You do, go on admit it, your reveling in all this quality we've brought in with seemingly limited funds
Yes of course it's way off the mark but I'm very pleased with Guthrie this season and reckon he'd push for a place in your XI. Whether he'd start or not who knows. Probably not with you trying to get Colback games and the likes of Gardner who I rate and Vaughan who has been good recently.
quite the love-in going on here... personally, i can't see the mags finishing lower than 7th, and i reckon the only teams with a massive outside chance of catching them would be us and stoke. how long is cabaye out for??
Have to massively disagree. Guthrie is a really good midfielder but as you've admitted, you don't watch him every week.
Enjoyed reading this, good views from both sides with amsterdam roger trying his hardest to ruin it all as usual, grade A tosser who continues to taint the Sunderland board in a bad light. Anyway I'm very hopeful that we can keep up our challenge for a Europa spot, the fact is when we've played well this season we have looked in a different league to most teams in the division and when we havent played well we've managed to grind out results anyway, which in my book is the sign of a team that's only getting better, I'm hoping for a couple of useful signings this month that will see us give it one big push to clinch that 6th spot, but I think 7-8th is probably the more realistic finishing spot. Seen 2-3 of Sunderland's games since MON took over and been surprised at how different the team has looked, they now seem to want to fight for eachother much like our team has done this season, and theres noticeable difference in tactics used, definitely a lot more positive than with Bruce. I agree with what a lot of the Sunderland lot say about needing a clinical goalscorer though, its a must if a top 10 finish is to be achieved, I always rated Bendtnder and was a bit jealous when you signed him but he looks pretty average indeed now hes had a good run of games. My prediction for you would be 8-10th with a new striker and around 9-12th without one
Personally - did the predictor the other day and got ourselves finishing 8th with 54 points, which would be a great season, especially since we were touching dropzone just before Christmas. Unfortunately, NUFC were in 7th. A rapid start and consistent season, and fair play to them. I've heard a lot of 'what if we had Ba' - but we don't, we turned him down and failed to replace Bent/Gyan appropriately. So fair play Pards, well done! If we finish 7th/8th that'd be a great year for the NE. Although on the predictor I did have Stoke to drop a lot of points, as I'm constantly gutted that they seem to be perenially 8th despite not being very good at football...
I think a lot of people seem to under estimate Stoke...In my opinion, they are damned good at what they do, and even at a European level have proved to be a very difficult team to beat..
Not wanting to cause any controversy, but I'm glad we're known as the team who blew the title rather than the team who got the record lowest points twice. And didn't Arsenal blow a bigger lead than us once?