Northern Monkey

Wrong. He's fucking awful, and we shouldn't consider playing him if we can ever help it.

They must look at us, though, and think "you pay £6m for the likes of Smith, and soem of you think you are going to get Deco". Everyone else is always stupid in football. True. I agree that all football supporters have to be deluded to some extent. Having said that, there's actually a chance of that happening: this is Newcastle. Their biggest ever signing was Tore Andre Flo, ffs. There is no chance of that happening, until Deco is 33 and fucked. And even then, it's more likely to be a stupid fanboy rumour. All (most?) football fans, by their nature, blinkered and stupid when it comes to the game and team they love. It goes with the territory. Maybe not so much the ones who decide to support Man Utd/Chelsea/Liverpool/us under KK, etc, because of success (actual or perceived), but actual proper fans. We're all stupid, tunnel-visoned fools most of the time. If we weren't, we'd do something productive with our time. i think its more likely than the owen transfer was. end of the day people always go on about how they would never sign for us, right up until the day they sign for us. i haven't posted anything on the deco rumour anyway, i neither believe or disbelieve it, but it makes me laugh how determined people are to say X would never come to us, just to balence out the over optimists, when a few weeks later their signing on the dotted line. I would have never thought gordon would chose the mackems over villa, who he could have waited a few days extra for them to sort themselves out, but he did. It makes ME laugh when people think we can sign real stars through the lure of our "big" club. Not saying you od that, but you know some fans do. But then, lots of things make me laugh. Hilarious stand-ups, Fawlty Towers, old people eating soup. All funny.

i'd have Geremi and Milner as cover for Solano before Carr, frankly. carr is not playing poorly at the moment, frankly. well done, basing your assessment of a player not on his entire career for us, but on a couple of friendlies.

I think thats a massive generalisation about his time. We have no idea at all how much of his time is taken up with signing players, as opposed to setting up his training regime. I suspect it's not that much.

I think our strikerforce is very, very average if you look at it. We won't be bothering the top Scorers list, i imagine.

i'd have Geremi and Milner as cover for Solano before Carr, frankly.

I thought Ashley wanted a "big" signing, as well? Instead, he goes and stupidly fucks up the best sale we could have made in the Dyer thing, and makes us look even more foolish than normal.

4 years? He'll be 70!

Thats just it though all this "they can play there" when we need players who do play there as their best position. I take your point but it isn't the priority a left-sided player is. Carr has done well pre-season - not ideal admittedly, Geremi is more than capable there, ditto Nobby, Taylor has done well there, the young centre-backs Edgar and Huntingdon are right-sided and will be more comfortable if they have to play there and I've also read Cacapa can play there (although I wouldn't know about that tbh). How many left-sided defensive options have we got? Carr was ok once or twice in friendlies, lets not pretend he's a good enough player for the top half of the Premiership, though. However, we have Geremi and Solano, who i would be comfortable with. As long as we don't have to play Babayaro or Carr, we're improving.

They must look at us, though, and think "you pay £6m for the likes of Smith, and soem of you think you are going to get Deco". Everyone else is always stupid in football. True. I agree that all football supporters have to be deluded to some extent. Having said that, there's actually a chance of that happening: this is Newcastle. Their biggest ever signing was Tore Andre Flo, ffs. There is no chance of that happening, until Deco is 33 and fucked. And even then, it's more likely to be a stupid fanboy rumour. All (most?) football fans, by their nature, blinkered and stupid when it comes to the game and team they love. It goes with the territory. Maybe not so much the ones who decide to support Man Utd/Chelsea/Liverpool/us under KK, etc, because of success (actual or perceived), but actual proper fans. We're all stupid, tunnel-visoned fools most of the time. If we weren't, we'd do something productive with our time.

Only 2 losses at home?? Didnt lose to the teams above us in that table last season at home. Possible I guess. Lost 5 last season to poor sides. Lost 3 the season before. Entirely possible we could only lose 2. Not sure we will though. we have improved defensively, obviously - as long as Given is in goal. But the big clubs have improved more. i think we'll probably still do relatively well against the bigger boys, but get spanked more off the smaller clubs.

Carr?? Fuck that with a pointy stick.

0-0 draw.

Dunno why we'd choose to play our best right winger on the left, and our best left winger not at all, if we could avoid it. And why we'd play Carr is a mystery to anyone, surely.

When he gets them, i agree. He sticks to the ball well. But he isn't a fantastic player, he doesn't get onto the end of those long balls as often as he might.

They must look at us, though, and think "you pay £6m for the likes of Smith, and soem of you think you are going to get Deco". Everyone else is always stupid in football.

A la Viduka. Very rarely does he give the ball away when he wins the initial ball. but his winning of the ball isn't brilliant. Its a cruel, cruel world.

Did you watch the Sampdoria match? He played very much as hard working midfielder, not attacking or defensive. His energy means he can cater for both jobs getting involved in both the tackling and the attacking. If we play with 3 centre midfielders (Geremi,Butt and Smith) Smith is going to be the one with a licence to get forward above the rest. out of those 3, you're right. But that doesn't mean he's GOOD at it, of course, or that he'd necessarily be the "free roaming" midfielder if we had other players next to him. No no. Smiths the kind of player that we all know what we are going to get from him, regardless of position. I don't think Sam every does the free roaming thing but IF we were to play with those three i'd expect Smith to play in a similar position to what Nolan does at Bolton. The two players aren't too dis-similar. I'm not a Noaln fan per se, but he's a damned sight bettter than Dirty Smith. I'm expecting soem Parker-esque long range sliding tackles, lots of bluff and bluster, and not a lot else, but who knows, maybe all the Man Utd fans are wrong.

4th!!!! muahahahahahahahahaha!!!! Let's all just wait and see, Mr Monkey! We are consistently under rated, while a few other teams are consistently over rated. None of us (in doing a forecast for us) have anything (at all) to go on, as the club/team did not exist in its current form last season at all. In my judgement we will score a lot of goals, and the only thing that stopped us picking up a lot more points last season was the defence. This season we should pick up a huge number of additional points with the defence (as I "hope" it is) sorted!! yes, we shall see indeed. I have some fundamental issues with a number of our positions, but i'm a cynical man, so thats understandable.

The Newcastle Evening Chronicle is a "regional" newspaper for North East England (like the South Eastern English equivalent - the London Evening Standard - is for the South East of England) it is not just a "Newcastle" paper. Most regional functions / businesses / media, are centred and have their head office in Newcastle (often in the City Centre) and the Chronicle / Journal newspapers are amongst them. From a football perspective it concentrates mainly on Newcastle United, because they are the only big nationally/internationally-known football club we have in this area, not really because the head office of the paper is in Newcastle City Centre!! They have the Echo.

i think his first touch is sometimes good, often utterly shite. Like his passing and his shooting.

Did you watch the Sampdoria match? He played very much as hard working midfielder, not attacking or defensive. His energy means he can cater for both jobs getting involved in both the tackling and the attacking. If we play with 3 centre midfielders (Geremi,Butt and Smith) Smith is going to be the one with a licence to get forward above the rest. out of those 3, you're right. But that doesn't mean he's GOOD at it, of course, or that he'd necessarily be the "free roaming" midfielder if we had other players next to him.

Nope, Richardson is Championship class as well. Nah, he's a middling Premiership player (like most of our players last season, and many of yours).

Blows your claims about going to loads of games home and away clean out of the water ha ha, it does like. What next "Ameobi has excellent positional sense and reading of the game"?

years of overwork are finally taking their toll.