Thorpinho

I find it difficult to understand that Kieron Dyer got so much abuse for his attitude and that tag "the King of Bling"....yet there is so much support here for Defoe who is exactly the same. Football wise he is no more than decent, which simply cannot justify the minimum 7/8 million price tag and big wages.

Chimbonda and Defoe are the only two with any ability to improve our squad. However I don't think either of them are the type of person we need right now in our dressing room. And besides Defoe wont leave London and if he did it would only be for a massive wage packet, which would not be appropriate for his level of talent.

Must be a scary thought for the new owners that if the season continued like this (but we avoid relegation) what the season ticket sales would be like!

Purely from the perspective of ownership of the club i would absolutely love it for them to give sam time and for him to turn it around. That kind of long term patience and backing of a manager to the fruition of success would be a welcome change from trigger happy freddy. But unless results improve thats not going to happen, no one can continually back underachievement.

I think its a cumulative effect of poor performances over the season making the fans sick of it. The performance tonight certainly didn't warrant such a reaction, but consistent poor performances test the patience of any fan.

I just watched Gus Poyet's interview on bbc after the Villa defeat. He was saying Spurs are going to be signing defenders. They could potentially sell Berbatov to fund those signings i guess. Incidentally i also thought when listening to him and the interviewer talk about rubbish set piece defending, that their defence is a complete shambles yet doesn't get anywhere near the level of criticism ours has and continues to receive.

Agbonlahor is not replacing Owen he is replacing those fringe strikers like defoe/johnson/bent who are clearly not international strikers. The focus of any article about players breaking into england team should be david bentley - how that guy is not in the starting eleven i dont know. Control, crossing, shooting, passing, creativity, vision, two footed. Does anybody know any weaknesses in his game?? He is one of my favourite players in the league and i would love to see a player like him at newcastle.

We have to look at ourselves as fans and ask where do we want to go? Provided there is no possibility of relegation we should stick with Sam unless someone like Mourinho would take the job (highly unlikely). Give it time and try to encourage consistency/stability. But as we are learning to do this, Sam needs to learn and improve himself. He needs to understand the need for some creativity and excitement. If we stick with it it has to be a two way street - blind total support from the fans for rubbish football is unrealistic, as is gung ho all out attack from Sam. There has to be a bit of each from the two sides to find a compromise.

that nasri does look class. Would love newcastle to sign pretty much any of the players on that list, but not going to happen! Being overly pessimistic about the list, a fair few of the players on there that i have seen are total midgets/lightweights which could limit how good they become. Saviola is a good example, he was hyped up to be incredible but he has not really reached that level, which seems largely due to him being so small and weak. (oh and i realise that messi is tiny but hes an exception)

Apart from Milner and the goalkeepers I just don't like any of them. When i was little Peter Beardsley was my idol, who the fuck are the kids meant to like these days???

I think Shearer stands as good a chance as anybody of being successful here. The only manager out there is Mourinho, and hes not going to manage us. Shearer would also have a good chance if he gets a good team in around him. I want him in to just see what happens, get it out of the way and give it a go. If we don't then it will just drag on and on. Plus if he does crap at least he would go down fighting and all guns blazing style, with a genuine attempt at attacking football. That contrasts with Sam's current demise, where although utterly ridiculous it actually does look like he actively discourages good football. I reckon if he does get the job he would bring one of his mates like Mike Newell in as his assistant. Could be amazing, could be rubbish, would be more interesting than allardyce though.

It would certainly cost a lot to sack them all and pay off their contracts. Would we have to sack them though? I would have thought we could just sack allardyce and leave the rest of them here. Then the new manager could come in and assess the staff in the same way as the players and decide which ones to keep and which ones to get rid of. Those who are loyal enough to big sam to follow him would resign as well. I don't see it as a package deal of sack allardyce = sack the rest.

Don't know if anyone has mentioned it yet, but he is going to be quality in the prison footy team. It will be like that film mean machine. I really don't care what happens to him, he is rubbish and a thug. Offers the club absolutely nothing.

Does anybody know what the situation with Van Persie is, just looked at Arsenal tea and hes not even on the bench. He is in my fantasy team and really dragging me down

Pretty much summed up what I was just about to post. HTT was the fella who was telling us how brilliant Allardyce is and how great we are going to be when he was linked/took over in his numerous mega posts he likes to make. Wrong, I was obviously delighted with his appointment and it showed in my posts but guess where I had us down as finishing at the start of the season? Mid-table! While others had us anywhere from top 4 to mid-table. Hardly the reaction you're referring to, eh? I've said since day one it is going to be a long hard slog to turn this club around and that the manager needs time and money as well as good fortune and that goes for anyone whether it be Big Sam or another manager. Actually HTT im not wrong, the "reaction i was referring to" was your dismissal of every other manager put forward, making the question of if not allardyce then who totally pointless here. Its got nothing to do with where you said we would finish. When he first came in you could barely go a day without some mega post about his training methods, how amazing it was the way he dealt with some small situation and how he was the man to take us forward. Since we have gone to shit your mega posts about him have kinda dried up. I would love allardyce to succeed, but until he proves he can do it do us a favour and stop the rubbish like this thread of dismissing every other manager put forward when compared to the glorious big sam!

I never said there are any better alternatives, just that suggesting any in this thread is fairly pointless because of the inevitable response they receive. My opinion on it is that we keep sam, aim to push for 7/8/9th place in the table BUT with Ashley/Mort being ready and very willing to cut Sam loose and pounce on an opportunity if a top manager becomes available.

HTT your completely up Allardyce's arse and have been since day one, and any manager any one suggests your going to just pick faults with and reject as inferior. So suggesting any other manager for this thread becomes completely pointless.

It really showed today how utterly atrocious the first touch and composure of our team is. It lets us down on so many occasions and is one of our biggest weaknesses. Viduka is a bit of an exception but in general it is a joke.

Someone above said Arsenal have better fans than Man U what a load of bollocks that is! Man Utd's away fans are the best I have seen at St James mainly for their creativity in their songs, although Fenerbahce for pure insanity come close.

I think perhaps Mourinho encountered a situation where if he wanted some decent players he was having to pay 20 million just because it was chelsea bidding. So he had to turn to the likes of Sidwell, Pizarro, Ben Haim to fill out the squad.

He's not Maradona so we should definitely get rid of him, and also because he's not Maradona he is the worst player ever to wear a newcastle shirt

Depressing that teams like Forest, Leeds, Sheff Wed are all languishing where Boro should be. Premier League would be a lot better atmosphere/crowd wise with those sorts of teams rather than some of the shite that we have at the moment.

As was mentioned above, no serious action will be taken. The situation with Italian football is ridiculous now, something has to be done about it.

"Joe Cole's been shit for the past season or two" .....Hasn't he been injured for a lot of that time???

Leaving aside the more obvious ones like Maradona...I always loved watching Raul when he was at his best. Also Rivaldo was a brilliant player as a few people have mentioned. Got to respect Cafu's achievements as well. In 10 years time Messi will probably be high up in these sort of lists.