ohmelads

Maybe playing left back, left wing-back and right wing hasn't helped. His confidence seems missing at the moment. All he wants to do is get down the left flank, run at defenders and put balls in the penalty area and that's what he's best at. He has been totally messed about this season, you can't ask for consistency from a young player who doesn't know what area of the pitch he'll be playing in from one week to the next. N'Zogbia isn't a defender. He's tried but I think he's getting a bit disillusioned. He perhaps does have a huffy character, one that he might grow out of, but as someone who prides himself on man management I'd have thought Sam would let him and Enrique build some sort an understanding down that left flank and a chance to build some confidence. Putting him in positions he doesn't know or feels uncomfortable in is probably the last thing he needs. He is after all our only fit left winger and Enrique is our only fit left back, their manager needs to show some faith in them.

You've ruined the hysteria of this thread! You're right though. It's really not that difficult to avoid trouble at football games.

Used to live with a lad from Stoke, passed through there once as well. It is a miserable place, a typical northern England ex-industrial city. As for the draw, we could have done a lot worse.

I agree with that. I have more reason to give Allardyce the benefit of the doubt than I did for Souness or Roeder (or indeed Shearer) because he did an impressive job at Bolton. Given time I think he'll stabilise us at the very least but he's done an awful job so far and I'm not sure he'll buy himself the time with the fans or more importantly the board to do that (the chairman is taking a strong interest in the games too which doesn't bode well for him).

Yeah, I get it. He has no managerial CV. Unlike you however he's a widely respected footballer with a reputation worldwide and no doubt has a lot contacts in the game. He also has an inside knowledge of the sport having played at the highest level for the best part of two decades and has an inside knowledge of Newcastle United. The suggestion that an ex-professional footballer should manage a football club is a perfectly normal one. The suggestion that you should manage one is not. You could have said the same thing when Keegan was given the job. I can't tell you why Shearer would be a good manager because I don't know him. Can you tell me why he wouldn't? We could go on with this all day. I get your drift and I'm pretty sure you get mine so we'd just be going round in circles. It'd be a big gamble I agree with you there, and I'm not sure a club of our size should be gambling on a man with no managerial CV. Sunderland, although a smaller club, took a similar gamble with Keane and it seems to have gone OK thus far. We have employed managers with lengthy managerial CVs, managers with years of experience around the continent and they have struggled here. The most successful appointment we've made in recent history was an ex-Newcastle player who had been retired for 8 years and had no managerial experience to speak of. I think history has shown that Keegan is not a brilliant manager, but what he had was an understanding of the club and a strong connection with the supporters, as well as financial backing. It was a strong combination and I see comparisons with Shearer there. There is certainly some justification for putting his name forward in my eyes, having seen what a force we were under Keegan.

essentially whether shearer would be a sucess or not would be down to luck, and not judgement. i'd rather not replace allardyce with a shot in the dark. give allardyce time here and we know he will improve us as a side, even if he is not good enough to take us to the CL (which he may be). with roeder and souness we knew the only way was down. if we replace a manager who in my view is guarenteed to improve us if given time with a manager who we have no idea, then in my view that is bad business. replace him with a proven CL manager if you want to replace him, but otherwise no. I'm not meaning to be glib but there are no guarantees in football. Allardyce has taken on a different challenge and he's struggling. There are plenty possible explanations for why. Maybe he needs time and/or money to get it right or maybe the job is too big for him, the expectations too high. Maybe his one-dimensional tactics have been found out; football is an ever-changing game, studied intensively and teams gradually learn how to cope with different styles (hence why formations and tactics have changed a lot over the decades). Who knows. We can't guarantee he will improve us given time because he may simply invest the money badly like Souness did and leave us in even more of a mess before eventually getting the push anyway. There are no guarantees at all and with billionaires taking over average clubs the competition is going to get more fierce than ever.

If you've never seen Shearer manage then you can't say he'd be a failure either. Works both ways really so it's a moot point. It'd be a shot in the dark we all know that. I'm not sure I'd feel comfortable with it either, but I'm not dead against it. There seem to be a lot of fans who want the manager to be given heaps of time regardless of results or performances and yet these are often the same people against Shearer. It's surprising really, because one manager who would be given the benefit of the doubt, who the fans would cut a lot of slack, is Shearer. He'd be given the time and he'd have the backing of the fans. If he's any good, it could be a very successful combination. Sam definitely shouldn't be sacked before next summer though, unless we find ourselves in a crisis situation where relegation looks very realistic.

