Beren

This is what I was going to post, more or less. A little sad about it though. CH still sees us as a Championship side that needs a fish'n'chips player like Nolan, when not all newly-promoted teams necessarily have to fit a certain style of play. As I said, sad. If Hughton's lucky, Nolan will pick up an injury.

Bale.

Inter beat you when it mattered though

He's a player learning, there was nothing for him to do in that match because he was isolated. Fair enough his defensive duties didn't make the grade but really not many would have faired much better the way we played Carroll yesterday. He had no service, Routledge managed only a couple of decent crosses in to the box, but were too far away from Carroll, wrong angles or pace and his only really chance for me came from Jonas and he at least hit the target, one or two more of them and he might have got a goal. The team 2nd half was atrocious, uninspired crap, we can't expect the young lads to pick us up, it has to come from our captain and senior players but those have shown to be the real problems, ones which show no signs of going away until their contracts run out. You mentioned his movement, but really his movement was typical of the whole front line. Carroll needs a partner to help with the burden, preferably a fast tricky player he can flick and head on too and be set up by. HBA is the only player we've got that matches that description even though he's not a striker but that means dropping Nolan, and that isn't happening apart from injury or hell freezing over. I agree with you mostly. Obviously playing up front alone and Hughton's stupid insistence for Nolan to 'support' him contributed to him not beng able to do anything of substance. But putting these factors aside, he too had a poor game (perhaps measured by his earlier performances). What struck me the most was that he wasn't making any runs at all. Surely he realized at some point that it was gonna be difficult for him to outmuscle both Huth and Shawcross, but even when HBA ran to the middle and looked up for a killer pass, Carroll jus remained static. There were just no options for HBA. Compare this to his run against Villa for the last goal. My assessment of him does not depend on him scoring, like against Everton eventhough he didnt score, I thought he had a decent game. Remember that run he made when HBA perhaps passed a split second too late? Carrol had a shot anyway but the keeper saved. Didn't see any of that against Stoke. Agree with Alpal, though he wasn't atrocious by any means IMO. Don't like the idea of having a nippy second forward just so Carroll can flick stuff on to him - it would seriously under-utilise his capabilities and make our team play unnecessarily ugly and one-dimensional stuff. If Carroll had dropped back a bit and collected the ball at his feet, he could have held the ball up and encouraged our relaxed midfield forward a bit more - that was my main gripe. No shame in winning only 50% of your headers when you're facing fucking Stoke - even if you are as good in the air as Carroll is. Relatively speaking a two-game "drought" is nothing, but sure a goal would pick up his confidence which is generally a good thing for a striker

http://img821.imageshack.us/img821/1006/montgomeryburns7004450.gif

Arsenal isn't great news for us. Rather they were worrying about their midweek Shakhtar ties either side of our midweek Carling Cup tie with them and consequently fielded a weaker team. [/speculation]

Can't argue with that. All the more frustrating because, though it wasn't nice to see Ricardo Fuller hurt, it did give us a lot of time to re-organise ourselves before the freekick was taken - and this was after they'd launched a barrage of undefended aerial attacks at our goal and hit the woodwork a few times. Yet somehow little Perch ended up marking Huth.

'kin hell, how many Saturday 3pms have we had this season? 1 or 2?

Barton.

Now I think about it, Jonas is tailormade for Stoke - has pace and he can rarely get his crosses off the ground - just what we needed!

To say Krul was our biggest liability is a bit of a stretch, but he certainly didn't seem authoritative in commanding the box - which is not unexpected. Perch was clearly our biggest liability, and every team under the sun knows it.

Nice corner for Ameobi's winner against Chelsea too. He's not actually as unproductive as people seem to think. Getting better, just way too slowly. Glad to have him in the squad, but epitomises the frustration that is Newcastle

Think the blame can largely be attributed to the players, personally. We were too comfortable at half-time - no urgency. Using Andy Carroll as a beanpole-Niall-Quinnesque front man is fucking stupid though and CH should have drilled it into our players at half-time to play it on the ground against Stoke. They've got a team full of hulking neanderthals with no pace - that's a bit of a clue as how to beat them tbh! It's been a bizarre weekend of football, revenge of the "minnows" but we just lost to a really bad side. Bit fucking angry, but it's Newcastle. It's so, so Newcastle. We're so desperately close to being a good side, but we're not.

Good controlled half. Like to see a bit more urgency and zip in the final third, but very good half all the same.

YES!!!

Stoke are shite. Giving us loads of time. We should get an early goal.

Ouch. Unlucky guys

Aye bit of a possession football by Villa would seal the deal.

Get the ball to Ashley, FFS!

Desperately close. Next dodgy Wolves tackle Shirley.

Knew it'd be Ashley to draw it!

Wtf why are Wolves suddenly playing like their mothers are watching!

Tevez is still a beast though.