Epic Swindle

They've got Lennon and King to add to that. Spurs I can just about accept but Villa? Their bench is seriously s****.

Almost. Webb with another howler.

Spurs' bench today: Kaboul Pavluchenko Palacios Rose Alnwick Livermore Assou Ekotto

Ace isn't he.

I knew Arsenal would blow it.

We're linked to Higuain on the official site. Won't happen obviously but if we had the funds he'd be the one player I'd go for.

Deflections probably.

4-1 Lamps.

3-1 Malouda.

Aqualini, Riera, Benayoun, Maxi, Skrtel and Babel - all feature reguarly on the bench for us. Villa especially have nowhere near that quality or experience in reserve. Striker options aside, Spurs also.

Was always going to be a home banker. They'll be tested a lot more in the coming weeks.

Villa's squad is awful. Spurs have a better strikeforce, that's about it. We have far more quality and experience off the bench and should be ahead of both of those sides given the time in the job, money spent and relevant wage bills.

2-0 Spurs.

1-1 Carew.

Lamps 1-0 <points to sky>

Hard to disagree with any of that but this nightmare of a season can't just be blamed on the manager, though he certainly hasn't helped matters at times with his stubborn approach. It's a culmination of factors, starting with the lack of ambition in the summer. The club is in limbo at the moment and there's no direction on or off the pitch.

I'll give you Torres, though he's often left isolated due to the restrictions on the rest of the team, but the others have at times been hampered by over elaborate defensive duties. Babel is the most restricted attacking player I've ever seen. He looks petrified to leave his zone. Gerrard is the one player who has constantly broke the shackles and made something happen. Is he perfect? No. But talk of selling him to balance the team is quite frankly ridiculous.

As someone said earlier, it's hard to be restrained reading such tosh. Gerrard is the one player who has broke the mould under Rafa and played with any sort of expression within such rigid constraints, and yet some people want to sell him after one dodgy, injury disrupted, nightmare season, in which on many occasions he's still been our only creative source and powered us to victory. It would be interesting to see the after effects of him leaving. I'm sure there would be a slight boost, with previously weak average players able to play with more freedom but we'd soon miss his quality.

Wolves or Liverpool, your choice.

Haha, say no more.

Or instead of buying, among others, Keane, Dossea and Aqualini. It's easier to lump all our woes on the one quality player we've had over the past 10 years than blame the manager and his approach. Lets sell him and buy another hard worker who doesn't get past the half way line and can't score goals.

Sell our best player to balance the team, quality stuff. Maybe we should just buy better players and go out to win games.

Doyle is worth a shout. I'm not sure Zamora has the mental strength to go up a level.

Won't happen. There's too many leeches in the game making far too much money.

Potato head, probably under orders from Ferguson, has had another pop at Rafa in the press over the Jones transfer. I really hope we go at them from the off and don't turn it into a war of attrition. They're awful.