The walters step over

One for fact fans, Owen has a better goals per minute rate than both Fowler AND Rush. He still won't be joining us any time soon though.

It's alleged that Owens release clause for next summer is £6m (summer gone it was £9m, last year £12m) -I would like to see Crouch gone but he's worth a lot more than £6m. Anyway, it's a moot point - I think Rafa would rather spend all of the Crouch money (assuming he does actually leave) on someone else. I just can't see him going back to Owen unless he misses out on his first choices. p.s. I'd take anything you hear on TS with a pinch of salt...although Hawksbee and Jacobs are quite good at imitating Marc and Lard.

The big four didn't exist for most of uniteds titles, they were challenged by a collection of teams and if I remember correctly wins away against Newcastle and us were seen at the time as pivotal in at least two of the title wins during the 90's and probably most of all last season. Arsenal in 98 won at castle greyskull and that was the push they needed to turn them into title winners. The overall point I was trying to make though was that the confidence that we'd gain from beating any of the other three could prove vital for us and that there's no reason at all to completely give up hope.

In regards to that, IMO one of the main reasons that Rafa joined us was because he thought Gerrard was a goner and he'd have £30m plus (with £10m already earmarked for Alonso) to completely re build the squad. Might be utter bull of course but then again, why would he want to leave the champions of Spain to join a club on the downward curve, that had spent £14m on a player he didn't want and had only enough money to pay for Josemi? Remember, the Owen money was used to pay off Garcias transfer and put down the first instalment on alonso. With his subsequent moaning to the press about transfer funds I can't really see him agreeing to join a club that had less than £6m to spend - Unless of course he'd been promised a massive injection of funds from somewhere... .....we now continue with part 876 of "Gerrard's s*** and Rafa should be sacked"

I would imagine most footballers would be hampered by playing with a broken bone in their foot.I find it interesting that instead of him getting credit for playing through the pain he's getting battered for his lack of form. There seems to be a trend for our fans (esp. on forums - TTWAR in particular) to slag him off at every opportunity and it just blows my mind really, forget Istanbul and Cardiff - What have you done for us lately Steven? But hey,let's make Carra captain, that'll solve everything! As someone who went to virtually evry home match under Souness and Evans, I'm finding it hard to get depressed when we're unbeaten in the league and we've got a game in hand on the Mancs - which if we win then we're right on their arses. There really is no need to panic, the Premiership is usually decided in the matches between the "big four" and against the chavs we played well and were pretty unlucky not to win. If we play as well against the other two then we're going to be challenging to the end of the season if we lose then you can say the title race is over. A lot of it is about perception, when UTD play badly but snatch points in the last few minutes it's apparently the sign of champions, but when we do the same (yesterday and away at Villa) we're supposed to be a club in crisis I'm still pretty optomistic about things as they stand, we've shown under Rafa that we come good in the last third of the season which means that if we can stay reasonably close up to Xmas and do some good business in the transfer window then it could still turn out to be

Not really, but I do wonder what would have happened had Houllier gone after Eto'o when he was fishing around to join us - "Michael Owen and I will leave people with their tongues hanging out" was one of his quotes at the time... Not one of Ged's better decisions to pay £10m on Diouf instead.

Nail.Hit.On.Head. Too much choice, too much of trying to keep everyone happy - If you look at the title winning sides of the last ten years (with the exception of the Mancs in '99) none of them had more than 3 front line - expect to be in the team strikers. You need three tops, 2 first choice and one in reserve who knows that he's not as good as the others but can still fill in when needed. Saying that though, IMO Torres is the only one at the club good enough to play for a title winning team.

Good point but the flip side to that is that they also know that no matter how well that they do they'll probably miss the next game anyway. Sissoko played like a monster for the first 18 mnths but since Masch's arrival has gone backwards - same for Crouch since he got knocked down the pecking order, it seems some people just need to feel wanted in order to produce their best.

Don't see why he would be, he's said himself that he would play if called up in an emergency - I know it doesn't fit with the image of Carra that he's scouse first England last but if he were first choice cb he'd have joined up with every squad that he'd been called up for.

Has tyldesley mentioned the '99 final yet? A good drinking game to have is line up the shots, and every time he mentions "that glorious night in Barcelona","THE greatest final ever"or "those magical two minutes" knock one back - guaranteed you'll be p***** by half time (even quicker if UTD are actually playing) in the match the c*** is commentating on.

After the time and effort it took to bring in a winger, I don't think Rafa will be in too much of a hurry to convert him into a striker (though that may be the long term aim). I can see Crouch leaving in Jan but only if we have a replacement and personally, I'd like to see Ashton here who I think is Crouch with heading ability.

I don't see how you can say he was a bad England manager,under Sven we qualified pretty easily and were penalties away from reaching the semis of the two biggest comps - Then who knows what might have happened? Under mcClaren we're about to be dumped out at the qualifying stage with largely no difference in the two squads. I know that could be proof of McClarens shytness but it's probably proof that Eriksson wasn't as bad as he's made out.

We were close to getting Malouda though and according to him the only reason he turned us down was because he wanted to work with the gobshyte in the long coat. It then seemed a toss up between Babel and Mancini but (if you believe press reports) Rafa didn't like Mancinis attitude. I'm not expecting great things from Babel this season, but he could become a big,big player for us over the next few seasons.