You're looking for excuses to be honest. Reading and Liverpool had us under the cosh and they were getting so much of the ball around our area that it was inevitable someone was going to get time, space and sight of goal. Both sides will rightly say the scoreline flattered us, so we can hardly point to bad luck. Those goals may have changed the game but then goals generally do, and we couldn't say they weren't coming.

Howay lads it's not a guaranteed defeat. I'm not confident, but we're at home and Arsenal have had tough games here in the past, they usually don't like coming up here. Bolton beat Man Utd last week, this is football and these things happen. In a sense we have nothing to lose in this game, everyone is expecting us to get stuffed and sometimes that's when you can spring a surprise. We've just got to hope Arsenal are similarly complacent and Sam gets our lot fired up. Sam is my biggest concern because he just can't make his mind up on what team or even what formation to play, so it's a safe bet there will be players out of position and players rotated for no apparent reason. I hope he sees this game as an opportunity and gets that mindset drilled into his players. Even a draw in this game would give us the basis to turn things around and he needs to get that message across to his players. If the mood in the camp is "oh no, Arsenal next" then we'll be beaten convincingly, the players need to be looking forward to this game because it does represent a massive opportunity. A draw would feel like a win right now and with the games that follow it there's a chance to get some points on the board before a horrible set of fixtures awaits us in January.

We'll face Chelsea at some point, might as well get them out the way now.

Thats not the point though is it? He was talking about the home fans. They are very very different to the away support in every conceivable way. Exactly. He's suggesting the home fans are part of the reason players struggle here, but they've been crap away as well where the support is totally different. So is it really fair to blame the home fans when the players are crap away as well? Maybe it's just down to poorly coached teams and sometimes just poor players. The fact he mentions players like Kluivert (constantly injured when he was here) and Jenas undermines his point further. Shearer never had a problem performing, nor did many others down the years. They were playing in front of the same fans as Jenas and Parker. Barton has a point about the booing, it's bloody silly but it is a rubbish excuse for underperforming players.

I really hope he isn't sacked until the end of the season but it's so frustrating to see that he isn't even helping his own cause. I want to support him but I can't see any logic in anything he's doing and I think I stand with the vast majority on that. He changed the formation yet again at Blackburn after the 3-5-2 farce against Liverpool and the square pegs in round holes against the mackems. None of these decisions have been forced upon him, he chose not to show faith in his only left back and instead shoehorned N'Zogbia into defence. Again. He simply refuses to go back to basics and we've lost to a Blackburn side low in confidence and tired from midweek. Managers often make the odd eccentric decision that doesn't sit right with fans and if they get it right they're labelled a genius, but to make decisions which baffle every onlooker all of the time is just bizarre, espescially for a side struggling to get even the basics right. I'm beginning to question whether we will ever see Allardyce's first team because I can see him fannying about, panicking and swapping the team around until he gets the sack. He simply can't seem to make his mind up and it's astonishing, really. We're 14 games into the season and there is no semblance of a 'first team'. I know quite a lot of the lads have been poor but you've got to have a spine to your team and stick with it. We're not helping ourselves at the minute.

Our away fans are widely regarded to be among the best in the country and yet our away form has been awful for years, so Barton's comments just sound like poor excuses from a player who has yet to do anything for his new club. 6000 travelled to Blackburn today and gave the players and manager their full support. Somehow I doubt Barton will talk about that, because it severely undermines his point.

Ronaldo was brilliant last season to be fair. If he was playing abroad and people only saw highlights of his best moments they would have no hesitation in putting his name up. He was arguably the best player in the Premier League, a league many regard to be the toughest in the world now, so that makes him a strong candidate.

Kaka. It's all about performing in the biggest games, when the pressure is really on and nobody gives an inch. That's when the greatest players come out and make history and as tmonkey said it is the reason why Henry never won the award.

