Teasy

Keegan shouted for everyone bar one person to go forward? Serious question, do you know that or are you assuming it?

True. I've no idea how Keegan will lift them now. We've done everything but win today. Very easily, he's say "you played very well today and were incredbly unlucky, keep playing like that and you have to start winning". The majority of the posts here make me absolutely sick, its just a testement to the reactionary nature of so many Newcastle fans. One minute they say we're playing really well, the next we concede a sucker punch goal and all of a sudden we're hopeless, s*** and have no desire to win. How did we create so many chances with no f****** desire to win? There are actually some people here asking for Keegan to be sacked because Owen and co missed numerous good chances and a slip up late on caused us to concede a goal.. bizarre. Had we converted one of the plethora of chances we had in the game the same people would be happy with Keegan... its as if some people think Keegan personally controls everything every one of our players does on the field..

Keegan is definitely in charge of first team signings, anyone who knows Keegan would know that if that wasn't under his control he wouldn't be here. Wise is primarily on the youth side of scouting and development.

Dennis Wise doesn't look for first team players full stop..

That entire thing is several months old, not even accurare either... The Sun must be running out of idea's. Hold on, no that is the several month old article.. Jol, why have you posted an article from October you

No way should we play the typical relegation scrap way, that's the reason we're in a relegation scrap in the first place! Because Allardyce has been playing as if we're already in one from the start of the season. Had we gone out and just played Football against the likes of Derby we wouldn't be in this position. Having said that we also shouldn't go into every game playing attacking Football.. Really what we should be doing is playing like we're in a relegation scrap against the better sides and trying to play Football against the s*** of the league.

Tbh, i have been asking myself if we'd have spanked quite as badly under Sam as we have been under KK these past few games. Would have been worse according to some on here as apparently we've been 'making progress' since he left. Progress in playing Football, not progress in limited every defeat to as few goals as possible, which was all Allardyce seemed to really care about.. That's alright then. At least we're 'trying' to play nice football while getting bettered every week. mackems.gif Results please. Are you interested in actually reading the discussion and taking part in it, or posting diatribe with a few silly smillies? Nobody has ever claimed that results have improved yet, that's the point that seems to have wooshed a mile over you're head..

As I said, the results haven't improved yet, but its got to have been extremely difficult to improve those results with the run of fixtures Keegan's started with. Confidence is important, and when you have four almost unwinnable games in the space of a month, it must be just about impossible to raise confidence for the winnable games. Which so far there's only been two of against Bolton and Boro (even then he'd only been in charge for days before the Bolton game.. and against Boro we should technically have won). Basically I believe that the way we're now trying to play will stand us in much better stead against teams like Reading and Fulham, confidence is all we need now, and I'm hoping that can come once we aren't being being forced to play the top four every week.

Of course its just my opinion, just like its your opinion, and not fact, that we'd have conceded less under Allardyce. BTW, I don't think there's any merit at all in comparing various fixtures several months appart. Especially with the way the players confidence had gradually deteriorated under Allardyce. Even worse if you're going to compare two different sides (Manure and Arsenal). After the second game against Derby, when we once again went out to try to "stop them playing" and were desperately lucky to scrape a draw, did you have any confidence left in you that we could beat anyone under Allardyce? Because I didn't. At least against Boro we had some kind of excuse (disallowed goal), and Bolton just came for the point (11 men behind the ball). Lets put it this way. Since Allardyce left we've made progress in trying to actually play Football, the way the players pass the ball is obviously better. What hasn't improved at this time are the results.

He's picking the players who are fit and available to play, who else should he pick in midfield instead of Barton or Butt? Who else instead of Owen or Smith?.. Carroll?, Ameobi? Big difference that would make..

Tbh, i have been asking myself if we'd have spanked quite as badly under Sam as we have been under KK these past few games. Would have been worse according to some on here as apparently we've been 'making progress' since he left. Progress in playing Football, not progress in limited every defeat to as few goals as possible, which was all Allardyce seemed to really care about..

Tbh, i have been asking myself if we'd have spanked quite as badly under Sam as we have been under KK these past few games. So what if we would have conceded less?, we need points not to try to stay up on goal difference. We never really had a chance of beating Arsenal, Manure or Villa. What we need to do more then anything is take our chance in the games we should win, at home against lower table opposition. If we went into the home games against Reading/Fulham ect with the same old "stop the opposition playing" s*** Allardyce forced us to play we'd come out of those games with few goals conceded as well, but even fewer points gained.. If we go into those games and try to play Football we have a good chance of winning some games.. Would I have preferred Keegan to play a more defensive formation against the best sides to try to scrape a draw and try to play Football against poorer sides? Yeah I would (though I bet if that happened we'd currently have people stupidly complaining that Keegan's no different to Allardyce). But one thing I certainly would never want is to have Allardyce still here so we can all feel great that Manure only beat us 3:0 instead of 5:1 while looking forward to going all out to try to scrape a draw against Reading at home

Lunacy. Lunacy for Celtic, I stand by Given but he's not worth as much as McGeady at the moment and Duff/Carr are both worthless (Carr's worth minus money IMO).

