alpal78

So why is this thread alive? Isn't it obvious that we won't be signing anyone this window anymore. Might as well squash expectations now rather than live in hope for another week or so and come to the same conclusion in the last few frantic hours of the transfer window. Quite how we are supposed to survive this season with a weaker squad (and weaker first team if Cabaye is sold and not replaced) is beyond me. Supporting Newcastle have never been this painful.

It's just a job to these guys, simples Well I've got a face like a smacked arse when I've had a shocker at work, so it's even worse. That's one of the reasons Hatem's happy here, tbh. Worshipped across the board no matter how he or the rest of the team plays. I've said this before, one of the main positives, apparently, of Pardew is that HBA really likes him. Yeah, cos he gets to go to France for a month every time he has a knock and can apparently eat what he wants to. f*** all to do with performance. My favourite managers at work are the ones that let me have leave and don't moan when I'm on my phone when I'm meant to be working. Not sure if you are criticizing HBA or Pardew?

I think the point about spending more than what is perceived as the player's value Wullie is that you invariably have less money to spend on others. That's why clubs try to get good value for money. Most clubs would have a hard limit on how much they are willing to spend in total for a given transfer window. An extra 2-3M for Downing would mean that said club would have 2-3M less to spend on other players. That being said, since it looks highly likely that we would not be spending any more this window, I share your frustration. In our case, the owner is not trying to get a good deal so that we have more to spend on other transfers, he just does not want to spend period. One loan signing for a club that was almost relegated till the last few weeks is horrible by anyone's standard and even worse that last summer. There is a middle point between throwing away money and being miserly. No doubt that Ashley is leaning way too much to one side that he has demonstrated that he has very little ambition for the club to do well (aside from empty talks from Pardew). But in saying that we should spend more than what is perceived as the fair value of a player just so long as we get a new face in who is an improvement over Jonas, you also come across as leaning too much on the opposite side. Just because fans feel that West Ham have overspent on Downing, it does not follow that they are happy with our current transfers. Most I suspect would still want a winger and perhaps another striker.

Can't believe that there are actually (presumably intelligent) people on here who believe that the casino picture was the game changer. It's incredibly over estimating the importance of fan's perception of a player's religious conviction to the player himself. Cisse's not going to go, "Shat now they've seen my casino picture, Dave and Toon Taylor will know I'm not a good 'Muslim', so I better back down". He had a believe (and it does not matter that the many Islamic experts on this board thinks its hypocritical) that he could not advertise Wonga and yet his conscience allowed him to play in casino. It does not matter what his rationale is, it doesn't matter if this means as a Muslim he will go to hell. All that matters is just that this was his believe. Now he has been persuaded presumably by a combination of Pardew, PFA and perhaps some Muslim folks in the community that wearing Wonga is not too big a deal, he has decided to compromise without getting any financial gain and we should just draw line under this sorry episode and get him match fit. Besides if all he wanted was a pay rise or engineer a move away, he did not need to use religion and probably would not have compromised. Get over it, players don't really care what fans think of them certainly not whether they are a good or hypocritical Muslim.

Spot on! All this talk of hypocrisy is nonsense. There are prescribed rules for all religion, but all who profess a faith chose what he/she wants to believe in. It's nobody's business to tell Cisse what version of Islam he should believe in. If a particular act is prohibited by a Islam (or any religion for that matter) and Cisse wants to stick to that prohibition, then that's the end of it. Either both parties find a compromise, or part ways for a decent fee and get his replacement pronto.

When Mapou came coupled with Colo wanting to go back, some were saying that we've got a replacement already. Maybe Mapou will improve next season, but right now there's very few defenders in the league who commands the back line as calmly as he does. We're gonna miss Colo bad.

I really can't stand seeing Shola do a knock on when he is the most forward player. That's basic of knowing your position in the field. It should be obvious even to the most idiotic football player that if you are in the most advance position, you try to hold on to the ball and wait for the rest to join the attack not head on to nobody then give a fucking puzzle look why nobody got to the ball!

will Debuchy be back for this game?

Nope he seemed to be celebrating the point oblivious to the fact that Wigan and Villa both won and that we could be in the bottom 3 if both Wigan and Sunderland won their game in hand!

Couldn't Ashley provide incentives for teams to beat Wigan? It's not bribery cause it's an incentive to win, heard that it's done in Italy and Spain.

Just saw the soccernet prediction showing Wigan beating West Brom and West Ham beating us this weekend. If that happen, I will be bricking it, the last two weeks will be unbearable!

