Benwell Lad

You really are full of shit. Is there anything at all you actually like about Newcastle ?

He jumps up and down a lot and sucks up to the press.

Aye. If the FCB hadn't brought his cockney mate Pardew in we wouldn't be in this almighty mess !

***** NB ***** !! VERY IMPORTANT !! PLEASE DISREGARD MISLEADING STATISTICS RELATING TO NEWCASTLE (A) Everyone (well Madman O'Niell, a few dimwit mackems and fawning journalists, anyway) knows that Sunderland in fact totally dominated that match, they were very unlucky not to win it, the opposition did not miss a penalty or smack the crossbar and Newcastle are now worried about Sunderland dominating north-east football for the forseeable future and are already green with envy about the player's O'Niell will bring to the club.

Been like that since oniell took over really. On borrowed time playing that way. Energy and cheating has helped them thus far but their manager is going to have to figure out how to do something different eventually. That's not what he's good at.

Aye some blurred memories there, they were pretty awful at SJP and we absolutely murdered them 0-0. Got to admire Swansea's first season in the big league but didn't they get beaten at home by Norwich recently ?

They haven't really played well even during the run of decent results. They work hard, compete and kick the opposition but there's no substance or style to anything they do. The predictable O'Niell guff and fawning press but it'll all end in tears.It always does.

Don't get me wrong, I do NOT want to lose Tiote. He is a good player, seems to like the club/area and I'd be happy to see him playing for us for many years to come. However in a real world of salary budgets etc, it is reported he earns £67K per week and if his agent starts turning his head at Chelsea's offer, I would not go any higher than that, thereby taking budget away from another position. As you rightly say there is no guarantee that you pick up a player as good, but a fee in the region of £15-20M and a salary budget of £3.35M p.a. would certainly help you to find someone decent.

Much as I like Tiote he has not pushed on and he looked a better player last season. If someone is daft enough to bid £20M for a player who has had one outstanding game this season, scored one goal since arriving and spends a lot of his playing time on the knife edge of a physical player on a yellow card, then I'd take their hand off. I'd be interested to see how stats compare this season between games he's played and games he hasn't but I don't think he has been missed anywhere near as much as we expected. Defensive CM is probably the easiest position in football to replace and maybe Abeid will make the grade anyway.

Saw a big NUFC flag with "Italian Magpies" on it at the mackem game, not surprisingly with a lot of Italian people surrounding it. Possibly the same bunch ?

Brilliant read as many have already said. I think everyone on N-O should be made to read it and thereafter sit an examination to ensure it has sunk in. Anyone not reaching a set pass mark should be banned indefinitely.

So in conclusion Pardew has taken a squad of players, who most people thought would struggle or be relegated, to 6th in the table with more than three quarters of the season played and given the club a possibility of European football next season. He has a good transfer market record, the apparent support of the club's owner, a solid and improving coaching, scouting and development system in place and 92.2% of people in a quite large N-O poll think he is doing OK, good or brilliant. Indeed 70.1% say he is doing either "good" or "brilliant". It would appear he is here for the long term and most supporters seem to prefer a shift towards that kind of stability. However the style football currently being played is not as eye pleasing as many wish for and the team is making hard work of every point we gain right now. Most of us want to see a more attacking style and prolonged periods of offensive possession rather than a cagey approach to defending slender leads. 1.6% of those polled think he is doing a "terrible" job. It is probably apparent who they are and they keep this thread burning hot arguing their case. No doubt the press who scan these threads to provide their stories when there's no real news to report, will soon start murmering about fans not being entirely happy with the management set up, but really it only appears to be a very small minority, albeit a vociferous one, who are not content with what the manager is doing.

Thought the Gallowgate corner sounded canny and credit to them for trying to lift the team. Didn't think they were as boistrous as normal yesterday. Even the Norwich lot were pretty low key as far as away fans go. Just a bit of a flat day all round. There was a banner hanging over the exit tunnel in the corner, had a face on it - what was it about ?

