hughieslastminutegoal

Nothing Lowe would like more than to still be talked about. He's a nobody now. Forget him.

Ha Ha - That was my point - I think you missed what the post I was responding to actually said!

Hence the need to be able to keep clean sheets

Yes, shouldn't we be flattered rather than slating Brighton?

Sorry but I think that could be very bad for us. We ship goals EVERY game. With that record, do you really want to come up agains a big boy? No, keep a run going with minnows as long as possible. After all that's basically what happened in 1976!

As a (long) retired defender, I like to see good defending as well as good attacking - and I'd rather see the former from my own team rather than from the opposition! So I'd like to start to see us keeping some clean sheets - and with the goal scorers we have we just might make the playoffs.... where we just might win through.... ...or am I moaning and being too negative?

Actually its not marked "shift" at all on most modern keyboards but by an "upwards outline arrow". You are probably thinking about that brand new 1905 Imperial typewriter on which you learned. I bet it wasn't querty then, either!

Yeah. 4 stars is not bad. You are scoring him out of 5, yes?

Well several fans seem to think it's pretty much done. If all you were doing is posting results, why bother? We already know them. You post them with a purpose, which seems to me to be aimed at trying to deter people from discusing what we need to do to improve, which you seem to think is negative. Oh, and I bet you've never said anything in the past about players possibly reading the forum.......

I think everyone is delighted with good wins, but complacency stops improvement. There are defensive issues and if a slow back 4 is inadequately protected by midfield, we become overly reliant on the strikers doing the business. When we play 424 there is a lack of pace in midfield as well as in defence, and that is something that needs improving. I bet when Woodward was here you were one of those who went on and on about him being able to bring "lots of 1% improvements in lots of areas " which was going to make such a difference. But when people point out that there are some areas of major significance that need addressing you (and 19C even more so) just roll out yet more complacency. I'm not trying to resurrect an SCW debate, just pointing out the inconsistency. Many fans are would-be managers and are always looking for areas where improvement can be made. Wouldn't you rather Pardew do that than just sit back and read your stats in self-congratulation?

Maybe they can't see him ever being injury free for long.

Trying to keep clean sheets is a damn good start though, ain't it. Yep we have been scoring well. So your good idea is to ignore what is now the obvious problem.

Nothing to do with wrist slitting, just a bit of realism. Are you saying you are happy with the no. of goals we concede every game? We clearly have a problem shutting sides out - no matter what standard they are. You have heard the expression "if you fail to plan you are planning to fail"?

I think I agree with you. Hope you don't mind the insertion of slow

It isn't 451 or 424 that is the real issue, it's a defence that cannot keep a clean sheet and has no pace. And when playing 424 theres not a lot of pace in midfield either. Brighton's pace from midfield and speed on the turn up front was a lesson and at times they looked much better than L1. Our slugggishness maybe made them look a bit better than they are though. Get some extra pace into central midfield, and certainly into the back 4 and move on from there. Maybe then it won't matter so much whether it's 424 or 451 or any other hyphenated bunch of digits.

I really don't understand why so many on here disagree with you. You obviously only demand that others should live up to your own absolutely perfect, spring water pure standards. Jeepers, you must be an enormously priggish pain in the butt to live with.

But that is the exact opposite of what advocates of 424 have all been saying on here - that for some reason when we have 451 we don't pass it but lump it to Lambert up there on his own, and we only start passing when we've reverted to 424. That's before the Brighton game - but then people always seem to be able to change their opinion radically according to the result of the last game. In my view our main problem still is we have slow defenders and Brighton were quick and snappy, and exploited it to the full. KD said in the Echo that we "reverted to old failings" - how can that be when 3 out of 4 of the back line are new players? The problem is mainly lack of pace and irrespective of personnel that has been the problem for goodness knows how long. Even Harding was shown up for pace for one of Brighton's goals, accentuated by his failure to anticipate the ball played inside him.

Just being bad is bad enough, but being half decent and just not caring AT ALL makes Ripley the absolute worst in my book. Didn't want to be here, couldn't be bothered to play, wanted the money. Worse than a benefits cheat IMO.

Yep he is much better when there are others to do half his work for him. He's a P O S E R.

People say scrapping the offside rule just encourages goal-hanging. Watching Italian football in particular, when is anyone ever offside anyway? Defenders play very deep much of the time, offside isn't really part of the thinking. So I doubt scrapping the rule would really make as much difference these days as people might expect. So maybe scrap it but have something like ice hockey where if the puck comes back out over the blue line, forwards must come out of that zone. If say a similar rule was applied to the penalty area, i.e. if the ball comes out of the area all attackers must come out as well, and once out you can't be offside, that might be interesting. What would the defenders do? They'd mostly have to follow them out to mark up, but are at risk of quick balls being played in just behind them. So not quite the same as just having an 18 yard offside line. The edge of the box could become quite exiting, as long as it doesn't become as ridiculous as that awful game Handball!

I always felt our best football in that era co-incided with his tenure as assistant manager, and I thought we suffered somewhat when he first went off to Greece.

Yes good cause for speculation. The question is "was what Fry did worth an award?" Obviously he did "a job", but a great job? Not for me. And not for you either if you think your speculation is close to the mark. Fry had his banker, as you put it, perservered for too long with his attempt to get more from a shambles of a "consortium", then went with the banker who (according to Cortese) wasn't overly impressed with Fry's efforts. Little more than a bog standard job really, though stressful for being so public, admittedly. I think it was working in the public eye that swung the award for him, not the quality of the job done for the creditors (who's options were what exactly? Aviva get left with an unlettable stadium?) But do I really care that he won an award? No. Does the industry giving out awards to itelf interest me? A bit.

Sehr gut! I like this one - if the bloke in the middle of the circle runs backwards towards the opponents' goal, dragging the ball with the underside of his boot to keep it in front of him, he can't be held to be playing the ball forward, so you don't have to hold the umlaut pair hostage. He should be able to reverse all the way into the opponents' goal. However the players in the forward part of the circle must be careful not to cross the goal line otherwise the ref may disallow it for players leaving the field of play without permission.

Technically it's 2, because the goalkeeper may not always be on his goal line. But that apart, I'm with you. And forget this "not interfering with play" crap. As a defender how the hell are you supposed to try and second-guess the ref's opinion on whether that wide winger is interfering or not when you step up to play the central striker offside? It makes marshalling a defence these days ridiculous guess-work.

Yes, I actually go along with much of what he says, especially the bit "When Pinnacle collapsed, it actually put ML/Cortese in a better position as the only bid in town and would probably have helped them negotiate a better price. " So if we go along with FC, the ML/Cortese bid was on the table at probably 12m. Fry tries to do better for the creditors (as he is obliged to do), so dips into Crouch's pocket to keep going while he tries to squeeze out that bit extra, and it very nearly goes t*ts up, because he gave credence to people who he's said himself lacked credibility. Therefore he may very nearly have lost the only bid that did have credibility. But as FC says, ML/Cortese continued to wait in the background for their bid to be left as the only one in town. So if Fry knew they were still around, and had indeed recognised early on that Pinnacle lacked credibility, Fry and Fry alone dragged the process on, thereby requiring additional monies to keep the club going until he could finally conclude the deal with ML/Cortese, who in the circumstances were unlikely to improve their offer (in fact FC suggests they may even have reduced their offer!). As ultimately he failed to get what his prevarication intended, and then he(presumably) accepted what had already been offered (or less), I can't see how that actually warrants an award. But I can see that getting shot of Lowe straight away merits applause.