there are just too many! but my top five, in no particular order: mourinho - simply too arrogant kenyon - whore/pimp or whatever gary neville - wind-up merchant souness - i know he got us the league cup and promotion.. but i seriously never rated nor liked this man. mike riley - worst of a poor bunch of premiership referees, though some may argue that the spanish ones are worst.

i'm struggling to come up with 5 names for our penalties if it goes to that... i know dickov takes our pens but i never felt entirely confident with him taking them... and that was before the chelski miss. Savage, MGP... and who else?

like we all already know, this match showed that we can't score... we need someone else in there beside dickov. and for me, that man is non other than jansen. he was doing fine, he was scoring, so why has he been frozen out? for me right now, i'd have him in the team ahead of gally, and stead on the bench ahead of johnson. come'on sparky, give him a run out in the replay.

he comes across as really passionate, and really tried his best to do well in his time here. unfortunately, he's just not up to it. cracking goal at fulham last year though. if he played beside a rio or campbell, he'd be a cracking defender. unfortunately, souness saw him as our sol campbell, and that's where amo's been shown up. another inspired sour signing. get rid.

i, for one, do not want to see our kit being made by nike (not that it'd matter for the next 2 seasons... but still). the generic stuff nike churns out is just disgusting. look at the jerseys for arsenal and scum utd. remove the badges and you have an identical design, right down to the stripe on the sleeve. the difference lies only in the colour. nike is for me, the epitome of all that is wrong with sports marketing. i'd be happy with someone like kappa making our kits. while it was still pretty 'similar' in basic design, there were at least variations amongst the various teams in kappa's stable. but not that my rant will matter, because we always end up with the smaller brands anyway (asics, uhlsport!!!??!!!, kappa etc), and i'm happy with it.

red and black for the away kit please! yellow almost always mean a terrible season for us.

plus he's... gasp... welsh!

YESSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! nice to see the changes being made to the 1st eleven, and these changes actually paying off well. surely now, 451 can be cast aside for good?

Steve Dunn. Wasn't he the ref at our last encounter? wasnt he the only person not to see molenaar's two handed shove on dahlin in the 4-3 loss?

i'll go with your formation lechuck, except flitty for tugay if the latter isnt fit. realistically however, we will never get this line up tomorrow. although i feel that he's still our best option alongside dickov, hughes apparently doesnt, and so matty will not even be on the bench (as per usual). that i'm pretty sure. prediction wise, it looks like boro's gonna be playing a whole bunch of kids... so hoping we can sneak something from the game.

taken from the dingle board: I'm saying that Blackburn were our rivals, but in footballing terms how long is it since we were in the same division? PNE are much more relevant rivals, and have been for years. Just like on the Turf - too many people singing antiquated songs that they don't even know the right words to (it should be 'will we play', not 'till we play'). even they accept we're superior

we have zero creativity. zero! impressed by the hustling, but the lack of real quality is telling, very telling and depressing. to play 451 effectively, the lone guy upfront has to win the headers, and dickov just can't! can someone please point this out to hughes?! and to round off a bad night, duff, who had handled himself extremely well i thought all night, had to kiss the rouble badge before throwing his shirt into the chelsea crowd. sore.

i dont know how many chelsea will score, and i don't wanna predict. but i'm sure the score line will start with a big fat 0. so the best we can do will be a goaless draw. but with individual matchups like duff & robben vs matteo & neill, jemal johnson and MGP vs terry and gallas... i'm not at all optimistic. not at all. that means: rovers 0 - chelsea ??? (more like whatever they fancy)

shilito, ferguson, emo, bellamy will be fantastic, but only if everyone's happy. right now, my preferred option in an ideal world will be ferguson in a straight swap for bellamy. however, if ferguson is still here this time tomorrow, then there is a chance he might actually realise that this club is ambitious and going somewhere, and give it a real go. i wouldnt mind starting afresh with him, but he has to assure us fans that he's worth it, and more importantly, want it.

our good friend souness just paid me 15m for MGP marek jankulovski and emo for me. heh.

