Cronky

Yeah, this too. They seem to be a fairly quiet bunch with no natural leaders. Colo has been made captain for want of a better candidate. Ba seems the strongest character but he's not a team player. Nonsense, he just wants to play in his best position which is fair enough given he is the best player at the club for the role. .... which is not the attitude of a team player.

Re-hash of old story with some new details - http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/transfer-news/newcastle-striker-demba-ba-demands-1468708 If true, should leave.

Yeah, this too. They seem to be a fairly quiet bunch with no natural leaders. Colo has been made captain for want of a better candidate. Ba seems the strongest character but he's not a team player.

My point is that 4-3-3 naturally brings with it a greater degree of movement. We don't play down the wings and having 3 CMs and 3 up front not only gives more passing options but allows our dangerous players to play further up the field where they can damage the opposition. alternativly it gives fewer passing options when trying to retain possession as there's one less midfielder, it also means it's easier to be outnumbered and out manouvered by the oppo using the width it's difficuilt to cover with a 3. You're looking at numbers. Look at how we actually play in a 4-4-2. Cabaye and Tiote are sitting deep. Their only passing options are sideways or a long punt upfield to two strikers not suited for the role of targetman. 4-3-3 gives a lovely little triangle in the middle (like keegans little triangles) and the tip of that triangle has passing options backwards (2) forward wide (2) or forward centre (1). if only the game was played on a blackboard eh ? using that simplicity it means when cabaye gets the ball in our 4-4-2 he has 2 options wide, 2 forward and 2 back (tiote or further back to colo). the main thing with keegans team was movement, very simple pass and move, as it was in his first spell here when people had us down as a 4-4-2 or 4-4-1-1 team. Rob Lee, with his forward runs, was a key player in that side. You really need someone who's looking to get on the end of passes. If you look at our midfield and full backs, most seem to prefer to be passers rather than receivers. Santon is the only one who really looks to get forward, and then not always. Tiote, Anita and Bigi are holding players, Cabaye's more a playmaker, Simpson isn't confident going forward, Sammy and Jonas usually look to take the ball forward themselves. Even Ben Arfa seems to prefer to drop deep and then make a run or pass forward rather than make runs into space without the ball. Perhaps I'm exaggerating a bit to make the point, but it's all a question of balance. If we just had one player of that mould it would make a difference. Like Nolan only better. We haven't got the wide players for an effective 4-4-2 either tbh, only one who is vaguely capable is Ben Arfa and we play him on the wrong side. I think the bigger problem is down the centre, where we don't create much at all. We bank on getting crosses in, but if that's your only weapon, it's easy to negate.

Hopefully the discussion is about dealing with the present rather than building for the future. That's what's needed.

My point is that 4-3-3 naturally brings with it a greater degree of movement. We don't play down the wings and having 3 CMs and 3 up front not only gives more passing options but allows our dangerous players to play further up the field where they can damage the opposition. alternativly it gives fewer passing options when trying to retain possession as there's one less midfielder, it also means it's easier to be outnumbered and out manouvered by the oppo using the width it's difficuilt to cover with a 3. You're looking at numbers. Look at how we actually play in a 4-4-2. Cabaye and Tiote are sitting deep. Their only passing options are sideways or a long punt upfield to two strikers not suited for the role of targetman. 4-3-3 gives a lovely little triangle in the middle (like keegans little triangles) and the tip of that triangle has passing options backwards (2) forward wide (2) or forward centre (1). if only the game was played on a blackboard eh ? using that simplicity it means when cabaye gets the ball in our 4-4-2 he has 2 options wide, 2 forward and 2 back (tiote or further back to colo). the main thing with keegans team was movement, very simple pass and move, as it was in his first spell here when people had us down as a 4-4-2 or 4-4-1-1 team. Rob Lee, with his forward runs, was a key player in that side. You really need someone who's looking to get on the end of passes. If you look at our midfield and full backs, most seem to prefer to be passers rather than receivers. Santon is the only one who really looks to get forward, and then not always. Tiote, Anita and Bigi are holding players, Cabaye's more a playmaker, Simpson isn't confident going forward, Sammy and Jonas usually look to take the ball forward themselves. Even Ben Arfa seems to prefer to drop deep and then make a run or pass forward rather than make runs into space without the ball. Perhaps I'm exaggerating a bit to make the point, but it's all a question of balance. If we just had one player of that mould it would make a difference. Like Nolan only better.

