Ne Moe Imya

They were quality in the second half. Pacheco's goal (and he claims he meant it) in particular was very good. Just like what he tried for the first team the other week, only it went in instead of coming back off the bar. Morgan predatory as always. Ngoo should have scored at least one. Can't think of much else that stood out. Oh, Wilson I don't think is going to get to the level to play for our first team. Just looks terrified any time an attacker runs at him. Granted, he's 20, so that may sound harsh, but at the very least he has a LOT of developing to do.

Where is this from? There were rumours (admittedly, on twitter) that we were offering him a 6 (!) year deal a week or so ago.

Just for the sake of argument, what if we make two assumptions? 1. Jenkins is telling the truth about not having a mole. He was able to make some lucky guesses and use tidbits from journos here and there to make correct predictions about who we were going to sign. 2. Chang is telling the truth about the Borini tweet costing us money. It may have been a lucky guess from Jenkins, but with the amount of interest in his twitter account and the timing of his tweet that we were signing him, Roma assumed that someone from the club had leaked the information and thus charged us more for him. If those two are true, who is right/wrong in this situation and to what extent? I think if those two things are both true then it puts a bit of a different light on everything. You can certainly understand Chang's frustration and assumption that Jenkins must have a source, as he was releasing things so accurate and timed so perfectly that it was costing the club money in transfers. You can also see why Jenkins would be so dumbfounded when Chang came after him so harshly. If you want my guess, which you probably don't care much about, I think that Jenkins is exaggerating (unintentionally, perhaps) the degree to which he was threatened, but that it actually did happen. However, I can't see Chang being sacked for abusing his powers a bit in threatening action against the season ticket, since he was probably acting under pressure from Ayre/FSG to plug the leak and save the club from future heightened transfer fees. Remember, he probably assumed that Jenkins actually was getting inside info from someone at the club. He is especially unlikely to be sacked with no evidence to back up Jenkins' story other than a few emails that don't spell out any threats.

Half the price and twice as good. Mind you, twice as good as Downing isn't saying much.

I just read the whole article that's from. The really surprising thing to me was just how much higher the teams near the bottom of that list price their tickets when Real/Barca are in town. I think it was Gijon who were charging 90 euros for the cheapest ticket against Barca. Ridiculous. Oh, and I can't forget to mention the "season tickets" that three clubs offer that excludes Barca/Real/derby games. You have to pay full (hugely inflated) prices for those tickets if you want them, separate to your season ticket.

Seriously? You think we paid 18 million for Aquilani and then on top of that paid him 145k/week as a salary? It was a bad deal, there's no need to try to (wildly) exaggerate it's terribleness. If you honestly believe that then it's quite clear which of you actually has the agenda.

Keane is actually a good shout. If we hadn't gotten 12 million for him, that would have looked a lot worse than it did. You can say what you like about Rafa, but when he made a mistake he didn't waste a lot of time in dealing with it (excepting perhaps Aquilani, but he didn't really have a lot of time to fix that one). If we had just admitted our mistake and put Andy Carroll up for sale that first summer after we bought him we might just have gotten lucky and gotten 20 million for him from Spurs or someone.

That bit in bold basically sums up this whole situation.

That's pretty much my view on it as well. Take away the tribal stuff on the sleeves and make the orange band around the collar and the orangey-yellow sponsor the same colour (why they didn't do that I'll never know!) and it would actually be, at worst, an average kit. Even as it is, it's nowhere near as bad as the pink Everton kit or the camouflauge thing their goalie wore last year, or some of the other monstrosities throughout the years. Edit: I just realised that you're looking for something sensational about how disgusting it is from a Liverpool fan to put in print. I'm sure if you look through the thread davelfc linked or the RAWK kit thread you'd find some idiot that would give you the inflammatory quote you need.

The only reason Diouf has had the chance to get anywhere near third is the fact that Stewart Downing isn't in the poll for some reason. Diouf was terrible, but we are going to end up taking twice as big a loss on Downing, at least.

It would be completely subjective, which is a big problem, but I would like to see some sort of "contribution to goal" metric. Even if you could never use it as an official stat, a club could use it privately to give them a better sense of where the goals are actually coming from. Similar to the "key contribution," but with a specific percentage of credit for each player. So, for Maradona dribbling from the halfway line, he gets 100% credit. For Kuyt's goal after Suarez' mazy dribble against the Mancs, Suarez gets 80%, Kuyt gets 15% for being in the right place, and whoever kept possession to get it to Suarez gets 5%. Kaka to Crespo for 3-0 in the CL final is 65% Kaka for the pass, 35% Crespo for the finish. Et cetera. Obviously you'd have to have some sort of system to minimise the subjectivity, but it could be quite informative. You'd also probably have to limit it to no more than 4 or 5 passes before the goal, or else you'd have an impossible task trying to work everything out. And, like any stat, of course it would only be useful if applied together with other stats like winning possession and passes completed and the like, but I do think it could be a useful thing to look at if done properly.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure there's something well off in the BBC possession statistics. If it were just one game you could probably just think to yourself "Well, I guess we didn't have it as much as I thought" but they've consistently been way, way off. Opta is clearly more accurate.

