2May The limp displays of QPR at Chelsea and Blackburn at Tottenham have left both sides well and truly stuck in the relegation mire. And the Lifeâs A Pitch team believes that based on performances like that, not only will both QPR and Blackburn fail to beat the drop, but neither deserves to. âOn the basis of spirit, fight and ambition, absolutely not,â answers former footballer turned journalist Adrian Clarke when asked if Blackburn and QPR deserve to stay up. âBlackburn Rovers and QPR in recent weeks, especially on their travels, have shown no spirit, no character, no fight. I couldnât believe Blackburnâs lame effort at White Hart Lane; not to register a shot on target is pathetic. QPR just waved the white flag from the first minute against Chelsea. They just said: âCome throughâ.â The Timesâ Rory Smith, meanwhile, has a theory on the apparent happiness in the Blackburn camp despite their struggles, and the fansâ frustrations with manager Steve Kean. âI took that to mean that Steve Kean was actually quite a good manager on the training pitch, and that his sessions were good, and that his good coaching reputation was helping him. It turns out that actually the players just donât care. I think Blackburn have been found out.â And while Mark Hughes hasnât had the positive reaction heâd have hoped after taking over in January, The Peopleâs Janine Self believes he was handicapped with the mediocre players his predecessor Neil Warnock panic-bought during last summerâs transfer window. âHe [Warnock] bought in a panic for deadline, and thatâs never a good strategy. They did a supermarket sweep of all the dregs that were not getting any games at their clubs. It was a gamble, it didnât come off.â It hurts! And I don't agree with the title (except for Blackburn for which relegation is richly rewarded) But there's truth in our lack of backbone at Stamford Bridge and NW's supermarket sweep of dregs not getting games at their clubs... Whatever happens over the next couple of weeks, we have to rebuild - young, talented players with lots of potential Start looking for them now Tony and Amit - they're an investment
Doesn't tell us anything we didn't already know. This "article" could have been lifted - almost word for word - from posts made on here over the last 6 months. (And probably was!)
It's hard to argue with the sentiment written above. We have been gutless away from home. We can't hide from that.
WBA away was a disgrace. The players didn't lift themselves for a game where we should have got at least a point.
Clearly based the piece on one weekend. Janine Self, whoever she is, says that Warnock's strategy of buying up the dregs from other clubs was a gamble without any mention of the fact he was forced to do so because his main targets were snapped up before Briatore ****ed off and he was able to spend some money.
Good point - the article makes out as if this was NW's reasoned strategy. He'll be cycling down from Leeds to complain at the injustice...
Too many journos can't be arsed to do proper research, or like to write articles that are an opinionated headline and nothing more I don't give a toss about these idiots - they don't love the club like we do
Ridiculous. Whoever goes down will deserve to go but to say things like this based on one performance is idiotic. Bolton's 2 games against us were probably the worst displays of any PL team this season. QPR and Blackburn were poor on the weekend but these are teams that between the two of them have won convincingly at Old Trafford, taken points at Anfield, won at Stoke, beaten Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool and Spurs. So knee-jerk
Its obvious someone has only seen us in that one game, I wondered if he would have said the same thing after the Arsenal or Liverpool game?
It's that time when the maggots come out to look oh so professional but as Eamon said nothing new to us. Deserve to go down? Easy for me : Wolves, Blackburn and Villa/Bolton They have been dreadful I do blame Wannock for his rash buys as its clear and I am convinced he ruined the team spirit he had successfully built very quickly The Core Championship players have outperformed the more established players NW brought in . The Norwich and Swansea teams have been outstanding as they built on their foundations ... We dug ours up and filled the footings with pig **** I will never recover from that as I was right and I knew it
Only the teams that actually are relegated deserve to be relegation, just as only the team that wins the league deserves it. Either way I'd prefer to be relegated than work for a rag like the People
We are not at risk of going down for the reasons given in that article. We had some good away wins and cracking games at home under NW (but needed to win some of these) under NW. Finally sorting out the home form but poor away now. Its too obvious to imply we are not the best team in the division. We put together a team capable of staying up. What messed it up was 7 red cards in key games and not performing well against lower teams away. Cisse's cards? The team was capable of better and we are nearly there (hope!)
The disallowed and blindingly obvious Clint Hill goal away at, of all teams, Bolton was pretty unhelpful too...Who knows what would have happened if we'd gone one up. If we go down, I think we should find that linesman and force him to clean the Ellerslie toilets for a season...without a brush
The article is bollocks as others have pointed out. Its not our away form thats been the problem, its our home form. We could have lost all our away games and still have 54 points had we won all our home games till now. Unfortunately, we kept losing or drawing all those home games at the start of the season. At the time MH took over, we'd only won one - against 9 men - and our away form was actually marginally better than our home form.
I think its destiny that we are going to go down and by less than the 3 points that decision cost us, Ive thought it for a long time. However, we can be all but mathematically safe (or indeed down) at 4pm Sunday depending on tonights result.
I wonder if the Journalist (And use am reluctant to call them a Journalist) go to the same optician that looks after the eyes of the referees/linemen(referees assistants) at the Bolton or Manu games. If (I know it's a big if) those two games had been handle by proper and fit officials things would be very different, another example of incompetant refereeing was also seen at our home match against Everton , I hope Bolton get stuffed by Tottenham and lose their match after that, we beat Stoke and Bolton need to win by seven clear goals on the last day.
