stozo

Top of the league after 1 day.

Just to make everyone feel better he scored a hat-trick on his league debut for Dortmund today.

Seems pretty obvious that Cisse has capitulated in the face of the casino story and in order to keep him happy the club have spun his capitulation as reaching 'mutual agreement'.

I hate transfer windows.

Sad Perchinho is leaving. Real pro and always gave his all. Could well have packed it in after he got destroyed a few times playing RB but he battled through and has put in some big performances for us. Thanks for everything and best of luck.

Utterly mad decision. Why is it that every time we have a period of relative stability Ashley goes and does something barmy. Not even annoyed, just depressed.

I'm praying this is a classic media management tactic - leak your going to appoint a DoF, leak it's going to be Kinnear so all the fans fury gets directed at that rather than the position and then appoint someone rather less controversial to the position who the fans now love because they are not Kinnear. Clutching. At. Straws.

As the link hasn't been posted yet here it is (says he's snubbed Lazio and is signing for us): http://www.lazialita.com/2013/06/10/mercato-sfuma-il-primo-obiettivo-douglas-teixeira-firmera-per-il-newcastle/

The idea that Curtois, De Bruyne and Lukaku are all owned by Chelsea is sickening. They could arguably improved their squad this summer just by recalling their loans. Chalobah ain't bad either (though not on the same level yet as the other three).

We shouldn't have that attitude and a club our size shouldn't ever be in danger of relegation. We were though so it kind of screws up your argument. Also with big clubs like Man U, Barca etc there is a huge commercial interest related to their pre-season tours. Sadly that's not going to be the case with us until we break into the top 4. Most frustrating thing for me is communication. We clearly do have at least some of our pre-season games planned (Blackpool) but the powers that be have decided not to announce it yet.

True, so not going to happen. Why? Thought it was by season not calendar year. Yep, this is the case as far as I'm aware. You can't play for more than two clubs in a season. Debuchy and Yanga-Mbiwa could both, in theory, move this summer.

I agree but I was too scared to post this myself! His style is safety-first and conservative a lot of the time, but I don't think he's a long ball manager or much like Pulis at all. he doesn't have a style man bolded is all he know and favours, football firmly comes second, and as we're seeing if you don't coach good players into playing football as a team they rapidly become a nervous pile of shit and resort to treating the ball like a hot potato Disagree with this (to an extent). Where I'll agree with you is that when our backs have been up against the wall this season (in terms of league position) he has certainly played conservatively, particularly away from home. I don't think that necessarily means that's how he wants us to play - I reckon that's largely him panicking about our league position and deciding he needs to get something rather than nothing. I think he does want to be more attack minded but he does need to improve his style. The Swansea and Sunderland home games come to mind as games where having gone behind we've actually thrown considerable numbers forward and been cut apart on the counter attack.

I think this idea that Pardew wants to play crap football (like Pulis) is a bit of a slur to be honest. Fair enough you're not happy with what happened this season but there have certainly been times when we've played good stuff under Pardew. Indeed in the past he's made comments about us wanting to play a more technical passing game and only this week was saying he wants us to play with attacking full backs. Also having tall players isn't necessarily contradictory to playing good football - Bayern's CB pairing last weekend was Dante (6ft 2in) and Boateng (6ft 4in).

Don't think it's a case of Carroll over Cisse at all. Man U played the season with 4 good strikers, Man City played with 3 so the idea that it's Cisse OR Carroll is bonkers. If we can get him for £10m I'd be very much in favour of us signing Carroll. He offers something that we don't have at the moment and if he can rekindle the form he showed when he was here before then it would be a fantastic deal.

Good news.

The argument against keeping Pardew seems to be 'what if he does badly and there is nobody else available?'. But what happens if we bring in Jol and we're 17th come Christmas? There are no certainties in any of this. I'm content in giving Pardew a chance. If he fails then fair enough but I think every manager deserves one bad season. Two bad seasons and he's got to go.

@pkelso 16m Expect #Uefa to confirm tomorrow that from 2015-16 Europa League winners qualify for Champions League. Could be 5 teams from one country Interesting. Gives teams a reason to compete in the Europa League.

Pure muscle. @Sammy_Ameobi 4m Just compared and as if Shola has less body fat % than me! Madness!!!

I still think the Di Canio thing will all end in tears for Sunderland but I've got respect for him taking the stance he is taking.

If this set piece makes a reappearance next season I think I'll lose the will to live.

Pretty sure that offcially the Man City goal was counted as being from a corner, despite it being second phase.

Nice gesture but let's be realistic. If we win today we could finish 10th, if we lose we could finish 17th. That's about a £3.5m difference in prize money is it not? So not entirely altruistic.

Tavernier? I'll be stunned if Tavernier makes. He's 21 (22 in October), his only consistent games have been in League 1 and he's looked ropey whenever he's played for our first team (If I remember correctly that Epstein lad from Atromitos ripped him to bits for about 20 mins in that game).

Have to say revisited this thread today after a few days away and it's much improved. A lot more sensible (and evidence based) discussion about where we've gone wrong rather than generic 'Pardew is crap'. Particularly love the player heat maps showing how poor our shape has been for a lot of the season.

Swansea away was the last game I thought we played well in, before the slump. We didn't create much and ultimately lost to a fucking wank goal but that was up there with the best performances this season imo. Cool, here you are: http://i.imgur.com/x6yPhu1.jpg So essentially shows we've improved since the new signings came in. At least that bodes well for next season.