toonpete1892

I'm not even going to start with the football today as I got wound up at the game so to start up again is simply not worth it. Apologies if already mentioned but the thing that really annoyed me today was the prick in the Everton end making airplane gestures. The lads next to me saw him doing it during the 17th and 18th minute and were outraged at the time. I personally didn't see him doing it until they celebrated their second. When I saw him, and knowing he'd done it previously, I tried to make my way to the nearest steward to make a formal complaint. I wasn't alone. The next five minutes involved the steward threatening to chuck us out for being irate, a police woman witness it for herself then a senior officer come across to try and dissolve the situation. During this time he continued to make the gesture, something that more and more of the crowd around us witnessed. Eventually, once they'd turfed someone out in the wrong section, the Police escorted him out of the ground to cheers from our fans. Two minutes later he was back in his seat, smirking and joking whilst being the (sorry) victim of our fan's chants. Him exiting his seat then returning continued until the end of the game. Not once did the stewards or officers come back to us or write anything down. Hours after the game and I'm still annoyed. I didn't know either lad personally but we grew up with John/the Undertaker on the terraces and a lot of my mates travelled on the buses with Liam. Now I'm not for this whole booing because other fans aren't joining in (sitting in silence is fine as long as they aren't singing over it) but this was totally inappropriate. He must be educated to some level, he knew about the incident hence paying his own special tribute to it, but the bloke must have been in his mid 30s and had a little lass next to him. His actions may or may not have been enough for an arrest but I'd report a fellow fan if I saw them doing something similar. I don't want to be sharing the terraces with, for a better word, scum. I'll be raising a complaint with Everton FC in the morning and asking how and why he was allowed back to his seat. The Police, Stewards and CCTV are there for us as fans as much as anything and acts like this can't be ignored. I have crowd shots of where he was sitting (he was the one wearing an off white jumper in a sea of dark jackets) but if anyone else had conversations with stewards/the Police please let me know.

Whilst sitting in the pub last night unwilling to join in on our conversation I was listening to discussions of other groups. Surprisingly the same points got repeated and repeated. - with a fired up Tiote and Colback on the pitch, why wasn't Anita on the bench to replace one of them after their inevitable yellow cards? Losing either one of them would have created a void and imbalance, something that was majorly evident when Tiote went off. Plunder land must have thought Christmas had come early when they saw our only holding sub option was, erm, Cabella. - Gouffran. I'll just leave it as that. - Perez, Cisse and Armstrong all being on the pitch yet only one being up front. - the constant movement of Sissoko to try and get weaker players into the game. He ruled the first 10-15 mins then got moved to accommodate a missing Gouffran. He needs to be our core. Our team should be built around him. What happens when De Jong starts and wants that 'just off the striker' role, where does Sissoko go then? - the Cabella sub. Just why? All it did was just unsettle the team both offensively and defensively at a critical time. I'm sure they could have held out for 5 minutes longer. - the 33min tribute was nice but it didn't deserve the same minute long, stand up applause we do to remember John and Liam. We've said thanks multiple times but £33k from a global (not just SAFC) contribution isn't the same as two lads tragically losing their lives. Same goes for those applauding the SAFC fans during the 17min tribute. No, it was for our boys, applaud our boys. - connected to that, and I know the kids sing the Jimmy Saville cringetastic song, Sunderland staying classy with their 'Steven Taylor we wish you were dead' chant. A lot of them were singing it followed by at least one who mimicked an airplane right next to one of the stewards. We're sat in the L4 corner so there could have been more. - the hatred of Poyet. That's 5 loses in a row to him now. He doesn't have the greatest of squads but he manages to manipulate the weaknesses in the opposition time after time after time. Animated on the touch line he becomes their 12th player. Pardew meanwhile stands there arms folded , occasionally giving it the smily face gesture, to 'protect' his players from the abuse aimed at him. When they scored there was nothing from him. Fucking nothing. I could go on. I live in Manchester and continue to go to both the home and away games when I can. I was down at Arsenal last week and saw us cave in to lose 4-1. I don't like us losing and it hurt but in a way it was accepted because of the week coming up (and the fact we'd just beaten Chelsea). Due to work I couldn't make it down on Wednesday but by all accounts that really hurt. Safe in the league, this was our chance to kick on and test ourselves. The performance was anything but. Then yesterday, our biggest league game of the season. The players had ground to make up for Wed, rested players were brought back in, the ground was rocking and, in amongst it all, we had 5 Geordies in the lineup. It still wasn't enough. The handicaps were restricting us and a late breakaway goal was highly predictable. This was a massive week for us. A week that could have seen us jump on and show the club had intentions to actually push for something. For me the blame lies at Pardew's door. But 'who would come in' they say. Well any young manager would bite the hand off to work at Newcastle United. They'd get 50k shouting their name, they'd get state of the art training facilities, they'd get to pick their team from a squad of internationals. It's evident a large percentage want change but within this a large number are stopping the change, often siding with sympathisers rather than those actively fighting. This week has been a horror show but it's a horror show that keeps on being repeated. It wasn't a blip. November was the blip.

