TRon

Both Shola and Martins provide moments of individual threat but their team play is erratic. Against that, the alternative strikers seem to disappear from the game altogether so it's catch 22 in some ways.

I don't know why everyone is saying we were hoofing the ball upfield. Given kicked the ball out a lot, but a lot of the long balls were often precise passes to forwards on the break, most of which were wasted due to bad final balls or sloppy finishing. You would have to question why we didn't push up more at 2-0 in the second half.

I haven't seen us play such frightened football since Allardyce's time here. Kinnear has said we should have went for it so I can only assume the players lost their way or ran out of gas. What should have been a massive confidence booster has ended up raising as many questions as answers. Shocking tbh.

Class. That's going in my sig for now.

If we are going to play an attacking midfield against anyone, it might as well be West Brom. I'm confident it will work as long as we defend as a team Jonas-style when we don't have the ball. I will be interested to see how Guthrie does as for me he's only going to establish himself in Butt's role. I hope and pray he will do well and banish Butt to the bench forever and ever. Amen.

There are three options which come to mind with how to get through this period for me: 1) Keep Joe Kinnear as manager on a monthly contract until the club is sold assuming a sale is imminent. 2) Take the club off the market and appoint a full time manager in Kinnear's place. 3) Keep whining about how the club has gone backwards, lament Keegan and the board every day in every way. While many have gone for option 3 that doesn't actually help us in the situation we find ourselves, so I still feel option 1 is the way to go.

Agree with most of that. A win today should be achieved if the strikers deliver, and that should ease the pressure on Kinnear. A bit daft to be going overboard with the criticism after one bad result however disappointing. JK is only an interim manager and seeing as we aren't in a position to make a permanent appointment yet, it's a bit daft to be whinging.

jesus christ Barton and Guthrie should start tonight and if we win it will make it difficult for Joe to change the side for the Villa match. Butt and Barton might work if you have two exceptionally quick and hard working wide men either side. Personally though I think Butt's too old and creaky to cover the ground like Guthrie would. Same goes for Geremi which is why i wouldn't put him in the middle either.

It's worth mentioning that January's still some way off. If Duff has many more abject performances like Saturday, his place should be under threat. If Zog gets back in the team and performs who knows?

No problem with it really. Pay the asking price or fuck off.

But if Sholas fading why not change it up? Because he's scoring?

Not really. Perhaps it's just because they hired shit DoFs. Also, your average British manager will baulk at the suggestion of having someone else do the transfers. Seems to work okay for continental clubs. Lyon and Sevilla in particular have dug up some real gems over the past few years and had cracking sides, making huge piles of cash in the transfer market to boot. At both clubs, DoFs are responsible for signings. I think that, if done well, the DoF system provides more continuity as managers/trainers change. In England, you generally expect it to take a couple of years at least till a manager has "his" squad in place. I am not arguing that it couldn't have worked, but for it to have been accepted over here, either Spurs or Newcastle really needed to make it work. The fact that both clubs are giving up on it, whether through choice or otherwise means the British experiment is more or less over for now at least. Maybe at a lower level like QPR it can be experimented with but I doubt any decent Premiership clubs will go down that route in a hurry for the moment.

I don't really think it failed at Newcastle in all honesty. Wise has only operated one transfer window at this club. We sold some dead wood and got in some decent players. People are disappointed we didn't replace Milner, but hey we got 12 million pounds for him. Then the manager resigns, fans revolt, and the owner begins to sell up. That is hardly a fair assessment of any "system" in all honesty. Newcastle United is a failure more than anything really. I'm not passing a final verdict on the system, it might well work elsewhere, and I agree we did reasonably well in the transfer market but the end result still has to be classed a failure at Newcastle. If the owner is selling up, the fans are unhappy, the team is in a relegation spot and the manager has gone....how else can you judge it?

Whatever the merits or pitfalls of the DoF system, the fact that it has failed with both Spurs and Newcastle means the debate is over in this country. Spurs have ditched it, once our club gets a new buyer, I think ours will go the same way. End of.

The best way of controlling such a large mob is probably to throw a hand grenade into the rowdier sections. That should stop them getting onto the pitch.

I thought the wall was a bit odd as well. It was like Shay was inviting Richardson to shoot for that side so the keeper would know where it was going.

