The walters step over

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We won't get anything for Cole, and would probably have to give him a chunk of money to leave. I do think though that there'd be a few Prem clubs that would take Downing for the right price/wages.

Thought he did alright, tbh. There's bound to be the odd game where most of what he tries doesn't come off but at least he didn't go into his shell and take the easy option - he kept trying to get in behind them and make things happen when he had the ball. At some point though he's going to need to have a couple of weeks rest but I guess we'll need Assaidi and Borini to settle into things a bit more before that can happen. Be interesting to see what Cole and Downing do in Jan. It's pretty obvious they're not going to start, or even come on most games so do they want to play and go out on loan or will they just sit back and collect their money?

They said that they didn't think Suarez was racist, but that wasn't the issue. To use words that can be deemed racially offensive is punishable no matter what the intent - that what their ruling on Suarez basically boiled down to. I would imagine had Suarez said it once, maybe twice then he would've been looking at a couple of games (whether or not you think that's sufficient punishment is by the by). The Fa will probably point to the words f*cking c*nt that surrounded the word "black" as being evidence enough that Terry is worth a ban, although they'll again point out that they don't think Terry's a racist as such.

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You're probably right. I'm not one of those ACAB lot but it's just an aspect of the whole thing that I've struggled to understand for the last 20 odd years. They did the same with the shooting of De Menezes, instead of coming out and saying "look, we were under huge pressure and we f*cked up - we're sorry and we'll learn from the incident" - which, I think, most people would have sympathy with, they instead tried to smear him and tried to make it sound like he'd brought it on himself by lying through their teeth.

I agree with that. I can understand why people might want to but when we've had internet campaigns to stop Simon Cowell getting to no1 it just makes it seem..I don't know what the words are tbh, but I know I wouldn't buy it and imo it doesn't really serve any purpose. As regards the report. I still can't get my head around why the smear campaign happened. Without it there would have been an enquiry, the people in charge that day would've been found negligent, as would S.Wed for having a ground unfit for purpose, as would the FA for insisting the game was played there but ultimately we would've been looking at a handful of people losing their jobs. The ordinary coppers in S.Yorkshire would have had some degree of sympathy for being under trained and under equipped to deal with something of that scale so why the cover up? What exactly did they think they were trying to achieve? I just wonder how many of them sat there and asked the question - why are we doing this?

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Don't know if someone has posted something similar, so if so apologies.. I've just been reading through a few other fan forums to gauge their reaction. Most have been pretty straight tbh and deserve credit for it - looking at the Geordies forums though it shows that no matter how much proof is put in front of someone, if they're prejudiced and it doesn't fit in their world view then they'll just ignore anything that contradicts them. I'm not going to rehash what's been said by most on them, you can probably guess, but I've never wanted us to smash the f*ck out of any team as much as I want us to hammer Newcastle.

Same here. A lot of people I've spoken to don't take the rag seriously about anything, but their views are that if the police came forward and said "fans were fighting with the police,blah,blah,blah" then it must be true because why would the police lie? I don't personally blame the coppers at the ground that day because they froze. If they hadn't the training to deal with something on that scale then they needed solid leadership from their immediate superiors - they didn't get that. I know a lot would disagree with me on that but for me the whole "truth" shyte happened because the higher ups in the establishment wanted to protect a couple of their own.

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After standing his ground in getting the job, if BR and the board will tearing lumps out of each other I don't think he's the type to suffer silently so I'm inclined to think he's not fibbing and that he does have a decent relationship with the board. It's possible that the right hand didn't know what the left was doing and as a consequence we ended up making a balls up of the last few days of the window. Doesn't neccessarily mean they're killing each other behind the scenes but it's obvious we need stronger leadership at the very top. It'll all come out in the wash I suppose but it means that any journalist with space to fill has an easy angle to write about when it comes to us.

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Or maybe she actually believes in what she's written? I know the narrative is Owens a c*nt, blah,blah,blah but I find it interesting that for someone that nobody cares about he doesn't half get a sh*tload written about him on here.. For the first three years he was incredible for us and won us points and games when we'd been so poor we deserved nowt. His injuries stem from being rushed back time and time again by Houllier to pull us out of the sh*t - he hardly ever played reserve games to ease himself back into things and it ended up costing him big time. I would also say that it cost us big time as well - instead of a Thierry Henry type of forward that he was developing into (and would have,had he been at Arsenal or Utd) he ended up being a Lineker type because he simply wasn't given the time and patience to work on his game. Did he love the club?Probably not, but then again, how many players do?And realistically, why should that matter? "Good ol' Robbie la" p*ssed his talent up the wall, undermined the management staff of Evans and then Thommo. But that's alright because he's "one of us" and he was only a young lad - much older than Owen, but still.. I just find it a bit sad that a guy that has never slagged the club/fans off in any way (and turned up for a charity game at Anfield, knowing what reception he'd get) gets called allsorts whilst other players that only gave a feck when they wanted to and took the p*ss out of the fans/club with their behaviour get palm leaves thrown in front of them when they walk down the road.

He was playing his first game with team mates he hadn't played with before. In a league he'd never played in before. Against one of the top four teams in that league. Players usually take time to settle into a new team, never mind a new country and I'm willing to bet that Sahin will be boss for us this season. It just seems as though it's been decided that the whole club is on it's way to ruin and genuine concerns are getting thrown into the pile with hysterical, over the top whining. The managers shyte, the board are shyte, relegation is a possibility and the players don't give a toss. It's like there's a competition to see who can come up with the worse scenario. Barrett is using quotes from Dave Whelan to have a go - Dave Whelan! Since when has anybody heard anything he's ever said and gone "yeah,talks sense that fella" but because it's another angle to have a go then all of a sudden he's qualified to talk about the "heart" of our club.

No chance. I'm banging on and on about this and boring myself but the same posters keep on banging on about "mid table finishes now acceptable to FSg" and "we are now Villa". If you can point me in the direction of ANY quotes, not journalist pieces, not my mate knows someone and he's heard but genuine quotes of "mid table is fine, thats all we want for the club" then fine, go nuts and vent. They've proved that mid table isn't what they're after by sacking Kenny. Why would they do that if they weren't ar*ed about where we finish as long as we're in the Prem? I keep on asking this question but no-one who thinks that FSG are solely here to asset strip the club has answered yet, here's another go: If they didn't give a feck and are only interested in making a quick buck then fecking off, why did they allow Kenny to spend the full Torres money, and then give him more that summer? They could've done what the Glazers with Ronaldos fee and pocket the lot or even told Kenny that he could only have a slice of the fee - they didn't do that, why?Why would they sack Kenny and have to pay him and his staff off if they weren't bothered about positions, only money? As a club we're in a similar state to when Ged took full charge. One or two top class players, a few youngsters but some pretty big gaps in the squad that need to be filled if we're to challenge at the top. Unfortunately we haven't got the cash to buy anyone we want (and with the exception of last year, as a club we haven't been able to do that for donkeys years) so we have to do it piecemeal.It was always going to take time.