In amongst a few Ameobi moments he had a strong game. Defensively he importantly found himself in the right place at the right time quite a few times and is growing as a PL wide man. Still day dreams a little and allows them to overlap but I'm not sure how much of that is tactics as he isn't alone in doing so.

Just noticed someone posted it elsewhere. Worth reading again IMO.

Surprised this hasn't already been posted. A truly heartwrenching but joyus article. If you do one thing tonight, make it this (stolen from .com who stole it from The Times). HE would have squirmed at this. Squirmed at the headline, hated his picture, recoiled from the thought that he was at the centre of things, when what he really wanted was to be at the football, there and bearing witness, there because it mattered, there because it happened. There, always there, dark jacket, white shirt, dark trousers, there until that inexplicable, unfathomable moment when he was no longer there. The story of John Alder is not easy to relate, because a reserved, private man would have shied from the telling. Because an extraordinary life of dogged support - over four decades, he missed a single Newcastle United game, when his mother was fading - ended incomprehensibly, when a missile obliterated the aeroplane that he, Liam Sweeney, a fellow fan, and 296 other people were flying in. Because the details are almost too difficult to bear. He was a known unknown; familiar to thousands - that long hair, those clothes, that reliable, ubiquitous presence - spoken to by few. They called him 'The Undertaker' but he was also John, Uncle John, a son, a colleague and a friend. He was a brother to Joyce, his closest living relative, inseparable as children, her a tomboy traipsing after him, he "polite and gentle," both "street-kids" playing near their auntie's pub. It was on Thursday July 17 that Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was shot down over Ukraine, but it is only now that Joyce and her family can contemplate an ending. She was present when John's body was flown from Amsterdam to Leicestershire one Thursday this month, after an agonising process of recovery, identification and delay. There will be a quiet funeral later this week and a reception at St James' Park; well, it had to be there, really. The quietness is their choice. There was neither quiet or choice in John's death, the scrolling ticker of dreaded news, totting up fatalities, blame thrown between sparring governments, the saturation coverage and then an emotional swell which built and flooded from Tyneside. John and Liam had been traveling to New Zealand to watch Newcastle in pre-season, a version - extreme though it was - of what we all do. They were going to the match. In one sense, it was universal, in another alien. John's name trended on Twitter - he did not do Twitter - Sir Bobby Robson's statue at St James' became a shrine, Gary Ferguson, a Sunderland supporter, decided to raise money for some flowers; £33,618 later, it was a phenomenon for which two charities would benefit. There were ceremonies at Newcastle and Sunderland, an invitation to Downing Street (Joyce was not ready for that). All the while, John was not home; always there but now absent. "Those first few days were surreal," Joyce said. "You're suddenly reading and watching things at an intense rate, to try and glean as much information as possible and then you hear that they can't even get on the crash site - it's heartbreaking … You're seeing this site and thinking 'my brother's there'. The inside of you is just screaming all the time." Joyce and Ian, her husband, have not spoken publicly before, but the desire to contain their grief is balanced by recognition that they and John have become part of something bigger, by a need to explain who he was. And they have decided, too, that his collection of memorabilia, programmes hoarded and cataloged - nothing thrown away - should be auctioned off for The Sir Bobby Robson Foundation. They want John's obsession to benefit others. We met at their mother's old house in Low Fell, on a neat slope of terraces. It was here that Joyce and John grew up, the home that John never left and scarcely changed when Ethel, their mum, passed away eight years ago, barring a Buddha figurine perched on the gas fire that he did not like and replaced with a horse. It was from here that John would set off at 11.30amevery fortnight, to walk to St James', through Gateshead and over the dark currents of the Tyne. As a boy, he was not gripped by football. "From the age