Nottsgriff

All depends which route you're coming on. If you're doing m62 a1 a614 then there are a couple in ollerton near the major oak (e.g. Launays) which are very good, there's the dog and duck in clipstone, and the lion in farnsfield, all very good and all around 20 mins from Mansfield. If you're doing m6 a50 m1 (the way i drive up to anfield) then I don't know it as well but on a Sunday you'd be ok coming via j.24 of the m1 to nottingham city centre and calling at the larwood and voce next to trent bridge cricket ground, or the riverside pub/restaurant just over trent bridge, which would be half an hour away from Mansfield. Others will know south notts better than me though, and I'm sure there are other nice places just off the motorway if you're coming that way.

All the rained off stuff is based on quotes from cox after their last game was rained off which have eventually recycled via local press to national press. No rain forecast from now until the game, it will go ahead. The talbot is the best pub near the ground, and it's a decent pub, but the home fans go there on match day too so not sure what it'll be like on the day. The railway inn isn't bad either 5 mins walk from the station towards the town centre.

Total b******s. The haggling would have been over the sell on fees and other monetary clauses - this is his agent's get out for nearly scuppering the deal by trying to say they were looking for a footballing clause that the league officials wouldn't accept (notice there's no blame on us in that article...)

Couldn't have been much better really. A team in disarray in the middle of their winter break, followed by Basel or Dnipro with the second leg at home. As the last 16 draw went on I was sure we were going to get Chelsea.

Wow, we have a back up plan ready to roll. They actually did learn something from the disastrous Dempsey deadline day debacle then!

I read Rodgers comments as saying nobody knows who's going to be available and for what price, so don't get your hopes up. These two are obviously the two we could get sorted for Jan 1st, but from my hazy memory of January windows most business usually gets done late on as clubs get desperate either to buy or to offload players with 6 months left on their contract. I'd be surprised and disappointed if we weren't at least trying to get someone else in as well as these two. Not necessarily just another striker either, a left back and cover for Lucas wouldn't go amiss.

The idea is that the 4-3-3 becomes closer to a 4-5-1 when we lose the ball, with pressing high up the pitch. But that only works if your wide attackers are any good at doing it. Sterling is young and inexperienced, and Shelvey was all over the place on Saturday. It looked much much better when Enrique was on the left, and we need to put him back there as soon as he's fit until we can sign someone else in January. I thought we could see against Southampton (I know, it's only Southampton) how the midfield is supposed to look, and we looked balanced for the first time in a while with Lucas back in there. We knew when the window shut that the squad looked s***. We've had to play the bigger names more often that we'd have liked in the Europa and it's all coming home to roost now. Sterling has been relied on for far too long up front. Allen, playing three times a week for the first time in his career, looks absolutely shot after a really good start to the season. Suso and Wisdom had already tailed off a bit after a good run, and we're left with a threadbare squad and players covering out of position e.g. Downing left back seems to be our best option at the moment, as Enrique is our best option wide left. If we sign two early in January, and Borini stays fit for the rest of the season, then we should look better.

Hindsight is wonderful on those deals though. Ba was, and remains, a near crock who reportedly will never pass a medical. Newcastle took a huge gamble on him and Sylvain Marveaux that summer, both of whom were highly regarded but had failed medicals elsewhere (Marveaux had just failed one for us). Ba worked out better than they ever could have hoped, but where was Marveaux last season? Diame had also reportedly failed medicals at Barcelona and Man Utd among others due to a heart condition. Those are the kind of signings you make when you're desperate and may as well take a punt. Sometimes they work out, sometimes they don't. We can't afford to take those kinds of risks on signings if we're seriously building for top four and beyond. Of that list the only genuinely smart signing in my opinion is Michu, who was identified and targeted by the scouting network Rodgers put in place at Swansea. I hope the set-up he's put in place here starts to spot these kinds of players over the next couple of seasons, but there's no doubt that if we were interested the price would have been a lot higher than £2m.

