Today was the 20th time a different back-four had been tried out, and I don't care about ability or experience, no rear-guard will ever look strong with such instability and lack of consistency regardless of who plays. I feel for the poor buggas.

My you're a cynic, I separate their wealth from their football, and speaking purely football, I feel sorry for the lads at the back, especially the younger players.

Next time one breaks a leg though, I'll remember how much they earn and go "ha" or "meh"

Edgar and Huntington had their first senior game together at CB today, didn't they? Surely you wouldn't have picked a totally new and inexperienced CB pairing when you've got a more experienced, but slightly less capable player to choose. That's gambling, and would do wonders to Ramage's probably not-so-great confidence. Then what if Hunty or Edgar was injured, and a confidence-shot Ramage had to play? I think Roeder made a sensible decision, even if he picked a poor player on an exceptionally poor day.

20th by the time the game finished.

How was Carr today? Was working during the first half, so I saw very little of it.
My father said he was absolute shit the first 15-20 minutes, but mainly because he was playing out of position and acted as if LB was his natural position.
From what I saw, he did a decent job. Nice to see a defender in black and white that doesn't panic when he gets the ball (even Nobby panics too often)

Carr was average, but then again he wasnt really tested at all today, in fact considering who he was up against, he had a very comfortable day. West Ham dont play with any wingers, Benayoun was coming infield alot and Cristian Daily was left to raid down their right wing - a player who cant dribble to save his life (centreback) and is certainly slower than Carr.

We've let in the same number of goals as Spurs and Reading yet you never hear about their defensive crisis or hear about they desperate need for new defenders. I'm not saying our defence is good BTW (it isn't) but it isn't as simple as people think, i.e. because they are shite players, the defence is shite. There are many factors behind our shite defense, ability not being the main one.

At the end of the day the number of changes in the defense is completely down to injuries and Roeder playing with the setup, Hunty and Edgar played their first senior match together against Man UTD and totaly dominated the players they were put up with, obviously resulting in our 2 - 2 draw with them (edgar even scored as i'm sure everyone knows!) then on the back of a very successful game where the defense looked reasonable ramage was deemed fit and instantly beat out edgar for a place in the team.

Since Ramage returned we've looked absolutely diabolical at the back and the results show it all to well: 2-2, 3-2, 1-5, 2-2 (11 in 4 games even with Shay in goal!), all games that could have been won (or won convincingly in the spurs game) had we feided our stronger defenders - the first cup tye with birmingham would have easily been a win for us had it not been for our sloppy defending which would have meant no 1-5 whooping, no loss of taylor and no extra unnecessary game for the lads before the West Ham game.

Solano, Taylor, Huntington, Edgar

That doesn't sound like an amazingly bad back four to me, no matter how short of experiance two of the defenders are they're showing alot of promise and proving we don't have to go spend millions on middle aged players when we have players like Huntington and Edgar in our back garden.

All in all Roeder made the call to choose Ramage as a more experianced player over a defense that looked solid and worked relatively well against Man UTD, throwing ramage into countless games where he causes problems and adversly effects our results isn't going to boost his confidence in defense, giving him a challange for his spot will push him to try that little bit harder on the training ground and maybe up his game to the point where he is back to the kind of form he showed not too long ago for a brief period. At this stage though i feel he's better off giving Huntington / Edgar a chance to show us what they have, blood them a little while we have so many players out and hopefully have them improve our overall performance.

Unfortunately for us all,he will only be out for 2 weeks.

I doubt he faked it but when the game against Villa comes we will have some new players(hopefully some fedenders)and we will have Titus back

He is not Franco Baresi but he is better than Ramage