My thoughts on the Darlington game - There's always a few that have to spoil it.

I knew even before I read it that Barton would get at least a 9 and that Fergie would probably get an 8 or better

 

Bloody hell yeah, lets just thank god that it wasn't...

 

No such thing as a friendly for Leeds

 

Bunch of a***holes with the pitch invasion and one or two trying to get across to goad the Darlo fans. Took my 7yr old to his first toon match and ended up trying to explain why our fans were running onto the pitch and the match was potentially getting abandoned.

As for the players....

JB - Legend
Saylor - top game
B Arfa - solid reintroduction to 1st team
Cab - looks v good (caveat = level of opposition)
Sammy - could be better than his bro

 

Sorry to hear that. Sounds like it was just a load of pissed up dick heads, pardon my french. Hopefully you can take your lad to a much better match with a better and friendlier environment and atmosphere

 

Hope so......to be fair i dont reckon it was normal ST holders more pissed up kids who got the train down and wanted to look like jack the lad.

Just ****e that the majority of fans who wanted to see a decent match didnt get the chance to do so.

 

you could take your lad to the first home game of the season (Arsenal) , bound to be a great atmosphere

 

Vuckic wasn't that bad, just didn't live up to the hype. His positioning and ability to find space were good, just took a while to get his first touch down, but once he did it was like he had Best's magic chest of sponge. He's clearly not a winger though, needs to be in CM or AM.

 

Was there any real reason for the trouble at the game? Seems very odd to have trouble at a pre-season friendly.

 

There did seem to be ****loads of radgee teenagers, most of whom didn't even wear the shirt, just the latest trend of polo shirts. Walked down to the ground behind a huge crowd of them, then had a group of them behind me who spent the second half basically on the advertising boards. Pretty much the 3 rows behind me had emptied when they went down.

 

wow, sounds like a lot of people really loved Ben Arfa. I think his passing, shooting and link up were excellent, but his dribbling wasn't that great most of the time and his touch wasn't that good. He lacked a bit of sharpness as well.

Cabaye was awesome though.

 

He broke his leg ffs.

 

Most people just ran on to the pitch for a laugh, but there were some ******s that starting fighting. The security at Darlington is ****. There were 13/14 year old kids pissed with beer in their hands and the police just threw them back into the stands when they should have been taken away.

 

Yes i know mate, i said in the article it's his first game back after 9 months so i didn't expect him to be God/Tiote like

All i'm saying is that i don't get why some websites seem to be saying he was epic and it was an amazing reintroduction. He was good, but he wasn't one of the better players IMO.

The magic is there, he just needs a bit of time.

 

Maybe they are saying he was good for a players coming back from a v bad injury

 

Think Sammy and Best both played better than Shola would have.

 

Here's my post from the match thead.

Just got back....well! Where do I start.

First Half was pretty calm, very impressed with BenArfa and Cabaye. Best looked sharp, Vukic had a poor game. Cabaye seems to be the guy who gets given the ball in our half all the time then passes neatly and accurately forward, very impressed.

The trouble. The bar seemed to sell drink to everyone, including all the underage charvs. A lot of people were hammered. When Sammy came on people were singing 'if Sammy scores were in the pitch' obviously he scored and at first only 2-3 people ran on, then hundreds followed. I believe a lot were kids but I'm not defending the pile of pissed adults also.

It started calming down, and the crowd booed the pitch invaders heavily. BenArfa wasn't happy clapped the crowd as he came back on with the others.

Unfortunately as the players were coming back on some remaining darlo fans pretended to Chase some left over Geordies prompting people to run back onto the pitch.this prompted the ref to stop the game and walk the players off. This again calmed down leaving a single darlo fan to punch a steward while being escorted off, 4-5 Geordies ran on a punched him a few times.

The crowd was booing and lively untill pardew and carver came and hand signalled to calm down and saying the match would continue in 10 minutes.


After that it went back to relative calm but the senior players were subbed 1 by 1.


Entertaining day. Impressed with BenArfa, Cabaye, Best and Barton. Oo and Shane Ferguson also, he looked as sharp and tricky as usual. Sayler did well, as did Williamson. Even Sammy looked up for it.

Vukic was poor, Simpson looked out of practice with a few slip ups. Ranger was poor for the final 20 mins he was on.

That is all, sick of typing!

 

Considering how long he's been out of the game with a serious injury and how short he is of match practise, I thought he did very well.

 

Agreed.

 

i didnt think to much to anyone tonight apart from Cabaye and Sammy when he came on!! Giving Taylor an 8 is a bit generous like he was hesitant going for everything i though did not look sharp at all

And Sammy is 36 seriously considering getting that myself after tonight lol