stozo

Need clarity in this situation now. If I were in the board's position I'd sign Remy ASAP and then tell Ba he won't play for us again until either he removes the clause from his contract or leaves. It's simply not acceptable that in a month of 5 crucial games Ba could abandon us at any point in our preparations for those games.

Should have been Marv for Perch, as well as Obertan for Jonas. So you'd have started Obertan after he's not played for a month and a half?

Well bollocks like. I supported him and stuck up for him but now i want him gone. Many reason but the main one is the fucking dreadful long ball footbal we have had to watch this season so far (last few game have been better). He deserve everything he gets, just because he made good subs today ?. What after fucking up the starting line up, what about the dreadful play, lack of movement, poor crossing and the rest of the shite i just watched. He is proving a shit long ball merchant manager. I'm judging this over months and not just a few games by the way. Don't doubt he's made some poor decisions over the last few months and needs to take his fair share of the blame. You've admitted yourself there though that the football has improved in the last few games. Also we played mainly only the ground for the first hour today and really didn't create anything. Would love to know who you think would come in and have us playing great football with the team we had out today - let alone put up with the fact that the board have near total control over transfers.

Wrong starting line up though. I agree - I would have liked to see Marv start. Amoebi was the player who had the most impact though and people on here would have had a meltdown if he'd started instead of Cisse (and I'd argue he's much more effective as a sub than starting).

Have to say some people on here seem to have developed a pathological hatred of Pardew. The 3 subs he made today swung the game in our favour so I'm stunned to come on here and see some people rubbishing him as a manager. After the first subs on 60 mins there was only one team that was going to win the game. Considering we've not actually won a game against a team playing with 11 men for almost 2 months we did exactly what we needed to do today. Never looked like conceeding and then went for them in the last 30 minutes. Not brilliant stuff but efficient and effective. Would I like us to have been sharper in the first hour? Yes. But considering the low base we're coming from today was a step forward and Pardew does deserve some credit for that (in the same way he deserves some criticism for where we are in the league).

Can we have a poll - how many pages does this thread get to before Remy signs?

Could do a lot worse than Lescott on loan for the rest of the season. Wouldn't be much of a long-term option but if we're not willing to splash the cash on a new CB in January then having Lescott until the end of the season could make a real difference. http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2012/dec/17/joleon-lescott-manchester-city-mario-balotelli

Completely the right approach to take if there is still concern over the scan despite no pain. Last thing we can afford is for him to play, tear his hamstring and be out for 3 months.

Overall performance-wise I think he's pretty low down on the list of people to blame for our current slide but harsh truth is he's been at fault for both the winning goals against Fulham and Stoke.

Not going to win so drop some of the players who deserve to be dropped. Marv and Perch in for Tiote and Jonas.

The only highlight from tonight was two off the line from corners.

Ruiz is out injured.

Don't really have any pro/anti Pardew views based on last night. We were always going to put out a weakened team and the priority with us being through to the last 32 has to be the league now. To be honest as well I don't think Pardew is wrong to say the less experienced players need to step up and might need to go on loan to get the experience. Bigirimana aside the five other 'youngsters' are Sammy (20), Abeid (20), Ranger (21), Ferguson (21) and Tavernier (21). These players are at the age now where they need to start getting pushing for the first team. This means being better or at least being able to compete with the player who has the starting spot in the first XI. At the minute none of those five would get in our best XI. To be brutally honest about a few of them they can't say they haven't had the chances this season. Sammy in particular has had a fair few chances and really not taken them. All of them are at the age now where they have to take the limited chances they get if they want to stay in the team and if they're not able to take them then it's probably best for all parties if they go out on loan.

Good news - Bryan Ruiz will miss the game on Monday.

here's how the Journal sycophantically reported it: http://www.journallive.co.uk/nufc/newcastle-united-news/2012/10/09/shane-ferguson-proof-of-a-laudable-policy-61634-31994548/ I'm sure we'll continue to recruit under 18s through the usual channels - ie boy's clubs, locals etc - but it looks like the idea of paying money for them from other clubs is finished. big mistake imo and a knee-jerk response to some initial failure. I said this at the time in more detail but I really don't think it is a mistake for a club of our size to stop doing this. Unless you've got the money to spend several million per season on new U18s then you're never going to see the benefit (unless you get lucky with one player). Chelsea, City,Spurs, Liverpool have all spent millions on U18s and seen very little benefit for it. When your recruiting at such a young age (15, 16 etc) then you generally have to accept that the majority of players simply aren't going to develop into what you hope they will. If you've got a finite budget (as we have) that is a very significant hit to take.

Completely disagree with those singling him out for criticism last night. I'd argue last night he was one of our better players (in an admittedly poor performance). His job is to move the ball around and get it to the players who are supposed to be able to do something with it. Last night he passed the ball more than any of our other players (21 times more than Bigirimana, 32 times more than Sa. Ameobi) so in that sense he did his job. Don't think he's set the world on fire yet but he is certainly not a nothing player.

What on earth was Taylor doing for the goal? Absolutely shocking defending. Also Danny Simpson just offers us nothing. He's a average/solid defender but he's atrocious going forward. Finding a new RB has to be a priority.

Tonight is the first time I've been concerned about us. Up until now it's been frustrating but tonight was genuinely worrying. If we don't win at the weekend Pardew is going to really start to feel some pressure from fans.

First half was frustrating but that second half was just awful. Really not many positives to take out of that apart from the Marveaux goal.

When we have the ball Anita and Bigi have been neat enough but apart from our goal there has been virtually nothing from the front 4 going forward. Very frustrating. On the positive side we needed a win tonight and at least we are getting that so far.

Reflecting on the game I'm not sure I'm as negative about it as others on here. It was another fairly uninspiring performance but there are a few points I'd make: 1. Our confidence looks totally shot. Apart from a ten minute spell at the start of the second half we really didn't look confident at all when we had the ball. Defensively we also look massively fragile this season where as last season we looked really solid. 2. I don't really see an enormous difference (apart from confidence) in performance between this season and the majority of last season. There was a spell towards the end of last season where we brilliant but I'd argue for the majority we were successful by being defensively solid and grinding results out. The difference yesterday was that Krul made a silly mistake (the type of which was rarely seen last season) and that left us chasing the game which saw us caught on the break for the second. Had we not conceded the first goal from an individual error I honestly think we might have ground out a rather unattractive 1-0 win. Frustrating that we got beat but I think with a few players back we'll start to pick up results and hopefully performances will follow on from that.

A little light relief from the doom and gloom. Name your Premier League XI + subs. Only rule is no more than 1 player from each team. I'd go for: Schwarzer Sagna Agger Huth Baines Yacob Toure Ben Arfa Hazard Bale RVP Ruddy Nolan Michu Kone O’Shea Clyne Taarabt

Big day tomorrow. Time for this team to put in a quality 90 minutes and demonstrate the talent we all know it has.

I find this a bit odd - surely the problem with those players were the fact that they were recruited by Wise who bought badly and overpaid for youngsters. To be fair I don't think it's that bad of a move for a club with a constrained budget like ours. Chelsea have spent millions (£5m for Michael Woods and Tom Taiwo in particular sticks out) in recent years and got virtually no return from their investment. Plenty of other examples at Man. City, Man U, Arsenal and Liverpool as well. I think with players that young to be successful you really have to adopting a bit of a scattergun approach which will involve investing several million per season and accepting that some of them will fall by the wayside. I think at our club where we're going to be spending a net of about £10m per season on our entire squad it's a tad unrealistic to spend several million of that on players who the majority of will come to nothing.