J7

I don't really care for the UEFA Cup much, but we need it to attract better players. Sam has already told how hard it is to get good players in without European football. I would hope we are still in with a chance of qualification for Europe come the last few fixtures of the season.

Half the story is about Oliver claiming he predicted this in his shit article 2 weeks ago. He loves to talk about himself and praise himself.

Michael Owen and Alan Smith are both gay icons, or so ive heard

we already have "target men" in ameobi and viduka, so we don't need another, especially with Carroll waiting in the wings. we do need an extra body to cover for the wide forward positions in a 4-3-3, but i think smith would be crap in that position. bolton under sam used stelios, anelka and diouf in these positions and all three are fast, skilful and agile. smith is none of these things. as for smith playing in midfield, he's worse than all the current first-team options we have there - emre, barton, butt, geremi. so the only thing he adds is another number to the squad and if we wanted to do that we could've spent a pittance and still probably got a better player in, someone who naturally plays there. we could do with another specialist DM to support Butt, but smith's not a specialist DM as he can't read the game and distribute well enough. despite this he is feted for his guts, aggression and bizzarely his god-awful tackling. he's not an attacking midfielder cos he has no vision, no pace, little skill and doesn't even offer end product when played there. sounds like a poor man's scott parker and scott parker is crap. as for what we have lost with Dyer's departure, it's his ability to inject pace into the the number of attacking positions he can play in and signing smith does not replace this. we're worse off without this and west ham with bellamy and dyer in their side will be a better team for it. Not a bad post, but I disagree. As a striker I think Smith is different to both Ameobi and Viduka. Both are target men, but are quite lazy off the ball. Smith doesnt give up, even when it seems like a lost cause. I believe he is very good off the ball and is a decent finisher. He offers something different to Ameobi and Viduka.

Im pretty shocked by some of the shite on here tonight. Big Sam is building a squad. He will want players with different attributes to play in different games. Bringing Smith in gives us different options, especially away from home. He is a better manager than we have had recently. He looks at the big picture and isn't so stupid to think that every single signing has to improve our best 11. He will pick different players in different formations against different teams. Smith will fit into one of these systems, proberbly in games away from home and against some of the better sides at home. The days of 442, pick your best 11 are long gone. It will change game by game, and Smith will be an important player.

Yep. gggg will be the judge. I trust him far more than Sam like.

Smith as well I reckon. He said he would spend the Dyer money tomorrow and I would assume Dyer and Smith will be around the same value.

I think it would be a decent signing. 100%er and a good finisher. Would also prove that we have some money to spend on defenders.

I would prefere to see him on loan in the Championship or an SPL side.

If I make it down on Sunday I will sit in the corner. Anything beats the moaning boring bastards who were sitting around me last night. Toon Ultras do a good job I reckon.

True that every other club in Scotland hates the two of them. Mind, many of the other clubs such as Motherwell and Airdrie are no better. Cowdenbeath have an average crowd of about 300 and they can't visit Berwick without wrecking things and marching down the High Street shouting 'English bastards' at random passers by. A load of them got lifted last time.

Why has the official site missed off our friendly up there in 2004. Im not amused. Anyway, we had a delivery driver in before saying the A1 is chockablock with Celtic fans. Might be a few more down than was expected.

Celtic will proberbly bring about 10'000. They treat these games like league games.

Never even been on that forum. This is the one the players read!

Don't know why the fans were climbing on the fence in the first half to see, because there was loads of room down the bottom of the terrace. Gaps everywhere.

Footballs changed. We don't live in the 70's and 80s anymore.

On the subject of these massive threads. Im not a fan. The Ashley one was pretty annoying. If anything happened you had search back through the thread for page after page to see what happened. Most of the time you just miss some news because as soon as a new thread starts its gets merged with a massive one.

Im not the biggest fan of Heinze. I don't think he is as good as he once was. Having said that, he would improve our defence.

Glad we decided against the train anyway. Just a 90 mile journey down through Kelso, Hawick and Langholm on the Border roads now!

What a terrible story! I knew Oliver was bad, but fuckin hell!! It should be in an opinion page, not as a news story!! This part is unbelievable! "But I am not 100% certain that Dyer will still be a United player at the start of the season. Dyer was deep in conversation with Allardyce’s first-team coach Nigel Pearson on the pitch at Hartlepool after the final whistle on Tuesday night. The former Ipswich man clearly looked distressed as Pearson attempted to console him in full view of the media and the stragglers leaving the ground." This as well: "I have always felt that Emre could be another midfielder who would leave St James’ Park in the close season, and with Fenerbahce, Bayern Munich and Hertha Berlin eyeing the Turkish inter-national this could still happen." What a tit!

Good news. Good to see a new thread or I would have missed it.

How come nobody seems to have a clue about the other clubs. Rumours were on here this morning so surely fans at other clubs would have noticed things around their grounds.

Means what? That he wants to stay? aye, being happy to stay does not mean he wants to just he has no others offers. Proberbly. Nothing wrong with that though.

I can't see why anyone was upset about him not commenting on his future before working with Big Sam. What do people expect? He is a world class international starter who signed for us, obviously expecting European football. The manager that signed him was sacked and we made another joke appointment in Roeder. A manager who the players took the piss out of and had no respect for. Is it any wonder this world class player was looking out for his future at a club who has just finished 14th and 5 points above relegation. It's up to us to make the right appointments and start to move up the table, if we don't our better players will leave. Its a simple as that.

True. It seems like it's going to be a while before we stop getting people from the past popping up every now and again with their insight into what Newcastle fans want. I personally think that the fans will give managers time. We always have. The difference is, Souness and Roeder was so obviously wrong from the start. There was nothing in their past, or the way they were taking the club to suggest anything other than going backwards. When its so obvious we are heading in the wrong direction, and the manager isn't good enough, then we become annoyed.