TyldesleyLatic

I don’t pity them – its their own stupid faults for forking out hard earned cash to watch a friendly in the first place. Same goes for club friendlies too

Have to say I went through a phase of watching England around 1998-2001ish & can’t say I enjoyed any of the home games. The one I watched at Old Trafford had probably the best atmosphere (it was the Greece game with Beckham’s last minute free kick) but even that was pretty limp. The homes games I watched at Wembley were awful – surrounded by screaming kids & devoid of any atmosphere even in a game against Germany

The away games are a different kettle of fish mind & I’d recommend anyone to try it at least once. Piling through Copenhagen, Stockholm & Hamburg on the way to & from a game against Sweden stands out even if the game was bilge

To be fair, there were very few 1st choice players out there for England last night for one reason or another so I aint reading too much into it

In a competitive situation I’d expect one or two of them could come in a fill a void but when you’re playign with only 1 of your recognised first choice defensive line, only 1 of your recognised first choice midfielders & none of your recognised first choice forwards then I’d fully expect us to get beat

You aint gonna be able to go to that many back up choices (& some of them are about 5th or 6th choice for their respective positions) & expect to get a decent result.
Even Spain would struggle on that score

For me its about striking the right balance

If you go gung ho at a club like United then they’ll tear you apart. If you attempt to sit deep & contain them then (more often than not) they’ll tear you apart.

For me you’ve got to constantly pressure them when they’re in possession & not let them settle or retain possession for too long & attack on the counter attack at pace (without committing too many men forward) when you do have the ball.

Personally I’d go with Moses & N’Zogbia down either flank on Saturday with Di Santo playing in the hole (where he looked good against Sunderland) in the absence of Cleverley just to give us a more attacking option than Gomez so when we do get a chance there’s likely to be more than 1 player around to have a pop at it

To be fair you can normally look at it on Feb 1st & have a bit of a chuckle at the number of our “poster boys” who’ve been shipped out

When I saw that Bobby was Mr December 2010 I expected him to have fallen into that category by now

that doesn’t necessarily mean that he’ll be match fit though

they can put him through all the intensive training & slim fast that they want but it don’t mean he’ll be able to last 90 minutes.
I think Fergie’ll name him on the bench

I doff my cap to the students who went to that demo last week for actually having the gumption to stand up and fight for something they see as a wrong

Most people seem content to let whichever govt/council etc.. is in power walk all over them whenever they see fit, whinge to people & then do nowt about trying to right that perceived wrong.
Even when people were roused into doing somet about the state of the price of petrol back in 2000ish they let themselves by conned by the line that the ambulances were running out of petrol & now the price of fuel is almost double what it was back then & they’re gonna stick another 5p a litre on in the new year. All we’ll get is a moan & a shrug of the shoulders

As for the “state” Labour left the country in – I’m no Labour supporter anymore. I voted for em in 1997 & felt cheated. I’ve also no idea of the true state of the countries finances coz I believe the financial instiutions, the press & the govt as much as I believe the stories in The Sport BUT there was a very good reason why Labour decided to invest so much money in new schools, hospitals etc.. & that was due to the appauling state they were in after years of chronic under-investment.
True you shouldn’t spend money you don’t have & I know from personal experience that some of the money spent was too much or could have been spent more wisely but if they’d done nowt they’d have been slated for letting the country’s infra-structure go to rack & ruin

As for what the current govt is doing to public services as per usual those least able to help themselves will be hardest hit & I fail to see the logic in them thinking sticking over half a million people on the dole over the course of the next few months is going to help the economy recover. Still I aint no economic expert – not full time anyway

But I digress – up the students I say even if they are all lazy, soap dodging, spongers!!!! & good em for for starting to expose Nick Clegg & his party for the bunch of hypocrites & liars they clearly are

Not sure lobbing fire extinguishers from the tops of mutli-storey buildings & such like is the right way to go about it though

Thanks for proving one of my arguments Yosser. I did say earlier on in the thread that if & when one of the “bigger” clubs chops and changes their side they do so still with the belief & intent that they can win that game.
When Bryan Robson did it at WBA in our 1st season up (for which he was roundly slated on here), Mick McCarthy did it at United last season & now Holloway at Villa last week they are sacrificing those games in order to concentrate their resources on another game.
I fully acknowledge that the supporters of those clubs couldn’t/didn’t give a rats @r$e if/when they stay up but that isn’t my point
My point is that club’s shouldn’t be allowed to sacrifice games in that manner because of the effect that has on other teams.
Someone’s raised the good point of the Liverpool team at Fulham in 06/07 which in effect kept Fulham up & sparked what’s happened since & had a bearing on Latics & Sheff Utd’s relegation battle – if Liverpool had put that same team out against us a couple of weeks earlier who knows what would have happened
Likewise Villa could nick a European spot off a team that Blackpool put out a full strength side against & took something from

I also apply it to Latics so its got nowt to do with the “the big boys can do what they want” stuff that has been thrown back in this thread – if I know that our manager is going to field a weakened side I won’t go (admittedly I don’t go anywhere near as much as I used to anyway but the point still applied when I did – I didn;t go to any game in the carling cup rin in 05/06 until the semi-final) coz if the manager is openly stating that he isn’t treating the game as a priority or with as much committment as other games then I think its wrong for them to expect the punters to hand over their hard earned cash for the “privilege” of watching it