of 11 to 16, he probably swam three times a day," Joyce said. "He was dedicated to it - he swam for Gateshead, we've still got all the gala programmes - but he had his heart set on being a technician for the Post Office and the grammar school entered him for mainly CSEs. So he stopped swimming and got the O Levels he needed and went on to work for British Telecom. "He'd dedicated his life to swimming and then suddenly he just cut that off. He never went to the baths again. That was about the time he started with the football. It's as if something else had to fill the space. I think he had an obsessive nature. My dad wasn't interested in football, but we had some friends up the street and their dad took him. That was where it started." At one point, John bought a 'Limited Edition Heritage Stone' which was amongst hundreds laid at St James'. It was labelled 'THE UNDERTAKER 4-1-1964', a reference not to his date of birth, but his first match. Newcastle were beaten 2-1 by Bedford Town in the FA Cup that day, a fitting introduction to a team seldom worthy of those who follow it (his last game was a 2-1 friendly defeat to Oldham Athletic). It began with every home game and then spread further when he was earning money. He applied for a passport, just to watch Newcastle, but travel was organised, whether here or abroad, with painstaking care; he could not miss kick-off. No drink before games, because alcohol may have impaired his enjoyment (he could make up for it afterwards) or forced him to the toilet. Shared car journeys meant BBC 5 Live or companionable silence; cheese sandwiches and no music. He always wore the same thing, but 'The Undertaker' garb was not a costume and he was not a celebrity (although he was inducted in the Premier League's Hall of Fame in 1999 as Newcastle's 'Super Fan'). "I think it came about because he used to go matches in his school uniform," Joyce said. "Black blazer, a white shirt and dark trousers. He hated shopping and it was what he was comfortable in. There are four identical shirts upstairs that have not come out of their packets." John had always been "painfully shy" - visiting their gran, he would ask Joyce to go in first, just in case anybody else was there - and yet football is social. "I doubt he would have told anybody he had a sister or a niece and nephews," Joyce said. "He would keep his private life separate. And in the same way, the football world was his world. On the day I took the wreath to the ground, I remember standing on the pitch thinking 'you should be up in your seat, John.'." Football kept him from family functions. His dedication "was too serious" to pull his leg about, but they could talk about the sport and there would be some ribbing with Richard and Peter, his nephews, who are Liverpool fans and John knew the right people to get them tickets for Anfield. When Ethel died, he began sending Joyce an email "as regular as clockwork, 11am every Monday, with 'I am okay' written in the subject line." They last saw him at the end of January, a chat on the train - Joyce and Ian were en route to Australia, to see Karen, their daughter; John was traveling to Norwich City - but there was a tradition that they would talk on their birthdays and they spoke on Joyce's, on July 10.He told her there would be no Monday morning email for three weeks, no 'I am okay', because he was heading to New Zealand and then on to Germany, where Newcastle had friendly games. He and Liam had settled on Malaysian Airlines. "He mentioned the plane that had disappeared and I gather, retrospectively, that the tickets were cheaper because of that," Joyce said. A little while later, Joyce and Ian were out for the day. They got home and caught the late news; a flight, a crash, Ukraine, Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. John's route, although he had not told them when he was flying. It was after 10pm and John went to bed early and rose at six - a habit from swimming - but Joyce rang the home phone. "I didn't get an answer." Left it a few minutes, tried again. "Still no answer." Dug out his mobile number. "Still no answer." She rang the Foreign Office at 11pm. "I just thought that if they told me he wasn't a passenger, I could sit back and relax," she said. Details were taken but there was no call back. She tried again at midnight. "They said 'we haven't got that information'." She stayed up until two and then attempted to sleep, the phone beside her. "At half-past five, there was a knock on the door and two policewomen were there and they looked at me and