chicago_shearer

Hell, Berbatov should have scored there.

Taylor is too slow, he doesn't get forward and his passing isn't good enough to play right-back. There's nothing wrong with having three central defenders at the club. We can rotate. What we need is a quality right-back or a creative midfielder that would allow Geremi to swap positions.

People are going to be very disappointed if they keep looking down on decent sides like Villa & Boro as poor. They will take points off of better sides than us this season. Having said that, I do think that anything less than six points from Wigan (h) and Derby (a) is unacceptable.

If we beat Wigan at home, then that's 8 points out of 12. If anyone was expecting more than that then they need their heads examining IMO.

They looked more familiar with the system and where to play the ball, but I thought Butt, Smith & Geremi looked just as poor in the second half as they were in the first. Boateng & Boro's midfield bossed the game.

Good result to be honest. Feels frustrating since we failed to defend a lead, but the quality of their attacking play was better than ours and 2-2 was fair enough. The midfield situation is become a worry and we need to find a way to organize up front and use Martins, Owen & Viduka properly. Additionally, we need MUCH better set pieces. Positives include our defending, which was once again very good especially given the injuries and our lack of posession. Zoggy has become a very able left-back, Viduka got a goal, and it's also nice to have a manager who is capable of adjusting his tactics with the game.

Fingers crossed for an improved second half performance and a broken leg for Mido.

The midfield 3 have been poor for about 120 straight minutes now. They are only ever involved in our own third, their distribution has been poor and there doesn't seem to be much of an understanding between them. Hurry back Barton!

Casper almost scores!

Bolton 3 Reading 0 Jol could well win the sack race if Spurs lose tomorrow.

1-1

Fairly poor one for me seeing as Sven decided to keep Bianchi on the bench until the last 15 minutes.

penalty to arsenal

Harper Solano Rozehnal Cacapa Zoggy Geremi Butt Emre Milner Viduka Martins Subs: Forster, Taylor, Ameobi, Owen, Smith That gives the England contingent a rest and might be a bit more creative than the the side against Bolton & Villa. Worth a try.

So long as Man Utd aren't winning, he will continue to get angrier, redder and more unintelligible.

I really hope that Luque looks like a player whose value has dropped from £9.5m to zero when he turns out for Ajax. He had better be absolutely useless (when we finally get a chance to see him), because if he looks half decent then it makes us look like fools.

"Luque moaned: (...)" Give that man a Pulitzer.

It's a shame we have Adidas because Nike are a lot better at coming out with simple designs. Better quality too.

Its bad but not that bad. I'm struggling to think of a worse away kit since away kits changed regularly... Last years first away kit, that bright neon blue one from ten or so years ago and the awful brown and green with the orange collar.

http://shop.nufc.co.uk/sites/newcastle/images/departments/home/ad1.jpg[br]http://shop.nufc.co.uk/sites/newcastle/images/departments/home/ad2.jpg[br]http://shop.nufc.co.uk/sites/newcastle/images/departments/home/ad3.jpg The short sleeve version looks better.

Not a huge fan of England, but to say they have a "very poor team" is a bloody stupid thing to say. They don't get the results, they don't play attractive football, they struggle against "inferior" opposition (and I'm not just talking about the German reserves), they lack leadership, they lack pride. By my definition, that is very poor. They have good players at club level, but on how many occasions have they looked like a decent team in recent memory? Maybe they don't work well together, maybe the don't give a damn, maybe they are poorly managed. For whatever reasons, they are very poor. It gets tedious and boring to hear it all explained as some big mystery to figure out - as if they can just drop Keegan, Shearer, Sven, Beckham, McSven, Lampard, Gerrard, Robinson etc. and the quality will show itself. Bollocks. At some point, you have to consider the fact that they might not be that good after all. So in fact not a poor team but a poor manager? Ok. A "very poor team" would be a result of poor management and poor individuals, England aren't that. A good team witherd down to a poor one via a very poor manager would of been more correct I'm not convinced that McClaren or Sven is the biggest problem. There isn't a quick fix, because it has been a problem for a long time. On paper, the team selection wasn't that bad. After 20 minutes, the players just stopped doing their job. They all play under good managers in the Premiership, they don't need anyone holding their hand at international level. Maybe motivation is the big weakness, but that really shouldn't be that difficult playing Germany at Wembley. He was. He just went on way too long.

Not a huge fan of England, but to say they have a "very poor team" is a bloody stupid thing to say. They don't get the results, they don't play attractive football, they struggle against "inferior" opposition (and I'm not just talking about the German reserves), they lack leadership, they lack pride. By my definition, that is very poor. They have good players at club level, but on how many occasions have they looked like a decent team in recent memory? Maybe they don't work well together, maybe the don't give a damn, maybe they are poorly managed. For whatever reasons, they are very poor. It gets tedious and boring to hear it all explained as some big mystery to figure out - as if they can just drop Keegan, Shearer, Sven, Beckham, McSven, Lampard, Gerrard, Robinson etc. and the quality will show itself. Bollocks. At some point, you have to consider the fact that they might not be that good after all.

England are a very poor team. Simple as that.

They're English, top-flight strikers, not presently injured and willing. That puts them in a fairly small group. This gives me some incentive to watch the match, and it will be great to see England's no. 9 & no. 10 from Newcastle (especially when neither of them are first choice forwards at the moment in Sam's 4-3-3) Just please don't either of them get injured.

Keegan as DoF, Ashley selling up to Chinamen or maybe Icelandic businessmen (with Shearer somehow figuring), Allardyce frustrated, Oba to Arsenal, Oba to Man Utd, N'Zogbia to Fulham, Owen to wherever. I wish someone would start a media watch because this summer has been ridiculous. The British football media are amateurs and liars.