Shak

Luque will see out his contract here IMO, he's apparently unwilling to take a wage drop and no other club that would have any interest in him is going to be able to match them. So we're stuck with him, and he'll almost certainly never be of any use to us on the field. Got to be the greatest flop in our history.

Would much prefer to pay the extra and get Anelka, but I'd have Diouf here in a flash personally. Despicable fucker by all accounts, but when he's winning points for your team on the pitch then it's amazing how easy it is to turn the blind eye. A good manager will be able to control him, as Sam has proved with Diouf before. Not a whole lot different to Bellamy, in all honesty.

While the poor performance is mostly my fault, I'm not overly upset by a draw at all. It's a point picked up and maintains our momentum from the Bolton game. If we can pick up another 4 points from the next 2 games (Boro and Wigan) then it'll be a fine first month of the season. We could use some more pace in the team though, that's for certain. Even though Milner looked our most threatening attacking player on Saturday, I'd be very interested to see how we'd get on with Martins and N'Zogbia either side of Viduka. Hopefully Emre is ready to go by the Wigan game, as these type of home games we desperately need a playmaker. Emre's got the talent to do it, in my opinion, but whether he'll apply himself better this season than he has in the past is another matter.

Agree with Baggio and Janitor, I'd have Emre in for games where we feel we need a playmaker and Butt in for the tough away games. I'm not overly convinced Geremi will be able to handle the DM duties by himself either tbh, but I hope he does because him and Butt both playing in CM together will not work at times, as we saw on Saturday. Barton - Geremi - Emre is a trio I'm very much looking forward to seeing in action though.

I'd rather efffective long balls than a string of short completed passes that get us nowhere and are ultimately followed by a panicked hoof forward.

Van Persie will step up into the upper echelon of Premiership players this season IMO. Ashley Young I expect to have a good season too. Of our players, Barton is one I'm very interested to see. Could become the driving force behind our team.

I'm hoping we won't be playing the same long ball s**** that Bolton did tbh, they also had better midfielders than Smith in Campo and Speed. Seriously then mate where does Smith fit in as far as a 4-3-3 formation goes? Would he be in you starting 11? One of the 3 CM spots, could play any of the roles to a good standard. Wouldn't be in my first 11 if everyone was fit, but then neither would Dyer. I reckon you're looking at this too simplistically, Smith isn't a like-for-like replacement for Dyer , don't think anyone said he was. But, like Dyer, he'll be able to play a few places when called upon. He'll be a damn sight more consistent than Dyer as well. I do think we'll add another wide player, someone with pace (which is why I'd be happy with Diouf) but even then it's not a pressing concern. We have Milner, Martins, Duff, N'Zogbia who I believe will be effective there, possibly Owen as well.

Cheerleaders and music after a goal gets a no from me, but stuff like this is great IMO.

Really looking forward to tomorrow, I'm gonna sing my heart out tbh. BIG SAM'S GEORDIE ARMY!!!

Dyer will generally have 2 or 3 blinding games a year, but other than that games just pass him by. We've essentially swapped Smith for Dyer, and with Smith we'll get a lot more consistent effectiveness. Delighted, almost all the dead wood is gone now.

It's the pace of the game more so than anything. Teams play a less patient game over here so there's more charging around that's required and the game can pass them by until they're used to it. So players have to get used to that more so than being kicked around and harrassed, which happens in every league.

Or else what?

Like you've done signing up here?

Elano has looked bvery good so far for sure, but there are a number of players that would help us much more. Surprised so many have picked him.

But if we don't have a scoreboard, how will we know the score? There should be two tbh, one at each end so everyone can see without having to turn their head.

Agreed Hence this thread, which I believe you attempted to discredit, mein herr. http://www.newcastle-online.com/nufcforum/index.php?topic=43843.0

Well spotted, if we lose a lot of games were in the s***. Cheers, I feel I've really contributed here tonight.

No it isn't. I don't reckon it'll happen but it's certainly not impossible. I meant more that it would be an unrealistic expectation on the part of the fans. :parky:

It's as much about keeping ourselves in good position for later in the season. There are some filthy enough runs of fixtures later on in the season, we dont want to go into them without being in decent position. Lose to Villa and we could go to Boro with the wind out of our sails, lose to Boro and then all of a sudden everyone's depressed and Wigan is being proclaimed an absolutely crucial game in our season for a different reason, the need to get back on track.

Winning all four is unrealistic, as we're not just gonna be a consistently good team straight away. Agree with Dave, Villa game is massive. Beat them and we've won two games that looked very tricky a couple of weeks ago. Then we're on to Boro and Wigan, go in to them full of confidence from 2 wins and there's no reason we can't get another two wins. But lose to Villa and the whole complexion changes in terms of the mindset we go to Boro with. I'll just be upset if we don't beat Wigan though tbh.

http://gamegear.nl/author/dredd01.jpg I knew you'd say that...

It's been years since we made a good start, even towards the end of Bobby's reign we had bad starts his last couple of seasons. So our whole season has been an uphill battle for some time. Having won what looked a very tricky opener, these are our next four fixtures. Villa H Boro A Wigan H Derby A Villa look on their way to being solid, and will be tough. I expect a tight game tbh but there's no reason we shouldn't be favourites going in. Boro were awful tonight, two defeats already. Wigan at home is the type of game we should be looking to win a lot more consistently if we can start playing well. Derby will be another good test of what we're going to be like when forced to show some steel, a team with inferior players to ours but they'll be at home and playing a high tempo game, if we can match them for effort and organisation we should have the class over them. We're gonna have some wobbles this season, almost certainly. We'll have much harder runs of games and will almost certainly have at least one bad patch. But everyone does and we can do a hell of a lot to make up for it now by getting off to a fast start so that, when there are ten games or so to go, we'll still be in good shape to achieve a Top 6 finish, which has to be the goal. Anything more than that is unlikely, though not impossible. It a beautiful run of games, and I'll be disappointed if we don't win at least two of them. Three would be very pleasing, even with say two wins, a draw and a loss from the above four games we'd have 10 points from a possible 15, which is a very fine start. But get 3 out of 4 of those and we'll have a nice cushion over some of the other teams we're competing with, and would be in the Top 2 or 3 certainly for then, which would look nice for a while After that, I can't list the fixtures as it's against the copyright rules but I'll say that we don't meat any of the Big 4 and should be expecting to hold our own quite well in most of them. PLEASE DON'T POST ANY MORE FIXTURES IN THIS THREAD AFTER THE PREVIOUSLY MENTIONED 4 Be nice to see us knocking round the Top 6 the entire season, and with a good start it could happen.

Poor Sir Alex was almost in tears, God bless him.

Got Ronaldo in my fantasy team, but I'm still delighted for the little twat. People need to get their priorities in check. I'm looking at you, Wullie.

in here... in here... in here...