Mick

We currently have a manager who is not playing a skilful player because he’s not grafting enough.

It's like watching Souness and Robert all over again.

What if his instinct is to think.

I'm not sure how you can say that Abeid is a better passer of the ball than Vuckic, I've seen Vuckic loads for the reserves and he can pick a mean pass out and some of the passes with the outside of his boot are brilliant. He can pick players out even when he's snookered as he can swerve the ball really well.

I wouldn't put him on the bench.

I've just checked, you might be right. Edit, He's back in training, 6 weeks early.

Isn't Anderson out for the rest of the season?

You didn't see his contribution last game, he is an outlet, quite possibly our only outlet if we need to be direct with the ball. That's just one part of his game. He works hard, fantastic first touch, can hold the ball, can direct ball in the air, he completely changes the complexion of our play when he's on the field. Numerous times we have seen how our game changes for the worse once he leaves the field. my only complaint bout him, is that sometimes we can be too direct with Best playing upfront, as we can rely on him too much and play too many long balls. he does get caught offside too often. but he does give us a variety that neither shola or demba can. I've just watched the first half again and his highlight was a really good chest down for Ba but even then the ball was behind Ba who does really well to get a shot off which hits a post. Other than that he won 6 headers and 6 times the next person to touch the ball was a Swansea player. 6 times no Newcastle player got near the 2nd ball and watching the randomness of where the balls drop it's easy to see why we don't get on the end of them, it's a lottery. Around 30 minutes he's about 2 or 3 yards offside and seems to be the only person in the ground who didn't know he was offside. In the first half he did less than Obertan.

I don't know what people see in him.

I'd drink my own piss.

The atmosphere would improve big time.

I've seen loads of trouble at football matches, I don't think people are the same these days though so I don't see a problem with standing, especially now when it's bastard freezing.

I hope that's the case, we tried to siign John Salako years ago and he failed a medical, Keegan told him to claim that he had decided that he didn't want to move so far North.

We could have said that we'd failed to agree wages or something, the club lies when it wants to.

It should never have got out that he'd failed a medical, I hope that we didn't release the information.

Dyer.

I know, I watched it.

Bobby Robson with Bellamy, you don't need to look at other clubs, we've done it in the past and done OK from it.

What has Obertan done to earn a start?

He scored a brilliant goal against Norway in his last game for France about 2 weeks before he signed for us. He didn't start that game but he looked very good when he came on. Ben Arfa has missed a year of football and is a year younger than Cabaye, he's played 1 game less for France.

He's had 3 or 4 "moments" in what, 7 appearances this season? I know in theory Ben Arfa should be a cut above Obertan and Best, but he's obviously not doing it in training if Harris and Sammy are ahead of him in the pecking order. Don't really see how anyone can argue with that if they haven't watched him every day in training like Pardew and Carver do. And also, what really boils my p*ss with everyone's criticism of Obertan is that he had 3 or 4 "moments" against Swansea alone, but everyone still clamours for him to be replaced. He's obviously not ready yet. I don't watch any of the players in training, I do watch them during the match where it counts and Obertan isn't performing. If Pardew thinks training is more important than a match then he's a moron.

I don't see why we "have" to sell anybody unless it's a fringe player to make way for an upgrade.

Why? It's not as if sticking it in the box has a massive success rate. If 1 short corner doesn't come to anything people moan and then you don't see another for months, but when it's been put into the box 7 or 8 times in one match and easily dealt with people don't moan... I don't understand it tbh. Yeah, you've put it in the box but it's still came to nowt... Think you should try as many different things as possible from corners. Far post, near post, edge of the box, work it short for a different angle, inswinging and outswinging etc. Fair enough last season we had Carroll and that means percentage wise it's worth doing the same thing over and over. Agreed, I would much prefer to see us try something different especially when we keep trying the same thing which comes to nothing. I don't understand why we don't try mixing up our corners to become a little less predictable. The same goes for free kicks which we don’t seem to do enough with.

Was I day dreaming or did Obertan take a corner on Saturday? Either that or Cabaye took a short corner to Obertan.

It makes you wonder why we never put anybody on the front to flick it on.