Shak

Amazing that Ben Arfa hasn't been thrown on yet.

I'll be very disappointed if we see Nolan playing as a CM again. Must be Tiote/Smith alongside Barton. The last two games we've really seen the benefit of having two CM's who actually get involved in the game in the middle of the park. Nolan would be a step backwards in terms of how we play because he doesn't do this. Happy enough with him being in the squad, he's a goal threat in that second striker role, but I'd play Smith ahead of him in CM in all honesty.

Ha, April Fools.

This in a nutshell really It's essentially down to the fact that we have awful CM's. There's nobody who makes us tick, who goes looking for the ball to start attacks and has the quality to do it well. The last few years our options in CM have made Newcastle look like Spain, until a CM comes through who is at least somewhat decent we're always going to look bad against the poor sides. It's grand against better sides, as we're looking to play on the break for the most part. Anyway, really good 3 points that. Shitty pitch, playing in heat that our lads aren't really used to and we've got the win. Never expected much better than a scrappy, tight win tbh. Also, I would love it if someone could point me in the direction of any evidence they've ever witnessed that suggests Aiden McGeady is a good footballer. He's absolutely piss, can't believe he's fetched almost £10m.

Four o'clock on a Friday... fucking bizarre time for a game of football if you ask me.

Encouraging to hear, looks like he's learned his lesson from the signing of Best. Trying to find buyers for the likes of Best, Shola and Xisco is going to be a bit of a task for us I'm afraid. Shola has two years left and the other two have three, I hope we don't get stuck with their wages on our books for that long, could really hinder our attempts to improve the squad in future.

I think the squad is coming together quite nicely, we still lack enough players with quality in the final third to really scare teams but we look like we're developing quite a solid team, and we're quite young as well which is encouraging. The situation at Goalkeeper isn't ideal, but it's not too bad though either. We have a below average PL keeper in Harper, and a raw but talented understudy in Krul. The way I see it, Harper will be passable until we figure out if Krul is going to be a long term solution or not. He's 22 now, we should know soon enough. Enrique is looking like a quality LB more with every game he plays. His ongoing weakness is that he gives the ball away in clumsy spots, generally through lack of concentration. He's quality though when players are running at him, I never expect anyone to go by him and they very rarely do. At RB we'll have to get by this year with a mixture of the various players we have who can play RB, I reckon between the two Taylors, Simpson and Perch we'll find someone who can do a job. CB we have good depth. Colo, Williamson, Taylor and Campbell is good competition for two places. Central midfield I really like what Hughton has done. I expect it'll be a case of one of Smith or Tiote to partner one of Barton or Guthrie. (Probably) Barton will be expected to get on the ball, make things happen going forward and get into goalscoring positions, while (hopefully) Tiote will be more inclined to sit back and anchor the midfield. Gosling signing seems weird now looking back, I'm not sure how he'll fit into everything. Jonas and Routledge are good starting wingers, but those two avoiding long-term injuries could be quite important as I don't think we've much depth after them. Disappointing that Lua Lua is gone on loan again, the coaches obviously don't seem to think he's able to play with the first team yet. Ben Arfa should be class signing, obviously. Hopefully he'll give us that bit of flair in the final third we've been missing for so long. Sounds like he's expecting to play in the role Nolan has played so far, excited to see that. As for Nolan, I'll never like him because I hate the type of player he is. The epitome of Sam Allardyce football. That said, he seems a great presence in the dressing room and you can't deny his knack for getting on the end of and taking chances more than most of the players in our squad. As long as he is deployed in the role he's played so far, and never again as a genuine central midfielder, I'm happy to suffer him for another year. Could actually be a quality weapon to throw on late in games when you're chasing a goal. Lovenkrands will be another option to play just off the striker, and he can play on the wing too (albeit quite porrly, generally). Andy Carroll is probably the most exciting thing we have at the club right now. A big, strong bastard of a center-forward who is a born and bred Geordie. He looks like he's developed massively in the last couple of years, and the first three games this year he's looked a real handful. Immense in the air, and quick enough as well as decent enough with the ball at his feet to be more than just a big battering ram. Typically enough though, he seems a bit of a lunatic. We need him to stay out of trouble and also hope that the expectation that will be heaped upon him now doesn't get in his head. After him we have passable depth at the center-forward spot with Shola and eventually Best being back-up options. Next summer will be interesting if things go well this year.