On Sturridge's extreme greediness, I've just been looking at his stats - how did he manage to get 7 assists to go with his 13 goals last season? Were they all mis-hit shots? He's always struck me as a bit greedy too, but not in an excessively bad way, and nothing that can't be coached out of him. Was genuinely surprised that he'd got so many assists though. [edit - just seen that they are all competition stats, but still only Adam and Suarez for us had more than him whether you count premiership or all comps]

Bitscores was great, I'd gladly pay to know that I'm going to get a decent quality reliable stream that doesn't buffer or drop every couple of minutes. Free streams have been OK for sky games, but for the games that aren't being televised in this country they are all rubbish, and as I have Sky they are the only ones I really need a stream for.

Well someone surely leaked the Sturridge/Ince story for all the papers to have basically the same story on the same day....may as well join in the idle speculation while there's nothing else to go on.

Yeah, you could be right on that. I suppose I jumped to believing the Sturridge and Ince story because I really want us to sign someone early in the window (ahead of the Utd and Arsenal games), and I can't see that being the case with Walcott - Arsenal will keep negotiating right to the deadline if he's going to be sold, particularly with us playing them on deadline eve. Would be happy enough with Walcott, Sturridge and Ince for the window, though would prefer it if it was Walcott, Ince and Huntelaar. I certainly think we need another two proven players if Ince is signed.

How many times have we screamed that we don't have enough pace in the team, strength in the team, and not enough people who'll just hit the bloody thing when we get round the edge of the box. Then we are linked with a pacy, strong, young striker with a decent goalscoring record and Premiership experience for just over £10m, and he's s***, will corrupt the kids (with no evidence to suggest this at all), and is too selfish (usually a good trait in a goalscorer). If we sign him then it'll be because Rodgers rates him, and I've seen nothing to suggest it's that mad a gamble, though I admit I'm not an avid watcher of Chelsea's games. If we get Sturridge and Ince in on day one of the window, with another class attacking player added before the end of it, then I'd say that's a decent window and definitely gives us much more attacking threat than we have now. On Walcott, I may be reading too much into the recent stories, but I think we're going to get him in the summer for nothing if we can show that we are going to be a top four side again, either that or with a really cheap offer on deadline day when Arsenal realise they're going to lose him for nothing. The Mancs don't want or need him, to me that story reeks of Arsenal leaking it to try and provoke a decent sized January bid from us.

Four points off 4th with villa (h) Fulham (h) qpr (a) Sunderland (a) to come. If all goes according to plan we will be sitting nicely when the window opens and we can get reinforcements in. That was a massive win.

Rodgers: "What I demand – when I came into here I promised three things: "That my communication is open, so my door is open for you, if there's football or social life you come and speak to me, you come and speak to me – but I will tell you how I feel. I'm not going to waste six months to tell you something that I know now. So my communication is open. The second point I'll promise you is quality. I'm in here at half seven in the morning and I leave between seven and eight at night. I'll give my life to the club to make it the very best I can and provide quality in my work. I've spent years studying, doing all the dirty work, being away from my family, travel, travel, spending money, having no money, you know, to invest for my future going forward. So I will provide quality in my work. The third thing I will promise you is ambition. I've arrived at 39 years of age at one of the best clubs in the world because I want to succeed and I'm ambitious, and, without being arrogant, I'm good at what I do." - from http://www.theanfiel...gers-interview/ Doesn't sound like someone with a lack of hunger, ambition or work-ethic to me. And I keep saying it, but as much as I loved Kenny our league form was bloody awful before Rodgers took over and I think we were all blinded a bit as to just how bad it was. He had a huge job on to turn that around, just as Kenny would have done himself had he been given the opportunity.

