MFletcher

Healy would be great for us. Given the amount of chances we create, the wee man would be in the right place at the right time to knock the ball away. His range of goals for us this campaign has been excellent - and he clearly has the ability to perform at the highest level. He's a brilliant player.

To be fair, Paletta was clearly a capable defender. He was good in the air and had one hell of a tackle on him. His problem was making the leap immediately from a mid-table Argie side straight to us. If we'd sent him on loan to Boca/River last year, he'd probably have come to us with more experience and more understanding of the defensve systems we're likely to play. At the end of the day, we got our money back and Insua on a permanent deal. We didn't do badly at all out of it.

Healy hasn't had the likes of Pavel Nedved or Steven Gerrard behind him when he's leading the line for us. He's had, at various times, Jeff Whitley - or Phil Mulryne. We went fourteen games without scoring because of the half-arsed tactics of Sammy McIlroy - his argument being that we were solid defensively so it didn't matter... The variety of his goals has been staggering in this campaign. Chips, long shots, headers, left foot, poaching, a penalty... Absolutely unbelievable. If Wayne Rooney scored the goal that Healy did last night, it would be on an endless loop on the news and we would have a variety of ex-players coming out and claiming it shows him to be world class. You will never hear the end of it in Northern Ireland and rightly so. For a player who was playing in the English Championship until not so long ago to score 13 goals in one campaign for a country who couldn't even score a couple of years ago... It really is staggering. Northern Ireland 0 - 3 Iceland Northern Ireland 3 - 2 Spain [Healy, Healy, Healy] Denmark 0 - 0 Northern Ireland Northern Ireland 1 - 0 Latvia [Healy] Northern Ireland 2 - 1 Sweden [Healy, Healy] Liechtenstein 1 - 4 Northern Ireland [Healy, Healy, Healy, McCann] Northern Ireland 3 - 1 Liechtenstein [Healy, Healy, Lafferty] Latvia 1 - 0 Northern Ireland Iceland 2 - 1 Northern Ireland [Healy] Sweden 1 - 1 Northern Ireland [Lafferty] Northern Ireland 2 - 1 Denmark [Feeney, Healy] They are our results - you only have to look at the amount of times that Healy's name appears to see just how important he is to us. It was the games against Iceland that screwed us over. Lawrie made a tactical error against Iceland at home by not man-marking Gudjohnsen and he tore into us that day. The Latvia and Iceland away games were mainly due to Worthington fiddling with the defence and dropping one of our best players from the campaign - Stephen Craigan. We were desperately unlucky against Iceland away though, Gillespie scoring an own goal in the 89th minute. We deserved to win that game. All in, it's been an absolutely fantastic campaign for us. It really is. I think you'd have been laughed out of the country if you'd told people that we'd have even a 1% chance of qualifying going into the last game. Yes, Sweden won't lose to Latvia at home and we won't beat Spain away. But to go into the last game with even a chance of getting to the finals is very special - considering we came bottom of the group with no goals scored during qualifying for Euro 2004.

No. Momo was immense his first season and I'm trying to find some (any) reasons as to why his form has completely deserted him. I mean, he has been abysmal this season and you'd think it was a different player.

It wasn't a comment in reference to anything.

I believe the reason he is behind those players is because he has failed to settle and is looking for a move back to Italy in January. Some players just can't settle in foreign countries and won't perform because of it. It's not a case of X is better than Y, therefore X should always play regardless of circumstance.

I read somewhere that since the eye injury, Momo has had trouble playing in night games as his eyesight takes longer to adjust if he's looking up because of the floodlights.

We'll probably only get about £8.5-£9M for him actually. As you say, we'll either have to offer him an extension or sell him in January. If he holds out to the summer, then his value will go down even further. Am I correct in saying he could actually buy his contract out this summer and move for one year's wages?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4T2KjqI9p1s...feature=related Obligatory YouTube clip of Bent.

If he could head the ball like he did for his second goal he'd be a thirty goal a season man. I just can't understand why we haven't seen a noticeable improvement in it since he came here. And his hat-trick was absolutely brilliant. But there were still plenty of games where he didn't perform at all last season. He was woeful against Blackburn away - three easy headers missed and a strop when he was substituted. I'm simply trying to look at the bigger picture. We can't keep hoping Crouch will suddenly produce the sort of form he did in the Arsenal game. He has been poor at times this season, and he needs to improve in order to justify a place in the squad - let alone the team. It seems to be a case of Torres or Crouch, and I don't think there is a single person on this board who could justify the selection of Crouch over Torres (fitness permitting of course).

