lawrie

Reina Finnan Hyypia Carra Riise Gerrard Hamann Alonso Kewell Cisse Crouch

I just want to slap Maureen's condescending chops with wet fish (pleural)

Certainly Ronaldinho can be brilliant in flashes but I've seen quite a lot of him this season (admittedly from my sofa) and turned the telly off feeling, well, underwhelmed. Although not comparing like for like, if given the choice, I'd take Henry every time (and even after seeing him at Anfield the other week)

That list doesn't fill me with optimism to be honest. I think 12 million for someone who is prone to injury isn't really that good a piece of business. Robbie may get us a few goals but he is unlikely to improve significantly over the next season or so. I see Crouch as nothing more than a squad player, being able to offer something different in the last 20 minutes of a game and Pongolle may come back to be a really useful player but would you at this stage of our development pin all your hopes on him?

Saturday, 04 March 2006 Aston Villa 1-1Portsmouth Fulham 2-1 Arsenal Liverpool 2-0 Charlton Middlesbrough 2-0 Birmingham Newcastle 1-2 Bolton West Brom 1-1 Chelsea West Ham 1-0 Everton Sunday, 05 March 2006 Man City 2-1 Sunderland Tottenham 2-0 Blackburn Monday, 06 March 2006 Wigan 1-1 Man Utd

He wants to play for his country tonight and I'm sure Carra (who has probably played more minutes than Stevie has this season) wants to as well.

Round 27 Fixtures: Wednesday, 22 February 2006 Newcastle v Charlton 1-1 Saturday, 25 February 2006 Birmingham v Sunderland 2-0 Blackburn v Arsenal 2-1 Charlton v Aston Villa 1-2 Chelsea v Portsmouth 3-0 Newcastle v Everton 1-1 Sunday, 26 February 2006 Bolton v Fulham 2-0 Liverpool v Man City 2-0 West Brom v Middlesbrough 1-1

agree with every word

Best midfield in Europe? Don't think so... unless you take their wingers into account

Not only has Gerrard been our best player by far, I think he's been the Premiership's best player so far this season too

Agree with anny road on this that Gerrard had to play. With our recent run of poor results it was essential that we won today. The confidence the win will have given us will stand us in good stead for Tuesday and beyond. As for Stevie's actual performance I thought it went up several notches in the second half after moving into the centre and he easily looked what he is - our most creative player I think Crouch has enough of his own "blinkers of the faithful" to worry too much about Fowler's

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Round 26 Fixtures: Saturday, 11 February 2006 Arsenal v Bolton, 3-1 Aston Villa v Newcastle, 2-0 Everton v Blackburn, 1-1 Fulham v West Brom, 1-1 Middlesbrough v Chelsea, 2-1 Portsmouth v Man Utd, 0-2 Wigan v Liverpool, 0-1 Sunday, 12 February 2006 Man City v Charlton, 2-0 Sunderland v Tottenham, 1-2 Monday, 13 February 2006 West Ham v Birmingham, 2-0

Owen Anelka Defoe Yakubu

Honestly haven't got a clue but I think we would be gambling less with proven premiership strikers

perhaps he should consider Holland

Sissoko is young and young players are inconsistent, he will hopefully improve - Parker is more consistent, went for the same money but is 4 years older, who'd be a manager, eh?

We need to stop hoofing it, to stop hoofing it we need to be less reliant on Crouch, to be less reliant on Crouch we need to put a bit more faith in Cisse, to put a bit more faith in Cisse, we need to play Garcia on the right and to play Garcia on the right we need to put Stevie back in the middle and while we're at it perhaps Hamann could be used a bit more so Alonso or Sissoko could have a bit of a rest

I've been worried about our strikers since before a ball was kicked in the premiership this season. I think our defending though will get back on track especially if we try to keep a settled back 4 of SF JC SH JAR

Sorry, it wasn't blindingly obvious to me that Baros wasn't good enough. I was ok about him going only because I thought it meant Owen was coming back.

I think bringing Robbie back is the clearest indication of all that Rafa no longer rates them enough

Owen Baros Anelka Fowler now/Sinama-Pongolle later

we have players who can (and do) hit shots accurately from outside the box but how often do you see a striker anticipating a possible rebound or deflection

The top 6 teams will always take points off one another generally over the course of a season thereby largely negating these results overall. I believe that in several seasons when Manure won the Premiership they had the worst results against the other 5 teams in the top 6 than any of the others had against each other. Granted its a slightly different situation at the moment with Chelsea being so strong but its still how you get on against the middle to lower order that really matters in the general scheme of things and this is an area where we have definately made strides this season - onwards and upwards