Cerberus

Look at this from his point of view - he is seldom a first choice pick and game time at his stage in his career is important. Plus if Villa are prepared to offer a contract beyond the summer of 2015, it would provide hime with added security before he retires or eventually drops down the leagues. His is not a supporter, football is his job and most supporters would act equally rationally in their own careers. The proviso to all of the above is that he kunckles down if he doesnt get his move.

Surely the yawning gap in our squad is the CM that can pass and defend rather than either/or.  This has been obvious all year and I quite atonished that we have not had a target for this position lined up towards the start rather than the end of the window

You are clutching at straws LDC. Even if we stay up and CH keeps his job, we are doomed to a repeating cycle of turgid football and flirting with danger. Eventually, our luck will run out and we will be relegated. The way we are heading at the moment, I fancy that even Crystal Palace will be above us by the season end, and something that was unthinkable duriing the early part of the season.Also Fulham are dire, having recently been trounced by both Hull and Sunderland. At times last night they completely outpassed us.

Unbelievable!!

Oh dear Reg. When are you going to learn that you have to let him have the last word?

A great advert for avoiding winning the League Cup!

Yellow Nets,I share your frustration, but the issue runs much deeper than the quality of oru strikers. Both Hooper and RVW are natural gaolscorers with good pedigrees. Why is it that they have suddenly stopped scoring? This problem is not confined to us - MOTD 2 ran a simialr discussion about how Spurs have turned the prolific Soldado who scoreds virtually all of his goals in the box in to a player that rarely gets into the box.

As well as another expensive striker, perhaps we could also ask Santa for a formation/style of play that actually involves us passing the ball to the aforementioned striker when he is in goal scoring positions. Seriously even Suarezor Aguero on current form would struggle to score goals in our side.

I think that some posters are a little more fond of dragging up the past, despite their protestations otherwise. Roeder, Gunn etc have little bearing on our current suituation, unless of course we have learnt absolutely nothing in the last 15 years about how a well goeverned organisation should operate.

If Adnan Januzaj....played for us, I doubt he would get anywhere as much game times for us that he would at Man Utd.

Edit - 4 out of 12 vs relagation rivals, but the points remains the same

Mrs Miggins,This isnt simply a question of bad luck. We dont have any variety or plan B and I really cant see what they are going to do on the training ground before next Saturday which is fundamentally going to change anything.For the record:1. We have only scored 6 goals this season.2. Only one of these has come from our expensive strike force.3. If the BBC are to be believed, our three strikers have have only 6 six shots on target in ten games.4. Our GD is already a jaw dropping -14 and in the same territory as the basket caees that are Palace and Sunderland.5. We have taken 4 out of 15 against our relgation rivalsCan you outline exactly what you think CH is going to do with the extra time that the board will give him to turn things around. Is he gong to have a "road to Damascus" moment and completely change his man management and tactical approach in the space of a few days? As point 5 above suggests, we can hardly use the excuse that we have played some of the top teams recently when we fail to inflcit damage on our rivals.

Plan B said: ffs, you lot should be f***ing ashamed of yourselves. On what exactly are you basing this ridiculous pessimism on? Our recent poor league results including against currently the two best teams in the league? Even though we did play some good football, in fact being commended by both opposition managers for the way we played. Yes,we probably will get beat tomorrow, not surprising that we will be playing a team that has cost over a £1bn in transfers and wages to assemble over the past few years, but to say it will be in the 7, 8 or 9 nil region is a total disgrace, they have hardly been handing out proper pastings this season, what makes you think we will be any different to Hull, Cardiff or Villa? You talk of Hughton being negative, have a look in the mirror."" Plan B - the question is why are we any different to Hull, Cardiff or Villa and why did the other City hand out a proper pasting without hardly stepping out of first gear?

Plastic Zak said:"6-0 and the end of Hughton. I predict you will be disappointed".Zak - correct on both points, but I sense a different type of disappointment.

Warren Hill  said: "Only 5? Call yourself a fan?   I fully expect us to get a real pumping here, wouldn''t be surprised if we took the field with shorts round our ankles, bent double and greased up.   The Binners record could go here, I''m going for 11-0. We''ll struggle to hit a 30% possession stat and Joe Hart might as well bring a deckchair. There''ll also be some squit afterwards when Bradley Johnson fails to submit a sample for his drugs test as it''s discovered he can''t even pass water. Hooper will only touch the ball to tap it at kick-offs and Garrido will be physically sick as Navas spins him time and time again. Even James Milner will score" Waren - although I appreciate you were being sarcastic, your posession and score rpediction were very nearly right. Had City wanted to win by more, it could easily have been double figures and our posession could not have been much more than 30%. Joe Hart wasnt a deckchair, but his Romanian understudy certainly was. As for being bent double and greased up, I think that you were very nearly spot on. What do you think will happen against West Ham?

