CaliMag

Spurs and AZ got screwed in this draw. It'll be a Seville Werder final.

Now that I have had a day to cool off and I no longer have an AZ supporter at my house (who watched the game with me - I took defeat harder than I expected). A couple of observations: This was just as much about van Gall and AZ winning the match as much as us losing it. They deserved to go through. Just like Mourinho has noted in his possibly fake "play book" concerning NUFC - Solano and Emre (to a lesser extent Zoggy) are important keys to our passing game. In the first game AZ tried to run in through the middle at pace or stay back and run at our full backs on the counter. This was disasterous for them because Solano can anticipate when and where attacks come from and he had ages on the ball to start movement ON THE GROUND (without hoofing it). Also Carr had much less pressure put on him and was able to stay back with no attempts to turn him (although he was AWOL during their first goal). Fast forward to the second game: Van Gaal pinned our fullbacks and ran at them at every opportunity especially when we had posession which made Solano less creative (no time), panicked our CMs into hoofing it (again) and made Hunty look total crap. With no Emre (until the 85th) and Solano neutralised we could not keep the ball on the ground or scrape more than two passes together. Butt and Parker are not good at creating anything - we know this - so we would then need to depend on the wingers or wide men - Dyer creates space through contsant movement but is not a great visionary so that leads us to Duff and our expectations. We desperately needed Duff to show up for this game and I think Roeder and the rest of the team knew this and when he went and had a poor game it fell apart for us. Roeder's second half game plan was probably: give the ball to Duff on the ground and he'll try to start something with Sibi, when this failed the CBs panicked and started leaving Duff out of the equation - that panic escalated when Parker kept repeatedly backpassing out of ideas and nobody to help him out on any creativity. And Parker started playing better the more desperate he became incidentally - which indicates poor instruction from Roeder and/or the coaching staff. We still could have won this game but it would have been undeserved - we are an average team with some decent players without a coherent strategy or a consistant training regimin. On a seperate note I woke up singing "No Silverware no silverware..." to myself makes me feel better.

I completely agree with the Nut here. I thought they were fairly f****** terrible at SJP and incredibly boring to watch, aye we know you can pass the ball between the defenders and the goalkeeper, well done. Their lack of a right-back was something else I picked up on, one of their centre-halves was always yelling for somebody to track back and cover Duff. They do seem to have pace either side of Arveladze and Dembelele starting will probably make a difference to them, but I'm still confident we'll go through. 2-2 draw or something along those lines, but I favour us to win over them. Hope this doesn't come back to bite me on the tukkus. Op Nut & The Janitor: Just think about the Birmingham game and try rewritting that.

I'd say the same as Nate: 3-1 to AZ. 3-2 if we are lucky. Either way I'd say this game will be a nail biter.

I would to draw Neverkusen in the next round. Our record against them is already Played 2 won 2.

Do you mean... Foreign Mercenary Scum vs. Best English Manager?

Been "wooooshed" have I? Better that than the alternative.

Please tell me you're joking about the sponsor's logo... a BIG PINK BOX FFS!! Oh how I wish you could buy jerseys without the sponsor.

That's a strange choice. Do you own one of those TOFFs kits? Similar to the old skool design.

My apologies. Credit to eltsacwen for such a good job.

I think the Souness comparison is very fair. Despite him being a terrible manager (especially for us) he seemed very rational in his interviews and has many of the same qualities that Keane does. Well spotted HTT. Not convinced about Keane and this may sound petty and narrow minded but I would never want Bruce or Keane to be our manager EVER because of who they are and what they represent. I think in this case I would probably be in the majority opinion of Newcastle supporters.

Those two mostly balck ones with just the two white stripes are excellent. Well done to nobby for photoshopping those.

My uncle played for St. Mirren, been to Love street - good supporters. Inverness Caledonian Thistle is fairly well supported considering the local population size and the newness of the unification. Intimate stadium and cool small town.

S****? Super?

