Sorry about your Reds Ed.

Do you want Roy to go?

Sorry I'm a bit late replying. I thought Joe Cole's goal would've given Roy another couple of months. Thank goodness! Good coach who inherited a washed up team without time to do much and I know he tried but he just wasn't the right fit. We were hard to watch at times - the other times we were downright unbearable I'm not sure how good Dalglish can be since he has spent the better part of the last 20 years out of the game, but he will give the squad some motivation at least, which is what they need most. Fingers crossed for a top 8 finish.

Villa seem to be in a similar situation eh Freddy? I was watching the Chelsea v Villa game and that was some end-to-end stuff! I thought you were unlucky after the Terry strike but it seems Chelsea have finally lost their ability to do anything competently. What of Houllier? Is MON still on the market? Sven the pimp might be hanging around the gates at Villa Park

And Stoke just keep going from strength to strength

I think Dalglish has an uphill battle. He hasn't been in the game for a long time and he finds himself in an immediate dogfight just to stay out of the relegation battle...

No doubt he has an uphill battle with this squad. He'll bring unity to the club and he has been out for far too long so I don't expect miracles. I just want the players to show they care. He's only temporary caretaker til the end of the season hopefully. I wouldn't want Kenny's rep tarnished by this current squad

Who even knew Howard Webb carried a red card in his pocket?

Dalglish's lack of contact with football over the last decade or so will no doubt be a worry, but he has worked in and around the club for a large chunk of that time and should, by all rights, know it inside out. The boost it'll give to the support, and I'm assuming the players (let's be honest, it was fairly obvious that the senior pros didn't want to play for Roy) will help. Where do 'Pool stand with regard to the January window, Ed? There's a lot of rebuilding to be done but given that he's only around until the summer, I can't imagine Kenny being given huge sums of cash to spend.

What do you mean? Of course he has a red card in his pocket next to his heart. He just doesn't like to show it because it's adorned with the Manyoo logo!

Meanwhile, Babel has actually put his twitter to good use for once: http://soccernet.espn.go.com/news/story/_/...trouble?cc=3436

We have nothing in the bank. When the new owners joined they said they would concentrate on buying young talents that were cheap and provided good re-sale value. They've laid low since then so I suppose nothing has changed. Considering our financial mess, I don't see them coming out to make purchases in an over-inflated market for an interim manager unless there was a really good deal on offer (*cough* Manuel Fernandes or Lass Diara *cough*). Meanwhile, Steve Clarke (yes, the first team coach that was at Chelsea not too long ago) has decided to join us. Anyone know what he brings to the table?

Seems to me that the two big stains on Dalglish's managerial record involve falling out with Freddy Shepherd and not being able to turn John Barnes into a tactical genius. The audacity of the guy! Impenetrably voiced crank with possible criminal affiliations? Sure. Out of touch? With what, how crap Liverpool are? I'd say he's had a pretty good vantage point. Besides, they don't deserve Klopp.

Starting online petition to bring Klopp to LFC now.

So apparently, our first signing of the January window is (you've guessed it) - David Miliband.

Question is, will he start on Sunday or be used as an impact substitute?

I hear Miliband plays in the centre but would rather be a bit closer to the right wing!

Typical. So even with Miliband (allegedly) now on board, we still lack a genuine left winger.

Thank goodness that's over with. Unless my judgement was impaired by watching the game on a crappy YouTube-esque feed (I couldn't see the ball on full screen mode) or having to witness Kevin Nolan's revolting chicken dance for a fourth time this season, our derby day proved to be a dismal display of football that wouldn't have looked out of place in 1925. So little genuine quality or positional sense on show that it resembled an ill-disciplined kickabout in the park. The Barcodes have an odd knack of exposing our weaknesses, while coaxing us into playing the type of physical game that we simply don't have the steel to contest, with or without a fit Cattermole.

If nothing else, the game should highlight our desperate need for quality service to Benty, Gyany and Welbecky from wide areas. Elmohamady, though full of pace and trickery, can't cross to save his life, while Malbranque and Richardson looked dreadfully out of their element on the left. Someone who can take a decent free-kick wouldn't go amiss either.

A curious feeling of fear seems to be building up within me that if I actually start to believe, there'll be a massive kick in the teeth for us in the near future.

Ah, there it is - right on schedule.

Presumably meaning Young will soon be off.

To Liverpool, right?

How do you feel about the signing Fred? I'm not sure Bent is really the guy who will solve your problems...

One signing was never going to solve our many, many problems but given how toothless we are up front having Bent certainly can't hurt. In fact all he has to do is complete one successful forward pass and he'll have surpassed Stephen Ireland.

That guy really seems to have completely lost the plot since leaving City...

Almost asked for a transfer myself after sitting through the game on Sunday. Most disheartening and a hard one to swallow for many reasons, but I'll move on should the club invest the fee wisely - so long Darren and thanks for all the goals.

I have to say some of the coverage of the Bent transfer has been quite amusing to me, you'd have thought we'd just bought a tin of rice pudding for 89 trillion the way folks are harping on. Of course Sunderland supporters are completely entitled to say whatever they want, but the media's snooty contempt for us continues to hover like a bad fart post-Martin O'Neill. Now Martin was mostly great for us and make no mistake, was a big ol' media darling, but come on now, we're not a gang of rats that betrayed our beloved pied piper, he left us, we didn't sack him. I still think Randy should have dealt with the situation a lot better, but still, there it is; a fiasco that became an embarrassment that lead to an avalanche of terror and woe that lasted for...well, its arguably still going on (on the pitch, at least). I'm rambling. Anyway, I like Randy even if his Terrence Malick approach to publicity occasionally works against us, I thank Martin for his four years at the club, and hope Bent does well and that we can keep all of our best players. But as trite as it sounds, we are bigger than any given individual and always have been. Say we're unfashionable, say we're crap to watch but the name over the counter is still worth something (80k a week if reports are to be believed). Villa supporters may come off as whiny, bitter faced drones seething in their own sense of entitlement and...well, okay, its completely true, but don't mock us for suddenly being a bit excited.

This is all directed at Pat Murphy, Oliver Holt, Jim White of Sky Sports News, etc, etc.

We've been used to a certain kind of player around these parts for a lot of years now - you know the type, your classic journeyman. Most of them wilt under the pressure of the fans' expectations (which admittedly, far outweigh the club's own ambitions and in many cases, any vague sense of realism), while the odd one might embrace life as a Sunderland player and gain cult hero status, almost regardless of their actual ability (hello Lionel Perez, Kevin Ball, Nyron Nosworthy and to a lesser extent, Phil Bardsley).

I've never been one for thinking that our little club is the be all and end all, and it's common knowledge that the North East can be a hard sell at the best of times (especially for a London boy) but in Bent, it felt like we finally had ourselves a proven top level player in his prime who had genuinely taken the club to his heart. He always came across as a cut above the stereotypical dozy Premier League footballer, and I regarded him as a true red and white icon for the modern era. Truth is, after his personal hell at Spurs, he was probably just looking for a way to get his career back on track and would have gone anywhere to escape 'Arry and play regular first team football. Currently kicking myself for believing that the lad saw my club as anything other than a stepping stone to better things.

Anyway Fred, I'd like to say that I don't bear Villa any ill will on this. Anyone pointing to our respective league placings is barking up the wrong tree, as it's fairly obvious you'll turn it around sooner or later and, I'd imagine, push for Europe on a more consistent basis than ourselves. We can take solace in the fact that we've got a large fee and a striker in Gyan who we hope can fill Bent's boots. Best of luck for the rest of the season.