people used the "continental coach" argument with Sven but he proved to be more afraid of dropping his stars than any manager around.

there's no single panacea that can be quickly brought in to cure the national team of its ills. In recent years we've seen Keegan touted as the man to restore our pride and solve our problems, Sven touted as someone to bring an outside approach, Owen, Beckham, Rooney, Gerrard all touted as the problems to our playing woes and so on. even average players like Hargreaves or Barry or Heskey have been held up as the answer to our prayers ffs. of course it helps bringing in a top class foreign manager but they're still working with damaged goods and can't single handidly change that. we need to start training our youngsters in a different way at grassroots level and changing our approach to football, so that we can vary our play. at the minute we just can't adapt to playing different styles of football. how often have we failed to hold onto a lead or draw? that's cos we are fundamentally unable to slow down the tempo, dictate a game, dominate possession, pass it smoothly and comfortably, move around the pitch in an intelligent manner and so on. even our best, best, best players are probably worse at these bread and butter parts of the game than some no-mark macedonian or croation who has not even a tenth of the english player's natural talent.

I reckon in the past couple of seasons Zlatan has matured in a way that he probably should have ages ago. He's better than Owen imo, and he's proving it at Inter every single week.

Edit - 22 league goals in 34 matches says a lot.

Everything you said about Zlatan I agree with. He's a great player and one who's probably now underrated because of how s*** he was in the WC and in his last season with Juve. The criticism he got from all that seems to have stuck and now people don't seem to appreciate how much he's improved and matured as a player. No more silly bookings/red cards and no more stupid mazy dribbles that go nowhere. He's more direct than anywhere and very lethal now.

Admittedly, no, not this last year or so.

McClownan is such a tit, how obvious he was gonna blame it all on the pen. Tbh if I was ref i would have gave it, my immediate reaction was "thats a pen" and only tv replays showed it was dubious...

"I've just seen the penalty again. It's an absolute disgrace .

"It's outside the box. The linesman didn't give it. It was the referee from quite some distance. Things like that turn games.

"We were comfortable. They were running out of ideas and that just turned the game.

"It was a mad four minutes after that and unfortunately we conceded a second.

You make some excellent points there Johnny.

Nailed on, then.

As long as we give him s*** loads of grief he'll buckle sooner rather than later.

We should target him and not let up, 3pts in the bag if we do.

 

We should boo him in a cockney accent, really mess with his head.

How do cockney's boo again?

'Beowww'?

 

SSN Breaking News: Paul Robinson out of Tottenham's game at Newcastle with Calf Strain

Or should that be : Paul Robinson out of Tottenham's game at Newcastle with "Calf Strain".

Unlucky eh.

Poor calf, didn't stand a chance against the hungry fat b******.