80

...

I'll happily give you that one, although I'm not sure who doesn't. As for home games, he got 3 wins in 10 matches (I totally disagree re: Liverpool), compared to Hughton's 2 in 8. I don't see how long throw Stoke, our Derby against Sunderland, runners up Chelsea and Allardyce's Blackburn have become so much easier a set of games than Tottenham bottlers, Arsenal who we'd already beaten, bottom-placed West Ham and Bolton. Again, bearing in mind he had 25% more games than Hughton at home, it's pretty similar for me. The standard of home fixtures were not similar at all. Comparing the likes of Blackburn and Stoke to Spurs and Arsenal, I mean come on now... I'd rather match up Chelsea with Arsenal, Sunderland with Tottenham (esp. given the significance of the game). I also consider Stoke a shit of a fixture.

I'll happily give you that one, although I'm not sure who doesn't. As for home games, he got 3 wins in 10 matches (I totally disagree re: Liverpool), compared to Hughton's 2 in 8. I don't see how long throw Stoke, our Derby against Sunderland, runners up Chelsea and Allardyce's Blackburn have become so much easier a set of games than Tottenham bottlers, Arsenal who we'd already beaten, bottom-placed West Ham and Bolton. Again, bearing in mind he had 25% more games than Hughton at home, it's pretty similar for me.

1) It would have, for me. Fact is, whatever someone might say about a generic footballer, I trust them (Nolan especially, given everything that's ever been said about him) to look after my/our interests vastly more than the Board. Again re: Nolan, he's always been pretty respectful towards Ashley, in public and private - gone out of his way to say positive things about him, which I've taken to be olive branch-style empathy and professional, for better or for worse. 2) Remains to be seen, but I doubt it.

Slagged off, more to the point, but

Yep, and it doesn't reflect direct assists and build up play. As mentioned it's a pretty useless method looking at things. Agreed. That said, seeing as it's never been done before... Pardew was 1.23 versus 1.19 for Hughton. Extended over a full season that would put Pardew less than two points better off. And that's including the Liverpool win as his. Taking that out and assigning it to neither of them, Pardew would be at 1.14 - more than three points worse off than Hughton over a full season. If you try assigning the Liverpool win to Hughton, his rate rises to 1.29, putting him nearly 6 points ahead of Pardew. Personally, I was expecting a win that day...

Dog-whistle politics.

I've heard that Harper has been carrying an injury for years which has badly affected his kicking. The shouting/bending over thing he does has always been unnerving...

or maybe "this group of lads" can't expect to earn bonus years based on being a "group of lads" and should accept that we are evolving. I'd reckon 80 is more right than wrong. The old guard are to be put out to pasture. If the new breed are of the Tiote, Arfa, Cabaye ilk I can't say I'm too concerned, but it has the potential to go pear shaped I'm sure. The old guard aren't being put out to pasture as far as I can tell. They just aren't getting inflated deals based on their "group of lads" valuation criteria. To me, it's pretty clear these deals have revolved around security of position - not much to do with quick pay hikes. It's blatant sense, following on from the past 6 months, that no one's position at the club is safe, and so anyone with longer term plans here will be looking to shore themselves up - looking for some evidence that they're not about to be chucked at short notice. It's proven that the Board know how to extend an already long deal - see Tiote - so an unwillingness to do so with any other player who is ordinarily seen as an important member (like the captain...) is a sign he's actually not highly valued and liable to be ousted. Have to say, why you seem to have disdain for the group of lads thing seeing as it was the main thing that kept us up I don't know. I'll grant you they shouldn't be given wildly large and long contracts but I haven't seen anything to seriously suggest they want them, but I can definitely see how offering security and a sense of value to bulwarks of the club's recent success - and likely future success for me - would help keep the wagon rolling and make sure the Cabayes aren't going to turn out like the Vianas. I don't have disdain for the group of lads, I just don't rate Nolan as a player at Premier level and never have, at least not for us if we want to move on. I take your point about a bunch of new foreigners could turn out to be Vianas, but IMO if you buy quality then any manager worth his salt should be able to fashion a decent team. We have a fairly strong defensive base with Tiote as insurance, so adding some attacking flair is a risk worth taking IMO. If we can afford to keep Nolan on an extended contract to sit on the bench as well great, but I understand if we can't. For the record, as much as I disagree with you about Nolan's value to us (given our finances/squad members), I wasn't saying you have to want Nolan around by law if you want to retain the 'lads' vibe, so what you say is fair enough by me. In fact, half the point of it for me is that it used to be bigger than any one individual and could potentially have outlasted them all at this club and been passed on. With regards managers worth their salt fashioning decent teams with quality players, I've seen managers fail at that more often than not. And I include Alan Pardew among them (Tevez and Mascherano...). In fact, it's pretty much the thing that divides the great from the vast majority who oversee relegations and failures at some time or other, if not repeatedly.

