OzzieMandias

"Newcastle are a selling club not Man U, Man City or Chelsea."

Whatever Ba's motivation, given the fact that we never stood to make much money out of Ba leaving and had no real financial motivation for moving him on, it's a piss-poor example of us being a "selling club".

We'll always go trophy-less with this kind of attitude. Always an excuse, always a hard-luck story, not much can-do attitude to be found. Pardew knows it and he preys on it, people accept it. Oh, grow up and look reality in the face. It was a rational game plan that sensibly addressed both our depleted resources (notably not one first-choice defender in the picture and a back four that had never played together) and the absolute necessity to stop them scoring because just one was all it was ever going to take to put the game out of our reach, and it very nearly came off. They were clearly the better side, but we still almost had them.

So close.

Well, you're going to have to lose sooner or later.

Terry: "If I just hold on to your arm like this, it'll stop you doing any accidental 'Roman salutes'."

I know what you mean but I think he's just got a bit carried away in the atmosphere himself, which is kind of nice to see.

Unusually poetic report from Martin Hardy in the Independent: http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/premier-league/newcastle-1-fulham-0-match-report-papiss-cisss-late-goal-sends-pardew-into-delirium-8563447.html

Yeah, me too. If we hadn't scored it would have felt like a cosmic injustice of biblical proportions.

Took forever for one to go in, but we really fucking deserved that.

Probably about right. I mean, if I was replying to suggestions that I was a fascist, and I wasn't one, the words "I am not a fascist" would crop up, well, almost immediately. Di Canio has now issued two statements without saying them.

Let's tonk these wankers. When I lived in Lisbon, they were crap but still crowing about their glorious history, which was already some decades in the past. They're obviously better now, but the Portuguese league isn't much better than the Scottish Premier -- three decent teams, the rest are cannon fodder. Pardew's correct to appraise them as a mid-table team, if miraculously transferred to the Premier League. Some seasons they'd be challenging for Europe, others they'd be flirting with relegation. Bit like us, really. Probably better than us right now. But still beatable. And remember, they've only won one more European trophy than we have.

Di Canio at Swindon: http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2013/apr/02/paolo-di-canio-sunderland-manager-appointment

I think it's quite clear from this thread that among our own ranks we've got a fair few nuggets who would have defended this appointment, had it been us who'd made it. There is a difference though in people defending the appointment and people defending the man and what he stands for. A lot of mackems seem to be defending the latter which is just fucking weird. Ultimately if he does well at the club and keeps his personal views private this will all be forgotten about by next season imo. He's just a daft bloke with silly opinions, not a tyrant. I dunno. Seems to me that what the appointment, and SAFC's defence of it, will do is say, "It's fine to appoint someone who calls himself a fascist and does Nazi salutes in public." It validates the idea of fascism, says it's no big deal. And the next time something like this becomes an issue, the mackem example will be there to say it's all right. And it's not. I suppose we'll see, their PR seems horrific though so I wouldn't be surprised if they fuck the whole thing up Probably invade Shetland Islands or something. They obviously hadn't thought through the PR approach beforehand. Their handling of it has been appalling, by any measure.

I think it's quite clear from this thread that among our own ranks we've got a fair few nuggets who would have defended this appointment, had it been us who'd made it. There is a difference though in people defending the appointment and people defending the man and what he stands for. A lot of mackems seem to be defending the latter which is just fucking weird. Ultimately if he does well at the club and keeps his personal views private this will all be forgotten about by next season imo. He's just a daft bloke with silly opinions, not a tyrant. I dunno. Seems to me that what the appointment, and SAFC's defence of it, will do is say, "It's fine to appoint someone who calls himself a fascist and does Nazi salutes in public." It validates the idea of fascism, says it's no big deal. And the next time something like this becomes an issue, the mackem example will be there to say it's all right. And it's not.

And at Swindon there was a trade union that had some sponsorship arrangement with the club that immediately withdrew from it when Benito di Canio was appointed.

I think it's quite clear from this thread that among our own ranks we've got a fair few nuggets who would have defended this appointment, had it been us who'd made it.

At least he'll make the training run on time.

He'll give 110 percent trying to change that.

A dismal, ignorant paragraph that could have come straight off RTG.

I wouldn't class you as 'most'. Never mind, one of these days you'll think of a way to blame me on Ashley or Pardew, and then you'll be able to moan about it at tedious length.

Yeah, big surprise that I haven't become young enough not to remember Joe Harvey.

To be fair, Llambias talks a lot less shite than most contributors to this thread.