Unbelievable

FFS

We 'showcased' the benefit of stadium naming rights exceptionally well it seems.

Fuck off ref

BT Europe I must be a good minute ahead Aye, you will be - you live closer to Paris then Newcastle.

BT Europe I must be a good minute ahead

Is this not on Live in the UK?

GTFI

Only just started watching this, but who is this team utterly toying with the team that were utterly toying with ours a few days ago?

Stop it man

4231 happened and McClaren is as much a believer in this system as Pardew ever was

While I can understand people jumping to this conclusion based on a stereotype, people seem to be forgetting that she is also carrying his child. She's not, theyve got a kid now. is it hot? FFS

Well I disagree. McClaren was a very uninspiring appointment and where we are in the table (and cups) should not be a surprise as such. A good manager would have been able to get much more out of this squad, I'm convinced of it. There's a convincing argument that the squad is unbalanced, as we're obviously weak in certain positions but good managers are able to work out a game plan that enables the good players we do have to produce whilst protecting the weaker areas. I also firmly believe the better football argument is a bit of a myth. We're very inconsistent and for every decent game there are a couple of rank bad ones.

No thanks

Doesn't any mention of it still get you an immediate ban on there?

Yep, this is what I always said about him. Thing I didn't realise was that none of it was to do with actually knowing what he's doing with tactics etc, it was just keeping the lads happy when someone in the team happens to win a game for him. How much of management is down to 'tactics'? I think someone like SMC is a good coach but perhaps a poor tactician and has poor motivation skills. Pardew seems pretty poor at everything but can whip up tremendous team spirit and is generally liked by players. I don't know TBH. How important a manager is in general is something that's hard to quantify. If you gave Steve Arsenal's squad he would get into the Champions League quite easily I imagine. This season has raised a lot of those type of questions. The manager is just one piece in the puzzle of the club. We have an embedded culture of failure, and bad transfer policy, so any manager has a hard job on. Then again, to relegate a squad containing as many good players as this would seem to be something uniquely awful on the face of it. TBH I don't know how important a manager is, 'it depends' is probably the best answer. No way man Ian

Stay strong

Hughton was sacked for siding with the players in a bonus dispute. Football didn't even enter the equation, just as it never does with our managerial appointments and departures.

Villa are as good as down and anything above 15th looks out of reach unless someone has a melt down in the final 12 games. It's between Bournemouth, Swansea, Norwich, the mackems and us for two places. The mackems will escape as is their modus operandi, that leaves four of us. I think Swansea has too much about them to go down (that said, so do/should we). I'm currently at a 6, but we'd better hope that both Bournemouth and Norwich don't hit a rich vein of form or that could quickly go up a notch or two.

Bang on. Also I don't believe for a second that they're prepared to basically acknowledge that they ballsed it up. They will stick with what they have in the blind faith that we will somehow stay up, which I think we will actually. Not sure how I feel about that really. The irony of "Little" Mike's post Pardew #wait interview and especially Fat Mike's pre-Villa interview backfiring so spectacularly would be strangely satisfying, maybe even more so than going into next season with McClaren at the helm and doing it all again.

Fantastic effort (*2)

Mayday mayday, going down...

Pffff

Dat defending

Oh dear