Pantu

Apparently Faurlin went off on a stretcher for them today, if he's missing and there's no Joey their midfield looks decidedly poor, and they're in freefall, really need to capitalise on that and get a bit of a run going.

10:45. Expect our highlights to be taken on a handheld camera and amounting to no more than 2 minutes of footage, with no replays of goals (seriously, it's ITV ffs).

AHAHAHA, "Superman" mask put on according to the commentators

GOAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL

YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!! BEN ARFA Commentator went mental

off the line

Sho time coming up Comes on for Obertanz

Plenty of time to turn this around, some of them doom mongering in here is outrageous . That said we do sound quite sloppy and I'm a little concerned with the amount of times the radio newcastle commentators have complained about the fact that Best seems very isolated when he goes in behind their defence out wide. Was hoping Obertan might get a confidence boost from a spirited display but it sounds like the poor lad's having a shocker and getting verbal volleys from all over the ground

The commentators then , "is that in?" "Aye I think it is" "aww na"

These radio tyneside lads are brilliant

Oh wow. Fuck

My (TELEVISION), my beautiful (TELEVISION)! Fucking hell it comes back and it's 2-2!! YES!

FINALLY

Yay a change! Ryan Taylor

Pretty dire that, Simpson and Colo must have played ten long balls each, and some of the passing in the final third after we've bundled our way there has been disgraceful. Massive thumbs up for Vuckic, Obertan has been reasonable and without Ba we would be completely fucked.

Fucking hell what a hit, so unlucky

I love matches between desperately out of form sides, I genuinely think this will be an absolute classic. I want lots of booing and slapstick defending for bags of lols

I've done that one a few times now. Ha ha, I just highlighted it to give all the people you've (quite rightly) pulled up for poor spelling and grammar a chance to sneer at you, with it being the season of goodwill and everything . Regarding Ben Arfa, I think for him to be most effective we need to change our style of play quite a bit and for Pardew place a lot of trust in him to put in big performances, we can't play as directly down the wings (as we're trying to at the moment) as we'd be much less effective with him replacing one of the bigger forwards like Best or Shola or Ba. If he gets to play in the hole behind Ba we'd be going through the middle a lot more and relying on Ben Arfa to orchestrate a lot of our final third attacking play, against Chelsea this didn't work too well (Romeu was exceptional and Chelsea were very well organised) but I think it would against the dross, I'd love to see Cabaye, Tiote and Ben Arfa in front of them against Bolton. I can understand Pardew going with Best and Ba, they are effective together and he knows that they'll create chances just through their strength and work rate, but Ben Arfa needs to be given a fair crack against some of the mid-table sides, hopefully tomorrow, and certainly against utter shite like Bolton on boxing day, even just to give us a proper plan B in matches like Swansea where it was clear plan A stopped working rather than just chuck on Sammy and Shola and hope for "a diagonal ball and a header" (that's pretty much exactly what he said as well . I do worry that Pardew is too conservative to do this though, and that come the summer we'll get "he's clearly a talented player, but for whatever reason it just hasn't worked for him here, and we wish him well at (insert 3rd-7th placed Italian/German/Spanish/French team here) ".

If that's a case why does Pardew want to play him number 10 role, a role renowned for it's lack of defensive application by almost everyone that has ever played it. Fuck knows, I just invisage that comment referring to how much work our players do off the ball. All season we've been closing down brilliantly, including on Saturday. Maybe he just doesn't believe HBA is giving enough and the tracking stats back that up? Even when selecting someone to play in the hole he's probably expecting that player to chase and harry the centre backs. It's "envisage" I'll have you know Seriously though, it is. If Ben Arfa doesn't get at least a half against this pile of shite on wednesday I'm going to be very annoyed, he needs to be given time in games where teams are dropping deep against us and prepared to let us have the majority of the ball. Teams tire from all our pressing, but so do our forward players and I simply couldn't believe he wasn't given half an hour to try and change things on saturday, he wouldn't have worked as hard as Best in the second half (and I refuse to believe Shola works harder than him at closing down and tracking back) but he wouldn't have needed to, the pattern of the game had been established and was perfect for him to exploit.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2011/dec/15/newcastle-cheik-tiote-alan-pardew Alan Pardew has warned rival clubs it will be "very, very difficult" to tempt Newcastle to sell the Ivory Coast midfielder Cheik Tioté in the January transfer window. Newcastle secured Tioté on a new six-and-a-half-year contract early this year after his impressive start to life in England. He has since been linked with several clubs, including Manchester United and Chelsea, and Newcastle are bracing themselves for bids. Pardew said: "He's a big target because he's a great player, and great players are going to be targets. We are always on our guard with Cheik because we realise that to us, he is very, very important and it would be very, very difficult to get him out of here." Pardew spent much of last January insisting that Andy Carroll was not for sale, only for Liverpool to make a remarkable £35m bid which they could not refuse. The manager knows a sizeable bid for Tioté or any other player – Fabricio Coloccini and Danny Simpson are yet to agree new deals – could leave the club with another decision to make. However, that offer would have to be significant and dwarf the £3.5m Newcastle paid FC Twente for the midfielder. Pardew said: "You never know with the window. It's such a minefield of possibilities. We have one or two players here that top clubs, I'm sure, will be interested in, but the one thing I would say on that is that they are going to have to pay a lot of money to take anybody out of here because we are obviously in a good position, not just on the playing side, but financially as well. "In terms of players coming in, there is certainly one player who will come in and we are hoping maybe two – if we don't lose anybody." The Sochaux striker Modibo Maiga is expected to join the club next month.

http://i.imgur.com/ujM8h.png Edit: I see you've explained.

What happened 15 years ago?

Are Bayern full strength David? Might go for them on a handicap (though not -4!) Schweinsteiger is missing. Obviously Robben will be missing, as always. But Schweinsteiger broke his collarbone during midweeks Champions League match against Napoli. He'll be missed but, normally they should win very, very comfortably even without him. That's why I've gone (-4). Saying that all, it's a derby and stranger things have happend in football than what would be an Augsburg win today. Cheers, as long as it's just them two (I'd assumed Robben would be missing) then they should surely win by at least two, Bayern have looked brilliant whenever I've seen them, didn't realise it was a local derby though!

Are Bayern full strength David? Might go for them on a handicap (though not -4!)

I just want to know who rang him after the Spurs game?