ohmelads

Well said. I understand the need for patience and realism but if we aim low we will not get anywhere. People overrating the likes of Moore and Ramage, people chuffed to bits scraping last-minute home wins against Watford and Reading, they are the ones who need a reality check in my view. If we want to climb the table we have to raise the bar. Other teams aren't going to sit around and wait for us. Bolton and Portsmouth are right up there challenging for the Champions League with very average squads, they're aiming high and deserve to be up there. Bolton and Portsmouth for christ sake. We should be taking a look at ourselves and saying that's where we ought to be. Not in two years or five years but this season. And here we are talking about the top half of the table like it's a dream. I have never seen the kind of knee-jerk reactions that we have witnessed this season. We win a couple of games with three academy lads and suddenly there are people out there who would rather see Edgar in the team than Babayaro. Totally over the top. Right now I think we're a club with an identity crisis. We have the finances to challenge top 6 comfortably but much of it was blown on a few players who haven't contributed (Boumsong, Luque, Owen). We've gone from 5th to 14th to 7th and now nobody knows where we stand in the Premiership's short-term future. My view is that outside the top four it is all there for the taking and all this talk of patience is just preparing for failure IMO. Roeder has made the best of a bad situation in my eyes. But he must take some responsibility for the bad situation in the first place. To steal a quote from nufc.com, it is an absolute joke that we have to watch 4 academy centre-backs protecting a keeper old enough to be their dad. You couldn't make it up. It's a testament to our catastrophic failure in the transfer market. However much involvement Freddy had, I find it incredible that some people try to completely absolve the manager from any blame for what happened in August. I have never seen a club so ill prepared for a transfer window, even by Newcastle United's standards it was shocking.

4-5-1 against Bolton. We need two strikers against Everton. That way we can peg the opposition back, maintain possession in their half and give our defence a bit of a breather. We don't have anyone capable of playing that lone striker role so why play a formation which involves a lone striker? I didn't watch it but the commentators have said we were second best for much of the game.

shit 1-1. Ramage OG

Corner. Milner's shot tipped over. Milner shot....just wide.

David Edgar is also a central defender by trade isn't he? Presumably the academy full-backs have absolutely no future at the club.

Who could ever have predicted an academy back four protecting a 38-year old Pavel Srnicek in the Premiership? It's a brave decision from Roeder. Emre at left-back or Parker at right-back may have been the less risky option.

Babayaro, Solano and Duff don't even make the bench. I hope he is being cautious with the Everton game in mind. An entire ex-academy back line. Good luck lads.

I agree. I think all 11 players should have some degree of technique. Ramage has none. His hoofs upfield more often than not concede possession and invite pressure back onto us. Against teams like Spurs on an off-day you will get away with this but against better teams it is vital that you don't keep giving the ball away cheaply because they will punish you. Hats off to him for his performances lately, he has a decent reading of the game and his tackling is good. But for me he lacks too much to ever be a viable long-term option in the first team. I'd like him to stick with us in the long-term as backup though. I still think we're lacking a quality, experienced central defender to play alongside Taylor. In the summer I'd like us to try our luck for someone like Andrade (Depor are 15th, need money and have very little left to cash in on). It's possible both Moore and Bramble will be leaving which will leave us with virtually no defenders, so it is an area worth investing in properly over the summer.

I fancy us to nick this one. It all depends on our own performance. I haven't been following Bolton too closely lately but I watched them get battered by Aston Villa last weekend, only to win with a very dubious late penalty. It's always a tough game at the Reebok but in Dyer and Martins we could rape them for pace. I honestly believe if we give them the right service we will win this. In front of their own fans the onus will be on them to attack us from the off and that will give us opportunities to find Dyer and Martins in space on the counter. Diouf looks like he'll be out for them which would be a big loss as it would rob their side of much-needed pace. He's an expert wind-up and a canny player. I'd like to see Duff back in the team at left-wing as he would give Huntington more protection. If Duff does come back then Roeder has a tough decision about central midfield. One of Emre/Butt/Parker would likely be dropped. I have a feeling Roeder will go into this game 4-5-1 but I think this would be a big mistake. If we're that scared of Bolton bloody Wanderers we totally deserve to be in the bottom half of the table. We should go 4-4-2 and look to get balls in behind their slow defenders, that's where we can win this game.

