afar

Bad, bad day for him, he's got to get this right and he fucked it up. It's all well and good being loyal to the players that started reasonably well, but you have to look at the opposition and playing only one recognised striker against a team that most regard as the weakest in the divison is stupid. The next game is crucial, he's got to get it right, otherwise we may be just on the start of a long slide.

This. Yep absolutely criminal to lose this one.

Well time to cancel my PVR recofrding for this afternoon, gonna have to stick to college american football all day now

just lost 3 points and given one of our major rivals 3 points, that is just criminal at home.

That is it. These are games we have to win to stay up, we can't afford even to draw them. We need a win and they are fucking it up, idiots.

We beat these 4-1 not more than 6 months ago, come on FFS

Wow just woke up, this is terrible, gotta turn it around 2nd half, we really can't afford not to win this game.

I think it's actually pretty smart. They've got a lot of new players, they need time to work together.

They do. Blackpool (favourites) West Brom Wigan West Ham Stoke Wolves Us In that order. That seems pretty fair to me, to be honest, although I'm not convinced that Bolton, Brum, the dirty Mackems and Blackburn are any better than us, but as we've just come up, it's more than justified that we are in that group of potential strugglers.

The poll is a pretty cool indicator of opinion, seems pretty clear cut that most people on here, think it's 3 from the 4 of West Brom, Blackpool, West Ham and Wigan. Wonder if the bookies odds mirror that.

If we are picking 3 realistic teams you would love to go do, I go with: The dirty Mackems of course. Wigan because I don't see the point in them, and although I like Martinez, I can't stand Whelan West ham, worst team in the division so far this year, horrible club with horrible fans.

It's worse. Worst home kit since, well, two years ago. I watched the 1996 Newcastle v Aston Villa game, which was shown over here on Setanta's classics, and we were sporting that first Adidas strip with the grandad colar. OMG was that strip a thing of beauty, Shame Adidas never really hit those hieghts again. Best NUFC kit ever IMO.

When I made the original thread a couple of years ago, I did it because I felt at the time we needed to lower our expectations. There were some people on here wh I don't think fully appreciated the effect that the backroom nonesense would have on the team on the pitch. I don't think that's the case at all this year, so it's a different kinda of poll in a way. Personally what I think the clubs needs right now is positivity, expectations are low right now, as they should be but no reason at all why we can't hope for a little better than just survival. I'm confident we are better than at least 6 or 7 teams at the bottom this year, I was confident of that 2 years back too, but the diference is this year we don't have those distractions and there are not too many of the players that have left since then, that I really wish we still had.

We had a 27 million strike force (Martins and Owen) in our relegation season, and that turned out to be a pile of crap It's not about how much money you spend it about the quality of the players. Personally I would take Carroll over either of those two as much for his potential than anything, although I do rate Bent pretty highly.

Got to say that's some midfield squad. I would venture to say the deepest of any team in the prem. I'm not convinced about them at the back, but midfield and up front, they look very good.

Wolves will 100% not go down. Defensively tight with a fantastic work ethic. They have spent nearly 15 million consolidating this year. Doyle, Fletcher and Ebanks Blake will score goals Yeah I agree. Wolves will be a hard place to go to for teams this season, and even though we should have perhaps won the game with all the chances we produced, we may look back on the point at Wolves as a very very good one, not too many times will come away with much there.

I took 10 as being doomed, 1 as being safe as houses.

I'm at 3 now, really not worried, think the only thing that will see us really struggle is a couple of long term injuries to players like Carroll, Jose and Barton. Assuming we have good luck with injuries, we'll be fine, there are a lot of teams a lot worse than us.

Competitively crap for those outside the top 7 or 8 teams tbh. I think my big take away from the opening games is how average a lot of teams really are, teams like Brum and Fulham and Blackburn, who had decent seasons last year are really pretty unspectactular. Someone made the point above about injuries being key, I think that's a great point, there's a lot of teams with pretty thin squads in terms of quality, ourself included, that could be easily sucked into this, with a little bad luck.

Prior to the season starting, I would have snatched your hand off, but I've seen enough of us, combined with the poor quality of that bottom group of teams to be slightly more optimistic. We've had a better than I expected transfer window too. We're not a Euro cup candidate or even a top half team, but no reason in my mind that we can't finish around the 12th - 15th mark.

Good Point. I'm to thick and lazy to work out how to add one, if an admin wants too, by all means feel free.

A week ago, I would have thought anyone mad not tro have Wigan in their bottom three, but they improved a hell of a lot against Spuds, they really did. I was torn between them an either Blackpool or Brom, but who 2 from three of those is a good call. West Ham are an absolute mess right now, would take a huge turnaround for them to not be involved in the relegation race.

LOL. Can't believe you've got Routledge in there, check out his mad eyes in the end of season review DVD.

So now the window's closed and we've seen 3 rounds of games from all the clubs, who do you think will make up the relegation spots this season ? I'm going with Blackpool West Brom West Ham

Penant to stoke's a funny one, since etherington and he play in the some position.