And you feel confident in making this assertion about someone you probably have never met because you have a window into his mind I presume - a bit like "being john whatsisface" with the mighty John Cusack.

erm...good point

True. Sky's "best league in the world" shyte does my head in, if you watch two mid table teams play each other in Spain they play the ball along the ground and try to construct attacks - over here it's "let's t**t the ball up the pitch and hope that something falls for us". Imo, it's precisely the reason that England has won bugger all - too much percentage football, we just get picked off at the highest level. As long as we've got the foreigners to blame though, nothing will ever change/improve.

Torres does play in Owens position, but if you play two up front then hey presto! Crouchs unique tools being what exactly? Don't get me wrong I like him and I'm not having a go but surely Rafa's attitude towards him this season (and in Athens) would indicate that Crouch will not be first choice here again - maybe he's even on his way out if you believe the speculation. As for band wagon jumping, as a reaction to one then you jump on one going in the opposite direction? I prefer to make up my own mind.

Who's pining? as a club we've moved beyond what he can offer, really? Are you saying that Voronin, Crouch or Kuyt are better? It's an undisputable fact that Owen has had s*** all luck the last 2/3 years but I don't understand the tone of your first post, if you're so indifferent then why the sarky comment - why bother? It's all well and good saying that we've moved on but remember Athens? when we were desperate for that goal who would you have rather on the pitch than him, Crouch-fowler-Bellamy or Owen even with what he's going through at the moment? He showed in the two internationals the class that Crouch and Bellamy could never aspire to and that Fowler has left far behind. If fit, Owen would walk into our current team.What's happened to him over the last few years doesn't make him a bad player - just a very unlucky one.

Can we, at some point in the future, and I know I'm asking a lot here but can we please stop the "I'm glad an ex player of ours who virtually carried our team for a few seasons is injured - serves him right for turning his back on us twice - which I know for a fact that he did because someone that I've never met or spoken to posted it as fact on the internet once" posts. Jesus Christ, you'd have thought that he'd gone round to everyone one of your houses and slept with your missus' - give it a f****** rest - to say the BS are "bitter" is a bit hypocritical when you see some of the posts on here (especially about Owen). Just one last thing, why do you suppose that he is so prone to injury? Do you think perhaps that it may have something to do with playing for us week in week out whilst clearly carrying hamstring/thigh strains? And why would someone who didn't give a flying f*** about LFC or it's fans risk their future career/potential just to help us? Maybe, and I'm going out on a limb here, he DID give a f*** after all! Mind you, most people on here say that he only cares about himself (as opposed to evryone in our squad that plays for us for free and never gets their agents to sniff around Chelsea,Barca or Real and Inter to see if they could get a better deal) so it must be true, he selfishly played whilst only half fit for us so that he could retain his England place - What a b****** - I know, next time he's at Anfield,let's boo him then we can sing the names of Alonso,Gerrard,Crouch and Benitez and pretend that they (or more specifically,their agents) have never talked to any other clubs whilst under contract to us. I've said it before, and I'm saying it again, some people on here really do need to grow up and stop being such mealy mouthed arl arses where Owen's conbcerned.

Whilst Rafa's been here we've had Baros,Cisse and Bellamy - none of whom have been a big hit under him and I get the feeling that he doesn't truly trust players that might not contribute a great deal out of the box but can put away that one good chance that falls to them.Hence workhorses like Kuyt and Voronin.

The point is though, he did enough to win in Spain. Personally speaking, I don't think Rafa is infallible like some seem to and I don't think we'll win the league this year, but we knew this would be happening this year - the big difference from last years being that most of us thought that we had the squad to go close whatever the team he put out. It may be that we don't have as much strength as we first thought but it's still far too early to make judgements about what's going to happen this season.

Spot on, he brought two titles to Valencia by doing exactly the same thing that he's trying to do with us.It hasn't worked so far, but we all knew that with the squad he built over the summer he was going to rotate the team as much as he is doing. He's always been a manager who rotates heavily, the only way it will change is when he leaves us (which I'm not advocating btw, that would be insane), so you either accept that we won't play the same team for two consecutive games or you prepare to be very,very frustrated this season.

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Absolutely, 100% bang on. However, I can't see Rafa inacting the clause anyway so in my opinion it's all a moot point. Man U were apparently looking into it before the Wc last year but then Owen got injured, whether or not he ends up there this year I've no idea but as we seem to be more interested in Darren Bent, again it seems as if we're all going to be spending another season debating as to why our strikers don't score enough and why we're 10-15 points behind the leaders come Xmas.

History would tend to show that we have little chance of signing these players (btw, how many times have you actually seen Huntelaar play?). One reason is the level of transfer fee they would command (which may, or may not, be a problem remedied by the Americans - but was always a factor under Moores). The other, far more significant reason would be the location of the club. Before anyone jumps down my throat i was born and brought up in Knotty Ash, but the reality is that there have been a large number of (foreign) players that we have been after over the years who quite simply did not want to move to the N/West of England - for them it was London or nowhere. You only have to look at the Mancs, for well over a decade they were unquestionably the biggest, most successful club in England over that period, loads of money to spend and CL football every year but could they go out and buy the likes of Ronaldo, Del Piero, Batistuta or Zidane? Despite being heavily linked with all of theses players the answer is could they f***. A lot of people when discussing the possibilty of Owen seem to think that we are in a position to sign anyone we choose, unfortunately, despite any rise in transfer funds this summer we are not - and the main reason is our location. It's one of the reasons why I would be in favour of an Owen bid, not because he's the best in the World - he isn't, and if we could get Eto'o instead, then that would be a no-brainer, but because he wouldn't need the usual six months to settle down. Talk of players like Kaka, V.Nistelrooy and Eto'o are all just pie in the sky. We may well bid for at least one of these players but we have absolutely no chance of getting them.