As far as I can see it could only look that way to people who don't know all the facts, or just don't want to see them. Lets see how Ashley and co treat there own choice as manager, then we can judge how different they are to the Halls/Shepherd in that respect. Good read overall though.

That doesn't explain why he played half the season in midfield. Allardyce..... that explains everything.

The reason Smith has played is simple, we've had no good striker to play in his place. Martins has been away and Viduka is a lazy fuckwit. We could have played Carroll or Ameobi yes, but neither of them are an obvious choice.

So Big Sam plays s*** football, loses some games and should be given time? KK comes in and loses to Man Utd and Arsenal and should be shown the door? Have a word. Home draws with Boro and Bolton? Do they not count? What about that miserable performance at Villa? At least with Allardyce we were grinding out results, the football may not have been good at times but we had a team of determined players who wanted to win. You can't say the same about the side now. Grinding out results?.. In the six games before Keegan came in we got two draws and four losses, exactly the same record as the Keegans first six games but against much worse teams.. There's no evidence what so ever that Allardyce would have done any better against any of the teams we've faced under Keegan (want to talk about drawing to Bolton?, what about drawing and losing the Derby?).

Don't know about that, he shuck the likes of Rooney off pretty easilly. Also he has looked pretty fast when he's needed to be, at the end of the day I can't remember anyone getting a yard on him other then Wallcott once in the game against Arsenal. Like others have said, he hasn't been amazing so far, but he's 21 playing his first few games in a new country. He's looked like a good lefback so far with the potential to be very good IMO.

I think one of the biggest problems Geremi had was being Allardyces captain. He'd obviously told Geremi to take every free kick, every throw (which always had to be long throws) and every corner. Which people got very sick of very fast.

You're spot on, not that it makes any difference.

Can't honestly see any club spending £12m on a player (Zog) who is reputedly unsettled and whose value is based more on potential than recent achievement and can't show off his potential because he's being played out of position. Being "unsettled" is a lot less effective when you've only recently signed a new 5 year contract. If he wants to go and another team wants him they'll have to pay far more then he's currently worth IMO, otherwise they can f*** off and he can rott in the reserves for all I care. Hopefully the management will see it similarly. True, the same could be said about Downing. Boro wanted c£12m, reputedly unsettled but no one paid the fee being asked so Downing signed a new contract. I'm not saying Newcastle should sell Zog for less than £12m if that's what they think he's worth. I just don't envisage anyone spending £12m to buy him. Fair enough, I doubt anyone would pay £12 million for N'Zogbia, he's certainly not worth that on current form. It all comes down to wether anyone wants him badly enough, if they do we have him on a long term deal and don't need to sell, which means they'll have to pay well over the odds.

There were people saying we could get relegated back when Allardyce was here. The only reason more people have now cottoned on to the possibility of relegation is because we're much closer to the end of the season. Its staring people in the face now, where as before it was far enough way to stay in denial. As a Football team we've gone forward since Allardyce left, fortunately for Allardyce he got out just before this run of tough games came along. So we were definitely going down under Allardyce were we? I dont know whether the team would have picked up more points against Bolton and Boro but i do think we would have conceded less in the other matches. I think the goals against and defending in general makes me feel like we have gone backwards. We're no more definitely going down now then we were then. The only difference between now and then is that now the possibility of relegation is more imminent. We may have conceded less against Manure and Arse with Allardyce here (or maybe we wouldn't have, see Portsmouth, Blackburn ect). We may have been beaten by Boro and Bolton (or maybe not). What I do believe, and being thrashed by Manure and Villa hasn't changed this belief, is that we have a much better chance of getting results against the beatable teams (such as Reading and Fulham at home) without Allardyce. Playing the lower teams at there own game was always a suicidal tactic and managed to give Derby half the points they currently have this season.

There were people saying we could get relegated back when Allardyce was here. The only reason more people have now cottoned on to the possibility of relegation is because we're much closer to the end of the season. Its staring people in the face now, where as before it was far enough way to stay in denial. As a Football team we've gone forward since Allardyce left, fortunately for Allardyce he got out just before this run of tough games came along.

Can't honestly see any club spending £12m on a player (Zog) who is reputedly unsettled and whose value is based more on potential than recent achievement and can't show off his potential because he's being played out of position. Being "unsettled" is a lot less effective when you've only recently signed a new 5 year contract. If he wants to go and another team wants him they'll have to pay far more then he's currently worth IMO, otherwise they can f*** off and he can rott in the reserves for all I care. Hopefully the management will see it similarly.

Ah well, sell the Zog for £12 million and spend that money on McGeady.