Whitey Grandad

Brilliant game, but it all went wrong after Murty went off. James was actually quite good in midfield but back to his old self at fullback. Atrocious refereeing. You couldn't tell which was the premiership team. We were mugged.

I hate the multiball system. It would be interesting to see a correlation between when we play multiball and when we win games. I was watching closely last season and our first win came when the ref stopped it during the match and the second was against Birmingham when the competition didn't allow it. Apart from these, we didn't win much. Does anybody know about the away games?

Agreed. He was slow getting back for most of the game and had no physical presence.

It's quite simple really. The high turnover of managers led to a bloated playing squad with quantity instead of quality which drained the finances out of our operations. Couple that with a megalomaniacal micro-manager and you have a guaranteed recipe for disaster.

Take one new player every two days and if it's not better in 9 months, come back and see me.

His missus?

Let's not panic yet, let's panic later. Halfway through next season perhaps.

That's what I suspected but I wasn't there. At one time when they had a corner he was trying to mark two players on his own. I used to play full-back and you tend to notice this sort of thing.

From watching that we seemed to be wide open around our left-back position.

I don't care how much profit the club makes. All that matters to me are performances and results on the pitch.

There's a few of them playing for us at the moment.

Even stating the truth can get you into trouble if you present it the wrong way.

It's the manager's job to tell the players how to play, not the other way around. The next thing you know, he'd be telling Alan who to pick and it might be for all sorts of reasons, none of them to do with football.

In which case things should have improved after half-time

I'm prepared to wait until it's Pardew's team and not last year's failures.

Maybe he is trying to prove a point to the owners that the present squad is not good enough? He gives them a few games to show what they're worth and then replaces them wholesale. Or am I clutching at straw thingies?

A French one? Sorry, it's been one of those days and I've had an attack of flippancy.

Because he's 59 years old and retired from playing in 1986?

We need a proper midfield. Anyone who thought that last season's engine room could have been tuned up and provide a service in League one was very deluded. All four need replacing urgently. Oh well, one down, 3 to go and 12 days to get them.

When was Ostlund signed? And Hajto?

It's taken years to get into this mess. It's not going to be turned round in a couple of weeks, and certainly not with some of the players that have been party to the mess. When does the transfer window close?

Got mine this morning. £3 for a concession, brilliant value!

It seems like a reasonable strategy to me. Buy up the best players in the division in every position. Then we'll have the best team and all the others will have lost a vital player.

Take away their boots, Toots.

hcdajft