It's alright saying we should be challenging for fourth, but willpower alone won't get us there. I was forwarded this earlier - LINK - which shows how far we've slipped since 2008/09 when we were still a top four side. I think Rodgers is doing reasonably well given the circumstances. Put a good run together now before the window opens and we can really push on in the second half of the season with a striker/attacker or two.

No co-incidence that he hasn't had a decent proper striker to work with for those two years either. He's missing his Torres to pass to (or Owen, or whoever else), just as Torres himself is missing his passes at Chelsea. I genuinely believe that a lot of our problems in midfield would be solved with a decent striker. We are so pathetically blunt up top that it affects our whole set-up.

In terms of runs of form, it's over a year since we last got 12 points from six games. I think too many people are blinded to just how bad we were in the league under Kenny last season, that's what Brendan is trying to turn around. I'd have given Kenny a chance to put his own mistakes right, and I think that two cup finals should have earned him the right to do that, but let's not pretend that our league form was anything other than atrocious before Brendan took over, never mind since.

<br /><br /><br /> It was blindingly obvious when the window closed and we hadn't signed more forwards that this was how it would pan out, that's why everyone was so pissed off at the time. We sold loads of goals in the summer in Maxi, Bellamy, Kuyt, even Carroll to a much lesser extent. The only replacement was Borini, and he got himself injured. The way we are dominating games and creating chances shows that the system is OK, though clearly still a bit of a work in progress as you'd expect less than three months in with a new manager (we had similar teething troubles with Rafa's system to begin with, though from a higher starting point). It's the players that are s*** and we simply don't have enough players with an eye for goal. Enrique heading across goal instead of at goal, Henderson missing an open goal, these weren't s*** chances last night, they were s*** finishes. That's without the hard luck stories that we seem to have in every game (Gerrard and Suarez non-pens, them scoring from a non-free-kick etc.). We need to realise where we are at the moment. We are not a "guaranteed top six/possible top four" side, and haven't been since Hicks and Gillett started selling all our best players. We've been in decline since 2009, and with this set of players we are a top 8 side who with a good run could sneak fourth, along with the likes of Everton, Newcastle, Spurs, etc.. With a couple of decent additions in January we can improve that. We're not too far away from getting back to being a guaranteed top 6 side, but it's no good blaming this manager at this stage, sheer will from us fans alone doesn't get you up there when you've not got the tools to work with. FSG realise they sold him short too, so I can't see them sacking him. Talk of the bottom three is daft, we were 8 games unbeaten before last night and our next six are Southampton, West Ham, Villa, Fulham, Stoke and QPR. We've lost for the last five years at White Hart Lane, last night was one of our best performances in that run.

Oh, well in bale!

Henderson open goal, Enrique clear header....these aren't s*** chances we're making, they're s*** players who haven't got a goal in them. Suarez has had a couple of half chances too, one off the line... Too many individual mistakes, and not enough goals, because too many of our players are simply s***.

Even game. But they can score goals, we can't. I'd put shelvey on at the front of the midfield for Downing, Enrique to left back and Gerard right, sterling left.

Agreed, but the 'being a knob' bit was about him reportedly demanding over £10k a week when he hadn't played a first team game, rather than him holding out because he wasn't sure he'd get a chance to play. I'm sure I remember him mouthing off when he was manager at Notts that Thomas would be on more money as one of his senior players there or in the Championship than he was on at Liverpool, completely missing the point that he wasn't a senior player at that stage. Regardless, I'm glad it has worked out for him at Blackpool and given the success he's had there I'd be happy if we signed him back.

Saw him a couple of times when he was on loan at Notts County. He looked really quick and skilful, but his decision making and end-product was lacking at times. He's clearly improved that if he's scored so many goals in the Championship. The only reason people aren't excited are because we let him go, but that was due to his Dad being a knob about his contract rather than because he wasn't rated. With the discount, I reckon he'd be a good signing for us, as long as we are still signing two top class attacking players along with him.

70k basic each, and are they really any better than when they were all amateurs?