ohmelads

Two games in three days will work in Spurs' advantage as they have much more squad depth than us. Just look at their bench against Villa: Bassong, Corluka, Jenas, Kranjcar, Pavlyuchenko, Crouch. That's 6 players they can bring in who will be fresh legs. You look at our bench and who can you bring in? Williamson and Ranger fair enough, but beyond that you worry. Smith? Guthrie? Perch? Best? None have done anything all season. We can either field a weakened but fresh team or field some leggy players. For that reason I think we have to pack the midfield and go there to frustrate them.

The better team lost but we only have ourselves to blame by gifting chances in the first 5 minutes. I can't believe some people are trying to blame Steven Taylor because it's nowt to do with him. The first goal is entirely Krul's fault, the second was Tiote. Both Taylor and Coloccini should have got goal side of Tevez instead of ballwatching, but Coloccini was in the better position to make the block. The third goal was a bloody double deflection. We knew we'd concede more goals this month or so because we're playing better teams. Chelsea, Liverpool, Man City and Spurs. We have the team spirit and the quality to finish midtable but we're in a precarious position because we have no squad depth. Our backup players will struggle if called upon - we saw that against West Brom. Injuries will decide our fate unless Ashley takes action in January to bolster the squad.

We've been the better team. I know City are happier to sit back with their two goals but we've caused enough panics in their box, it just hasn't fallen for us. We're playing pretty direct stuff but Carroll is causing plenty of problems, he's had an excellent half. Tiote's not been his usual self, need a better performance from him second half. A goal will make them nervous, it's not over yet.

They've had two chances and taken them. We've been punished but since the goals we've played alright. We're getting balls into Carroll at least and look capable of scoring. Have to be careful though because a third goal and it's curtains. 2-0 doesn't reflect the balance of play at all but these kinds of teams will punish your mistakes.

Redondo deserves a mention. A rare breed of DM who would dominate midfield and also break forward and skin players. Very quick feet, Ferguson once asked if he had a magnet in his boots after he backheeled the ball round Berg and laid off an open goal to Raul at Old Trafford. Capello also described him as "tactically perfect". Stoichkov deserves a mention for his Barcelona days and the 1994 World Cup where he won the Golden Boot despite playing for Bulgaria.

Exactly, he's playing it the only way he can. All that matters is what happens on the field. At least he has identified the key men quickly, the likes of Tiote, Barton, Carroll and Ben Arfa, although it wasn't exactly hard to see that they - along with Enrique - are the key men and pretty much undroppable when fit. We'd be mad to let any of them go.

You don't go out of your way to bring a new man in on a 5 year deal midway through the season and then give him nothing to spend. Although, this is Mike Ashley's regime. Whatever Pardew says in the press is irrelevant to what goes on behind the scenes, we've found that with everyone who has worked under Ashley because they often don't know themselves what's going on. I think we can all agree on what needs to happen both long and short term. Long term we need to the failures out of the club and replace them: Smith, Xisco, Best. You can add to that list the likes of: Lovenkrands, Ryan Taylor, Perch, maybe Guthrie too. In the short term, we'll be lucky to shift any and should look towards strengthening our first team options with bigger changes happening in summer. We badly lack quality up front if Carroll gets injured, and we only have two fit wingers, so it's obvious those are the urgent priorities. I'll be disappointed if neither position is strengthened over the coming weeks because we are one or two injuries away from a severely weakened team as we saw at West Brom. The club will argue Gosling and Ben Arfa will return but it's still not enough because our other backup as mentioned earlier is mostly dead wood which we will eventually look to sell.

I'd stick with Krul. He'll make mistakes but he'll get better. Harper will make mistakes and won't get better. If Forster wants to come back in summer then that would be the right time to move Harper on. But Forster seems quite happy up there and we may have trouble convincing him to come down here to sit on the bench.

We owe this lot one, not just for the Ben Arfa leg break incident but the bullshit penalty they got ten minutes later and the blatant pen we weren't given after that.