Twitter (I know, not that much better than givemefootball) is abuzz that it will be a 6 year deal, which is great to hear. I'm not much on deals above 4 years for players who are older than 26/27, but for younger players it really protects us from losing them for that much longer. Would be very disappointing if it were a 3 or 4 year deal and then we're selling him to Madrid at age 21 anyway at a cut-rate price because he only had a year left on the deal (like what happened to Dortmund with Sahin). Much better to get him locked down for a longer period, even if it means we pay him a bit more in the meantime.

It's Carroll, and it isn't close. In 20 years people will still be talking about that transfer as one of the worst in football history. Second place is actually quite close for me between Downing and Aquilani. I think Alberto takes it, but I'm factoring in my hope that some desperate club with deep pockets (QPR?) will give us 8 or 10 million for Downing in January, which would go a long way towards ameliorating the disaster he's been. On a side note, I find it extremely depressing that for a club with our extensive history, at least 5 out of our 10 worst signings ever have come in the last 5 years.

32. Never got to see Pele but grew up in South America so the auld arses were always telling me about how brilliant he was. Guess I have to take their word for it.

I was just having a conversation the other day with someone about how unfortunate CRonaldo is to be playing in the same era as Messi. In my opinion, Messi is going to end his career as the greatest footballer who ever lived. Certainly up there in that elite group that up until now has had only Pele and Maradona. Those three stand head and shoulders above everyone else, for me. CRonaldo doesn't get as much credit in the overall scheme of football greats, because we're constantly putting him up against Messi and seeing him fall short. However, the fact remains that he continues to demonstrate consistently that he is indeed in that next group, the one that includes Cruyff, Zidane, Brazilian Ronaldo, Beckenbauer, etc., and that is really an incredible level to be at. For me I would say that Brazilian Ronaldo, at his peak, was a superior player to CRonaldo, but CRonaldo hasn't been as blighted by injury and, by the end of his career, will probably go ahead of him on my personal list. I would guess, by the end of Messi's and CRonaldo's careers, that my list will look like this: 1. Messi 2. Pele 3. Maradona 4. Zidane 5. CRonaldo 6. Cruyff 7. Brazilian Ronaldo

If Suso and Sterling develop as we all hope that they will, not to mention Shelvey, then where does Eriksen play? I admit that the two times I've seen him play he was absolutely brilliant, but it's just such a crowded area in our squad right now, the position of attacking midfielder/wide forward, especially when it comes to young players, that I wouldn't make it a priority. Much rather see Fischer if we're going to spend 20 million plus on a young Ajax attacker; between Yesil, Fischer, and Hodzic we'd have three of the best centre forwards in the game under 21, and surely one of them will turn out to be the finisher we've been crying out for for so long.

Shelvey was a shoein at halftime, but wasn't nearly the force he had been in the second half, so I'll go: Coates Shelvey Suarez Really wanted to include Robinson, and Reina probably deserves to be on the list as well, but this is what I ended up with.

I know no one agrees with me but I think the scuba suit looks absolutely brilliant in the yellow and black that Pepe gets to wear. It's only bad in the black/grey for the outfield players. Edit: this one

Don't really care where we are in terms of league table position. I only care how far behind the top 4 we are. If we're within 6-8 points of fourth at that time, I'll be happy. If we're 8-12 points behind, I'll be a bit worried but as long as our play continues to improve I suppose I won't be completely paranoid about our future. If it's more than 12 points to fourth by the 1st of January, I really will be starting to worry that we might be in real long-term trouble.

Assaidi just nicks MoM from Sahin. Behind those two I'd put ... Coates. Though it's surprising how close Suso got to the top 3 in just 9 minutes on the pitch.

I think only Ron Offerman can truly answer the question this thread is asking: Warning! The following content is NOT WORK SAFE. Click the Show button to reveal.

You're technically right, it doesn't matter as to whether it is or isn't a penalty. However, it makes a huge difference to whether it's perceived to be a penalty or not, and since the referee is basing his decision on his perception, it does in fact matter. The fact is that no referee wants to find out later on that he was conned by a dive, so if the player is overacting (especially one with Suarez' reputation) the ref is less likely to give it.

Didn't get to see the game (don't ask), so I have a question or two. From the sound of things, there were a number of 50-50 decisions for the referee: - Jonjo/Evans tackle: red or yellow, if so for which player - Evans tackle on Agger in the box: pen or no pen - Evra tackle (on Sterling): red, yellow, or foul, was it in the box - Scholes tackle in the box(also on Sterling): pen or no pen, if so red or yellow - Evans tackle on Suarez in box: pen or no pen - Johnson tackle on Valencia in box: pen or no pen - van Persie tackle on Suso: red or yellow Is that accurate? And, if it is, from the looks of it, every one of those was given United's way. That's rather hard to swallow, even for someone likes me who thinks blaming the referee is usually a loser's excuse.

I have said on several occasions that my worst fear about the club is that we'll get so bad that I'll actually want a gazillionaire owner.