West Ham game

[Rudy65]

Milner's performance was not overrated. He went off to a standing ovation.

And that thunderstorm was biblical. I was grateful I was well under the Holte End roof. Although I had just been chucked so maybe would have welcomed being struck by lightning.

Agree. Milner was awesome that day particualry as the deal with City was done and he could have missed the game or taken it easy for fear of being injured. Three nil at a canter

[SoccerHQ]

Twenty pages of hope.

Exactly what you want from the first game of the season.

It's easy to say now but I would've given McDonald the job until a decent manager during that season had become available (not Houllier in my mind as he was past it). Yes we had Newcastle and Vienna car crashes but we were picking up points, 7 from 5 games so I'm pretty sure we would've been ticking over nicely in mid table given we still had good quality in the squad.

That thread almost brings me to tears. The level of optimism on there, everybody could see it. There's some wonderful quotes on there, including Paulies "That was what I imagined it was like for people who managed to escape East Germany in the 1970s".

Wonderful stuff.

Amazing to think that was the first game after finishing 6th three times in the premier league.

I know we were more functional than free flowing under MON and he wasted so much money on bog standard squad players but the last 7 years have been pretty sobering given how dumbed down things have got.