said 'I think you know what we've come to tell you'. All I could say was 'I hope not'." A tragedy, but not an accident; somebody flicked a switch or pulled a trigger. Somebody gave an order. "I can't cope with that at all," Joyce said. "It's just so senseless and when you look at the bigger picture, the other passengers, the innocence… Nobody on that plane deserved to die. "It's the enormity of it. When you think about how much grief you've got yourself and then it's multiplied by all these people. Sending that missile up … You know it's going to be in the news for a long time and every time it feels like somebody has stabbed you. It's a reminder of your own personal loss, but a big part of you feels that loss for everybody else, the tears cried every night by people who are screaming out for their loved ones and they're never coming home. "It couldn't have happened in a worse way or in a worse place - there's no way you could ever visit the site and say 'this is where my brother died'. I didn't think I'd be the sort of person who would want to, but part of me now feels it would have been nice to say 'this is where you went, John. Goodbye'. It all just feels too much." The circumstances are harrowing. The police traveled to Low Fell to collect forensic data, to take Joyce's DNA. John was eventually identified by the fingerprints he gave to United States immigration when Newcastle were there in 2011, but that was not until the end of August and the wait since then has been because there may have been more of him to find. "In my own mind, I've got to think he's there in that box like I see him in my head," Joyce said. At first, there had been regular contact from the Foreign Office, but "then it got quite patchy. Just before John was found there was very little communication and I remember my daughter being here, getting on to them - she was a lawyer at one stage - and she gave them quite a bit of stick, but we haven't heard from them since. It's all been through police liaison officers. Sometimes I've been tearing my hair out - is somebody going to ring, is someone going to let me know?" The response from football, from Newcastle, from Sunderland, from everywhere, was overwhelming. It brought warmth from St James' and a sense of unity to a fractured club; in the 17th minute of every match, an echo of MH17, there are 60 seconds of applause for John and Liam, followed by a throaty roar. John may have had a dim view of that - the match should not be interrupted - but the noise, the collective, brought solace to his relatives. He never wore a replica shirt or a scarf, but plenty have been draped in his memory. "I found it amazing," Joyce said. "All this press, all this attention, all this for John and Liam. My brother was a total introvert! All the gestures, all the reactions were so touching. We're so grateful. You read all these things like 'condolences to the family' and part of you is thinking 'well, that's me', but it doesn't feel like you." Notions such as rivalry dissipated. Ferguson asked on a Sunderland message board what they could do; soon, donations from fans of clubs everywhere, were rushing in. "It wasn't made up of big gifts and that's more touching in some ways," Joyce said, "that so many people sent £5 or £10. It wasn't just people who could write a cheque for £3000 and not think about it. It was 'I'm a fan, too', just recognising that here were two guys going to a football match." There is now a permanent 'Alder Sweeney Memorial Garden' at St James' and when the families went there to reflect and to grieve, they asked Newcastle if they could enter the stadium and spend some time at John and Liam's seats. "I hadn't been to a ground before," Joyce said. "I'd never watched a match. I looked around and thought 'can so many people really come here, can it really be this big?' "When we came back for the first game and the crowd applauded, I think I had my eyes shut then. I couldn't cope. But when we were up in the box, looking around … all this for John and Liam. It's incredible that all these people could feel part of our tragedy." When the rocket flared and 298 lives ended and others changed immeasurably and forever, Joyce and Ian had driven to Ethel's terrace in Low Fell. In the lounge, they found a scrap of paper resting on an armchair beside the fire, the one where the horse stands. "It listed 'passport, trousers, shirt', column after column," Joyce said. "He'd used the same list time and time again. He ticked it off every time he went away for the football." George Caulkin

