Rich

Sissoko. No "h".

Ba or Cisse depending on where you're playing them. It's a moot point really, because if we get all three of those we'll have more than 11 purples It'll be two if we're very, very lucky. I'm hoping for just a central defender and a fullback personally, that'll do me for now if we don't sell anyone.

Undeserved mockery? He's obviously a very good manager - and one who generally plays good football - but he is deserving of mockery with the way he carries on.

15.00pm. dacky pls.

Cretins do tend to come across as cretins, funnily enough.

Can't help but laugh at the bolded bit. They missed a f***ing hatful. We had more shots. Alreet Pards.

Can't help but laugh at the bolded bit. They missed a fucking hatful.

Had no help from Cisse either there tbf, and no fucker picked up Toure either obviously (should have been Marveaux, for me). Still frustratingly avoidable.

He was good today again I thought, for Simpson at least. Still cannot forgive him for their third though. Just looked like he couldn't be arsed to track the run.

Clearly onside Thought he was canny today in general play as well.

Done. £2 as well. I trust you Jill.

This isn't another member of the Wallsend Mafia, is it?

I'm like you at the end of the day, albeit with less faith in the manager and his philosophies. Happy to be proven wrong though and as such I'm willing to stick with it as the past few years have brought far more good than bad with them on the pitch. If he can make it through this period and turn us around then I'll be delighted as it will represent real progress for us as a club and provide us with even more of the much-vaunted "stability" that could actually see us fulfilling some of our potential.

Had quoted you before you added this bit, but he's had two years already now man. That's a lifetime as far as managing NUFC goes! My main concern about this season and the way we've been playing is that by the time "another season or so" comes we'll have lost a few of our key players and we'll find ourselves back to square one again. I may be doing Graeme Carr a disservice here, though.

Of course not, those 6 games are the golden standard that most of us are holding him to now. Then the Wigan game came around, where we were undone in the most basic manner possible. Sadly this was a game where Pardew took possibly his most attacking decision of the entire campaign (to pin Ba, Cisse and Ben Arfa up against Wigan's back three and leave their wide men open) and it backfired spectacularly. Since then what have we really seen of that same set-up? Not a great deal. I understand that injuries and suspension have played their part and there are undoubtedly a lot of other factors at work in the background as well - the lack of progress in the transfer market in the summer and the potential Demba Ba playing on the left issue being two chief amongst them - but we went back into our shell long before this current run of poor form. I genuinely do hope I'm wrong about Pardew being a fraud, but until issues like this transition one, set-plays and the formation start to show signs of improvement I think he deserves everything coming his way. We're just so bad at so many fundamentals at the moment it's painful. I do still firmly believe he has the players though and that he's capable of motivating/inspiring them. Our recent few performances have shown that with the increased levels of effort we appear to be getting out of the players, but he's got a long way to go before he convinces me he can get a team playing an attractive style in an attacking philosophy on a regular basis.

I don't doubt that he'd "like" to play more positively, I just think he lacks the courage and/or intelligence to be able to do so effectively. Whether that's because he doesn't feel truly secure in his role to take the risk despite the 8 year contract (couldn't blame him), whether he doesn't feel he can trust some of our players to perform such a style (again couldn't blame him), whether it's not really his style at all when the chips are down (fear this to be the case) or whether it's just because he's not a good enough manager to do what he wants to (same again) is up for interpretation. It's easy to pick holes when things are going badly, but I think there were enough critics of our playing style last season during the better times to show that it is definitely an issue. Aspects like the one polpolpol has picked up on here form part of a far, far bigger problem.

Very interesting reading dudes Transition is undoubtedly one of our key weaknesses, but as has been mentioned it goes hand-in-hand with quite a few other factors to form a perfect storm of shitness at times. It's definitely a tactical/technical aspect of our approach that could be improved though. The type of change that you can make which could naturally help build confidence through increasing passages of good play in games. This has the knock-on effect of pleasing the crowd and leading to an overall better atmosphere about the place... and so it goes on... We haven't had a good transitional team since Robson's though. Early last season our foundation was built upon an incredibly rigid shape from back-to-front and not much else aside from a lot of hard running, a direct style and a working partnership between Ba and Best. Later the individual brilliance came into things when Hatem returned to form and Cisse arrived, but overall our "team play" as an attacking unit still left a huge amount to be desired. We came 5th and the end of that season in particular was a very exciting time, but it had been by-and-large turgid from a footballing perspective in terms of style for much of the season prior. Unfortunately it appears that's what he's trying to get us back to at the moment - lots of running, harrying and hoping that Ba, Cisse or Ben Arfa are going to produce a "moment of magic" or two for us no matter where he sticks them on the pitch. And to think I personally thought in the summer we may strengthen the squad and focus upon building towards a more potent version of our 4-3-3/4-2-3-1 (with better defenders in particular). How silly I was. To my eyes our approach is incredibly basic and elementary at most times, which says a lot to me in terms of the collective intelligence of the coaching staff AND players. We have a few players capable of rising above the malaise on a consistent basis (Coloccini, Santon and Ben Arfa more often than not, Anita shows all the signs of being another one), but generally the rest of them don't have enough about them in the head to do the same. Oddly I wouldn't generally include Cabaye in this as I think he tends to get strangled by our general approach and becomes more of a box-to-box workhorse than anything more fancy. He undoubtedly has both the class and the nouse to be a brilliant player in a "good" team, though. Unfortunately we've basically just focused on running him into the ground in most games. Currently I'd consider him similar to Jonas in that it may be to do with the fact he's such a model professional/team player that he's willing to sacrifice his personal game for the good of the collective. Ba scores goals, but his general play is poor at the best of times. Cisse and Tiote go without saying, as do Simpson, Taylor and Williamson. Pardew has never truly convinced me from a tactical perspective and the transition phase is just another glaring weakness in the way we play the game. Every time I watch us I find myself wondering what the grand plan is. What are we? Where are we going? It was alright when we were picking up points as I felt it may be a means to an end - getting us by on the players available to us at the time when we had Best, Ryan Taylor and Obertan playing every week - but now we've added Anita, Ben Arfa, Cisse and Santon into the mix and we're still approaching things the same way. It's baffling.

I thought he looked like he remembered who he was for a few minutes in the second half against Fulham. If he can find any sort of form again he could be invaluable for some of these games coming up, particularly on Saturday.

The one from King Shola says "33 crosses away from home and 7 shots on target usually equates to 2 or 3 goals", yours says "34 crosses and 7 shots on target away from home should get you close to a victory."? Are these quotes from the same sentence but being reported differently, or is he repeating himself and getting his stats wrong? I dunno, I wrote it exactly as he said it in his press conference. I must confess to dropping the repetition of "should".

Based on that training footage and if Hatem's not fit I think we're looking at: Krul Simpson Williamson Coloccini Santon Perch Tiote Cisse Anita Jonas Ba Won't be as regimented as that of course given how we've lined up in the previous few games, but that'll probably be the general shape. All kinds of on paper but we'll see how it translates. If Ben Arthur does recover in time I'd personally drop Cisse rather than see him shunted wide again.

"34 crosses and 7 shots on target away from home should get you close to a victory." Now I like stats myself, sort of rely on them in a way, but I cannot fucking stand comments like that

He "fibbed" on more than one occasion if I'm remembering rightly. However, like others have alluded to in terms of this latest one from Pardew maybe not everything said in press conferences staged in front of the assembled national and local media should be taken as 100% fact all of the time.

Really? I liked Hughton but his interviews were just as bad as Pardew's at times.