Noone can deny that they'd put Keane in over Ameobi or Ranger. Keane could be a good short term signing if it was 18 months with an option to extend. But I don't think he'd come here on such a short term contract. Giving him a 2 or 3 year deal would be risky, he's 30 and hasn't scored a Premier League goal since god knows when, and his wage demands will be high. He's clearly not the player he was otherwise he'd be getting games, and at his age he will probably get worse over time. We don't want to wind up with another Viduka/Kluivert type of player who still has the class but is a journeyman on the decline looking for a final payday. Proven strikers don't come cheap though, so if the deal was a good one I think he'd be well worth a punt. With the kinds of funds Ashley will hand out we would struggle to get better.

I would love it if they got Allardyce.

I agree. Just look how Chelsea have suffered when you take a few key players out of their team. Look how Liverpool were against us without Gerrard and Carragher. Yes if we lose our key players all season we will be in a relegation scrap, that was true before and remains true now. Only some January signings will give us the kind of depth to lose key players and still put out a winning team.

Here is a club who have admitted lying to their fans after being dragged through the courts by a former manager and have put out numerous statements about how they plan to cut costs, and people will happily believe they have offered an extremely lucrative deal to Taylor? We know f*ck all but I'll be amazed if they are offering anything like the figures being thrown about on here and in the rags. It's just not Ashley's style to throw his money around like that. I'd be far more inclined to believe a homegrown defender who has only had one club in his career, has stayed with the club through relegation and who for all his flaws is a passionate player. Perhaps the truth is somewhere in the middle but it amazes me how people are happy to believe the club when it suits them. Just look at Llambias/Ashley's statements and how they've run the club since they arrived, are they the words and actions of people would throw silly money at a defender who wasn't even getting a game at the time? I think it's unfair to judge the player's loyalty without knowing any of the facts. Espescially when you look at the shady people running the club.

The only positive news is Gerrard is out according to .com and Liverpool's away record has not been great. Doubts over Nolan and Barton for us though. We need them back asap.

I hope Pardew proves a revelation, I really do. I only want what's best for Newcastle. However it's extremely unlikely because the odds are stacked against him. Hughton would have had it tough with a weakened squad and tough December fixtures, but he would have had the fans and players behind him and everyone pulling in one direction. All teams go through a few bad games or a bad patch, but with January around the corner and Harper, Gosling and later Ben Arfa back, you sense it would have picked up again. Instead Pardew goes into the game with an even weaker hand and the chances of our season spiralling out of control have increased dramatically. Despite always wanting the team to do well I believe the club should be boycotted until the owner is gone, for the long term good of the club. Whatever Pardew might achieve in the short term, he will always be operating under the restrictions imposed by Ashley. His sudden sacking could come at any time, boardroom interference, low transfer funds, undermined by his bosses and so on. When (not if) he is sacked, a poor replacement will come in because as Pardew admitted himself in the interview, other managers called him mad for going and working under Ashley. It is hard to support the first team yet try to unseat the owner. Massive negativity will affect the team in the short term. The question is, is it a price worth paying to get rid of the owner and roll the dice again on a new owner coming in? Another relegation is very possible, but what good is survival when the club will always be run like this?

Booing won't achieve anything. Masses of fans missing from every game will. Ashley still has the money from the season ticket deals but they expire this summer. If he sees tens of thousands missing from the stands he will know it can't go on like this, and that his actions will have consequences. That is the only way to force him out. Yes he put the club up for sale last time, but obviously not at a price that tempted anyone. If he was losing so much money he desperately wanted a way out to cut his losses, he would lower the asking price and buyers would come in. So far, fans haven't done enough to make that happen. Mike Ashley doesn't care what you think of him, your boos or your banners, he cares about his money though and if that takes a hit he will sit up and take notice.

I can't see how he will motivate a bunch of bemused and disappointed players for this one to go out and play in front of a hostile crowd and win a game for a manager who has been thrust on them in the space of a few days. Liverpool will be excited for this one because they will sense a rout. Alan Pardew admitted people have called him mad for taking the job, it just goes to show how managers percieve Mike Ashley and how noone bar the desperate would work for him. Just look at the widespread criticism received, no proven manager will ever come near us till he's gone. The question is, should we rally behind the new manager in the hope of short term success or should we look at the long term and take action now by boycotting games? My view is we'll never move forward with the kind of boardroom interference, PR gaffs and insufficient transfer budgets typical of the Ashley regime. Relegation will always be around the corner because of his capacity to make sudden, massive decisions which send the club spiralling. I think most have had enough now and will take the view that we must look beyond the next few results and do whatever it takes to force him out. This was all so predictable the moment Hughton was sacked. I will be hoping for a surprise result against Liverpool but in spite of that I hope there are masses of fans missing from the stands because Ashley so far has acted without a care in the world and needs to know that the fans are prepared to force him out.