For an example Wolves. Hughton 1 - 1 Draw. Pardew 4 - 1 Win. While at the same time still putting in creditable performances (and getting some sort of result) against the top teams. To an extent, I'm not even sure why you're talking about results because I was following on from Chris and thinking about the atmosphere behind the scenes and public rhetoric. Re-reading my post in that light might get you somewhere instead of having you barking up the wrong tree. There've been a number of pessimistic remarks from Pardew, including one or two surprisingly negative ones, about how we're a worse team than the bigger clubs and should be grateful for anything we get from them. But that hopefully we'll be able to buy some better players and be more competitive in those kinds of fixtures in the future, of course. Then there's things he's said like in the long BBC radio interview where after dumping Routledge he indicated there were at least a couple more members of the squad who he thought aren't meant to be in Premiership sides but that we'll struggle on with them and he'll have to try and get the best out of them. And, returning to my original point, there's just a groaning lack of the positivity and coherent squad worldview that was being expressed by the players prior to Hughton's departure nowadays - see Carroll quotes, Enrique quotes... even Barton's moustache. The thing that used to strike me under Hughton (and contrasting with now) is that we always went out on the pitch as equals of our opposition. We went out with a 90 minute plan to win, saw no reason why we couldn't win, but also gave them a lot of credit and realised we could do an 08/09 and lose too. Now, I could see some downsides to this - maybe we should have been more arrogant towards Blackburn and played less cautiously - flat-track bullied them into submission with our obviously(??) superior quality (although remember Allardyce managed them at the time, they weren't the demoralised shitpit they became under Steve Kean when we went and got a draw at Ewood Park). But in return I'd point out the Arsenal tried that approach and got fucked up almost as regularly as us against so called bankers, and they really are superior in technical quality to them and us. Now as for what we do today, well it seems the results are more random. If we don't roll up and accept a beating as we did at Spurs and Liverpool (we seriously threw away points at White Hart Lane and against Man City in my view), it seems we either treat it like we're 3rd Divisioners in the FA Cup and 'give it a go' or attempt a flat-track bullying. Either way, it amounts to the same thing under Pardew - we set out to score early, and ultimately whoever scores first is vastly more likely to win the match as a rule. The better teams normally score against us, and we normally score against the worst teams. Beyond that, we don't really seem to know what to do in tactical terms, which is probably why - unlike our opposition - we keep dropping leads (see my post in the Pardew thread for statistics on that if you want to claim one match against Arsenal disproves everything I'm saying - http://www.newcastle-online.org/nufcforum/index.php/topic,72878.msg2976612.html#msg2976612). We either hope the opposition's morale crumples and give them a hiding (West Ham), or accept we're already beaten and take our lumps (Aston Villa, Stoke).

4 months? But yes, I remember, and you're probably right. Certainly doesn't have a clue what to do with him at the moment.

looks like he's doing exactly that, shipping out older more expensive players in order to bring in more talented (risky) cheaper players and hope they settle. Depends how much credit you give to all his interviews... Recently enough he was saying how important Barton was and that he'll almost without doubt be top class until his mid-30s...

or maybe "this group of lads" can't expect to earn bonus years based on being a "group of lads" and should accept that we are evolving. I'd reckon 80 is more right than wrong. The old guard are to be put out to pasture. If the new breed are of the Tiote, Arfa, Cabaye ilk I can't say I'm too concerned, but it has the potential to go pear shaped I'm sure. The old guard aren't being put out to pasture as far as I can tell. They just aren't getting inflated deals based on their "group of lads" valuation criteria. To me, it's pretty clear these deals have revolved around security of position - not much to do with quick pay hikes. It's blatant sense, following on from the past 6 months, that no one's position at the club is safe, and so anyone with longer term plans here will be looking to shore themselves up - looking for some evidence that they're not about to be chucked at short notice. It's proven that the Board know how to extend an already long deal - see Tiote - so an unwillingness to do so with any other player who is ordinarily seen as an important member (like the captain...) is a sign he's actually not highly valued and liable to be ousted. Have to say, why you seem to have disdain for the group of lads thing seeing as it was the main thing that kept us up I don't know. I'll grant you they shouldn't be given wildly large and long contracts but I haven't seen anything to seriously suggest they want them, but I can definitely see how offering security and a sense of value to bulwarks of the club's recent success - and likely future success for me - would help keep the wagon rolling and make sure the Cabayes aren't going to turn out like the Vianas.

Wouldn't be surprised if he was about as effective as he is now, actually... but yeah, this was one of my guesses for the MDouglas 'treason' - Captain Nolan thinking about going/agreeing to go. Fwiw, I can't imagine he or anyone would expect him to be given a 4 year £50k p/w contract - I'd bet it would've come with a healthy cut. As for why it's happening (IF it's happening), I believe that it's finally properly dawning on the players that 'this group of lads' is meant to be disbanded, not evolved.