I think regardless of whether it's 4-3-3 or 4-4-2, the midfield and the strikers have to link up, and that's what's not happening. Although formations are categorised as though they were horizontal lines across the pitch, in practice if a team operated like that (as we're inclined to do) they'd look very static and predictable. Players have to operate as much one behind the other, as side by side. They have to look for space in between the lines. We struggle because we don't have a striker who can drop back or a CM who really gets forward (I'd see Cabaye as more a playmaker). That's a problem for either formation.

Well, it's possible to be both. A scapegoat is just someone who takes the rap for other people's mistakes. Overall, Taylor isn't any better and Colo has his weak points. But if Williamson is involved in any way when a goal goes in, he takes the blame. The game on Wednesday was a perfect illustration of that.

Jeremain Lens being linked with us for a £10m transfer on Talksport. By all accounts, he can play out wide and as a striker and has a bit of pace. Sounds like what we need.

Ranks high in the scapegoat category.

With 4-3-3, you have to make sure that the main striker isn't isolated, and that your goals can come from a number of sources. So I think it's best that at least one of your more withdrawn / wider players is a striker that can operate in that area, rather than just have midfielders who like to get forward. Hoilett or Moses would have been good choices, and I'm not sure who would be a) good and b) available in January. The nearest equivelent we have at the moment is Sammy, who ideally we would be using more sparingly.

Yeah, we don't see enough of that pass into the feet of a player who's in between the opposition midfield and back four. Everything goes via the wings or direct to the strikers. The Ba - Cisse combination, in whatever form, was never going to help matters. However, I can understand that there was pressure on Pardew to give it every chance. What puzzles me is that the strikers that we seemed to be going for in the summer - Carroll and De Jong - wouldn't particularly help either.

No. This is just the way of football supporters. Rafa's reputation took a knock in this country after what happened at Liverpool, and that's what the Chelsea fans are reacting to. As for Arsenal, they want to win trophies and they think their board should be spending more on players. No story there. with rafa it's because of thinjs he said about chelsea when he was at liverpool isn't it ? I think if he'd left Liverpool as a success, that wouldn't have mattered. They just don't think he's very good.

No. This is just the way of football supporters. Rafa's reputation took a knock in this country after what happened at Liverpool, and that's what the Chelsea fans are reacting to. As for Arsenal, they want to win trophies and they think their board should be spending more on players. No story there.

We lost to a crap side and people are laying into a player who only appeared for the last 3 minutes. The pace and quality of the Premiership is different from the Europa League, so Sammy hasn't had the same impact. But he has a lot of skill, he can make things happen, and he should be given more of a chance because we need that kind of input. It's not as though Ba and Cisse are pulling up trees.

I think the feeling behind this was, no more spending money on players from other Academies (effectively giving money away) and instead spending that money on investing on better coaches at youth level to ensure the players we already have here are given the opportunity to become as good as they can. There still will be players signed at u18 level, just not for the high fees that were wasted on the likes of Tozer and Aaron Spear. In part it goes back to your club ethos wish. The Academy has one, and is gearing up in delivering it. Hopefully they'll remain on board with the ethos and not change it (like what has happened in the past 15 years). There's been a good move away from the recruitment of physical players (teaching the tall, fast & strong to be footballers), to intelligent players that want to learn, can learn and adapt quickly. Yeah, I don't see why Ashley is being criticised over the youth development side. It's one area which really has improved under his ownership. The finer points of what you should spend on poaching players from other academies doesn't change that. And it doesn't have any bearing on the current form of the first team either.

Well I'm sorry, but this is the result and the performance that has me reaching for the panic button. People moaned about losing to Swansea, West Ham and Southampton but they are half-decent teams who can play well on their day. Stoke are not. We got our 4-3-3 but we didn't have the players to make it work. It looked to me like Anita was pushed forward, and he tried his best to close defenders down - something which Ba and Cisse aren't very good at - but he was doing it on his own and it wasn't effective. It smelt like a bit of desperation on Pardew's part. We had no-one in the front six that was technically secure on the ball. Marveaux or Sammy can make things happen and at least one of them should have started. There are risks but they have to be taken.

