I`m trying to keep my mouth shut!

Silence isn`t always golden. Trying to get a word a word out of Freddie Shepherd when the club are in the bottom half of the table is like trying to draw blood from a stone. The same can`t be said for Glenn Roeder however. I think the gaffer is doing a great job, don`t get me wrong. He`s got the team into mid-table stability following the worse ever injury list to affect a Premier League team and managed to keep us in Europe past the Christmas break. Bar the FA Cup disaster and the September / October / November home game shockers against Bolton, Fulham and Sheffield United he`s done about as much as we can ask of him.

However there`s one thing that is getting a little tiresome and that`s the protestations about never speaking about other teams` players. Speaking today he said again:

'There are so few young players of a quality we're looking at that even without me saying anything it's pretty obvious. I don't like talking about another club's players. If I was their manager, I wouldn't want other managers going into detail about my young players and I've not done that. There's always speculation about players we've targeted. All I've said is any Premiership manager would be interested in those players.

I don't want to say any more, I don't want to be taking calls from opposing managers. There's not that many top-class young British players that might be available. It's very hard to hide a good player, those whose talent is generally what I call god-given. I've been more open than most managers, but I've never gone public on the amount of players I'd like to bring to the club.'

I can see what Glenn is trying to say. However it looks a little hollow when in the last three months he`s mentioned Crouch, Darren Bent, Barnes, Bale and Curtis Davies as being players we`re interested in signing!

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