James

Nplan owes us nothing. He came into a very unsettled team, and didn't settle in his first five months which is really no big deal as that can be expected. Since then he pulled the club back up by the neck, led by example and genuinely contributed to two excellent seasons. That wasn't really expected of him but now he's done it we need to make the most of what he brings the club.

Seems like a lot of people are making the usual mistake of blindly assuming that anyone we sign to replace them will fit in straight away, have the right mentality, get on well with team mates etc etc. We have all this in our team right now. Yes we do need quality, but we are in a situation where it can be infused slowly. We've tried fixing everything that is wrong with the team too quickly in the past, changed too many players and it just resulted in a downwards spiral. The way to improve our team is to retain Barton and Nolan and do our best to keep Enrique. Players that aren't necessary invaluable would be Jonas (likely to be the fall guy for Ben Arfa), the strikers, and the other centre back (i.e. not Coloccini) One striker and one attacking wide player are enough to get us from 12th to 8th. However try to replace Nolan and Barton with supposedly better players so half our first team is different could take us down from 12th to 16th.

The most sensible approaches for any player whose contract takes them to over 31 in my view are: 1. Contract lasts until season end and player is 31. Option for an extra year automatically applied each time he plays 20 games. 2. Wage after 31 gets halved, but the other half becomes a bonus for each week a player plays in.

Appreciate what they do, give them the contract, and have faith that the manager will persuade them to move on if they are no longer wanted. Trouble is the board are scared of another Nicky Butt scenario, where despite being uncertainties over relegation or whether we even wanted him, Butt announced to them all that he was taking an option out to extend his own £50k a week contract, while taking out loads of bonuses. Eh? Hope the manager can persuade them to move on from their 50k plus a week 4 year deal?? How? I know Pards is a silver tongued charmer, but I think you are overestimating his charm. I don't think any sensible business model in the world is built around people being persuaded to leave their highly paid jobs. I trust Barton and Nolan to leave the club if they are no longer wanted.

Yet he made a big mistake by selling and aging Garry Speed. He wanted speed to stay but Freddie wanted the younger nicky butt. Thought Robson wanted Carrick?

Appreciate what they do, give them the contract, and have faith that the manager will persuade them to move on if they are no longer wanted. Trouble is the board are scared of another Nicky Butt scenario, where despite being uncertainties over relegation or whether we even wanted him, Butt announced to them all that he was taking an option out to extend his own £50k a week contract, while taking out loads of bonuses.

People have been trying to justify both, Nolan in particular, being out of the first team for months. Have you not seen the team lineups of loads of unproven players in the midfield?

With Wullie on this one. The board have repeatedly failed to recognise the players as human beings, and don't realise that happy players are better players.

Was this from when HTT was going through his David Hasselhoff phase?

Troisi actually got two goals.

Nothing is going to happen this week that isn't already nearly completed as Llambias is on holiday.

I remember when we had one of our terrible games under Allardyce, might have been Derby, and Allardyce came out and said it was all good because the team were starting to follow his way because Alan Smith had done a good man marking job on an opposing player.

Cometh the hour, cometh the Pavel Srnicek.

For an example Wolves. Hughton 1 - 1 Draw. Pardew 4 - 1 Win. While at the same time still putting in creditable performances (and getting some sort of result) against the top teams. Not meaning to criticise Hughton who did a good job, but I think people are trying to spin things to justify an unjustifiable stance on Alan Pardew.

Bernard and Elliott (also Babayaro and Elliott?)

Third most accurate finisher in the PL last season.

Do you really need someone to answer that for you? Have you never heard of a rhetorical question?

Act the cunt and you go. A warning to all of them. My thoughts. We want to develop good players, but we want to maximise their potential by encouraging high levels of professionalism. Turning a blind eye when he is never going to be amazing spreads a bad message.

What would binning him say to the other kids?

I've heard that Harper has been carrying an injury for years which has badly affected his kicking.

Llambias is on holiday. Authorisation has been given to secure Cabaye, but anything else will only be done over the next week or so if there is an emergency.

Even if we didn't beat the top teams, we had a go at them, and also started turning over teams that were giving us problems at the start of the season.. So the mentality 80 described doesn't really stand true even if the results support his suggestion.

But also we've gotten very good results against the majority of the bigger teams.

I know, but I've got no idea what he's asking Probably who it is, not that I think many of us would know any of them apart from Carr? How do you know, do you know much about this particular scout, if so what... had the scout agreed to leave, is he expecting to leave in the near future... The fullest story you can offer really. Can't tell you the name of the scout. You can find his name on one article online re: Tamas Kadar. I go to uni with his daughter. He's agreed to leave and become chief scout and wherever Hughton goes next. She seemed to think he's definitely on the lookout, but will only really go for it when its right. Mentioned Fulham, but she admitted that wasn't something that had come from Hughton. She said today that whatever you read in the press, the backroom atmosphere that Hughton had built amongst team, staff and personnel is gone, or at least it's not the same. Hence this guy being willing to move after serving the club for over a decade. For a moment I'd started to wonder as the only thing that turned up on icnewcastle was Jeff Vetere... Speaking of the atmosphere behind the scenes, I stumbled onto an article the other day - a load of quotes from Andy Carroll about Hughton and our season a few days before he got sacked. The attitude you could feel coming across was still inspiring, and yes, put simply there's been no sign of anything like that for a long time now. Felt like a completely different era, there's no vibe of writing your own headlines and not letting the media tell you how good you are, now. At best now it's 'be realistic, we won't beat bigger teams with 2nd Division players like Danny Simpson, but we can probably bully some relegation candidates, and with a bit of luck we might buy some better players in the future'. I think the only thing really stopping things become poisonous is Nolan, which is ironic considering some used to say it was Hughton who relied upon him... We've done anything but that under Pardew!

Well maybe you should stop being so confrontational whenever someone says something you don't agree with.