alexthegreat

what so saying something now counts in an innocuous foul? 'cause that's what it was like, it was f*** all There was no attempt to play the ball. Thick as f*** on a yellow card. wasn't worthy of a second yellow, sorry like it just wasn't He was making no attempt to play the ball and I heard the contact his boot made on Cabaye's shinpad from 40 yards away, the referee will have heard it as well. Impossible for the ref to do anything except show a yellow card imo.

I also havent seen the replay of his second challenge but I'm astonished that there's been any debate about it from Stoke fans - I heard the collision from about 40 yards away from my seat in the East Stand and he clearly missed the ball as well. Referee couldn't have done anything else imo.

This is the team and the bench we put out at Arsenal away last season: Krul Simpson Perch Coloccini Santon Bigirimana Tiote Cisse Marveaux Obertan Ba Substitutes: Ferguson for Simpson (82) Sh.Ameobi for Bigirimana (82) Tavernier for Marveaux (88) Subs not used Harper Sa.Ameobi Abeid Streete Since then we have added 5 players plus Remy on loan, as well as getting Dummett involved in the first team and looking a viable option as a full back. On the other hand we have only lost Harper, Perch and Simpson from the 1st team squad. If we were to get into Europe then we would need a few more signings in the summer, but should be far more able to cope with the demands than last time.

Ferguson never criticised the Glazers despite the fact they have enough income to compete with the likes of Bayern Munich and Real Madrid in the transfer market. Wenger never criticised his board despite having to sell an entire title winning side to his rivals. Of course he says it's all great, what do people expect? Benitez criticized his board and look what happened to him.

Don't like watching him in the middle. He isn't that strong, he tries to hold on to the ball for far too long, and he often doesn't show enough awareness of the other players around him. He gives up possession far too easily when he plays there. The problem Pardew has is when he is out wide his defensive play can be so awful that it effects the team - Debuchy looks twice the player without Ben Arfa in front of him. Personally, I'd like to see him in the side anyway against teams like Palace, but you cant argue with the results Pardew has been getting without him. He'll be 27 in a few months and Pardew has got more out of him than his other managers. But with 18 months on his contract and with him not in the side you have to wonder how much longer he'll be here.

If it's City they get then the Mancs had better do the business. Especially since City beat us to get there.

Man City, Spurs, and Man United still in it at the moment, semi finals over two legs - can't see them winning it.

In fairness to him, he has been the under 21 captain, and would have wanted a full season in the first team to challenge for Brazil. He is a million miles away from that at the moment, I can imagine he is frustrated. He's only got himself to blame. Agree, he's played one match since May and it was arguablythe worst individual performance from a Newcastle player in that entire time (away at City). As he said himself, he has to get on with it and not sulk.

In fairness to him, he has been the under 21 captain, and would have wanted a full season in the first team to challenge for Brazil. He is a million miles away from that at the moment, I can imagine he is frustrated.

Absolutely right: Here's Ashley's spending on strikers 2007 - 2013: Viduka 0 Xisco £5.7m Zamblera 0.5 Ranger 0 Lovenkrands (twice) 0 Best £2m Ba 0 (+various add ons) Cisse £10m Gouffran £2m Total: £20.2m Cisse came on to replace a striker who his manager has said isn't fit to play 2 games in a week and shouldn't be near a start for a premier league side in the first place. As bad as he is he is Cisse is still our number 9 - you can argue about the decision as much as you want, but we just haven't got the strikers to sustain a push for the top 6 imo. I thought Southampton got a grip on the middle of the park in the 2nd half rather than us surrendering it - Anita was excellent in the first half but made mistakes in the 2nd half. Their half time changes made a difference, we had nothing on the bench to counter the grip they began to exert on midfield when Schneiderlinand Lallana came on.

Talented footballer, but there isn't enough aggression in his game imo. I don't mean that he should turn into Tiote, but I have seen Cabaye, Debuchy, Coloccini leave their foot in and get involved in a battle at some point or other. Simpson wasn't averse to that in the past, and we've even seen some of that from Krul. You never see that from Santon. I can recall him losing his composure a couple of times about 12 months ago and making a few wild challenges when the game was already gone, but apart from that he has rarely picked up a booking. Aside from that I think opposition wide players know that they won't end up in a battle with him. Obviously I'm not saying he should get more yellow cards, but he doesn't assert himself on a game in my view, either defensively or offensively. There's a question mark over his mentality rather than his ability as far as I'm concerned.

NUFC Advent calendar on Jimmy Howie, lists his achievements with us: Member of Newcastle's 1905, 1907 and 1909 Championship-winning and 1910 FA Cup Final winning side, losing finalist in 1905, 1906 and 1908 FA Cup Finals Given that the like of Crook Town could beat Barcelona at that time, surely we must have been the best team in the world during this era?

Excellent today, butI'll be a bit nervous about him playing v Southampton's pressing game next week. Decent on the ball today though.

