smithdown

Spot on. Considering the player he looked last season we should all take our hats off to Rafa. Its almost as if he thought 'OK lets take the most ridiculed player in the league and take them all on with him"

C'mon, its better than the manc one about Park that goes on about eating dogs.

As he imagined himself in the role of England manager, Allardyce conceded that his pragmatism would extend to international football, however he would instruct his players to dictate play to the opposition. Evidently the Dudley-born former centre-half is excited by his association with the most exalted position in English football. "Clearly the level playing field that I would be on, and above most of the international teams with the quality of players that I've got, would mean that we would go out to outplay them and beat them," said Allardyce. "If I had Peter Crouch up front at 6ft 7in, then I'd play to him where his strength lies, like we played to Kevin Davies on Tottenham's left-back on Sunday. He completely dominated that area and created nearly all our chances from that position. But if Michael Owen was playing then I would play differently." divvy

just charlton left for them curbishley's swansong, mamncs look miserable. never know eh?

looooooaaaaads of empty seats cheering the mancs on all over now

all over them but boro defending well and mancs looking fairly toothless in front of goal feckin hell - 4 minutes inj time? where's that from?

Urs Meier?

Prpoer big titty lip on rvn now, picking arguments, snide digs in the back and wanting fouls everywhere. Sh*thouse.

boro not getting any of the ball now though 25 to go

What a feckin handball that was

what was it again? 'faster than beckham to get alongside a goalscorer so his face was all over the papers?' or something like that? Boss that, been saying that for years about the c*nt

Anny Road Lamps Red Mist all in the same post but unfortunately the wrong order

10 til half time Boro have come into it pretty well last 15 mins, some decent efforts

But you've forgotten Boro have the master tactician at the helm to guide them to another famous victory. 4-0 to Mclaren's side.

I wish King Kev would come back. If we had any ambition as a club we'd never have sold our little gem in the first place. And lets not have all that "oh he was only interested in england" sh*te before anyone starts

Europe too

You couldn't blame him if he left, he wants to win things.

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Just had a text off me cousin who is only fourteen and says Kenny is the best player he has ever seen. Is right lad!

Same here with Benfica. I was right next to them in the Anny Road and hearing their fans singing "Liverpool" and shaking loads of hands softened the blow cos I left the ground thinking 'well, what an eighteen months its been...back on the map BIG style'. They had just beaten the European Champions away and they were delirious, and genuinely shocked by our reaction to them winning. Highlight would also be Crouch's first and second goals

1-0 ingerlund Can't remember the scorer, might have been a platt penno or something but at one point there were four or five Reds on the pitch at the same time: Scales, Ruddock, McManaman, Barnes, James, Jones, I think, maybe Fowler as well I'm not sure. Loads anyway.

Jammy gets at the match just called me saying its all 1986 revisited: Queen songs, Michael Jackson, Genesis, everyone in their brown cords buzzin like a load of better beauts waiting for roly poly Molby to run out with the lads.

Ah come on, that QPR game was an absolute watershed for the club, when 'he won it from brock' a lot of people's lives changed, I'm certain. Sounds silly to look back on it now and make such a sweeping statement but I really think something happened that day with a lot of Reds on The Kop. Some might have taken longer to get te message but it was a massive seachange that day. Part of the bitterness from the blues was them maintaining "ah yeah but at least we are white" as we ran away with the league. Do you think Reds were embarrassed by them by that - even within their own families? Or do you think for the first time in their lives a great big load of Reds said "So what if he's black? You're loss. Barnes is class." Maybe Barnes managed to soften a load of blues thinking also? And by the way, I've tried as I say to sit in an ingerlund crowd at Wembley and it was me who felt outnumbered. versus Nigeria in 94, I was chuffed that Efan Ekoku was playing for them (I think he was captain) cos he went to my school in Liverpool and I'd played against him a lot. Barnes was playing for ingerlund too, so happy days as far as I was concerned. Believe me, I got some stick when I'd said to people in the pub and in the seats around me about Ekoku and cheering when his name was read out...me and my mates stuck out like sore thumbs for being the only ones going up to Nigerian fans on the walk up and talking about the match...and then when Barnes was getting abused me and my mates got up from our seats in the tunnel end and made our way round the ground to where the Nigerians were and the second half we could barely hear the boo's and hisses above the drums and singing from the away fans. The atmosphere was different class in their end. Thats the only way I see of outnumbering and shaming them: sit with the opposition. Thats why I say its not international footy I dislike. Its them shower of sh*te.

We signed John Barnes and that's when the ugly chants stopped. Different people didn't start going the match, the same ones who would sing "day-oooo" the season before were now singing Barnes's name and the irony was not lost on them. I'd include myself in that as well. Lesson learnt: you can't act that way and then expect a player to perform for you and/or you can't apreciate a player's efforts and sing offensive songs that he'll hear. A large section of ingerlund support won't grasp that.

And the 'reports of death threats' would be all over the front pages of the tabloids, I guess. Yet another reason not to favour ingerlund.