Last year I seem to recall, Spurs were going to finish above Arsenal!

So, who do you think will finish top this season?

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So here are the results :

No more than £600 - 13%
£600 to £1000 - 32%
£1000 to £1250 - 13%
£1250 to £1500 - 8%
£1500 to £2000 - 5%
I'd pay anything to watch my team 29%

So whilst I'm not surprised that 32% wouldn't pay more than £1000, I'm surprised that 29% of you said you'd pay anything to watch your team.

So, while many ticket holders are thinking of giving up their season ticket, because for them it's becoming far too expensive, there will always be a large number of fans that are willing to pay, what ever the club demands!

We're always on the look out for new writers. So if you fancy writing about your team, please get in touch.

We're always on the look out for new writers. So if you fancy writing about your team, please get in touch.

Yet as our recent poll shows, almost 30% of those that voted, said they leave well before the final whistle. Why? To, “get ahead of the traffic and beat the rush”. And it’s not just Gooners that are guilty of this!

Looking at the Gunners season so far, (and providing I’ve done my sums correctly!) of our ninety two goals, thirty two have been scored after eighty minutes of play, sixteen of which came after eighty five minutes.

So if you left ten minutes before the official ninety, then the final outcome of eleven of the games wouldn’t have been decided before heading off!

But what does this all mean for our last ten guaranteed matches?

Well based on our current scoring rate, we’ll see another 19 goals, 5 of which will appear in the final ten minutes and 3 in the last 5, with the outcome of 2 of the matches being decided in the final 10 minutes.

But, putting the numbers aside, which are never guaranteed, if you’ve got a ticket for one of the remaining games, then stay to the end, our team deserve our support.

Perhaps now more than ever!

IT was a case of ‘if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again’ for Manchester United and Cristiano Ronaldo as the Madeiran Magician conjured his 31st goal of the season for a 1-0 victory against a dogged Derby County, which took the Reds back to the summit of the Premier League following Arsenal’s draw with Middlesboro later in the day.

The Portuguese star spurned a hatful of chances, as United failed to make their dominance at Pride Park count, before finally converting a Wayne Rooney cross 14 minutes from time to spare the champions’ blushes.

Given the cost and how difficult it can be to get tickets to see a match, I think if you're luck enough to get to a game, then you should stay and see your team through the bitter end.

Anyway, if your guilty of not staying, what's your reason?

I particularly enjoyed watching the guys football skills on the bridge and look out for the dangerous kick - ball off top of the head!

Watch the video and you'll see what I mean!


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Champions: Man Utd - they have only strengthened this season with the signings of Tevez and Hargreaves and will surely back up their win from last year. Doubts remain around Roo's ability to play with Tevez, and a distinct lack of full back options with want away Heinze and the aging Neviller, but will anyone get close enough to test them out?

2nd Liverpool - yes, said it last year, but Liverpool have to get it right sometime. If Kuyt can show the form he did last year, and Torres/Babel can add some flair, this might finally be the year the Reds show enough consistency to challenge

3rd Chelsea - not the force they were, and I seriously doubt they have enough goals in them to challenge. Shevchenko is likely to be a bit part player at best, and much is reliant on Drogba. Also suspect at the back if Terry is out for too long

4th Spurs - I think I tip Spurs more often that Spurs fans do, but they have got themseleves a bargain in D Bent. The lad is an out and out star, the most trustworthy striker in England and will, mark my words, lead England's assault on Euro 2008. If Berbatov can continue to impress, and Keane/Defoe can deputise, they have the most fearsome strike force in the country. Will be good to watch if nothing else

At the other end of the table, perm any 3 from 5:

Bolton - take a strong, settled manager from a strong, settled club, stand well back and watch the fireworks. For Charlton in 2006 read Bolton in 2007. Poor, holding pattern signings, inexperienced manager, grumpy striker...can it end in anything but tears?

Birmingham - look up ‘panic’ and 'buying' in the dictionary and you'll find a picture of Steve Bruce. Desperately devoid of quality, I cant see them being out of the bottom 3 all year

Middlesborough - have deceptively moved from being 'high fliers' to 'selling club' in recent years, and the route to success is rarely 'sell your best strikers'. Sadly, with Yakubu likely to follow Viduka in plying his trade away from Teeside, it’s hard to see where the goals are going to come from. Add to that a (blindly) loyal chairman, and the writing could be on the wall very early on.

Derby - 4 words; out of their depth

Wigan - like Bolton, have lost their driving force. They have recruited better and more widely than the other stragglers, but it remains to be seen if Chris Hutchings can pull it together. A more experienced man at the helm may have a chance to save them late in the season if Hutching’s fails to succeed.... Neil Warnock, anyone…?

Obviously that wasn’t to be ! We certainly had most of the possession and created the opportunities. According to “A Cultured Left Foot” we had 16 corners and 24 shots on goal !

So what went wrong ?

