He's right about Featherstone like , love him or loathe him, when he isn't playing we miss him , which is scary.

As you say like or loath Featherstone his is still our best midfielder.

Yet we still can’t dominate ten men when he plays that’s the scary thing. He is the only one who can pass a ball in the team mainly sideways. Until we replace the donaldsons, featherstones and Oates with much better quality players we will forever struggle. It’s no coincidence we rarely win games with them in the team.

It is no good damning Xavi with feint praise. If he is our best midfielder we are really struggling. And we don’t win matches with him and Donaldson in the side. Even with 10 men

I would scatter anyone who played under Hignett. Problem with our squad is we will have to scatter most of them as most of them are not good enough. So we will have to start all over again, another season wasted, when ideally this season for me was about building foundations for a proper promotion attempt next season, finish this season say 8th or 9th, have the nucleus of a decent team, 6 or 7 core players , and then add 2 or 3 more quality key signings during close season. This seems a million miles away at the moment, and so the same situation will play out again, mass clear out, more bargain basement signings, possibly worse than the last lot , with us sinking deeper and deeper into the mire, until eventually we are fighting to stay in the league not get out of it.

Not much point either in blaming them two all the time when they're not the worst players in the squad.

It's past time Donaldson had the captaincy taken away from him - maybe he wouldn't have been stupid enough to take a penalty in the shoot out if he didn't think it was expected of him because of the armband. Even so, it was his header that won the first penalty. In the second half he put 3 or 4 good crosses into the box from the right that nobody got on the end of. Sod all was coming in from the left with Bunney playing instead of Ferguson.

[quote="Docherty"]It is no good damning Xavi with feint praise. If he is our best midfielder we are really struggling.
the thing is that he is. the main problem with him and has always been is when the team is good he is and the opposite. got the ability but cannot turn things round on a bad day. suppose thats why ihe is at pools and nowhere higher.