The walters step over

But isn't that the whole point? We weren't just lacking one top quality forward, we needed a couple (plus quality wide men) that's why everyone's banging on about Kuyt - if Torres is out then the standard of our forward play drops dramatically. On a side issue, I fail to see why pointing out obvious faults in the team is such a bad thing - I hope this forum doesn't turn into another TTWAR with the whole "I'm more of a fan than you because I think Rafa is immune from criticism" boll***s.

His record at Feyenoord only proves that in the Dutch league he's a very good player, but Kezmans record in Holland didn't mean much when he played here either.Kuyt seems to need a good few chances to score and maybe in Holland Feyenoord were dominant against the weaker teams so that he got 3 or 4 good chances per match.If you look at it objectively he doesn't create or score enough for a club with title ambitions. The original post is just pointing out that to progress we'll need better strikers than Kuyt and I fully agree with him.

Ruddock,Clough and Piechnik were Souness, Evans signed the others except for Matteo who came through the youth.

Agree with pretty much all of this, one thing I will add though is that after Istanbul/Cardiff/Athens I think Rafa has earned the right to f*** up now and then and if this season turns out badly (only finishing 4th, out of Cl early) then he still deserves the full backing of the board and us for next season. It's fine to criticise, but I genuinely cannot think of anybody else that could do a better job than Benitez.

I have it down for about 6 o'clock Sunday afternoon.

Agree with the comments, I find it interesting that we've all picked someone who used the minimum effort to get things done rather than Ronaldinho who knows every trick in the book.

Goes to show, when you're off your t*ts on morphine you'll believe anything you read/dreamt the night before

Probably not but Istanbul was a freak, before the match not many of us would have named Traore,Kewell and Smicer as big hearted players so I guess we'll never know - though in all probability Evans' team would probably have devised a hilarious drinking game at half time in the Attaturk which Ruddock and Fowler could have recounted in their books to show what "characters" they were.

Did we really only spend £15m net? There was a lot of spin during the summer about the amounts spent by Hicks/Gillette but that figure does surprise me. Tbh, I didn't give football much thought over summer but from the impression given (esp. by Parry) I did take the £40m+ at face value.

Figo was interviewed about coming to England a few years ago (think the rumour was about the Mancs) when he said that he was offered to us by his agents when he'd just started out in Portugal (sp. Lisbon?). Don't know why it didn't happen. i guess at the time it's hard to judge a would be superstar and just a promising youngster.

Fair point, although Fowler is still referred to as godlike despite being the fulcrum of the whole "win, draw or lose - first to the bar for the booze" mentality at the club and had Evans sold him then he'd have been lynched for selling "one of us" so Evans was a bit hamstrung in the regards of what he could do to instill discipline.Obviously, it wasn't all down to Fowler before everyone bursts into tears at the horrible slur against our Robbie but I've always thought that the players let Evans (and the club) down very badly. Whether he could have brought success is debatable anyway due to his inability to drop/substitute anyone except for Collymore and Berger and his continued blind faith in an old Johnny Barnes.

Great point, our discipline wasn't that good, but some of the football we played under Evans was Arsenalesque. You could also add a young Luis Figo to the above list

Essentially, all fans are pretty much the same - " the referees hate us","so do the media""so does SKY" so whilst well written, the original diatribe is a bit pointless at best - and at worst virtually ignores the impact that Heysel had.It changed the face of football in Europe forever and to just sweep it aside with "well,we would have won it in '88" is pretty weak. Kn*b heads come in all shapes,sizes and football scarves and articles like that one will not exactly help the atmosphere in the friendly derby.

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You never know, a move to us might to just get him back - Shevchenko at 80% is still one hell of a player. Can't see it ever happening though.

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He would scores goals for us, he'll score goals for ANY team he's in. I just can't see Rafa going for him, every time he was left on the bench the press would be after Rafa and I think that's a big consideration. I wouldn't object to us using the Crouch money to make a cheeky bid for Robbie Keane though, I think he'd make and excellent link up man for Torres as well as chipping in with a few. If we could get our money back on Kuyt and buy a goal poacher like Owen (don't know who though) then we'd have a forward line that could withstand rotation without too much of a loss of goal threat which I think is one of the things that needs looking at in Jan/ next summer.

the rumour is the Jol wasn't aware that they spurs were in for Bent..If true it would explain a lot. On the Crouch/Owen thing I would expect that I've got more chance of playing for us than Owen has (or Crouch for that matter!)

Nobody's actually suggesting that we adhere to a blue-print put down 40 years ago but....oh, I get it! sarcasm!!

Fair point, but I'm coming at it from the other way - play your best eleven as much as possible* and make changes when needed. I think Rafa does think about the opposition too much but there's no doubt that in the last third of the season we'll come strong - my only worry is whether we're going to be too far off for it to make any difference. * I do realise that Rafa may well not have a best eleven in his mind, and that he takes who we're playing into account when he names his team.

Have I missed something here - why do we all hate Lawrenson again? You're argument seems to be "He's a c***, therefore he's always wrong". As for saying that we can't play the same team for 3 or 4 weeks on the spin because the players will get injured - come on, you don't really believe that do you? We'll never get anywhere with that sort of caution. Personally, I thought he made sense but obviously I'm heavily influenced by "the media" (who all hate us you know) so what do I know?