So we are getting to towards the very end of Big Duncan’s Everton career. The term Everton legend seems wholly inappropriate in a week which has seen the death of Brian Labone, but Duncan will have a place in our hearts for a long time. A better tag for Dunc, for we must label people, would be ‘cult hero’. Over the next week we will look back at Big Dunc memories.

On the transfer market, it looks as though Everton will be signing Tim Howard or Chris Kirkland. It’s tough to know how to react to this but most would agree that we need reinforcements with Martyn’s fitness a doubt and the others Wright, Turner and Ruddy deemed too dodgy, young and young respectively. No-one likes to take a 2nd choice player (or in Kirkland’s case 4th) but the preferred option would have to be Howard. Kirkland has always seemed either prone to clangers or injured. The only way he appeared to work his way up the England pecking order was by being out of the side, which says more about the paucity of decent English keepers than anything else. We'll see, Howard (even if it is on a years loan) would seem to fit the bill better. And if he does occasionally lapse into spitting and swearing he’ll blend in nicely at the Park End anyway.

According to reports on the team for Boro, we seem to be fielding about 16 with Turner, Vidarrson, Valente, Anichebe, Arteta and Kilbane all supposedly coming in and Davies keeping his place. Moyes has 'bigged up' Davies' display and in fairness he showed a couple of glimpses against Birmingham, as he did in the early games against Villarreal and United, of what he can do. Let's hope we can see more and see the player Moyesy 'thought he'd signed'.

Whether Middlesboro's European 'heroics' will have an impact on the outcome of the game is tough to say. Watching last night's game, the turning point appeared to be when Steuea's Dica started crying when he got booked and found out he would miss the final. No 'face of savoury snacks' Lineker-type figure to mouth the immortal 'have a word with him' in Rumanian, and the Bucharestis folded like Ceausescu’s government.

Boro will no doubt 'flex their squad muscles' and make loads of changes and still put together a team that could beat us. It was particularly galling to see that even West Ham can make 5 changes and still put a presentable team out.

Hopefully we will end our winless run with a convincing victory against what is still a 'plastic Man United'. Up the blues.

We were 2-0 up by half time. The first goal came from a Nobby Solano corner which was met at the back post by Ameobi, and an almighty scramble between 4 players at the near post led to the ball ending up in the net, with the last touch seeming to be from Boateng, although in the post match interview Ameobi said he would stake his own claim for the goal. The next goal will definately be attributed to him; good work down the right from Steven Carr helped set up Ameobi, who drove a low shot across goal and right in to the corner of the net. Boro couldn't make it two comebacks in a week however despite Boateng scoring at the right end, albeit via a deflection from Bramble on his return from injury.

Ameobi's goal moved him to 9th in our all time Premiership goalscorers charts; he is now 1 goal ahead of Laurent Robert.

The Toon are now just 3 points behind Bolton, who the media would lead you to believe are chasing the Champions League, suggesting that perhaps there is still something left for us this season. The trouble is there will be one less UEFA cup place than usual, because one of the FA Cup finalists will be Boro, West Ham or Charlton, none of which will make Europe via league position. Even if Europe might be an unrealistic target, the prize money at stake per league position is still worth playing for.

Roeder was again unsure as to whether he would be in charge come the next United game; it has been well documented that Shepherd wants the new manager installed well before the end of the season, and in my opinion the appointment could be made during the week after the Tyne-Wear derby. I can't see Shepherd hiring the new manager before that game, where he could potentially lose support if the unthinkable happened!

Our next game sees us host Wigan, where a win would put us level on points with the Latics. After that we are playing 3 of the current bottom 4, so there is no reason we can't have a decent run in and move up a few places. Its always easy on paper of course, but we are at the stage of the season where you least want to face the teams at the bottom, as they will be desperately fighting to try and stay in the league, apart from Sunderland of course, but that is a derby match and anything can happen in a derby.

Dyer is available after being rested for the Spurs game, and could well start at the expense of Ameobi I would imagine, despite Roeder’s positive analysis on Shola this week. A midfield quartet of N’Zogbia, Emre, Bowyer and Solano is certainly a possibility, playing behind Alan up front with Dyer playing just off him. With Dyer, N’Zogbia and Bowyer bursting forward there will be no lack of pace as there has been in recent fixtures, notably in my opinion the home match against Liverpool. I’d like to see the defence left as it is, as it looked solid against Spurs, and as mentioned in previous articles I think

Time was when Middlesbrough tried picking a fight with Bolton. They saw us as rivals. Rivals! Quite why I’m not sure. Both clubs are probably similar in size and fan base, but that’s about it. Yet many games in recent years brought fans of each team out against each other in a Dennis the Menace vs Walter the Softie (you choose who is which) style verbal custard pie fight.

Then have been a few niggly factors in our respective recent histories – Michael Ricketts saying he wanted to join a bigger club and win trophies! Ahem. How much did Boro pay? Nuff said. Then of course there was Diouf spitting water on the pitch close to the crowd, though you’d think he was Robbie Savage the hysteria it caused on Teeside.