Sifu

That's completely different. They're your local rivals. Of course you wouldn't give a s***. The Newcastle v Sunderland thing doesn't really mean as much to me. I understand it's like Yankees v Mets or something, but it's not like Dempsey left us to play for them. That would be totally different. 'before' Just trying to spare the guy's feelings. Some basic f***ing s*** here Mike, how long you been on this board? You know that I understand rivalries, man. You more than anyone. You post in the US threads. But there are Newcastle fans all over the world now, and you have to understand that the stuff that means a lot to you won't mean a lot to some of the foreigners. I remember typing this s*** before. I can empathize, but most of the time the Sunderland stuff is just ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ . Your hatred of them is hilarious, but if Dempsey goes there, I'll look out for their results and hope he does well while they stay mid-bottom of the league. Oh dear Mike, you're a lost cause

Stoke love?! Uh oh.

You do realise that you're going to have to disown Dempsey and/or take posters of him down. If he joins the mackems then he's going to tarnish his reputation Btw, if the mackems do actually sign him then I wouldn't put it past them to actually finish in the top 10. The only way they'll f*** up their season is through O'Neill's dinosaur tactics. I was wondering how much Sunderland love I was going to be allowed, tbh. None Mike, Sunderland "love" is not allowed

You do realise that you're going to have to disown Dempsey and/or take posters of him down. If he joins the mackems then he's going to tarnish his reputation Btw, if the mackems do actually sign him then I wouldn't put it past them to actually finish in the top 10. The only way they'll f*** up their season is through O'Neill's dinosaur tactics.

Rhodes would fit the bill nicely. Would be good back up to have if anything were to happen to Ba/Cisse. Our attacking options would be very decent. Would be satisfied to go into the season with Cisse, Ba, Rhodes, Shola, (Sammy), Campbell as our strikeforce. Make it so. Btw, how gutted will Carroll be if we do sign Rhodes over him

Yeah, fuck that.

Gouffran?

We're still laughing at you Brendan

If he does end up at Marseille then fair play to him. From the shitness of QPR to the decent l'OM would be some feat. Some decent blagging there.

I had 20 odd pages to catch up on...

It's got to the point where I don't really check the news outlets anymore. This forum is where I get all my football news really.

Had to be fucking FOX who commissioned that

The more times this thread gets bumped, the more I think he's coming back. Booo. In which case, it's time for the healing process to begin.

I would say the only time this partnership has been close to working was Cisse's debut against Villa. My gut feeling though is that the Ba-Cisse partnership will work in time... They don't appear to try and play as a pair which doesn't help matters... Always too far apart imo... If Pardew's intention is to play a 4-4-2 then I'm sure he is actively working on them to click as a pairing in training. 4-3-3 makes more logical sense though as it utilises all of our players to good effect. The good news is that the 4-3-3 is still very much in our plans so I'm not worried as such.

Johnson signed already and they are going to challenge for top 6 now.. Oh so it did happen? They've got a good player there tbf...

I'm on a night out on transfer deadline day. If anything were to happen in terms of outgoings, I may just go on a rampage in Manchester.

Haven't been in this thread for a while, am I right to assume the following has happened: - They've finally signed Fletcher for an over-inflated price. - Their game got postponed yesterday because the SoL is shite. Have they signed McGeady yet? Is Johnson signing? So many questions...

I would say the only time this partnership has been close to working was Cisse's debut against Villa. My gut feeling though is that the Ba-Cisse partnership will work in time...

Accrington Stanley tbh.

To put it simply, we were beaten by the better team on the day. A deserving win for Chelsea tbh - Hazard, in particular, caused us quite a lot of problems through the middle/wings. I hate Torres though. We looked off the pace again this week IMO. We do have a few fitness issues, namely with Cabaye who looked properly knackered by the hour mark. He's definitely not match fit yet. I'm sure he (and the team) will be fine, fitness-wise, as the weeks go by. It's just rather annoying how behind we are atm in comparison to other teams in the division. Our first half performance was pretty much forgettable. We did play better in the second half (with Ben Arfa providing most of our attacking threat once again) but ultimately it wasn't enough to really trouble Chelsea. All in all, we were outdone and we just have to move on now. Oh and about the 4-4-2/4-3-3 business btw... We did beat Chelsea last season with a 4-4-2 so I can somewhat understand Pardew going with that system again but the problem with using that today was that Chelsea had new personnel who have actually improved their team so a new approach would have been better way to counter the Chelsea threat. 4-3-3 makes more sense because it actually utilizes all of our players to good effect - the good news is that Pardew does recognise it to be a good formation to switch to if need be. Having said all of the above, we have to remember that this was our second game of the PL this season and considering that I would have been content with 2 points from our first two games (after the fixtures were released), I'd say I am pretty satisfied so far.

Post-pub/drinks session posting never goes well tbf. Still an idiotic post like.

S'il vous plait! £6 million would be a reasonable offer imo so I sincerely hope something finally materialises. Ben Arfa lacked support today and Debuchy would link up with Hatem well (if their games in the French team are anything to go by...)

A harsh lesson for him today. He really shouldn't have stuck a leg out in the penalty area - it gives a striker a reason to go to ground. I'm sure he'll learn from this mistake like. We have got a good player on our hands so I'm already looking forward to seeing him in action again

We're going to see a Ben Arfa special on Saturday. Definitely.