Not this s*** again man. Obviously if anyone looks at the league table they say "well toon fans must be delighted". However our fans have actually watched all our matches this season. Huh? Reread. Im asking our fans who should be happier, not what they think. The respective ability of the sides above us to keep possession & dominate games has been highlighted in this thread & used as evidence we underperform under Pardew. Yet many would agree those 2 sides have underperformed in terms of picking up points for the quality of their squad, in comparison to how we have done. So should people be more dissapointed with our attacking play than satisfied with our strengths in other areas? Many seem to be. So true. So many people on here when our fans got/get derided in the media for "demanding an attacking brand of football"/"the Geordies would rather lose 4-3 than win 1-0" claimed that to be the media ganging up on us/not knowing their arse from their elbow/talking s*** etc. Now we have a manager under whom for the majority of the season we have ground out scrappy, 1-0 wins with good team defending, as well as good football and some great goals in part, and so many people on here are complaining about it. Yeah, take your point, the football isn't particularly inspiring and with out first XI there's room for improvement and it's frustrating to see that denied us, but at the end of the day you're living up to the stereotypes that David Craig, Louise Taylor et al set for us having bashed them as inaccurate in the first place. I've said it before and I'll say it again, Pardew can have us playing a formation of 10-0-0 for all I care as long as keep winning, because as a fan of Newcastle United I love it when we win. I'm a fan of Newcastle United first, and tasty football involving Newcastle United second. Great post. Somehow the ridiculous 4-3 myth still prevails to some extent but probably only in the minds of the same people who don't call the stadium SJP. i.e. no one who watches Newcastle regularly or really matters. In reality the football we are playing, even now, is nowhere near as bad as it's made out to be by some on here. We are playing decent stuff in patches but to play it out of defence all the time you need confident defenders. Right now we have one of those.

Yeah but we're ONLY sixth - in a season when many expected us to struggle and many more tipped us for relegation. Surely if we had a manager who knew what he was doing we'd be in the top three and probably unbeaten. Personally I'd rather be in the bottom three and playing the beautiful football inspired by the purist Martinez at Wigan. You can only really compare Martinez if he's got a similar squad to work with. It's not like at Wigan he's got Collocinis, Tiotes, Ba's Cabayes or Cisses at his disposal. I wasn't really comparing them, just being a bit sarky. FWIW I admire Martinez, his team play really good football and they do have some decent players. Problem is it's a big boy's league in a big bad world and they just get done too often despite playing great stuff.

Thought the Gallowgate corner sounded canny and credit to them for trying to lift the team.

For some obscure reason we remain the second biggest draw in football after ManU. Probably the sublime entertaining football we play. Feeling quite good about us going forward with HBA,Cisse and Demba but then think about the one man defence we've been playing with lately. A few goals in this one I'm sure.

Yeah but we're ONLY sixth - in a season when many expected us to struggle and many more tipped us for relegation. Surely if we had a manager who knew what he was doing we'd be in the top three and probably unbeaten. Personally I'd rather be in the bottom three and playing the beautiful football inspired by the purist Martinez at Wigan.

Out of interest are you a Newcastle supporter ? Nothing to do with your dislike of our manager but your style of argument seems similar to a couple of "non-Newcastle" fans who posted on here in the past.

Not the inspirational victory we wanted but a very good win regardless. A lot of criticism of the performance but distilled into context we won,kept a clean sheet, scored a goal worthy of winning any game,created several good chances and restricted a useful Norwich side to a couple of half chances which once again our superb young keeper dealt with adequately. Thought some of the crowd treatment of Williamson was disgraceful. He is rock bottom on confidence and it clearly shows, but he's our CH for the remaining very important games and getting on his back will do nothing for our cause. He needs our support. At present we have a back four with only one person playing with any authority. Ironically a player who was getting the same treatment not so long ago,James Perch, put in a really hard working performance and was probably MOTM. It was certainly a performance Tiote would have been proud of and has only exceeded on one occasion this season. Another player who gets both barrels from a section of the crowd every time he makes a mistake came on for the fourth consecutive match and contributed excellently making the ball stick to help out a stretched defence.

A wonderful finish and a goal worthy of winning any game. Top quality striker. Should probably have notched a second when put through by Jonas but as said above every great striker misses chances, fortunately they also score plenty of goals.

Aye, it's good and surprisingly positive. It contains some positive comments regarding our overall situation but also quite negative comments about squad depth etc. Overall I'd say it is neither positive or negative but a very realistic appraisal of where we are and what's going on right now. Also the match report itself hit the nail right on the head.

Have to say I thought the nufc.com match report for this game was brilliantly written. Thought provoking and right on the money.

We have looked better in the last 3 games after he came on and started holding the ball up. A deeper Demba Ba could do the same, pushing Cisse up top to do what he does best.

Only 4th worst ?? The poll must have included the Commomwealth, former colonies and places like Somalia if that's the case. Article on same page drives home the reality sadly. http://www.sunderlandecho.com/news/crime/racist-thugs-spat-on-shopkeeper-s-children-1-4339076