What he says may be waffle, it’s on the espn website and some morons will read it and take it as gospel. Pardew has had it far too easy and part of that is because of articles on the internet and in papers. The only reason he isn't having it easy on here is because some are highlighting the s*** he does, the s*** he comes out with and the contradictions. If we were all just reading the papers and watching TV we'd be brain washed into thinking nothing that is wrong with the club has anything to do with Pardew. If people want to write articles then they should expect to have what they write challenged. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for challenging the article. Just don't understand why Wullie of all people is leading the attack when Wullie was also stoutly defending Pardew's strategy after the Benfica game. Feel free to point to a post of mine after that game where I said we now had a team to be proud of for the first time since relegation. There's very little talk of tactics in that article so I'm not even sure what point you're making. The part on having a team we can proud of was only in the last few lines of the article. In sum it was about how we came so close to beating Benfica to the semis using Pardew 'tactics' of defend for 70 and attack for 20, the exact position you took and defended several times.

I understood that. You understood Pardew's super negative tactics in the 2nd leg against Benfica??

What he says may be waffle, it’s on the espn website and some morons will read it and take it as gospel. Pardew has had it far too easy and part of that is because of articles on the internet and in papers. The only reason he isn't having it easy on here is because some are highlighting the s*** he does, the s*** he comes out with and the contradictions. If we were all just reading the papers and watching TV we'd be brain washed into thinking nothing that is wrong with the club has anything to do with Pardew. If people want to write articles then they should expect to have what they write challenged. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for challenging the article. Just don't understand why Wullie of all people is leading the attack when Wullie was also stoutly defending Pardew's strategy after the Benfica game.

By the way Ian is conspicuously missing in this thread. Where is he? Would love to hear his views now

Any journalist who purports to be a Newcastle fan who is writing articles rimming Pardew and Ashley is a massive part of the problem. Since when did journalists become sacrosanct? Oddly enough that article you quoted was after the 2nd leg of the Benfica game when you stubbornly defended Pardew's 70 minutes no attack strategy and tactics. Journalist or not why attack someone whom you agreed with just a few weeks ago?

Good point, that never happens to us. Course it does, but luckily we're a few points ahead. So then the only difference is the fact that we're a couple of points ahead which can easily vanish with teams below chalking up a few points. Whilst I'm silently optimistic, unless we get one more win, we are far from being safe and if ever will escape by the skin of our teeth.

It makes me smile even more remembering how some on this forum thought nay argued (during the negotiation stage) that 35M was too low for him. I've since decided to ignore them as the shiteness of their view has been proven beyond doubt

Absolutely, there's just no pattern to our attacking play

I don't think he'd have set up this way had we had Coloccini/Taylor and Santon fit. I think a lot of his thinking was not having a particularly strong back four, and not having his "door openers" available to play much more than half an hour each. Haven't we set up the same way (defensive and hoping to grind out results) pretty much the whole season? We see weaker squads play better football every week. It's all about psychology and inspiring players to push themselves to play better. Just because we have alot of international class professionals doesn't mean they don't need inspiration to push them from time to time or that arm around them to help. That said the players are clearly united with pardew and have bought into what he feeds them. For me it just looks like it's easier for him to play defensive than try to inspire his players mentally to step up. If Swansea play the way they do against someone like Benfica next season, I think they'd get ripped apart tbh. I think our best chance of winning the tie tonight with the players available, was the way we set out. That, imho, is bollocks. Swansea may well get seen off for a variety of reasons but because they have the ball a lot more than the other team won't be one of them. And if the only chance we had of winning the game tonight was the way it panned out, 10 mins of pressure out of 90, then we just had no chance, simple as. That's bollocks like. No chance? When Cisse scored there wasn't a person in the ground who wasn't fairly confident we would win it. We were incredibly close. Not for me. ON is of the opinion that the way we approached the game was the best tactically that we could have done. Don't agree with that and my point was, if that was the best approach possible then we weren't ever really in it. Tell me how we could have been better tactically? I wouldn't have started Bigi in the first 45 mins. Sissoko out wide and either Marveaux or Shola would have given us far more bite IMO. I think it's clear Marveaux wasn't fit...and this place had Shola started. Marveaux looked plenty fit to me - and Pardew really shouldn't give a toss about what this place would think about Shola starting tbh. Pardew said post-match that Marveaux struggles with a lot of games in a short space of time, which is why he didn't start tonight. Fine. But why replace him with an inexperienced defensive central midfielder? Do you think teams with no threat going forward are going to worry a team with a poor defence? We didn't want to worry them in the first half ffs. Why poke the bear with a stick when you can get to the hour and try and shoot it instead? What a s*** analogy. We clearly didn't have enough time to beat them in that time, there was a lot of huff and puff and they looked a bit rattled but don't go on like we were unlucky. I wouldn't say we were unlucky necessarily, they were really rattled for a good 15 minutes or so but we picked the wrong ball too often and made too many sloppy passes in good positions. I wasn't interested in being the better side tonight, only in getting through and I thought we gave ourselves the best chance of doing so by playing the way we did. Scoring on 70 minutes was almost scripted, it fitted so perfectly. 2-0 up on 70 minutes with Benfica camped in our half, I'd have written us off, 1-0 up though with the onus on us, I really thought we would nick it late again and I bet so did everyone else. We needed to keep the ball in our court for as long as we could. Although I can sort of see your logic Wullie, coming from you, it is really surprising, that you'd rather be 1-0 up than 2-0 up with 20 minutes to play. To me this reflects that you've lost all faith in Pardew being able to organize a team to get the right result. If we were 2-0 up, why couldn't we sit deep with fast counter attacks through HBA and Marveux? Plus as many have said, I don't see why we can't defend and still attack at the same time, there has to be a balanced approach not an all or nothing. Had we attacked earlier, we could have got the first goal earlier say in the first half, which would have then given us more time to get the second goal. I don't quite get how anyone can think that the chances of getting a goal in 20 minutes is greater than doing so in 45 minutes. In terms of first half, we wasted the opportunity to attack and get the first goal early. It is also interesting to note that they only hit us on the counter when we were going all out in injury time. I have not seen anyone on this forum saying that we should have gone all out attack in similar fashion from the first minute. Ultimately if this was such a great strategy, it's odd to me that I can't seem to remember any other teams losing 0-2 playing the way we did in the second leg, not in Europa and not in CL. For those defending this strategy, do you think that Pardew just uncovered a masterpiece strategy that eluded the other top managers before him who faced the same position? Not really arsed about what other teams have or haven't done, most of them probably haven't got a load of injuries and a Tyne Wear derby on Sunday meaning extra time would have been extremely bad news (and probably fruitless anyway). Why couldn't we sit deep and counter? Because we can't, we're hopeless at it, we sit deep and leather it as far from goal as we can when we lead. When a team really wants to get a goal, Pardew knows very few ways to stop a barrage of attacks because we can't retain possession. I'm not claiming I've had an epiphany here, simply that given the circumstances, annihilating the game in the first half was the right thing to do. Well if you've accepted that we can't ever play on the counter or attack without conceding a goal, then of course the only thing left for us to do is nick a goal in injury time. That's a truism for me and self serving way of arguing though, plus chances of this strategy working out is very slim (we've been quite fortunate with all those last minute goals).

