38, 32, 30 and 23 respectively: the next highest is us on just 8 and the bin dippers A & B on 4 a piece. There is a distinct demarcation between 4th Place and 5th place on goal difference and frankly gven the figures we have done well to get as many points as we have with such combined scoring and defending limitations.
Just look at the table at this point in the season and you can see the figures don’t lie: we are not top 4 we are the best of the rest.
“we are not top 4 we are the best of the rest.”
I would agree with that if we had played at our best, but we haven’t. We are top four material, but our players, who frequently fail to turn up, + a combination of dire managerial ‘tactics’ and team selections eg not giving Pav a run of games, has put us where we are.
If I thought we were genuinely not capable of top four I would say so and agree we are best of the rest, but if we fail to make CL next season it will be because we have thrown it away.
We did better last year courtesy of an +8 boost from Wigan but we have simply conceded to many and scored too few and as I said the league table seldom tells lies. I think on points we are batting above our average.
The point of raising this is that we need to improve and keep moving forward and the two stats For & Against pretty much shape the requirements we have to meet to do that.
That’s kind of what I’ve been arguing for a while. Our points total flatters us hugely. Yes, every team goes through bad runs but may pick up points. But we’ve been at it all season. Our GD betrays the mid-table quality of our league campaign, which has been garnished with a lot of luck and late winners.
The result of the Stoke game, which many of us greeted with some relief, was in reality another indication of that. Would we, if we were once again a solid mid-table team, be expecting to beat Stoke at home? Yes, we would. Maybe not convincingly, but we would. By the odd one or two goals. And…that’s what transpired. A top four club, however, would probably expect to tank a handful of teams in the lower reaches at home. Maybe not 9-1, but 2, 3 or 4-0. Not every lower team, but some. We’ve squeaked past every single one (where we have beaten them, and not lost or endured dull nil nils).
The GD is testament to this fact, and utterly gives the lie to Harry’s increasingly boorish mantra that we’ve had a fantastic season. We haven’t. We always were a cup team – but last season suggested we could be something more. I’m still waiting for proof that it wasn’t a fluke.
On Tuesday night we played for practically a whole game against arguably the second best team in Europe with only ten men.
On Saturday, much the same team turned out to face Stoke.
All things considered, simply winning on Saturday was an achievement in itself. To have played at the level we did play for the first half hour or so was nothing short of magnificent.
spot on. luckily the WHL crowd are a whole lot more positive than some on this blog. It was inevitable we would tire in the second half after Madrid. The win was everything. If Bale had not picked up that back injury we would probably be around 6 points better off which challenges for third spot.
Incidentally, City are getting tonked and Tevez may have done his hamstring.
Game on.
got it wrong jen arse was out there marking the ref only 9 men
I reckon a City win tonight will decide 5th and 6th place. We’d have too much to do to make 4th and the dippers would be too far behind us.