Unbelievable

Shit, Sissoko marked by two defenders. Time for plan B...

HTL!

Shame for Elliot who has done much better than expected, but I hope Darlow impresses and makes the position his own.

Exactly. Does my head in that we have four central midfield players out there, with the two most defensive ones sitting just a few yards in front of the defence and the other two required to protect the full back and somehow dictate play and create chances from the wing. What I wouldn't give for a Tiote - Cabaye like central midfield partnership again.

He would be an upgrade on Colback Personally I would prefer it if we looked at a controlling, more defensive midfield player who can truly protect the back four, doesn't need another DM holding his hand and is neat in possession. That way maybe we could afford to play with a winger or two every once in a while rather than worrying about the opposition all the time.

Unchanged?

I would also add that tactically what we do have is not being used correctly too. In short, it's a complete failure in understanding how professional football works from the top down, which is affecting our transfer strategy, management recruitment approach, squad mentality, etc. You don't need 11 top class players to be in the top half of the table. What you do need is an understanding ofhow to build a good team in terms of players' strengths and weaknesses and of how to prepare tactically and mentally to make it play at its potential.

I agree, but the problem with Cisse was the same. We needed a proven striker capable of contributing to the creation of chances as well as somebody to hang our coat on in terms of effectively finishing the chances. Not writing Mitrovic off, but he's clearly not the type of striker we were crying out for (yet), and as HTT has pointed out, was brought in for other reasons than to be the best fit for the players we have. Also, I don't know what McClaren's ideas where in terms of tactics before the season, but he's setting us up as a counter attacking side and I struggle to see how a player like Mitrovic fits in, as he seems to lack the pace and guile to be an off the shoulder forward who could be effective in such a system.

I think you may have misunderstood, or I may have, but I think all he said was that the lack of maintenance to SJP since Ashley took over is beginning to show physically on SJP. It wasn't a sudden realisition that Ashley is a bit shit I don't think.

I agree with TCD a lot of the time and even if I don't he usually puts decent arguments forward. Don't really understand why so many people seem to have it in for him these days.

Squad improvements in January will have to come from outside (read Ashley) cash so I wouldn't get my hopes up. We'll have to sell the likes of Sissoko and/or Perez before we can even begin to contemplate who to bring in.

Nah, Douglas is probably the Brazilian from Dnjepr Djnepropetrovsk that AS Roma are after too?

Magnificent?

We played alright in the second half, so he has a point. What does "we'll be fine" even mean? Our stated target before the season was top 8. Has it been changed to PL survival already? Didn't he say the other day that 8th had admittedly been an overambitious target (in a league with Leicester, Palace and Watford in the top seven)? He did? I must have missed that. But as you point out, the PL is quite open, especially this year. Had we had our affairs in order we could have easily been in the running for European football. http://www.theguardian.com/football/2015/dec/25/newcastle-united-steve-mcclaren-top-eight-premier-league-target-relegation Dear me, we have actually changed our target to Premier League survival and he is counting on characters like Willo's to pull us through. This club man

When you say alternatives have been tried do you mean to say that Colback was not played when unavailable only? And even moving away from player names, have we really tried different formations than a flat back four "protected" by two defensive midfielders, even against weaker opposition at home?

We played alright in the second half, so he has a point. What does "we'll be fine" even mean? Our stated target before the season was top 8. Has it been changed to PL survival already? Didn't he say the other day that 8th had admittedly been an overambitious target (in a league with Leicester, Palace and Watford in the top seven)? He did? I must have missed that. But as you point out, the PL is quite open, especially this year. Had we had our affairs in order we could have easily been in the running for European football.

Well yes, but that comment in particular is spot in and has been after almost every game. Maybe if McClaren tried something different people wouldn't feel the need to point out that here is a man who keeps on doing the same thing over and over hoping for a different outcome.

I guess people are getting used to where Ashley has us as a club right now. There should be a revolt about the constant level of underachievement while the club is being abused, but people just shrugg off the constant stream of disappointments nowadays. In hindsight, maybe it would have been better to lose the West Ham game in May and just be done with it.

We played alright in the second half, so he has a point. What does "we'll be fine" even mean? Our stated target before the season was top 8. Has it been changed to PL survival already?

Nope we deserved a draw. Face it your anti McLaren stuff doesn't wash. What?

Face it lads, we deserved nowt from that game.

Definitely making our own luck

Watching this and wondering what McClaren has learnt, if anything, since the start of the season. We seem to be going backwards in terms of our style of play. Tactically, he hasn't experimented at all and I am yet to see one player do as well as I know they're capable of. We'll be very lucky to stay up.