tmonkey

A little bit of a winning mentality. That'll do for Mike Ashley That can't be genuine surely. He should be locked up if it is. http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/26785499

"If you take a personality out of the dressing room when you have a small team it's going to have an effect." "I'm looking forward to having some impact in there." "Put on top my personality - which we all know is a little bit of a winning mentality - and I want to make sure we want to win." - Alan Pardew, 2014.

10 in the past calendar year. 2013/14 Sat 5 Apr Newcastle 0-4 Man Utd 2013/14 Sat 29 Mar Southampton 4-0 Newcastle 2013/14 Tue 25 Mar Newcastle 0-3 Everton 2013/14 Wed 12 Feb Newcastle 0-4 Tottenham 2013/14 Sat 8 Feb Chelsea 3-0 Newcastle 2013/14 Sat 1 Feb Newcastle 0-3 Sunderland 2013/14 Wed 4 Dec Swansea 3-0 Newcastle 2013/14 Mon 19 Aug Man City 4-0 Newcastle 2012/13 Sat 27 Apr Newcastle 0-6 Liverpool 2012/13 Sun 14 Apr Newcastle 0-3 Sunderland

From Mascherano's wikipedia (quotes are sourced but I remember the general view on him at the time anyway): Honestly, saying "at Liverpool it took Mascherano quite a while before he looked like a Premier League player" is just making things up. Question then has to be 'why?'.

Tevez was definitely a player he should have been playing. But even at Liverpool it took Mascherano quite a while before he looked like a Premier League player. He was right to use him sparingly. Mascherano had an excellent debut at Liverpool. First game he looked fantastic. IIRC 10 minutes in he made a world class tackle and instantly you knew the guy was good. As for Tevez, he looked good nearly immediately under Curbishly and was a one man army within a couple of months. Given that he was on the bench under Pardew but immediately in the team under Curbishley you have to question Pardew's judgement here. You can argue all you want that maybe Tevez (and Mascherano) needed the time to settle, it's impossible to know, but it's still scandalous that Pardew stuck with Harewood and Mullins over two genuine world class talent and had Mascherano in particular playing with the reserves.

Irrespective of tonight's result or whether Chelsea turn it around in the second leg with a 3-0 win, I just feel the need to pop the cork of bottled hate on Mourinho - the guy is a negative w***** and to my "naked eye" is massively responsible for other negative w*****s like Pardew and Allardyce approaching games like they do. I've considered him to be the embodiment of pure footballing evil ever since Rijkaard's Barca turned up and found the Stamford Bridge pitch had been heavily watered overnight by the groundsmen (on Mourinho's orders) despite the fact that it had been raining heavily for an entire day or two. He's a genius no doubt because in that game Barca were constantly slipping and struggled to play their natural game (indeed I recall Chelsea's first goal coming from Xavi slipping whilst turning), but he's an anti-football, win-at-all-costs one who'll resort to anything to get a win other than coaching a creative style of play into his teams. He has never really built a team into playing a successful brand of football, and every game it always seems to be about his team grinding out wins with himself being the biggest star of the show because without his changes and focus on nullifying the opposition's strengths the team won't succeed (even if he has the better team on paper). He's from the same school of thought as Allardyce, Pardew, etc, just that he's infinitely better than them at implementing negative tactics than them (that plus he's had £30m+ rated players to work with). And let's not forget his Real Madrid side pretty blatantly instructed to go out onto the pitch and kick lumps out of Messi. Pretty sure Mourinho was in charge too when Del Horno went for Messi's knee. He's just a horrible w*****. Oh, and pretty sure he essentially ended the career of a referee over something. Can't remember the incident, but I'm sure he did, because he is a w***** after all.

PRESSURE.

This is like the Ferdinand and Vidic from 5 years ago.

Interested to see Ribery tonight. Always a major let down whenever I've seen him in these types of big games.

I thought after the Spurs home game that it looked as if he'd lost the players. We obviously got a couple of wins since but Saturday looked very much as if he'd lost them again. Have this sneaky suspicion that he used the lambasting of Ben Arfa and Marveaux after that Spurs game as an attempt to motivate the rest of the players (through fear/stamping authority) having seen the signs of their motivation and desire fading. Now that has worn off, he tried a similar trick again, this time starting Ben Arfa then subbing him at half time to make an example of him to the others. Wonder what he'll have left up his sleeve after this.

We all have legitimate angst with Ashley and the numerous diabolical mistakes he has made and will continue to make. But we shouldn't allow high level criticisms about what we should do, or should have done, in terms of strategy/vision to mask what we actually currently have today. E.g. yes, the abysmal transfer windows could have been infinitely better, and yes we should be aiming for much more than what we appear to be settling for, and yes we should be treating the club like a Harrods or Selfridges as opposed to a Poundland, but when you look at what we do have right now as opposed to what we don't, I think we have a pretty decent squad from which a good manager could form a solid footballing side. Other managers are getting alot more out of lesser of equivalent squads imo, when you watch their teams you can see visible evidence of how their players are coached into passing, moving, creating, and defending as a team - why should Pardew be excused because Ashley didn't give him a couple of £20m players to ruin or paper over the cracks?

:lol::lol:

Southampton can't even score when the net is half empty.

Sissoko could have passed to Hatem who is running next to him in a better position and free but decides to go for a reverse through ball that would have gone through 2 Southampton players. What a f***ing c***.

Gouffran must have lost the ball about 75% of the time.

CB not suited to playing at FB. No surprise there.

Southampton are a class footballing side - noone on our team can get on the ball because we're not coached to play at this standard.

This is insane. We should be 5-0 down.

The Luck of the Pardew helping to keep this goalless so far.

Their passing and movement

Should be 1-0 to Southampton.

ESPN for games/goals, Soccerway and Transfermarket for minutes. No idea if they're accurate, but difficult to know otherwise unless there's a better source readily available. Assists on ESPN seem to be wrong for Robert, but I have it as Robert with a total of 33 assists during his time here (16 in 01/02, 5 in 02/03, 7 in 03/04, and 5 in 04/05), Ben Arfa with 10 so far (0 in 10/11, 5 in 11/12, 2 in 12/13, and 3 in 13/14). So Robert = an assist per 3.9 games or every 289 minutes. Ben Arfa = an assist per 7.3 games or every 440 minutes.

In terms of Robert vs Ben Arfa goals only: Robert scored 22 Premiership goals in 129 games. Average of 1 goal per 5.8 games. Total minutes on pitch of 9,562, so a goal every 434 minutes in the Premiership. Ben Arfa has scored 13 goals in 73 Premiership games. Average of 1 goal per 5.6 games. Total minutes on pitch of 4,403 so a goal every 338 minutes in the Premiership.