What? Discounting Liverpool for obvious reasons, Pardew hasn't beaten any team that wasn't still in danger of going down on the final day. Hughton on the other hand beat four of the top ten (two on their own patch) plus Chelsea in the cup, yet he's the one that's tactically inept. Yet Hughton's failed to get results against so called 'home bankers', they're both average managers for different reasons. For me, an important point for every club this season was that there was no such thing as a home banker. Tottenham losing to Wigan, Arsenal to WBA etc. etc. Surprise result after surprise result (especially when you throw in the away results, like the top 5(?) all going to Wolverhampton and losing). Judging head-to-head results on a 'long-term class' basis wasn't the right way to look at things. Agreed we were a newly promoted side, we had no right to regard anyone as a home banker, hence the quotation marks. The thing is you could easily use the same article in favour of Pardew. He got us enough points for a comfortable mid-table finish, job done. Aye, true enough... I'm not using it to criticise Pardew, just saying it for Hughton's sake. Goals going against the run of play against Blackpool doesn't make him an average/bad manager for me, in the context of everything else that took place.

What? Discounting Liverpool for obvious reasons, Pardew hasn't beaten any team that wasn't still in danger of going down on the final day. Hughton on the other hand beat four of the top ten (two on their own patch) plus Chelsea in the cup, yet he's the one that's tactically inept. Yet Hughton's failed to get results against so called 'home bankers', they're both average managers for different reasons. For me, an important point for every club this season was that there was no such thing as a home banker. Tottenham losing to Wigan, Arsenal to WBA etc. etc. Surprise result after surprise result (especially when you throw in the 'banker' away results, like the top 5(?) all going to Wolverhampton and losing). Judging head-to-head results on a 'long-term class' basis wasn't the right way to look at things.

Ah man

I know, but I've got no idea what he's asking Probably who it is, not that I think many of us would know any of them apart from Carr? How do you know, do you know much about this particular scout, if so what... had the scout agreed to leave, is he expecting to leave in the near future... The fullest story you can offer really. Can't tell you the name of the scout. You can find his name on one article online re: Tamas Kadar. I go to uni with his daughter. He's agreed to leave and become chief scout and wherever Hughton goes next. She seemed to think he's definitely on the lookout, but will only really go for it when its right. Mentioned Fulham, but she admitted that wasn't something that had come from Hughton. She said today that whatever you read in the press, the backroom atmosphere that Hughton had built amongst team, staff and personnel is gone, or at least it's not the same. Hence this guy being willing to move after serving the club for over a decade. For a moment I'd started to wonder as the only thing that turned up on icnewcastle was Jeff Vetere... Speaking of the atmosphere behind the scenes, I stumbled onto an article the other day - a load of quotes from Andy Carroll about Hughton and our season a few days before he got sacked. The attitude you could feel coming across was still inspiring, and yes, put simply there's been no sign of anything like that for a long time now. Felt like a completely different era, there's no vibe of writing your own headlines and not letting the media tell you how good you are, now. At best now it's 'be realistic, we won't beat bigger teams with 2nd Division players like Danny Simpson, but we can probably bully some relegation candidates, and with a bit of luck we might buy some better players in the future'. I think the only thing really stopping things become poisonous is Nolan, which is ironic considering some used to say it was Hughton who relied upon him...

How no one else had noticed or mentioned this sinister angle yet is beyond me. Well done for saying what needed to be said, tbh.

I know, but I've got no idea what he's asking Probably who it is, not that I think many of us would know any of them apart from Carr? How do you know, do you know much about this particular scout, if so what... had the scout agreed to leave, is he expecting to leave in the near future... The fullest story you can offer really.

Beyond that, I remember thinking at the time (and twitter makes it even more obvious to me that he was right...) that Keegan was trying to make Owen feel loved and important with a view to re-inspiring him and making him play better for the club's sake, regardless of how true what he was saying was. In hindsight I also wonder whether he was trying to inspire Ashley with that kind of talk and move him away from the bargain bucket approach (not that it hasn't always done us a favour... but then Keegan was never against spotting a bargain, either). Edit: Enough of this Keegan talk... back to slagging off the odious little crybaby. To head off any jibes, that's Owen, Cronk...

Yorkie was right

Keegan did manage to make a great player out of Owen, it's true. Damn good manager...

http://www.historicalkits.co.uk/Newcastle_United/images/newcastle_united_2004-2005-third.gif Stonking kit, looked better irl. http://www.nufcsingapore.com/_40203494_shearer270.jpg http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00723/sport-graphics-2005_723148a.jpg Lucky too, I reckon... Took Souness to a hair's breadth of the UEFA Cup final, so it must have been.

"The Geordie Boot Boys"...... Really?? Fucking Christ.