Brilliant article and it's lit the fire inside my belly about the bands regression into mediocrity. This guy knows his stuff about the band and sounds like a fan, it's not like some journo who knows nothing of them has come in and written this.

The band have lost 80% of what they had in the mid nineties. The passion has gone, the sincerity non existent and the playing dumbed down to suit what ever pop rock agenda Jon has.

Look at Jon at the start of any show in the 00's, he comes out with this big cheesy grin and you can see he's dead behind the eyes, he's never looking at anyone in particular in the crowd. He couldn't care less if no one showed up as long as he got his cheque.

The guy is 100% right, most of us still care because we have some blind faith, we believe somewhere deep inside that the band are gonna say "f*ck it" and play hard.

The X Factor has killed off any remaining creditability the band has and I can't see any more than the ten nights at the O2 selling out.