Some close stuff. I'd take it, yeah.

Pretty miserable lock of the other thread tbh, was a quality wind-up.

It'll be Shola who will replace Carroll I'm sure, and probably Best after that. Definitely a big worry, as it's a significant step down from Carroll with either of those in there. Lovenkrands I'd guess will get a few games playing in the role just off the main CF, he'll probably get a few games playing out wide as well as we don't have much depth on the wings at all and he's played there before (although not very well, obviously).

Aye, would have been the icing on the cake. I know the plan seems to be for Ben Arfa to play just off Carroll, so I can see why Hughton might be content with what we have. I suppose between Lovenkrands and Nolan we may feel we have enough depth for when injuries inevitably come.

Funny thing though, a fraction of a second quicker with that 'lunge' and he'd have been a hero. I don't know quite what to say to that. Aye. Like a golfer missing a short putt to win a title and someone saying "If the putt had gone in, it would have been a great putt."

Babel will be a good player once someone has the basic sense to actually play him up front.

the guy with the worlds smallest mouth He looks like a Guess Who character. That picture of the two lads on SSN on their phones is class as well.

He's always looked better than Leon Best when they've played for Ireland, to be fair. He's still looked fairly shite, though.

You can attribute blame to both Williamson and Perch for their goal, but mostly I think you just have to put it down as a lovely bit of play from the goalscorer. That said, Perch does look a bit lost out there at the moment. Think he could be a decent player with some proper coaching though, he's a very good athlete which certainly helps his cause.

Think this kind of thing will happen to City a few times this year, can't for the life of me understand why you go out there with such a negative setup when you have the players in your squad to go out there and give teams a good hiding. Really need to get one of Barry or De Jong dropped and play Adebayor or Silva IMO. Hope they don't and struggle though, don't like them or their negative manager. If you're going to go out and try and buy your way to success in such an obscene way, at least have the fucking decency to play good football in the process.

I would never drop Jonas, he makes Enrique better, their communication is great and together their linkup play is great. Would be just dumb to drop Jonas. I like Jonas, but it's pretty much impossible to deny that he has absolutely no end product whatsoever. His running and work rate will make him invaluable against the better sides we'll face this season, but if we want to really attack teams then he might be droppable. The point is more that signing Keane would give us another option, a different way we can play, and more importantly gives us depth for when we have an injury or two. I'm interested to see what sort of team we have if we start Ben Arfa instead of Nolan... that may just be our best 11. But what if Routledge or Jonas gets injured? I'd much rather push Ben Arfa out wide and play Keane up front than stick Ryan Taylor or Guthrie out wide.

In home games where we were looking to really have a go at teams I'd consider playing Keane up front with Carroll and starting HBA instead of Jonas. Amazed that anyone could be against bringing Keane in on loan. God forbid we actually have options in terms of how we approach a game.

Why? If someone doesn't rate Keane as a player then I can see why they'd rather not sign him (even though it seems pretty clear to me he'd be a significant improvement on all our strikers except for Carroll), but I can't see any other reason to not want to bring him in. He'd be so much better than Nolan playing alongside Carroll that it boggles the mind.

He was better than he usually is in terms of his general play. Still offers next to nothing positive when he doesn't get his name on the scoresheet though.

Fingers crossed there's something in this, he'd be a great addition.

I'd love to see Carroll with a real strike partner like.

He didn't look like he was going to get sent off though. He was a bit hot-headed at one point but he didn't look like another yellow waiting to happen to me. Just seemed silly to me because we basically invited Wolves on to us for the end of the game, Nolan and Shola up front must never happen again at any point.