How many games did Crouch start in the league last season? He only scored nine goals, and five of them came in two matches (Arsenal/Watford). It's not a criticism, but the big man didn't score quite as often as people think last season.

Leaving huge gaps in defence and his partner high and dry.

Mainly because he was. Either way, seeing Sissoko in the centre of defence would terrify me. He doesn't have the positional discipline to play the position effectively.

I rate Bent - I think he's a good player. But comparing him to Crouch is a non-starter. They both offer completely different things to their teams. Crouch's heading at goal is very poor though - and it should be one of his main assets at 6'7" (not because "he's tall he's got to be an awesome header) but because that is why he's in the team and we look for him from crosses. He's been here two and a half years and his heading just hasn't improved at all. That's my main criticism of him. He also misses too many "easy" chances, but he's the sort of awkward player who creates problems in the opposition defence and he is likely to pop up with a goal at some point.

Gerrard's being interviewed as the stand-in England captain. Of course he's going to come out with this sort of rubbish - it's what he's expected to say and it's what the vast majority of people want to hear. He can't come out and say "Well, I enjoy playing for England but it's not the end of the world if we don't quality. Qualifying for the latter stages of the CL with Liverpool is much more important." The quota system won't happen - EU employment laws etc. I think a solution is to have seven substitutes in the Premiership. Then it means you can have five established players and a couple of youth players to throw on if the circumstances are right. As it stands at the minute, Rafa probably has a difficult job choosing five and won't have room for youth players. I can't see why we persist with five substitutes when the majority of other competitions allow seven.

Bianchi has failed to settle and wants to go back to Italy in January. Thus he's not in the "right frame of mind" to play and play well.

It was a four year deal - and it hasn't been renewed since he joined. I imagine he'll go in January. I can't Rafa letting him run his contract down - especially when we could collect a good fee from any number of Premiership sides.

He did a lot of good for the club - mainly the Treble season. It's the transfer market where I would really question his record. He made some excellent signings in Hyypia, Hamann, McAllister etc. But for every good player there was a bad one. I need not comment on the £18M summer of Diouf, Diao and Cheyrou. The falling out with and subsequent selling of Fowler didn't go down too well with me at the time, as Robbie was one of my favourite players. He had to go when he did. If we'd persisted with him any longer we'd have been looking at seasons of mediocrity. All in, he was a decent manager but probably not much more than that.

I suspect most of the problems lie in the way young players are coached. The vast majority of youth coaches seem to take personal pride in whether their teams win or lose. In order to win and satisfy their ego, they choose the big, strong, quick kids who can't play football but will bully the opposition and allow them to win. Thus the more talented kids are sometimes left to watch because they aren't big enough. Quotas would be a disaster frankly. We'd see excellent foreign players benched to make way for Johnny Englishman - who can't play anywhere near as well as Joe Foreigner but is discriminated against because of his passport. As a consequence, the English clubs will perform poorly in the CL as they fill their squad with local players who probably aren't good enough. I doubt it would hold up legally anyway.

It is indeed. Hence their frustration when they're playing Milner on the left, Barton on the right and so on.

Don't encourage him.

He's a competent left back and a poor left winger. He's not good enough at a technical level for us and a lot of our attacking moves seem to slow down/end when he receives the ball as he's not particularly comfortable with it. The difference when Aurelio is in the side is remarkable. Even against Besiktas, his "hoofs" were generally accurate enough to allow Crouch a flick on. Riise seems to put his foot through the ball and hope. He's been a good servant to the club, but we need players who are more confident on the ball than him. I'd take a good offer for him if it came in.

Arsenal beat Slavia Prague 7-0. We beat Besiktas 8-0. I wonder what would happen if we came up against even poorer opposition in the same sort of form. We could be looking at double figures in some games.

To be fair, Fat Sam moved Barton to the right, played a left winger at left back and a central defender at right back - this was when they had Beye and Enrique on the bench. I can understand Newcastle fans being frustrated by this.

Why do people keep giving dream teams with three men at the back and no proper wingbacks on both sides? Kompany is clearly a talented player. As someone else said, Gary Mac was a talented player in his late thirties. A young player with talent is known as a prospect. Therefore it might be fair to say that Kompany is no longer "a prospect". But to say he's no longer talented is folly.