just heard steve bruce's prematch interview on tv. basically, thought he doesnt sound all that confident about bellamy signing for them; bruce just said that a fee's been agreed, and bellamy had to make his decision quick, and that he will know where to get bruce. don't want to get my hopes up, but he doesnt sound too convinced. but if emo's going to newcastle as a make weight for bellamy, i wouldnt be too upset till the details are known. meaning, if emo goes and we end up paying something like 1m for bellamy, i would think that's a good deal, meaning emo's valued at 5m. however, if he goes, and we end up paying anything above 2.5m cash, i'd be pretty upset. fact is, emo is replaceable, with thommo suitable for the right wing, as well as reid. am i the only person here who thinks that whilst emo's improvement since last season has been tenfold, he still isnt quite that good?

personally i don't think that the money will come from the insurance claim. if we pull this off, i'm more inclined to think that its a 'cole' style of financing, and that its a special release of funds for what is essentially an emergency situation. more likely, while the 4m insurance claim might have gone towards sparky's transfer kitty for next season, it will now go back to the trustees' fund. but whatever, i don't really care, as long as we land a decent striker. and kudos to the board and sparky if we pull this off. and not forgetting, mr savage, who must have had a friendly chat or two with his welsh mate.

bring on burnley or the winners of brentford vs hartlepool. then let man u or boro get newcastle, and arsenal get chelsea!

disgusting end to the game, but in all fairness, neither side deserved to win it. i thought the referee had a good game, and made only 1 wrong call, which unfortunately cost us the game. the neill handball may have evened up the penalty, but diouf really should have been sent off for diving instead. more worrying though for us, was that today's game highlighted 2 points. 1st, our attack. basically, its no dicky = no bite. i never realised that dickov was so important to us till today. however, this game has shown that without him, we are absolutely impotent in attack. his haressing, his holding up of the ball and laying it off and all around play was sorely missed today, and i think this is evident to all who watched the game. also, what in the world has happened to matty? surely he can't do worse than stead, who looks absolutely bereft of confidence, and also out of his depth. johnson did not make a big impact, and looks much too scrawny. also, his shot when put through seemed to be the wrong decision - the angle wasnt the best, and savage was steaming through the centre. had he pulled it across, we'd have scored. 2nd point though, might be a little more controversial. i have seen mokoena against portsmouth, cardiff and now bolton, and i must say i have yet to be impressed. somehow i feel that without nissa, the defence just isnt as steady. mokoena's positioning might be alright, but his heading and clearing ability isnt. mokoena simply lacks nissa's strength in clearing headers and generally dominating the air and area around him. i thought that with todd and nissa, we had a regular and genearlly steady, almost rock-like centreback pairing. why did we have to break this up?

great result, and a good team performance overall. more importantly, another clean sheet! apart from 1 good save, friedal did not have much to do. everybody did well, from stead to thommo to todd, who was magnificent again. overall, very good result, especially coupled with norwich losing. slowly building a gap now between us and the bottom 3, so may we continue moving upwards!

http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2002390...4602601,00.html feeling worried now. personally, i do think we may have tapped him up, although this isn't unlike what other clubs do. however, given how much this has been played out in the press, should birm actually report us, will we get hit with a points deduction?! god forbid this from happening... please!

yesssssssssss!!! it may be only a 1-0 win, but we were never really threatened at all; brad did not even have a single save to make. i thought everybody played well, but my man of the match has to be flitty. he's looked resurgent recently, and today he was everywhere. every ball that came at the defence, flitty was there to intercept and just hoof it clear. his passing also seems to have improved lately, more precise than i ever remember. and also, another clean sheet! more of the same against villa please.

now that you say it... any chance we sue souness for misappropriating funds? i wouldnt be too sad if we lost ferguson for the 7.5m we paid. he isn't consistent enough for me, and doesnt dominate the game for all 90min, tending to disappear and play well in flashes. if 7.5m means we get a good striker and another decent replacement in midfield, i'll take it. but savage for 2m is steep. if we stay up and savage plays a key role in it, he'd have paid his fee back, but he really doesn't have any sell on value, so this will be another transfer along the road we have taken in recent years.

in this order: defensive mid, striker, centre half

tugay tried hard to, then drew out when he realised that the best he could have done was hack brown down. no doubt it'd have been his second yellow and he'd have been off again. i'm sure if he hadn't already been booked, he would have brought brown down, drew the card, and stop the immediate threat. that said, our defenders actually ran into each other. nissa and todd i think, when brown was clearly running out of breathe. if they hadnt ran into each other, one could have got a tackle in too.