I agree, but i think box to box players is just a term for someone who is just below good at every technique (parker) Is it shite. Bryan Robson as has been mentioned, Roy Keane as well, probably the two standouts in this league over the last 25 years. A bit before that Graeme Souness was class at Liverpool. The best holding midfielders actually dictate the game from that role. The ordinairy ones are decent tacklers with limited football ability. Guess which one we usually end up with?

No contest. There was something especially obnoxious about the Mackems in that era. A bastard of a manager, red and white goblins leading their front line in Gabbiadini and Gates. The fact that it was our first season in the 2nd division and we would have been promoted if the play-offs hadn't been introduced. Instead Sunderland went up despite finishing three places lower. That play off defeat was St James darkest hour.

FACT It should be burned down, with the Makems in it. That's the only sensible 'fact' I've ever heard on this board.

Can't hurt to venture some qualified thoughts - you weren't over the moon, I take it. I was pretty happy with him, myself. Barely put a foot wrong but I'm feeling a little uneasy about the hype of our new players on very little evidence (other than Coloccini who I think is proven class), simply because when they underperform slightly or make one rick, that then gets pushed to the other extreme and they're shit/not adapting/not developing/whatever. So you're not saying he looks possibly good now so that you can take the moral high ground when someone starts saying he looks bad if/when he makes a mistake? That approach never bloody works, man, it won't be remembered - might as well just go with the flow No I just think making any judgement of a Premier League centre half against a poor Championship side is inevitably going to be flawed and people inevitably build themselves up for disappointment. He played very well tonight and that's as much as anyone can say. I think some of the stuff written about Jonas and Guthrie has been daft too. They've both looked quality but it's what they do season after season that matters and I think a lot of people will end up disappointed because early on, everyone judges a player as a whole over a couple of games. If Michael Owen has a shitter, no-one mentions it and it's not a problem because he won't next week because he's a good player and has been for a long time. If Jonas has a shitter next week or Coloccini makes an error that costs us a goal, it'll be panic stations on here (OH NO THEY WON'T ADAPT!) and it's ridiculous. Thought I'd bump this on the back of the slagging that Bassong and Guthrie are getting. Build 'em up, knock 'em down. I didn't think he was that bad yesterday so I was surprised how much stick he has come in for. He looks like a CB playing out of position but hardly surprising since that's what he is First impressions were right for me. Not the finished article by any means, but a very useful defender and a fucking steal at £1m.

Look at what he cost - he's NOT a top midfielder and sums up much of the side ; decent, but nothing outstanding. You don't get players of his age on the cheap if they are any good. I like Guthrie but I don't think he has enough about his game to be used in the playmaker role. It would be worth giving him a go in Butt's role in front of the back four.

I'm not going to say yes or no on this one. I have a feeling Shearer could turn out to be a very good manager but that's all it is - a feeling. No one will really know until he's been given a crack at it. Of course we still don't know if when push comes to shove Shearer will actually want the job. My biggest worry is that if he's made manager and turns out to be uninspiring, he's virtually unsackable. If the Arabs buy the club they should know that appointing Shearer could backfire on them if things don't go well. If it did happen he'd have my full support though.

ironically everyone said, when viduka was injured, that he wasn't the sort of player you need in a relegation fight. ultimately it was his class, and also the quality of martins or owen, that pulled us out of the relegation positions, not the grafters like milner or smith who had us down there in the first place. I'd walk on broken glass to get those three back up top again, with Barton, Gutierrez and one other in behind them. Very good thread by the way, with some cracking points in it. Yesterday was turgid in terms of football quality and for all you can blame conditions and the nature of the game, these are professional players coming off the back of two decent results who should be better and should know better. The lack of movement is the main issue for me, though, and will hopefully be resolved to some extent with the return of Gutierrez and the axing of 2/3 of yesterdays midfield. I don't believe Kinnear is deliberately trying to get us playing "long", although by the same token he's hardly a proprietor of beautiful football either. I'm with you on that Rich, while Kinnear doesn't like to fanny about, I don't think he is sending sides out to deliberately play long ball, that's more a result of players hoofing it because they are scared of losing the ball under pressure. Doug, plenty of people have been saying for some time now that there aren't enough legs in midifeld, but there's more to it than just age. It does take courage to want the ball and make the runs. When we are playing badly watch how many players will pass the ball and then stop running as soon as they have got rid of it. Compare it to a team like Man U where there are constantly 3 or 4 players darting forward or peeling off, giving the man on the ball plenty of options. Finally look at Damien Duff who in the last couple of games was attacking the last defender, but yesterday in the intense heat of a derby passed backwards rather than take on his full back even with space to run into.