No. I think they'll stick with him until they have no choice but to sack him. What's the alternative? Next summer I think they'll take stock of the situation and act accordingly, as somebody said they seem to be waiting for events to shape their thinking. I think and hope they'll stick with him until then. 1 point out of 18 would be shocking but the following 4 fixtures would give us a chance to keep our heads above water. Following Arsenal we've got Birmingham, Fulham, Derby, Wigan and we absolutely must get something out of those games (10 points should be a realistic target) because in the month that follows we travel to Stamford Bridge, Old Trafford and the Emirates, hosting Man City, Bolton and an FA Cup game in between. The "only a dozen games man" excuses will be quickly forgotten if we're hovering above relegation in the second half of the season. Let's just hope it doesn't come to that.

Beresford is spot on. Zog is struggling for consistency, but it's difficult to blame him when you don't even know where he will be playing from one week to the next, or who he'll be playing alongside. It's a mess at the minute. Sam needs to show some faith in his players, panicking and swapping it around every week isn't going to get us anywhere. He might fluke the odd win but we'll never see any consistency until he calms down and backs his players.

Is it really unfair to suggest he might be a one trick pony when he has come to Newcastle and played a percentage game even when Martins and Owen are up front? Premature perhaps, but not unfair on the evidence so far, because there are no excuses for the tactics and teams he has chosen, decisions which have not been forced upon him. His long term future here depends on whether he can buy himself the time to overhaul the squad and the only way he'll do that is by getting the best out of the current players. The board won't throw money at a man who can't work with what he's got. He faces a totally new challenge here and needs to adopt a different strategy, we're all waiting to see if he can (or wants to) change his ways but so far there is reason to doubt that.

From the BBC: A lesson to be learnt there.

He's dropping Enrique now? What, is that to accommodate Carr or to make sure N'Zogbia is out of position? Christ almighty. You almost get the feeling he's taking the piss. The time for pissing about has well and truly passed. The fans won't accept it and the board won't either, these are Premier League games not pre-season friendlies. I hope he knows what he's doing.

Your argument holds some weight if we're skint or need to save transfer funds for other positions, but if money is there we should be looking at a longer term signing for a position already manned by a 31-year old. Once we hand him a sign-on fee and hefty wages (I suspect he'll want a 2 or 3 year contract as well) the position is filled and we won't be seeing another DM for quite some time, so it's about the opportunity cost as well. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on whether the gamble is worth taking. There are just too many question marks over him for me. His injury record has been consistently poor for way too long, it seems a bit naive to expect him to suddenly play more than 25 games a season for us when he's seldom managed it in the past. On the back of such a serious injury as well, there are major question marks over what sort of player we'll be getting. Some might argue a bit-part role would be fine but I'd say players coming in and out of the side in key positions has been one of our major problems in recent seasons. The last time we had a settled team we were competing among the top 4, albeit with arguably better players/manager. You can almost put your money on him missing one in two games here given his track record and I'm sick of us bankrolling those types of players.

That's the same World Cup which saw Nicky Butt widely praised and voted player of the tournament by Pele. That too could be used to say Butt knows how to defend. Don't get me wrong, Edmilson is a good defender (by our standards) and in his prime he might have done very well here, but signing him now doesn't make much sense to me. This is the sort of signing that would only fuel suspicions that Allardyce just can't get out of his Bolton mentality.

Players who move leagues at that age usually have it difficult. Shevchenko has struggled at Chelsea and Henry is struggling at Barca, but they're strikers. Sam has shown it can be done with Hierro and others, but I think this would be a massive gamble and not really one worth taking. He's competition for Butt fair enough, but come the start of next season we'd have two 32-year old DM's competing for the same spot, and both on big salaries. Surely it'd be better to get someone younger to come in who will provide competition and has a longer term future at the club. A more motivated player with time on his side to establish himself in the team and get used to the English game if coming from abroad. We also have Faye who was apparently always a DM until he joined Bolton. I'd also say that the last thing we need right now is a player with no Premier League experience who possibly speaks no English. Time would not be on his side to pick up the English game and with the sheer number of injuries he's had, I don't see him playing on well into his thirties. The cons outweigh the pros IMO.

If you check his injury record it is shocking and goes all the way back to his young days in Brazil. He has always struggled to play more than one in two, his record is not too dissimilar to that of Babayaro. He's 31 now and coming back from a 6-month injury. This is his third knee operation in three years.

What is that supposed to prove?