Dr Venkman

Should've been sacked months ago.

And we're off! 3-1 to the toon.

That one of Pardew is mint

Mehdi Abeid in Footlocker

Said it before but all this talk of him having them wound up is interesting, considering they've just sacked a manager who based his whole career on winding players up and little else.

Going to this with my granda, should be good for a bit of old school craic

Been banging this drum for months now.

My god I'm excited for this now. Lets send these prehistoric fools back into the abyss where they belong.

I hope you've got a spare pair of Y fronts and a pencil. http://robertdavidsullivan.typepad.com/.a/6a00e54ffb0bef8834017744a46b16970d-250wi WIBBLE Hooray!

Oh I'm sorry I misread the post you quoted. Fair enough his record wasn't the worst, it is a good indicator of how good he is at his job though, just like everyone else.

well said and for those Pardew apologist. Take a look at yourself before he came here and now that he's been here. Ask yourself this question, do you ever see Alan Pardew managing a bigger club than nufc in the future? be honest, and that tells you everything. That means bugger all. What bigger clubs than us did Keegan go on to manage after he left us? (both spells) The one bigger job he got, he failed. As I said a week or two ago, I don't see what the issue is with people being prepared to offer a manager who had us within touching distance of a top 4 spot, and close to a European Semi-Final, a bit longer to put things right. His previous record definitely means something. It's ludicrous to suggest otherwise, absolutely ludicrous. The comparison to Keegan is laughable.

No-one will reply to that Bimpy because its sensible. It's easier to rubbish the grander stuff like 'Pardew's shit and this gameplan was just the same stuff we always get'. I totally believe it though.

I hope you've got a spare pair of Y fronts and a pencil.

Surely Pardew will have a plan specifically formulated for this fixture?

That's fair enough. It's the fact that the tactics weren't much different than usual that irritates me. We simply need to be a more balanced team than Pardew has made us.

Can everyone shut up about Barcelona? Even the Benfica fans agree the league is shite.

Big picture is he's not good enough agreed, but is there a replacement out there who would want to come to us and could make us play better football? Especially considering the financial restrictions we're under compared to sides people expect us to be competing against? We don't have London as bait, we can't pay players £80k a week because we're highly unlikely to break into the top four and get all the money that comes with it and Ashley clearly has faith in the man who got us to 5th last season. I just think constantly griping about every single thing he does just isn't worth it. I think when he gets things right he should get the credit for it and when he gets things wrong he should get blamed for it. It's just being a football manager isn't that clear cut, a player won't always do what you tell them. And do you really think he wants Shola as his 2nd choice striker? He's not that deranged. Yes. For all the 'we're only little old Newcastle' tub thumping Ashley/Llambias have done (and seemingly asked Pardew to do on their behalf) they've assembled a good squad that only needs a few additions now to make it very, very good. Whether they have the drive to bring a better manager in is debatable but I'm positive we could attract someone considerably better. I don't feel like I'm constantly griping about every little thing that he does, I'm constantly griping about NUFC under his management, because his priorities are wrong, and he's in charge of good players who collectively make a bad team.

Big picture. Always about the big picture. He's not good enough.

Spot on. We had to at the very least beat a very good side 2-0. We scored one and had 4 other very good opportunities (Cisse offside x2, Cisse put through by Bigi and Ben Arfa towards the end). We also kept a side who aren't exactly the worst attacking team around out until right near the end when we were stretched and allowed them to take advantage. We didn't win by the required margin to go through so if you are being pedantic we didn't do enough but we didn't massively fall short. To EXPECT to beat a team like Benfica by 2 clear goals isn't realistic, well not to me anyway. We played a conservative game, road our luck a little but even in our poorer periods we were creating the odd chances or breaking but being let down by the final ball (that attempted cross by Cabaye ), we then went all out and put them under immense pressure but couldn't make that break through. I certainly won't be embarrassed by our performance. That's right actually. Expecting to beat them in 20 minutes is canny mad as well.

yep he did and still gets stick, haters crawling out the woodwork- disappeared when we got the goal the sad sacks.

If only we'd had the benefit of foresight.

Seriously? Our squad's pretty good I'd say, it certainly has been since January, we didn't play anyone good until Anzhi.

I dislike it immensely actually. The only fun thing about the football he's got us playing is reading you lot trying to defend it.

I was born in North Shields mate, I didn't get the ferry there.

Delighted to see him back. He's still mint when he's a bit fat.