James

Its a bit unrealistic to expect our defenders to find Geremi at halfway. Its tactics like that which lead to long ball, even if that wasn't the initial intention. Also, passing from centre back to attacking full back can be quite risky these days when Premiership teams like to play Kuyt and Bellamy style players who play as a first line of defence. Getting the ball to the full back via Geremi allows the full back to push up without running the risk of a dangerous interception.

I remember the days when everyone was trying to oust Gary Speed from our side. Same situation now I reckon, with Geremi playing the water carrier role and others not noticing his contribution when he is playing for us. Our bad run coincided with Geremi not playing central midfield. Also, look at the Telegraph match reports. There is a Flash programme at the bottom that has several pro-zone style statistics. Look at Geremi's individual statistics, and compare them to others, in particular, Butt. You'll find that he receives the most passes from our defenders, and he has a better pass completion rate than all our other midfielders, and makes more successful passes, and generally wins the ball more often than other midfielders. What does this actually mean in match terms? Well, he helps the defence play it short, and he is good at quickly getting the ball to our more dangerous players. In moves leading up to goals we have scored, he has been involved more often than any other player, and this demonstrates that some of our best attacking moves have gone through him. He was shit against Fulham though - I thought our midfield found it very difficult playing against a five man midfield when there was a big gaping hole on our right hand side. I also dont think we need Butt, Geremi and Barton if playing three central midfielders. Judging on what I've seen on the pitch complemented with the statistics, Butt needs ousting and replacing in January. I feel we can also get better with Geremi in the team if we ever get around to playing an effective right winger.

I missed seeing the first 30 mins on television, but of what I saw, Beye and Cacapa were our best players, though its a shame that every time Cacapa does something good now, the commentators are going to mention how he's been bad so far for us, even though you know that they only noticed him against Portsmouth. At times, Barton looked good. I'd argue that only him and Beye looked like they were playing to win today, and despite talk about lack of fitness, I'd say he was the fittest player from 80 minutes onwards, this talk is probably due to lack of pace and sharpness more than anything now, and because of his layoff (rest period), he is currently fatiguing slower, which means that as our opponents get more fatigued, they become less sharp and less pacey, and this allows Barton to become one of the better players on the field. Meanwhile, Viduka and Emre dont currently have good enough fitness levels to offer more than 30 minutes of a good performance, but their introductions when others are fatigued are beneficial for us, and with Barton as well, plus the immense fitness levels of Beye, we can be very dangerous towards the end of matches, especially during the more hectic parts of the season. Butt and Geremi were poor today, but I thought the midfield were outnumbered and exposed by the atrocious performance of Martins, who was totally undisciplined and lacked any goal threat whatsoever. Certainly Allardyce recognised this, hence taking Martins off for Viduka to create a very slow strike force that we haven't seen when Sam has made past tactical adjustments. Hopefully Martins will be out of the team next game. I doubt Sam will change a defence that kept a clean sheet, but I would bring in Enrique, play Milner in Martins' position and play N'zogbia in Milner's position.

And I was right to stick by Santa Claudio.

Second time I've predicted the important goalscorer in two games. And no money gambled

We could have had a penalty - Viduka was held back.

What the fuck are you on about man? Is '10% of a good performance' even a term that can be understood by normal human beings? And no, Owen should not get into the team as soon as he's fit because he fucks up Allardyce's thinking re: formation and system. He'd have to play ten times better to be considered good. Martins isn't playing as the system expects - he's slap bang in the centre, where Owen would be doing a better job, especially as he has experience of scoring goals from the right of three strikers at Real Madrid.

Martins has failed to produce even 10% of a good performance in several consecutive games now. He should be out of the team as soon as Owen finds full fitness.

Omosuzi? he's not making his debut. Was one of their only decent players against us. I thought the radio had described him as a debutant - my mistake.

Barton will score today.

He's attempting a Guiness World Record in handstands on the top of Mount Kilimanjaro.

Lets target their young debutant right back. Mick Lowes is fawning over Aaron Hughes embarassingly.

To be honest, an away draw at Sunderland isn't that bad this season. They are going to manage the odd good result here and there, and should stay up.

And they couldn't have told him from the bench? Its a pace and fitness issue, not a tactical one.

Apparently Emre was about 10-15 yards further back for the whole match than he was meant to be against the mackems, which is why he isn't starting.

Good opportunity for us to overtake West Ham and start bumming Blackburn and Villa later.

Academy over the stand every time. As mentioned, others during their time at NUFC gave us more, but also Robson gave more to other clubs and football in general. A Robson Academy (hopefully) brings future football talent to both NUFC, England and the footballing world, whereas a stand is too grand, too rigid, too unchanging and too permanent for someone who is more of a football man than a Newcastle man. Plus it can be argued that Robson laid some important early building blocks in our Academy, so it is something he contributed too. All of Robson's other contributions have gone now to be honest - he left great memories, but his footprints in the sands of time have been washed away by changing tides.

Not too sure about playing our weediest two centre halfs against a Fulham lot who are strong, tough and uncompromising. I would have taken a gamble and played Edgar.

Well Capello has more experience at coaching youth players than any good English manager currently out there.

Reading a few articles about Capello, in particular a BBC one where Desailly, Seedorf and Boban discuss his attributes, I'd say he actually possesses quite a few similar principles to Allardyce. This could be intersting if Capello and Allardyce were to find some common ground and have some sort of working relationship. For starters, if both of Owen's managers can come to an agreement about how they want Owen to play, I can see Owen improving for both teams. Sam may also pick up a few small tweaks to his systems from Capello. 433 is popular at the moment because there are more players to defend, but perhaps Capello can show that a team can defend just as well with a 442, while offerring opportunities to attack. I reckon if Allardyce can learn to implement Capello's 442 system, it could hugely benefit us.

When Ramage let that player run inside him against Birmingham last season, he showed that he isn't even good enough for the Championship.

Oh FFS

The Italians blatantly arrested some Brits to make them look blameless.

Breaking News on the BBC ticker.

Perhaps it could be worth sending out preliminary feelers to the club? i.e. we outline various things the club could do and someone writes a 500 word argument about why and how each suggestion could be done, and then the club can then respond to tell us what suggestions they are receptive to. That way we can't run down an impossible alley. I'd be happy to write an argument supporting the pre-season tournament.