I rate Collo but Taylor is a **** muppet and a ****ing awful one at that. I actually had a lot of goodwill towards Andy Carroll after he gave him what EVERY normal lad wanted to. Whoever plays from either side it will be the usual tense, nervous scrappy ****e it always is (apart form the odd occasion) and lots of fire and brimstone but little real goal mouth activity. There isnt a *** paper between the 2 teams on form or quality.
I stand by my point. Unless you are playing worse than Aston Villa (whom we struggled to get a draw against) of course!
1) Despite what you may think about Taylor, he is a much better defender than Williamson and Perch. With Fletcher on this form, he will bag a hattrick. 2) It will be a scrappy affair. I will be sat in a corner rocking backwards and forwards hoping for the best. 3) Normally I would laugh at the two of us being equally matched and guess what..... I still am laughing. We are terrible. One good season seems to have gotten to peoples heads. We are probably just about top 10. On grass, you are better than us despite this defensive set up.
Quillips Your main worry should never be an opposition player. If that's the case, you're going to end up sitting back deep and making sure Ben Arfa doesn't get too much space by sticking a couple of men on him, it's a dangerous game to play with that guy because he's got enough quality to humiliate your fullbacks for an entire game (this isn't restricted to just Sunderland by the way). Instead of this, you could just set up an attacking side that take the game to Newcastle for 90 minutes, non-stop ruthless attacking and by default Ben Arfa will become obsolete in attack and be forced to help out his right back/left back. That nullifies his threat, because as good as he is going forward, he's not going to offer much by way of defence. I can't think of a great example, this is a bit specific to the best team in the world, but when teams try to mark Messi out of a game, all that does is let Pedro in for a couple and the heads drop and Messi will do more damage later on. Ben Arfa's a great player, but there shouldn't be any special plans for him, if you're going to go out there and attempt to dominate and win the game.
Terry, was just pointing out who the main threat is from their team, I agree with everything you say.
It depends. If we have the same defense that played yesterday, you're right. But it would have been different if we had Coloccini and Taylor back in the side. So I don't think it's right to assume that attacking us straight away will work no matter who we put out.
Our teams have nothing between them. You seem to udnerestimate the quality of Cabaye, Tiote in midfield. I think if we didn't have such a strong front 3 they would be better, but Ba and Ben Arfa in particular are a different class and pull us level, whoever can play better as a team will win in a fortnight and will finish higher in the league, almost a straight manager v manager battle to see who can get the most out of their players.
At the moment, our two most out of form players are McClean and Colback. I would drop McClean and push Danny Rose up to left wing, and play Colback at left back where he has always impressed. ...............................MIG.................................. ..GARDNER......O'SHEA......BRAMBLE....COLBACK.. ..JOHNSON......LARSSON.......SESS.............ROSE.. ...................FLETCHER.........SAHA..................... Lets take the game to the ****ers!!!