Bellamy was a top player but the difference with Martins is he can create goals for himself and can lead the line in the absence of any other stars. It's clear to see Martins is not playing his natural game at the moment but he's making a bloody good first of it in difficult circumstances and to score 7 in 14 league games is a great start. Bellamy is a great player if you use him correctly, but Martins is doing superbly without the benefit of playing alongside big strikers such as Shearer or Kluivert. Martins would have been in his element alongside either of those. Indeed Shearer's skills were fading and Kluivert wasn't the most motivated, but Bellamy forged his reputation playing alongside Shearer when he was still a top class number 9 and I sincerely doubt Bellamy could play up front with Dyer or Sibierski and have the same impact Martins has had. He simply doesn't have the strength or aeriel ability to get to half of the balls Martins gets to and he is significantly easier to foul or knock off the ball than Oba. I'd say Bellamy's running is more intelligent but he hasn't always been this way and is a good few years older than Martins. Martins has had a very tough job, his natural game is to play off a big man but he's had to spend a lot of the time working hard to keep the ball and play in others. If we can get in the right partner for him in January there is still a lot more to come from Martins IMO. Of course Oba could improve in certain areas but so could all footballers. His finishing is slowly getting better and in time hopefully his runs will get better too. Physically he is all-rounded, so much pace and power and he's scoring headers too. With the ball at his feet he's demonstrated better awareness in recent games. I've wanted us to sign this guy for years and it was once just a pipe dream as he burst onto the scene with Inter. We've been the club to take a chance on him and give him a run in the team and we are beginning to reap the benefits.

Credit where it's due, Roeder has made the best of a messy situation, he's got the players believing in themselves again, the team has stopped leaking silly goals and things are looking up. He's a calm, pensive man in the face of crisis and they're qualities which have served him well. However, long-term I still don't think he's the man for the job. His tactical shortcomings cannot be overlooked and could hurt us in the transfer market. As I see it he may as well stay until we can find better, but I honestly see him as someone to steady the ship in the short term and nothing more. Realistically there aren't alternative managers around at the moment. These next three games are very tough and will tell us a lot about the current Newcastle side. The players seem up for the fight but there are a few tired legs out there and I wouldn't be too surprised if we got 0 points from the next 9. Similarly, I wouldn't be too surprised if we picked up 6 points or more. They're 3 games which could go either way and within a week attitudes may change significantly once again. That's the nature of a manager's job, and we as fans are all a bit fickle to some extent.

Weird. It's a good gesture but part of me thinks it's a clever publicity stunt. I took a browse on the guy's thread and he seems to be an informal mouthpiece for Randy Lerner.

Michael Dawson.

To be honest I'd rather throw Krul in than Srnicek.

Dawson was absolute pants once again. Hopefully he'll put in a similar performance at WHL.

Apparently Solano is playing through a groin injury as well.

I reckon he'll get into the box a lot more when he has a big striker alongside him to hold the ball up. The Martins/Dyer partnership has given me confidence that Owen and Martins could work together, although I still think Martins is most comfortable when he's alongside a bigger player. Martins is adding a lot to the team and is probably our most important player right now when you look at the squad. It was great to see King and Dawson shitting themselves whenever he closed them down, I remember one occasion where King panicked and punted it out for a corner even though he was about 20 yards from goal. A couple of times he intercepted their passes in defence and would have been through on goal if the ball hadn't squirmed away. He's started to make defences feel very uneasy. Put him alongside a big man to rough the defenders up a bit and we could have a nightmare for opposition defenders. As for Duff, I can't believe people are starting to write him off already. I'm very confident he'll come good. Even if he never matches the form of his Blackburn days he's still a top player. Give him a run in the side and let him settle and we'll have a quality winger on our hands, I'm sure of that.

I could never support Man Utd in a title race. Although Chelsea get up my nose, I still see them as the lesser of two evils. In terms of football played so far this season though, Man Utd deserve their place at the top.

He was poor, probably because he was asked to play left-wing. He kept drifting and leaving Huntington exposed.

Nobby Solano. Ever since he switched to right back he has just oozed class. Showed his intelligence today, gave confidence to the rest of the defence. He is the best thing to have happened to our defence this season. At times he had the fans in laughter as he took the piss out of Spurs. Another top performance.

Rarely have I seen such a decisive and one-sided game where the team hanging on has come out victorious. How we lost that I'll never know but it was a massive turning point in the title race. Schmeichel was simply incredible.

Didn't we offer Chopra a new contract and he decided to move on as a free agent? Don't remember us deciding to sell him.

If Duff passes fit, Glenn has a few decisions to make regarding form players versus pedigree. Parker/Butt, Baba/Huntington and Milner/Duff are some of the decisions he has to make. I'll be livid if he goes 4-5-1 again. I can see him going 4-4-2 with Sib back, Dyer on the right, and Parker in for Butt. Duff, if fit, replacing Milner and Baba replacing Huntington.

I'm more worried about Berbatov to be honest, hadn't even thought about Lennon. Their strikeforce looks better than ours (although Oba is looking very sharp) but I think we can win the midfield battle. I would continue with Huntington although I've got a feeling Glenn will put Babayaro in.

Patrick Kluivert.