Moyes made his star player go through the full 90 mins when he clearly wasn't fit. Sign of a desperate manager imo. Normally when they aren't wining after 70 mins they will change 2 or 3 of their front 6. The quality on their bench means that you are up against a different but equally good attack with fresh legs for the last 20 mins or so (plus Fergie time). The sight of Winifred Zaha coming on today didn't make me particularly fearful. Can't see this improving for Moyes any time soon.

another manager taken to the cleaners tactically by Pardew - both Moyes and Mourinho have been out thought by him this season. He'd be well suited to managing a top Italian side imo

If Van Persie and Rooney are both out as well as Carrick then it will probably be the weakest looking Man United team I can remember facing. I could see Moyes putting Fellani up top behind Hernandez, although maybe not from the start - they are both players that have hurt us in the past. They could still cause us major problems, even though Fellani doesn't suit Man United's style of play at all.

Man U's Premier League record: 12/13 Champions 11/12 Lost title on last day 10/11 Champions 09/10 Lost title on last day 08/09 Champions 07/08 Champions 06/07 Champions 05/06 2nd by 8 points 04/05 3rd by 17 points 03/04 3rd by 15 points 02/03 Champions 01/02 3rd by 10 points 00/01 Champions 99/00 Champions 98 / 99 Champions 97 / 98 Lost title on last day 96 / 97 Champions 95 / 96 Champions 94 / 95 Lost title on last day 93 / 94 Champions 92 / 93 Champions If they win every game between now and the end of the season they will get 94 points - probably enough to win the league but not guaranteed to, and only 5 more points than they got last season. Even with a significant improvement then, this season is still already almost guaranteed to be as bad as any in the last two decades for them, going to be hard to see Moyes lasting another year with that in mind. They have had a few years off the pace before though under the Glazers, so I think its still far too early to write them off as the new Liverpool. It must be a totally new experience for some of their fans to be out of the title race already, will be interesting to see the reaction.

The run he took us on was a big factor in us going down. We were f***ing abysmal under him. If anything, he contributed to our downfall. dunno personally looking at the results they were by no standards good or acceptable but the run post Kinnear heart attack is worse that with kinnear He managed 20 points from 18 games when he was in charge, and we went down with 34 from 38. Keegan got 4 out of 3, and Hughton and Shearer took 10 points from the 17 games they managed between themselves. He's always going to argue that he would have kept us up, and tbh he may well have done.

A lot of hatred for someone I am presuming you have never even met. What evidence are you waiting for btw? A manager of the year award? A manager of the month award?

The way Pardew has spoken about fans, the club and about Ashley (in praise) are a disgrace, and to say he wants to uphold traditions Sir Bobby brought to the club make me want to put a meat cleaver through Pardew's bollocks to be honest. Wish he would just shut up. When Robson talked about fans when he was having a rough ride he called us ungrateful b******s and budgies whereas Pardew never said anything like that during his bad spell, so I suppose thats one of Robson's traditions that he isn't upholding . I don't see much wrong with what Pardew's said, as usual. If he says he's trying to use one of our best managers as a role model then what is wrong with that?

May well have got this completely wrong, and I was only half watching it, but from my seat in the East Stand it looked as if Pardew was changing his mind between bringing on Cisse and Ben Arfa, had Cisse ready to go. Then he changed his mind and pointed to Ben Arfa. Ben Arfa took his training top off to reveal he was only wearing a training t shirt. He went running down the tunnel (that bit definitely happened) and then came back out, by which point Pardew decides to stick Cisse on. All the carry on means that 4 mins of stoppage time are up, Cisse comes on, and the ref immediately blows for full time. Anyone else see this? There was definitely some sort of carry on.

Points gained after going behind Aston Villa 11 6 Manchester United 11 6 Chelsea 12 5 Everton 12 5 Cardiff City 11 4 Norwich City 12 4 Stoke City 12 4 Manchester City 11 3 Fulham 12 3 Hull City 12 3 Liverpool 12 3 Southampton 12 3 West Bromwich Albion 11 2 Swansea City 12 2 Arsenal 12 1 Tottenham Hotspur 11 0 Crystal Palace 12 0 Newcastle United 12 0 Sunderland 12 0 West Ham United 12 0 We are one of 5 teams that haven't got anything from a game once we've gone behind.

Points lost from winning positions this season Team Pld PointsLost 1 Southampton 12 0 2 Aston Villa 11 0 3 Chelsea 12 2 4 Fulham 12 2 5 Hull City 12 2 6 Norwich City 12 2 7 Manchester United 11 2 8 Tottenham Hotspur 11 2 9 Arsenal 12 3 10 Cardiff City 11 3 11 Liverpool 12 4 12 Swansea City 12 4 13 West Bromwich Albion11 4 14 Newcastle United 12 5 15 Sunderland 12 5 16 Crystal Palace 12 6 17 West Ham United 12 6 18 Manchester City 11 6 19 Everton 12 7 20 Stoke City 12 7 We've dropped points from winning positions v Hull and Liverpool (when we only had 10 men) which is slightly worse than average in the league. It does seem quite rare that a team loses from a winning position on the whole though.

got told the exact amount the other week - can't remember precisely what it was but I think it was in the region of 480.

They've usually given us a very good game over the last 4 years. They aren't a bad side and this won't be easy at all. Narrow home win.