I'm not remotely tempted. Probably go get a shower and head out to watch it somewhere. With that in mind - anyone who's not going to the game - want to watch it somewhere? Shark Club is always available but shark club. I'm going to come over and watch the Lockwood Cup then head to town to watch the match. Shark bar is canny but do they show games on the Forrin channels? Used to, not sure if they do now. Someone caught up with them and have threatened them with a lawsuit. No more dodgy streams.

Pivotal day today. As much I think we'll lose and hope we lose to hopefully get rid of Pardew, we need the 3 points. The jump away from the relegation zone and into the next group is slowly becoming bigger and bigger and it won't be long until 6, 7, 8 games in become 8, 7, 6 to go. Lose today and Pardew has to go. The international break could, for once, come in our favour. Imagine a new manager coming in and having a fairly quiet week to do some house cleaning before the main squad come back. We then go into what should be a very winnable home game against Leicester. Optimism is fresh and high in the stands, the grass is greener and we get the win everyone craves. Happy days. Or, we lose, draw or win and Pardew remains. The international break, again, deflates the pressure on Pardew and he is allowed to waste vital days doing whatever he seems to waste his days doing. Pressure and expectations rise again for Leicester and we find ourselves in a similar boat as the Hull game (or the Cardiff game) where we're fighting rather than focusing. We've wasted another 2-3 weeks and whatever the results, Pardew is still around. I won't be cheering on Swansea to tear us apart but I won't be going out of my way to watch, follow or find out the score. I want to say I'm numb to it but my uncontrollable desire to support AND protest at Stoke showed, at least deep down, my heart is still very much involved and tangled up in this mess. I don't know what I'm trying to say, I just want my club back.

Bit patronising But so did the fans on Saturday. A lot of whom made a huge effort to get behind the team for the first 4 minutes but then rip Pardew on the 5th. If it wasn't for the protest then there would have been no atmosphere yet again. At least we got 10 minutes. Those protesting were the ones supporting. The vast majority did nothing.

'Apparently' it's been kicking off in Germany. I can't imagine it has. Or if it has, any NUFC would be involved. Probably to West 'am up their usual tricks.

Who are the 10 professionals who, according to Pardew, we were apparently missing today? We had to change our tactics because of their absence but I can't think past Debuchy, Santon and Remy.

Despite watching that toss down at Stoke, today isn't such a bad day. Name your swapsies ...... http://img.tapatalk.com/d/14/04/13/u2ymy3u7.jpg [attachment deleted by admin]