I guess we have different interpretation then. When you see people complaining about "keeping it tight", it does not follow that they want us to go 'gung-ho from the off". In fact you're the first person in this thread that I've seen using such a phrase. Instead, I suspect most would agree that we kept our shape but attacked so that we have more than one measly shot on target after 45 minutes. As I said we did not concede when we were attacking them from 70-90 minute (even with the introduction of the "better offensive players". We only conceded in minute 92 when we went all out and nobody is advocating that we do this from the start.

are you deliberately stirring the pot? "Sorry officer, I didn't see the crime but I know he's done previous so he's probably guilty" We fashioned opportunities to get the second, someone else mentioned the poor decision making in the final third...would probably agree with that although it seems a little harsh on the players. Despite going out to a very good side, it seems as though there are people who genuinely expected them to roll over at SJP and that we could go gung-ho from the off (and keep them from scoring one, or more, for 90minutes). The plan to shorten the game to 20-30minutes and go gung-ho was the smart option and sadly we fell short of the target. Pleased that we made it back to the quarter-finals at our first attempt; would have been pretty tough to have gone out before Xmas. Sorry have not seen anyone advocate that we go "gung-ho from the off". That's just a misrepresentation. Instead I see quite a few saying that we should have adopted a more balanced approach of keeping our shape yet showing some attacking intent to the extent that we used more than just the 20-30 minutes at the end to get the two goals we needed. I'm not sure why this is such a hard concept to grasp and why so many is buying into that if we attack we will surely concede. We only conceded when we went all out in injury time, not when we became more offensive from the 70 minute mark. In fact if anything, once we started attacking, they were pinned back and was less of a threat to us compared to the first half when we sat back and invited pressure.