I don't think Pardew will stand a chance looking at the quotes coming from the players and the imminent fixtures coming up. Liverpool, Man City and Tottenham in the next 3 weeks. And that's before I have even mentioned the fans, who have every right to be angry and will struggle to be enthusiastic. If by some miracle he makes a bright start against all the odds people will get behind him, slowly but surely. The odds are stacked against him because he doesn't deserve the job. He won't believe his luck that he has landed at a midtable Premiership club after being sacked in League One. The fact it's Pardew, someone so desperate he would take the job regardless of the circumstances, suggests to me there is little to no money in the transfer kitty. If Ashley was promising a decent wedge we might have had proper interest in the job. I don't think it's right to boo someone who is trying to win us games and is just starting the job. But he'll get no support until he earns it because he shouldn't be here. The fans are yet again left in the position of supporting the players while protesting against the club. We can't go on like this, and Ashley certainly won't change. We know no proven manager will ever work under him so the only solution is to force the owner out.

Be gutted if we lose him, which I now think we will. He'll be a very hard player to replace, arguably our best player along with Carroll. These quotes are spot on and very worrying. If we lose players like this it will sum up how stupid the sacking of Hughton was. I still can't believe people have tried to justify the sacking.

Surely he didn't sack Hughton without a replacement already lined up. That would be f*cking stupid, even by Ashley's standards. Mid-season, we're 11th, the sacking is insane but to do so without already speaking to replacements would make no sense whatsoever. I'd be happy with Martin O'Neill, he could work with limited resources and build a team that will work hard to overachieve, in other words he might continue Hughton's work. He already has his big man in Carroll and would probably be smart in the transfer market. But I doubt he'd be mad enough to come, I'd be very surprised if we got him. Martin Jol I'm not so sure, did a decent job at Tottenham but let's not forget he had a huge wedge to spend, he won't get that here. Pardew not at all.

Mike Ashley get the f*ck out of our football club. We are back to square one folks. Hughton has spent 18 months rebuilding the club from a fractured mess. He turned a bunch of players who wouldn't play for each other, the shirt or the fans into a determined unit. He smashed points and attendance records in the Championship, he got the fans back on side again after years of pissing and moaning about massive injury lists, arsehole managers and spiralling form. We were relegated a laughing stock by the whole nation but came back a different outfit, we went from hatred to respect in many parts, all thanks to Hughton. He turned us into a sum greater than our parts at times, with a 6-0 demolition of Aston Villa, a 5-1 demolition of Sunderland, a team that went away and would grind out deserved wins at places like Everton, Chelsea, Arsenal. He got Barton and Enrique playing the best football of their careers, he nurtured Carroll from a reserve striker to an England cap in 18 months. As a team we had resilience and even played good passing football. We shot ourselves in the foot with some home games where we deserved more but decisive moments cost us (Stoke, Fulham, Blackpool). I can only point to a few games this season where we convincingly deserved to lose. I can point to a few draws we deserved to win, and however it might sound, I can point to some shocking refereeing. All in all we were more than good value for our points total and league position but yes we stuttered in recent weeks. Instead of sacking him January would be the perfect time to strengthen the squad and let Hughton push on, with the arrivals of Gosling and Ben Arfa hopefully later in the season too. Suspensions and injuries have robbed Hughton of his most influential players for the last 3 to 4 games. It turned out the backup wasn't good enough but we all suspected that. Yes he got some of his tactics wrong but over the course of the season he has got way more right than wrong. His transfer record? Pretty good. Best and Perch were strange signings to say the least, but Tiote for a few million and Williamson for 2M are steals. Routledge was a smart and cheap Championship signing as was Simpson. Ben Arfa could have been a masterstroke, our most creative player suffered a broken leg and that would hurt any team badly. The irony in all this is that Hughton's successes meant that we forgot all about Mike Ashley and looked only to the future with a feeling of stability at last. All this progress and then Bam! Ashley strikes again. We can't move forward under this owner. We are back to fan protests again, disheartened players, a divided dressing room. Any manager who steps through the door will feel the axe hanging over his head every day he goes to work. The new manager knows promotion and 11th place is clearly not good enough, that money will be insufficient, he knows he's succeeding a popular manager who the players and fans liked. Who is going to take that job? Who is going to work for an arsehole like Mike Ashley? And why? nufc.com's tepid response to this news is disappointing. As they suggest, perhaps the club is ready to spend decent money in the transfer window and wants a big-name, experienced manager to spend it and build a new era. But come on? Seriously. Look at how Mike Ashley has operated the club since he arrived, look at his 'blueprints' for the club and you have to say the chances of major squad investment looks extremely unlikely. He's been trying to pedal Hughton for a while, that's why he wasn't given a new assistant manager after Calderwood left quite a while ago. The media's attempts to suggest his position was under threat before the mackems game were bizarre to say the least and most likely were spin put out by the club to undermine the manager. But after the West Ham, mackem and Arsenal wins they couldn't sack him then. Hughton has been a dead man walking in recent times, operating without a number 2 and working under ridiculous circumstances, fearing the sack while the fans want a contract extension. Make no mistake our relegation fight just got a lot more serious and the new man, whoever it is, has to start from scratch and build the kind of rapport that Hughton did. He has to turn a team into a sum greater than its parts and get average to poor players producing good results. And when you look at the current squad, he'll have his work cut out.