Don''t be so patronsing - has O''Neill actually signed a contract that has been on offer for some time or do you think he is playing for time. Ireland harly have a golden generation of talent and I dont think O''Neill will want Sunderland to be the last experience on his Premier League CV. My guess is that he would still jump at an opportunity to stay in the big time - the question is " do we have a vacnacy and are we sufficiently big enough to be more attractive than the Ireland job?"

Ron,Martin O''Neill reunited with john Roberston and Steve Walford would be a completely different proposition to waht we saw at Sunderland. Think of Brian Clough without Peter Talor. Plus I sense that O''Neill has unfinished busienss with both us, and more critically, the Premier League. He wouldn''t want Sunderland to be the last mark on his CV and his record before then was very good indeed.

Indy - completely agree. When I was watching the macth the thing that kept going through my head was first team vs youth team practice game, with the youth team told to think of nothing other than defending the area and conceeding all other possession. The trouble with this strategy (ably played by Hull so far this season) is that is relaint upon not conceeding and nicking a goal. We dont seem to be good at either at the moment.However, on the bright side of things, we are increasingluy in a select group of five (Palace, Mackems, Cardiff and Fulham) whereby a comapratively low points total may mean escaping the bottom three.

Sorry Indy, we didnt set up with two banks of 4. We had a bank of 4 and 6 for most of the game, not that this should be confused with a defensive approach since we were simply happy to conced possession on the flanks and outisde our area. Our entire defensive strategy was based upon defending the penalty box, which is always doomed to failure with quijck ninble players like Nasri, Silva and Aguero who will simply play through the line. The scoreline today could have been much worse had the other City had really wanted a big score.

Very funny indeed."Hughton has the right tactics and players but we can''t score" - surely this is an oxymoron, because if we did have the right players and tactics, we wouldn''t look so lightweight up front.

The key issue here was that this was an away game. Had this been a home game, I would have expected more leakage from CR. put simply, key personnel will be travelling and no decision would happen today. I suspect that if we dont hear anything by tomorrow evening, CH will at least have the West Ham game, which based upon their current form has 0-0 written all over it. This is when we should expect more noise from the powers that be.

Ron,If you thought that bad luck was anything other than a small contributory factor to today''s performance, your stream must have been really weak. There was no passion, no strategy, no teamwork, no belief. Man City hardly ever got out of first gear and were literally walking the ball around for lareg parts of the game. They scored three goals in the second half after easing off the gas from an already moderate pace. If City had needed to win by 10 or more goals, I got the feeling that they could haev achieved this simply by trying a little harder. I am struggling to recall a Premier League game in recent years where one team has so simply been outclassed. We loooked like a L1 or L2 team out there.This was a seriously troubling performance and even someone normally upbeat like Adrian Forbes on CC couldnt pretend anything otherwise. As for the reasons and remedies, I am less certain. Equally, I really cant see how extra hard work on the training ground (starting tomorrow) is going to turn this around. We really have got to change some fundamental issues about how we approach games. In all seriousness, we might as well stop picking a striker and simply add another defensive midfielder to the team (if we have one) because it is pointless playing the Wolf/Hooper or Elmander up front in thsi formation.Today was very depressing indeed - let''s hope that this is the catalyst for fundamental change.

I would like to know just what Snodgrass has to do to get dropped if that is what your thrid point is about. He is showing no sign of improvement whatsoever and we can no longer blame the lack of pre-season or fitness. Surely CH is not blind?

[quote user="The New Boy"][quote user="PurpleCanary"]6) The hotel joint venture. See Tangible’s posts on the subject. [/quote]Where can I find these?[/quote]TNB,I haven''t seen Tangie post for quite a while now. He would normally have something to say about the accounts. Does anyone know what has happened to him?

Sorry my mistake - it was a long time ago, I thought it always used to be called the Falcon Brewery on account of the symbol and that being a play on words. But rather astonishingly, the long standing head brewer when it closed it 1968 was called Michael Falcon.