I think he'll soon be faced with the choice between spending in January to maintain our Premiership place, and spending next season to stop us going belly up financially in the Championship. I don't think he should be getting all the blame for the situation we're in though. There were problems in the way we were playing and in the balance of the squad that ought to have been addressed over the summer. That could have been achieved by intelligent trading of players in and out. It seems to me that Ashley was given the message to try and hang on to the existing squad as the first priority.

There was no skill or pace in our front six, and no matter what qualities they may have as individuals, you are not going to succeed like that. The main chances that we had seemed to come from Stoke's defensive mistakes. At least Sammy and Ranger would offer something different, whatever the risks with their inexperience.

We saw some good flashes of his finishing ability tonight, but he loses the ball far too often.

Not on what I've seen. I thought we looked better than at the weekend because the opposition was worse. Stoke were poor, we looked worse. None of the front six could pass the ball. If the injury situation continues we will have to bring in new people in January. If that remains our best eleven, we are going down.

Well exactly. You can forgive someone for being beaten in the air by Kenwyne Jones. Letting someone run right past you like that and giving them a free header is terrible defending.

For the first goal he was left trying to mark two men. With the second, he's not always going to win an aerial battle with Kenwyne Jones - the main fault was with Colocinni who seemed completely unaware of Jerome's presence and let him go past without a challenge.

The West Brom game keeps getting mentioned, but a) it wasn't particularly typical of our performances last season and b) we didn't exactly look like Barca either. It was a game where things clicked for us, as will happen for every side now and then. For the most part, our football wasn't that great, and sometimes the margin between success and failure can be very small. This season a few things have gone wrong - some of our newer players are now familiar to the opposition, Ba has been discontented, Cisse has lost form, we've had more injuries - and that's been enough to take us from the European places to near the relegation zone. In the Premiership, a lot of teams are of a fairly even standard, and a small decline can take you down quite a few places. I don't think Pardew is suddenly an incompetent manager who has no idea of tactics. I do think, however, that the club was hoodwinked by our 5th place finish into thinking that some of our players were better than they really were. If, as seems likely, we got some generous offers based on their inflated reputations, we should have taken advantage of opportunities to trade up. I think 5 wins in a row (F11, A1), having just switched formation, would have to be a hell of a coincidence not to be significant. Most of our players have previously flourished in a 4-3-3 - Anita won the league at Ajax, Cabaye at Lille, Ben Arfa has four Ligue 1 medals and none playing what we play, Cisse second in goals only to Gomez at Freiburg. It's hardly a stretch to say that's the formation they prefer. If the difference is so insignificant, why has European football more or less given up on 4-4-2? For sure, you've hit on an area which Pardew hasn't handled well, in that his decision to try and keep both Cisse and Ba happy has led to us trying to play two out and out strikers, when we should be playing one. I think my points are still valid though, because even if we were attempting to play 4-3-3 or 4-2-3-1, we would still be struggling far more than last season, given the injuries (particularly Cabaye's lack of fitness) and the general quality of our players, which I think is now more exposed.

The West Brom game keeps getting mentioned, but a) it wasn't particularly typical of our performances last season and b) we didn't exactly look like Barca either. It was a game where things clicked for us, as will happen for every side now and then. For the most part, our football wasn't that great, and sometimes the margin between success and failure can be very small. This season a few things have gone wrong - some of our newer players are now familiar to the opposition, Ba has been discontented, Cisse has lost form, we've had more injuries - and that's been enough to take us from the European places to near the relegation zone. In the Premiership, a lot of teams are of a fairly even standard, and a small decline can take you down quite a few places. I don't think Pardew is suddenly an incompetent manager who has no idea of tactics. I do think, however, that the club was hoodwinked by our 5th place finish into thinking that some of our players were better than they really were. If, as seems likely, we got some generous offers based on their inflated reputations, we should have taken advantage of opportunities to trade up.