offix

Kluivert was just caught again for drunk driving last week

From the BBC gossip column: Scott McDonald's agent, Lou Sticca, has hinted that the Celtic striker may move on in January, if a suitable bid comes in. (Herald) One for us?

WGS

*****ing about the refs just makes no sense and is counter productive. These same refs are at Leeds' games and at Charlton's games too. Yet those teams score enough, play well enough, to overcome the ref's errors. THAT is what AP should focus on, he should not be complaining that we were robbed. We robbed ourselves by not scoring more.

Basically YES, if you play to win by only one goal you leave yourself open to this kind of thing. Score 2 0r 3 more than the opposition. It's called winning.

Or: if we all just accept that we lost because of the referee we will never improve

My point is that this is totally irrelevant. People make mistakes. Some more than others. The players and managers have the job to score enough so that it doesn't matter if some of those mistakes go against us. Giving in to the "blame the ref" reaction is just an excuse for not having done the job well enough as players and manager.

As per the Echo and BBC articles: Pardew said "I thought he robbed us". Definitely blaming the ref for our loss.

After the Stockport match AP was "fuming at the referee" according to reports. While the ref's decision to award a penalty kick to Stockport may or may not have been incorrect, I was very disappointed with that reaction from AP. It sounds a bit like he is falling into the same trap that most of our previous managers have; when losing (or "not winning") becomes systemic blame the ref, blame our bad luck. Allan, when you came here you rightly mentioned that you had to get the players back to a winning mentality. Please realize that by entertaining this kind of "blame the ref" attitude you are doing the opposite. You are giving yourself and the team another excuse for not winning. Please lets get to another attitude: "if we had played well enough, and scored enough, we should be able to overcome the odd mistake by the ref."

if UEFA does this the big clubs will simply step out of UEFA and form their own International organization.

We've already got his replacement; Lambert. Better, faster, more efficient.

Oh boy, if only we could have played this well in our own league. It sounds really exciting. COYR!!!

Jason Dodd used the words "they switched of" a few times. Does that translate into "not fit enough"?

he was expecting Burley over.

1 incompetent manager scolding another incompetent manager. Regardless the fact that one of them was a nice guy and the other an arrogant twit, they both sucked at their job. This little spat is completely irrelevant and fortunately of no consequence to us anymore.

I'm optimistic (a new sensation for the last few years!), and I see us win 3-2

HAS it returned? probably not quite yet. IS IT returning? Absolutely - the process has begun and that spirit will be completely back sometime. But it had been far too wounded to be completely healed this fast.

29 goals in this league in one season. Seems an easy choice.

It has gotta be a while since we signed a player who scored 29 in a season, and in the league we are playing in. Well happy with that.

nice to have commentary live. Shame it's so bad! Bring back Cope and Armstrong!

very respectable result against a presumed front runner in this league. For a young squad, still incomplete, with a new manager, we did pretty good.

Our time of misery is over. Theirs is yet to come. In that sense we are better off

Like it! ordered one from the store

The best thing about League 1: Getting promoted out of it!

With a 10 point deficit at the start, a woefully weak squad, a new manager/system, absolute bruisers in all the opposition teams, I would accept mere survival this season. Still, hoping for more than that of course, and I still have it in the back of my mind that AP may strengthen us enough at some point during the season to get us in or near the play offs.