Great... another bloody Scot!

We're f*cked... I got an e-mail back from Setanta already: ________________________________________ From: Shane O'Rourke [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Tuesday, March 06, 2007 1:56 PM To: XXXXXXXXXXXXX [email protected] Subject: Re: A Plea for a switch of the 15th March UEFA Cup game I am sorry we can't do this. We buy rights for the UEFA in packages and this game was not included and we would have to pay extra for it. While we appreicate your following of Newcastle we simply can't buy extra games when we have several key teams as part of our package. ----- Original Message ----- From: XXXXXXXXX To: [email protected] ; [email protected] Sent: Tuesday, March 06, 2007 1:18 PM Subject: A Plea for a switch of the 15th March UEFA Cup game Dear Shane & Madeleine: Please show the AZ v. Newcastle game instead of the Shaktar v Seville game in the UEFA Cup on the 15th of March. I had been informed through soccertv that the NUFC/AZ game was to be shown only for conformation of the Shaktar game on Setanta Sports USA. I was disappointed as it was that Spurs were chosen over us for the first leg, but I am begging you to switch the second leg game. I can guarantee that the AZ NUFC game will spark much more interest and ratings for Setanta than the Shaktar match. There is a very large Geordie ex-pat population in the States (as you are already well aware of) and a small die hard AZ support base that has not been able to see them play in Europe before this season. Thank you for taking the time to read this, CaliMag

Where the hell is Stevie when you need him?

gutted

Here's what I want - Barca to score again play to pens against liverpool and knock them out of the competition in the most heartbreaking fashion possible whilst injuring several key players (bellamy, Kuyt Gerrard) for the rest of the season. Does this make me a bad person?* *(Only Stevie is allowed to answer this question)

Well I sent an e-mail to the folks in charge of scheduling and North American broadcasts... I am hopeful that I came across as more humbly groveling as opposed to snivelingly desperate.

This is what was posted on Soccertv yesterday: AZ (Netherlands) vs Newcastle United (England) Setanta Sports USA Th Mar 15 3:30pm ET/12:30pm PT LIVE This is what is posted today: Thu Mar 15 11:25AM Pacific Thu Mar 15 12:25PM Mountain Thu Mar 15 01:25PM Central Thu Mar 15 02:25PM Eastern Length: 2 hr 5 min LIVE Setanta Sports USA UEFA Cup - Round of 16 - 2nd Leg Shakhtar Donetsk (Ukraine) vs Sevilla (Spain) Honestly who the f*ck cares about Shaktar and Seville in the States? I am going to post a very stern e-mail to Setanta -

... hmmmm ... disappointing. I was hoping for more ITK stuff from the North Americans.

Okay this is just for the North American exiles... Does anyone know what is going on with the Setanta schedule? Our 15th of March away game was scheduled on Soccertv.com to be shown on Setanta USA until this morning but it would appear we have been bounced in favour of the Shaktar game? WTF? Is soccertv.com wrong? Are there other channels available? Anyone know of any Mexican channel listings (because I can get most Mexican satellite TV here in California)? All help appreciated.

That seems a fair assessment to me especially your last point.

If the Guardian got it right and we were contacted first then the answer would be no. He would have been offered at his full wage and then when he got the no answer it would have been "Fine I'll play in Italy or Spain then." As stated before Campbell (and his agent) thought that he had many options before he eventually ended up at Pompey... which leads to another point: If he was such a "common sense option" why didn't he have more opportunities available? He was most likely seen as an expnsive risk by more managers than Roeder... some of them may have even been good ones. I can't believe I am in a position forced to defend Roeder (whom I was never very happy about) but here I am. I think you are being a tad unfair here. Campbell played fewer matches because of his psychological issues as stated before and Woodgate because he was injured. Huth, on the otherhand, was not playing first team football, but he was in fact still playing reserve football and was fit both physically and psychologically. I see a big difference in Woodgate v Huth v Campbell in the 05-06 season.