afar

It bit obvious since he got a hattrick but that's the best game for his all round performance I've seen from Nolan. He and Tiote and helped by Barton abslutely bossed that midfield.

I'm sorry but I've been kind of away from all things NUFC for a week or so, what the hell is going on

Got to say that one of the best halves by a ref I've seen all season. Manshitty may complain but Clattenberg's got everything absolutely right there.

Got to put someone on noble

This is going to be a long evening for them. Playing awful so far, deserve to be behind, been coming.

The Mackems have been so fucking lucky in this 2nd half. And how people think Dunne is a footballer and not a complete liability to your team mystifies me. I've never seen him play well once and usually hands the opposition at least one good chance every game.

I purely biased when it comes to refs, if they've performed poorly in our games I'm going to throw them in the incompetent pile. Why isn't Howard Webb in there ? He's up at the top for me after disallowing Viduka's goal that would have saved us from relegation. But I've never seen a ref get so much wrong and look totally biased as Atkinson did at Man Shitty.

Time to cancel my scheduled PVR recording.

I honestly don't know where we go from here. Something has to change, we lost 3 games we should have expected to have won at home now. It's looking extremely grim right now. Somehow we have to halt the slide, but are the players good enough to do that ? I highly doubt it.

Wow we are shit, I thought we could survive with ease due to the relative crap at the bottom but obviously we overachieved in the games against Villa and Everton. We just can't compete at the moment and are soft at home.

Nothing fucking semi decent about Shitty's performance, they've been poor and don't deserve this.

So fucking angry right now. Man Shitty have done nothing to deserve this win and the ref has fucking cheated us, no justice in the world

How many fucking times are we going to be cheated this year ffs.

Don't think it was a pen, from the replays they just showed.

Been very good that first half, dominated posession. I Just hope both Ben Arfa and Colo are alright, any news on that ?

I said when you signed him that he wasn't good enough, and got ripped to shreds (although to be fair, i wasn't really clear about whether I meant good enough for the top flight specifically), but what we saw here was a player who seemed totally bereft of confidence, and didn't want to run at people. Admittedly, he didn't get much of a chance here, but when he did, he didn't look anything like up to it. I saw him play for the reserves a fair bit, and he didn't look the deal there, either, mind. He comes across as a shy bloke (thought that whilst watching the press conference when he signed for us), and he's got form in flopping in the top flight elsewhere, so maybe the current issue for him is just that - ie about confidence to have a go, confidence that he can do it. Maybe the fact he looked so poor even in the reserves suggests tha is the case - pressure to perform, to deliver, that affects him. In defence of Routledge he hasn't got much to hit when he does get in a positon to cross - Carroll is marked by 3 players and Nolan is having a sandwich back on the half way line. That's the real issue here. A number of times on Sunday, he got in positions to make a cross but had no one really to pick out. I'm not sure where all tis criticism is coming from , well I do, it's because people want Ben Arfa and Jonas in the team and realise Hughton will never drop Nolan. Routledge has not hit the form he did last season for us, but at the same time, he's been tidy and occasionally offered a threat, if we want to play with wide men though we really need to get more people in the box.

I thought he easily had had worst game of the season on Saturday, his general play was poor, he didn't seem to show the desire to get the ball he has for the majority of these opening games. He was well handled by the Stoke defence but didn't really test them too much either. Is the performance he gave on Sunday going to be his standard fare or is he going to play to the high standards he set in the previous games ? I hope it's the latter.

Got to say they are starting the season very well. As ever with Bruce, flying start, had some good results with a difficult fixture list. Not looking forward to the derby at all.

Think people are being way too hard on him. Outside of the own goal thought he had a decent game, against a tricky player in Etherington.

I noticed the drop off from the Blackpool game was huge, almost 50K for that one, 41k for the stoke game. Considering the week we had in terms of wins at Everton and Chelsea you would have thought attendances would have been good. I can't really criticise since I live in Canada, I'm not going to any games but I do think it's a little disappointing seeing all though empty seats on TV.

Early days, but 40 points might not be enough this season. There are lot of poor teams picking up good results early season, and no teams getting cast adrift, if that maintains through the season, that could be bad for us. We simply have to improve at home, we are not going to beat the likes of Everton every week so we really need to win the games we are supposed to. Before the season started I was fairly confident of survival, but our inability to beat the teams around us has me more worried than I was about our chances.

He lost a bit of my faith on Sunday tbh. The tactics were wrong, we saw that against Blackpool and he didn't learn. His substitutions were awful, although Jonas did well when he came on, taking off our best chance of a creating a goal and leaving on a passenger, then taking off the player running midfield, made no sense at all. His handling of Nolan will define his mangerial credentials, if he can show some balls and pick the best team we have regardless of reputation and influence in the dressing room, he'll show he's a real manager. I would imagine he'll stick with the same team against Man Shitty but what will be really interesting is the team he picks for the next home game against Wigan.

They are still a team we should beat at home, whether they relegation contenders or not. Our performance on Sunday was simply not good enough.

Simply not good enough today, really. Dominated possesion first half but did nothing with it. Second half we've been bullied out of it

Fucking hell Nolan, that's shocking