I don't think he'd have set up this way had we had Coloccini/Taylor and Santon fit. I think a lot of his thinking was not having a particularly strong back four, and not having his "door openers" available to play much more than half an hour each. Haven't we set up the same way (defensive and hoping to grind out results) pretty much the whole season? We see weaker squads play better football every week. It's all about psychology and inspiring players to push themselves to play better. Just because we have alot of international class professionals doesn't mean they don't need inspiration to push them from time to time or that arm around them to help. That said the players are clearly united with pardew and have bought into what he feeds them. For me it just looks like it's easier for him to play defensive than try to inspire his players mentally to step up. If Swansea play the way they do against someone like Benfica next season, I think they'd get ripped apart tbh. I think our best chance of winning the tie tonight with the players available, was the way we set out. That, imho, is bollocks. Swansea may well get seen off for a variety of reasons but because they have the ball a lot more than the other team won't be one of them. And if the only chance we had of winning the game tonight was the way it panned out, 10 mins of pressure out of 90, then we just had no chance, simple as. That's bollocks like. No chance? When Cisse scored there wasn't a person in the ground who wasn't fairly confident we would win it. We were incredibly close. Not for me. ON is of the opinion that the way we approached the game was the best tactically that we could have done. Don't agree with that and my point was, if that was the best approach possible then we weren't ever really in it. Tell me how we could have been better tactically? I wouldn't have started Bigi in the first 45 mins. Sissoko out wide and either Marveaux or Shola would have given us far more bite IMO. I think it's clear Marveaux wasn't fit...and this place had Shola started. Marveaux looked plenty fit to me - and Pardew really shouldn't give a toss about what this place would think about Shola starting tbh. Pardew said post-match that Marveaux struggles with a lot of games in a short space of time, which is why he didn't start tonight. Fine. But why replace him with an inexperienced defensive central midfielder? Do you think teams with no threat going forward are going to worry a team with a poor defence? We didn't want to worry them in the first half ffs. Why poke the bear with a stick when you can get to the hour and try and shoot it instead? What a s*** analogy. We clearly didn't have enough time to beat them in that time, there was a lot of huff and puff and they looked a bit rattled but don't go on like we were unlucky. I wouldn't say we were unlucky necessarily, they were really rattled for a good 15 minutes or so but we picked the wrong ball too often and made too many sloppy passes in good positions. I wasn't interested in being the better side tonight, only in getting through and I thought we gave ourselves the best chance of doing so by playing the way we did. Scoring on 70 minutes was almost scripted, it fitted so perfectly. 2-0 up on 70 minutes with Benfica camped in our half, I'd have written us off, 1-0 up though with the onus on us, I really thought we would nick it late again and I bet so did everyone else. We needed to keep the ball in our court for as long as we could. Although I can sort of see your logic Wullie, coming from you, it is really surprising, that you'd rather be 1-0 up than 2-0 up with 20 minutes to play. To me this reflects that you've lost all faith in Pardew being able to organize a team to get the right result. If we were 2-0 up, why couldn't we sit deep with fast counter attacks through HBA and Marveux? Plus as many have said, I don't see why we can't defend and still attack at the same time, there has to be a balanced approach not an all or nothing. Had we attacked earlier, we could have got the first goal earlier say in the first half, which would have then given us more time to get the second goal. I don't quite get how anyone can think that the chances of getting a goal in 20 minutes is greater than doing so in 45 minutes. In terms of first half, we wasted the opportunity to attack and get the first goal early. It is also interesting to note that they only hit us on the counter when we were going all out in injury time. I have not seen anyone on this forum saying that we should have gone all out attack in similar fashion from the first minute. Ultimately if this was such a great strategy, it's odd to me that I can't seem to remember any other teams losing 0-2 playing the way we did in the second leg, not in Europa and not in CL. For those defending this strategy, do you think that Pardew just uncovered a masterpiece strategy that eluded the other top managers before him who faced the same position?

The way the match is going is like they are the one who needs 2 goals. How can anyone watching us play (including the subs) not get demotivated. We have not even had one serious attack!

I would not say staying put and building a legacy (ala Fergie) is necessary superior than bringing success to several clubs in different countries in the same time period. Both has its pros and cons. On one hand to build a dynasty at a club does require staying power and for a manager to have a long term paradigm. Fergie has obviously demonstrated this. But let's not pretend that Fergie's success has all been about youth development. Whilst he has transformed some youth with potential to become top players over the years, he has also benefited from getting some incredible young players during his time, he benefited from the excellent youth system in MU which is largely not to his credit. You'll be hard pressed to find another club/manager who got their hands on the youth players dubbed the golden generation (i.e. Scholes, Becks, Giggs and Neville), all being delivered to Fergie on a plate almost at the same time. Let's us also not pretend that MU did not spend when they wanted to. Rooney, RVP, Cantona, Andy Cole, Jaap Stam, Ferdinand....etc were all expensive buys that had a huge bearing on their success. On the other hand, yes changing clubs every few years does mean that managers will largely just ignore the youth setup which Mourinho is largely guilty of. But it is simplistic to say that Mourinho bought his successes through the transfer market. Buying top stars does not equate success not when there are more than a handful of clubs who have the same purchasing power (Man City, Man Utd, Chelsea, Barcelona, Real, PSG...etc). You still need a manager to mold these top players into an effective team with coherent game plan (just ask Pardew). Plus changing club and country, being able to adapt with different football culture, management hierarchy, tactics, pace and formation and bringing success within a short space of time the way Mourinho does/did requires a special manager. Just different way of looking at things and different type of achievements in my view.