What a magical day!! Some of the highlights .... - walking around Manchester for a pre match pint and hearing Geordies everywhere - entering the ground and not feeling nervous (after Chelsea,Spurs and the two follow up games, today was a totally free game) - the constant and varied sing song in the first half - realising the ref wasn't giving a penalty for their dive - getting to half time and thinking we were on top - the intensity of the fans in the first 15-20 mins of the second half (I could only par it with the O'Brien song at Sunderland a couple of seasons ago) - realising the ref wasn't giving a penalty for Anita's 'handball' - scoring! Celebrating and hugging every person in sight - head tennis on the halfway line, let alone controlling the midfield - watching two glorious chances curl wide of our goal frame - appealing then seeing the flag go up when they thought they'd scored - witnessing 72000 Old Trafford muppets celebrating a goal that wasn't - Ben Arfa taking the piss out of Moyes - seeing thousands upon thousands of empty seats with minutes yet to go - 'Wor Shooolaaa, wor Shooolaaa, he's off to Brazil, cos he fucking brill, Wor Shooolaaa' - sucking the ball into the corner - winning the corner - Shola and HBA keeping it in the corner - the full time whistle! Jubilation - turning round and grinning at the glum Man Utd fans in the boxes behind us - the vast majority of our fans remaining in our seats for 20+ minutes and singing as though it was a hold in - walking to the pub/on the metro with a 'frowned face' trying to hide my inner joy - hearing the Man Utd fans cheering on the smaller clubs as though they were a mid table side - getting back into Manchester and deeming it was now 'safe' to put our scarves back on - walking past a group of lads whistling the Debuchy song and both groups shouting 'Debuchy' as we crossed paths - getting the metro back and having a pissed up Manc singing 'Cheer up Alan Shearer/Shearer took you down' for a good 15 minutes. The need to not sing back but just stand there grinning was enough - sitting in the pub with random proper United fans saying we deserved the win (they even said the pens weren't pens) - watching motd with a Brown Ale and knowing what was coming - waking up and reading the match thread - realising that we'd done it, we'd only gone and fucking done it!

I live down in Manchester and my mate is heading down on the Back Page bus for the game. How long before the game do they normally get there? I don't want to be standing around outside the ground waiting when I could be having a drink. Edit: I have his match ticket.

This Benfica game is brilliant!!! Comedy at its best.

Slightly annoyed, despite happily taking it, with the timing of Sammy's goal. I wanted 5 minutes of anger to show despite the win we're not happy with the current situation. Instead we're made to look like fickle Arsenal fans going away happy after booing their team only a few days beforehand. Saying that, I still came away angry. We was dreadful.

He is a professional footballer who should be able to play a position he is forced to play in. Like people have said, he was too eager to return the ball from where it came (generally without even turning around), watching the game bypass him and generally playing hide and seek either on the wing or when he came inside. He did better in the 2nd half and was subbed at his best but it was far below what he should have offered, again. The fact I'd pick Obertan or Sammy over him (let alone Gouffran or Vuckic) speaks volumes. A scapegoat yes, but he was very poor for a large part of his performance.

When a goal is described as fantastic despite being scored as a result of high feet. Take RvP's yesterday. The Swansea player should have been a simple block with his head but you could see him begin to move in with his head but pull out and swing his foot at it instead, ultimately putting in a crap attempt at the block and conceding. If no-one is near then fair enough but it would be a free kick anywhere else. And commentator's excuses for commentating. Not a game goes by without me getting wound up by it, and most of the time it isn't even our games.

Hardly the way to run a sustainable club is it? West Ham can't afford to pay for a new stadium/the Olympic one but they can afford to pay big fees for overpriced English players on huge contracts. It's a joke. I sometimes think our fans would be happier if we spunked money away (don't get me wrong, I want another striker and out and out winger) rather than putting the work in and buying sensibly. In football there isn't one answer, there are many.

It says it is disabled when a post a reply and doesn't state anything in the settings. It seems to be an ongoing issue according to Google, a problem that wasn't fixed with an uninstall and redownload.

Yeah. Sent from my Computer using my keyboard. Good one haha. Now I have to find a way of removing it. Stupid update! *without having to edit each post

The HawkEye goal line technology is being installed this week. ITK Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk 2

Minus the stupid two stripe inner collar I was really starting to like it but that was with the black Wonga rectangle. The white rectangle totally ruins it. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk 2

Away to Everton or Liverpool first, Hull at home on Boxing Day, one of the Manchesters at NY and the small matter of Sunderland at home early doors then away within April/May. Knowing our luck we'll get a trip to Wales over Christmas/NY when we're supposed to be playing someone local.

This time tomorrow the away team will be leading after a traditional slow start from the home side

Yeah I've got some ill bring them. Brilliant. I can't wait until Sunday now. I'll be like a kid on Christmas Eve tomorrow night.