Up until the last few weeks we certainly didn't deserve the tag of a long ball team, and many neutrals said we were playing some nice stuff and passing it about. Yes we used Carroll's height but we were by no means a route one team. We've long relied on our left side of Enrique and Gutierrez being dangerous with their overlapping play. Our right side was limited but we found with Barton's crossing we had some threat from both sides and could stretch teams. We've gone from that to having no threat on either side, Enrique won't get forward and Barton's missed the last 4 games. That, coupled with Ameobi's poor form, in large part explains our struggles. Guthrie is a confidence player and right now his confidence is shot. I really hope Barton is back for Liverpool because I don't see what options we have. Smith had a couple of decent games before Tiote came in but looks a liability once again and besides he offers nothing going forward. Take Barton out and what have we got? We may have to consider blooding Vuckic, I don't know anything about the lad but fixture congestion around Christmas means all teams will do some rotation.

I don't criticise him often as I think he's doing a very tough job with the squad at his disposal, not to mention injuries/suspensions to several influential players. However in the West Brom game our better players were not put to good use. For the last few games Enrique has stopped overlapping. Why? Has he been told to stay in his own half as an attempt to shore things up at the back after the 5 goal drubbing and the soft goals we're conceding? Against Chelsea, fair enough, but West Brom? Gutierrez really needed some help down that left hand side but noone ever overlapped. If Enrique and Simpson had bombed on we'd have opened ourselves up more, sure, but we'd have caused them a lot more problems than we did. Even when we went behind our full backs refused to bomb forward in search of the equaliser. Enrique has been solid defensively but we all know there is more to his game. We need him linking up with Gutierrez again and overlapping. As for the utter lack of fight from our players, it's a mystery as they have mostly been up for the challenge this season. We did have a few who are coming back from injury (Sol, Taylor, Guthrie) and Ameobi didn't look fit either, but it ran through the whole team. Teams are sussing out that Carroll is our only major threat and I struggle to see what Hughton can do about it. January can't come soon enough.

The scary thing is, without being bitter, West Brom really have been poor espescially at the back. Just seen their first goal, why on earth was he allowed to take 4 touches inside our penalty area? We have a worrying list of fixtures coming up and January will be a key month for us to strengthen. Take a couple of players out and we are not good enough. Ashley has got to release some funds for a new player or two, surely? On today's evidence we can't handle a couple of injuries in any area.

Our usual performers such as Enrique, Tiote and Carroll have underperformed today and so has everyone else to a man. We've had chances because West Brom are crap at the back, but only one team ever really looked interested. We have a tough run of fixtures after this. Hughton needs funds to strengthen in January because a couple of injuries in any position could derail our season.