londonsaint1604

If we don't win 2 or 3 of those league games (forest, doncaster, barnsley are most likely) then I will be worried.

I disagree. According to the Daily Echo over 20,000 tickets have been sold for the Forest game, probably because the price has been reduced (I'm fairly sure Lowe has not left). It will be interesting to see how many return when United visit. Also people will return when results improve.

Haha, Lowe is responsible for the decline of this forum now!

If everyone had your attitude, there would be no club left to return to!

I just wonder how much difference it would even make if we sold, for instance, Kelvin, Drew and Lallana for £5m. We got a fair bit for Baird, Jones, Bale and Walcott recently and we're still in loads of debt. £5m, or even a bit more, for 3 important players doesn't seem worth it.

I think he was just clarifying his original point which was (if i remember correctly) that Mcgoldrick scored a few goals in pre-season and showed some potential, therefore he deserved to be given a chance and he might get a few goals. To be fair he scored against Cardiff on the first day and then got the winner against Derby and later Preston, although he has been a disappointment overall.

And Pele scored a hat-trick in the world cup when he was 17. What is your point? Our academy isn't good enough because it doesn't produce world class internationals? Also did you not see Walcott score a hat-trick against Croatia in the WC qualifier? That was pretty good.

They've done pretty well so far then, if they aren't ccc standard. Some of the performances I've seen have been very good and show potential, especially as a lot of the players are under 20. Anyway what do you suggest we do about it? We don't have any money.

Pearson did a good job in as much as he did the job required from him, ie he kept us in the championship. Don't forget we still came very close to going down and we had a stronger squad than we do now. In my opinion, Jan's job is the same as Pearson's was - to keep us in the championship - but he has far less resources to achieve that (although I accept that Pearson came in at a difficult time and did not have the whole season to do it). Therefore if we are still in the championship next season you could argue that Jan has actually done better than Pearson did. It's unfair to make the judgement at this stage.

Also saga is due back soon and he can't do any worse than mcgoldrick/robertson.

I don't think it would make much difference to be honest. Jan himself is not the problem, it's the fact that he has had to rely on young and naive defenders who concede goals early on in most games and, of course, the fact that we have **** all money which means he's also relying on young, inexperienced strikers who don't score any goals. It is up to him to address the defensive problems and he always needed time to do that. I think he deserves more time to show what he can do because some of the performances so far have actually been very good, we've just been very inconsistent. Therefore I don't see what good changing the manager would do at this stage, we just need to be patient and let the youngsters develop and gain a bit more experience for next season.

To be fair though it's not really a racist chant; you could say that it has homophobic implications but it's not explicit. Granted it's a horrible chant and those who sing it are obviously complete ****s but I think arresting them over it is going too far.

I think Surman is more useful right now, but it wouldn't be a disaster if we lost him. Similarly we could cope without Lallana but I would rather keep hold of him because he seems to has such great potential.

Great post CB. It's good to read something grounded and based on the reality rather than all this emotional, nostalgic whining about how great things were back in the good old days and things will never be the same. John Smith you need to lighten up, mate. Times change, it's a fact of life as well as in football and we aren't the only club to have suffered a major decline in the past 5-10 years. It happens very often and I'll bet you the likes of Leeds, Leicester, Forest, Sheffield Wednesday, Norwich etc and ourselves will be back one day. Of course, if everyone has your attitude (which fortunately they don't!) then things certainly won't improve as you sound as though you have basically given up on the club.

Mate this is getting boring now. Maybe he will, maybe he won't, we can only speculate about it at the present time. You may as well have just started a thread along the lines of "Lowe is going to sell Schneiderlin, Surman, Lallana, and possibly Davis in the January Transfer Window" instead of dressing it up as a genuine question about the team against united.

I don't really see your point. You could say that the Burnley game is a must win game because if we don't win it confidence will be low and we won't beat forest. What if we beat burnley, and forest, doncaster and charlton all lose at the weekend, that would take a lot of pressure off. Or maybe we'll end up drawing with forest and go on to beat plymouth and reading again. It's far too unpredictable to place so much importance on 1 game half way through the season.

Seriously mate, just let it go. 5 years is a long time, you never know we might be back up there in another 5.

Anything can happen in the championship. We'll have a great run after christmas and get promoted through the play-offs. Look at Hull, they were 14th this time last season with 27 points - 5 more than we have now.

Well it certainly won't be the only way forward if it means relegation. In fact it could a complete disaster, whereas the current set-up has potential (depending on who we can hold on to) when you think of the quality of our young players and that they are still learning and gaining experience.

It was never doomed to fail, but it was always going to require some time and patience to work. As we have seen it has produced some very good results and some very bad performances and results, but I think there is real potential there.

Wes & Whitey, I take your points there and I agree that, at times, we were clearly a lot more effective last season, in as much as we were able to actually win games and win them well! (eg 3-0 at QPR, although your Blackpool example is a bad 1 considering we played pretty badly and would have drawn the game if not for a bizarre decision from the ref about 10 minutes from the end). We had some quality players who, as you say, were good enough to beat the 3 teams who were promoted, but where did that leave us on the last day? That was what I found so painfully frustrating about last season and, while it's hardly much better this time round, I get the impression that the team I'm watching are giving it their all and playing some great football in difficult circumstances. Last season we had a team capable of beating anyone in the league, yet we came within about half an hour of relegation!

It's not really though is it? I see your point but it's certainly more than just a game to me, but I suppose that says more about me and how futile and empty my life is in general

Are you taking the ****? Did you watch the cup game against Bristol Rovers? Or pretty much any game in the 2nd half of the season other than when we beat Bristol City and Sheff Utd to survive by the skin of our teeth? Last season was a f*cking shambles, no one even seemed interested or could be bothered to play, thankfully Stern John decided he would score a few goals and that was all that kept us up. The lads playing this season have a lot to learn still but at least they give it everything each week and play some very attractive football with real passion.

I'd rather see them put out their 2nd team and give us a chance to force a replay or even win the game.

Grab us 2 tickets while you there please mate. Thanks in advance