All of a sudden, doubts creeping in about Bobby: he gets his tactics wrong, he's bought poorly, blah blah. Thing is, we are on the South Americans' backs before they've had a chance - Acuna is fine and we paid next to nowt for him, Bassedas needs to get fit and we haven't even bought Cordone. The next thing you know, they'll be having crises of confidence a la Maric, Tomasson and Andersson. As for Bobby, he couldn't have legislated for this bad luck with injuries. He has said that we can't keep rebuilding from within as we are really down to the bare bones. He's right. Whatever mismanagement has got us into this predicament, it isn't Bobby Robson's fault.

-- Anonymous, December 11, 2000

Answers

They say they are waiting on Bridges getting fit before targeting him. I'm sure everyone on here would like to see Bridges at NUFC. Local lad who is only 22 but has a good reputation in the premiership.

Get someone on loan until we can get him. I'd have to agree with that strategy, we've just been unfortunate that Cort and Shearer look a long way from playing.

I would take issue with our medical record and for the amount of talent we have on the sideleines I think we need to invest in this side a bit more.

-- Anonymous, December 11, 2000

Incidentally, re Bridges, wouldn't we have to pay the Makems 50% of whatever the cost was? On that basis, I suspect a player plus cash deal might be on the cards to notionally reduce the Mkaem profit.

-- Anonymous, December 11, 2000

I can't believe that you think Maric, Tomasson and Andersson would've been ok had they not had a crisis of confidence! All three were duff buys from the start. We all wanted them to do well, but they were as much use as a carpet sweeper in an elephant enclosure.

Acuna showed some nice on the ball control, as did Dyer and Solano, but all of them have been in the game long enough and at a high enough level to know that unless you do something constructive yer get nowhere.

And as for players plus cash for Bridges, well at 5.00pm on Saturday I could have happily seen 11 or 12 pack their bags to Sun'lan. Now, I'd settle to see about 6 of those 'players' stop taking the piss.

-- Anonymous, December 11, 2000

Unlucky my @rsenal. It has been bliddy obvious, even to me, that we've needed more cover up front than we've had for the last 3 seasons. We've bought enough midfielders to play 11 each week with some to spare.

For Gawd's sake, on Saturday, we had an Oirish international keeper, an English International FB, a Northern Oirish International CB, a Scotland International squad member CB, an English U21 International FB, two England International Midfielders, the Welsh Captain, a Chile International MF, a Peru MF, and a bairn who's only played football for a few years. On the bench we had Harper (can't remember his recognitions), a French U21 International, a Scottish U21 International, and (presumably) two Argentinian Internationals.

If we can't make a decent side out of that many internationals then the world of soccer must be a poor place.

-- Anonymous, December 11, 2000