merlin

Bellamy is a jumped-up ignorant worm - had a decent spell at NUFC under SBR but has always been a trouble-maker and stirrer. Not worth a tuppeny toss... A 'decent spell'. He was very arguably our best player for the 3 seasons we finished in our highest positions since Keegan. In your view, maybe - he missed easy chances and he was the main beneficiary of Shearer's ability to take the pressure and lead the line. All Bellamy did was pick up the pieces - and he never, ever, achieved the same success with another club.

Bellamy is a jumped-up ignorant worm - had a decent spell at NUFC under SBR but has always been a trouble-maker and stirrer. Not worth a tuppeny toss...

Much of this is true.

Ameobi was our worst player on Sunday - at fault for giving away possession many times and for the break-down of many attacking moves.

All the stooges coming out of the woodwork because we have had a few good results which are largely down to Pardew having to select players like Cabella & Perez as well as Abeid last week. Just wait until Williamson is back in the side again and Pardew drops Perez for Cisse and puts Sissoko back on the wing.... As I said last week, cream always rises to the top and dross eventually finds its own level..

Good post and quite correct - Janmaat and Cabella look good on the right, but Ameobi was desperate on the left....lost possession more times than I could count and ruined some good build-ups.

Janmaat had a great game and is finding his feet in the PL - if he continues in this vein he will be a major asset to the club and going forward, is certainly one of the best RBs we have had. 2 crosses today just begged for someone to get on the end of them and the one for Colo's rare goal was a peach. Both Janmaat and Perez are the main reasons for Pardew's escape from the bullet - disappointing in that sense but they are going to be great signings for the club. They are both what we would call 'Keegan players' and I don't doubt KK would have signed both of them given the option.

Perez impressed me the first time I saw him because he clearly has talent and is comfortable on the ball. He has impressed me even more now because he allies his skill to hard work - a player of his stature and build would find a lone/main striker role difficult regardless of his age, but for a player of 21 who has just come into the PL, Perez stuck to the task manfully and the WBA defence were never comfortable when he had the ball. The goal was a sublime piece of finishing and would have been a credit to a top international striker, but also brilliant was the athletic volley which forced their keeper into a brilliant save....would have been the goal of the week. Pardew owes his current survival to the efforts of mainly new players and in particular, to Perez whose goals have got the club out of a mess and saved Pardew's skin - how long it lasts is up for question but Ashley must be rubbing his hands with glee at the thought of how much Perez will be worth at the end of the season if he gets anything like 15 goals...a ten-fold increase in what he cost is on the cards.....

Ask the fans of W Ham, Charlton and Southampton if they would have him back as manager - you'll not be happy at their answers...

Its just a pity KK wasn't managing this team and especially Sissoko - he would get Sissoko playing as he can most match days, not just the odd flash of what he can do. Sissoko would be one of the best midfielders in the PL if he was managed by the likes of Keegan. He has a great engine and can finish if he concentrates as well as no little skill on the ball. Wasted under Pardew and we will see him blossom at another club in the not too distant future.

As cream always rises to the top, so dross always finds its own level even if it is suspended at a higher strata for a while. Pardew will inevitably be the centre of controversy and questions about his suitability as a PL manager once things start going wrong again - as they will. His record at other clubs is all you need to look at to know that and he has had a temporary stay of execution because he was obliged to pick several young players either by injury or for the League Cup game - it worked out better than he expected so he lives to fight another few months. Abeid was probably NUFC's best player yesterday - why hasn't he been in the first team before now ? That tells you all you need to know about Pardew's judgment of a player.

The 0-1 result at SJP against Man U was the main reason for our failing to win the 95/96 title. We had absolutely murdered Man U in the first half - if it had been a boxing match the ref would have stopped it but we failed to get a goal despite numerous chances(Schmeichel played the game of his life). Had just ONE gone in before HT I am convinced that we would have beaten them comfortably and they would have collapsed after it. Our one moment of concentration failure from that corner, which enabled Cantona to score lifted them from the depths of despair. They knew they had a chance after that and their experience under Ferguson was crucial. Even then, we blew it at Anfield when we should have won and again at Blackburn.....we needed more 'Big Time' players for the following season and we signed Shearer but that was basically it and he missed several games through injury so we finished second again after KK walked in Jan 97. We will never get as close to winning the PL as we did then unless something miraculous happens off the field.

Partly true - Shearer certainly WASN'T past his best when he arrived in July 1996 as he was only 25 at the time...he had had a bad injury(cruciate)whilst a Blackburn, but it was the injury he suffered at Everton pre-season in 1997 which did for his pace although he was still a formidable striker and target man. We WERE lacking a bit in defence which probably cost us the 95-96 PL title but it was loss of nerve as much as anything else and loss of concentration in 2 vital games.

This - totally. Just a talking shop paying lip service to interest in supporters' concerns. The fact that Moncur is 'Club Ambassador' indicates the depth of his a--e licking to the regime....wonder why Beardsley doesn't get a similar post...!?

At least 'horrible Don't Revie sold us Terry Hibbitt cheap, like. Quite true and one of the best value-for-money buys that NUFC ever made - Leeds were ruthlessly professional to the point of cynicism in the late 60's-70's but they had some great players. Nevertheless, we did have a fair record against them at SJP and a 1-0 win late in 72-73 cost them the title. We beat them a few times in some great games.

Eh… Ellis was in charge for years and they hated him. He was, but even under Ellis they won the Littlewoods Cup and even, I think, the European Cup at the start of the 80s.... We are noticeably absent from any likelihood of winning trophies under Ashley, even though he leaves Ellis dead for financial wealth.

Nothing to enthuse about in this match...worst possible result in terms of Pardew's survival, he has probably wangled himself another month in charge now and all courtesy of one of the worst performers we have had in the past 2 years, Obertan. Every dog has his day and yesterday was Obertans, long overdue after a string of mediocre performances that still have Pardew singing his praises. Took the goal well, credit where its due. How Leicester contrived to miss some gilt edged chances is a mystery but Colo and Cisse were also guilty in that dept. Perez shows great promise but give Pardew another few weeks and he'll knock that out of him...unless Dummett was injured, I couldn't see the point of subbing him for Haidara at that stage of the game but its Pardew we are dealing with here. The club is in a rut of long-term mediocrity which the majority of supporters seem to have accepted - not going anywhere and will be there to make up PL numbers until it finally goes down. Its coming to something when an A-League game between Western Sydney and their Sydney FC derby rivals is more exciting(FC won 3-2 after being 2-0 down)and had a better atmosphere than watching an NUFC game at SJP, but that is how I felt about the 2 games yesterday. There IS life after NUFC.. at least, until Pardew and Ashley depart...!

An untalented, sycophantic donkey.... Not worth commenting further...if it wasn't for P45Due, he would be playing in a Championship/Lge 1 team.

Waddle is and always has been, a Mackem fan. He was quite happy to use NUFC to get him on to the rung of the professional ladder when playing for Tow Law, but debunked for Spurs as soon as he could. Decent player but his heart was NEVER in NUFC....comes over as thick as a door-stop too. Even when people were raving about him, I always thought that Beardsley was the better player and so it proved - pity they both turned out to be stool-pigeons for the owner and manager, but then, what can you expect from 2 players who thought they had bettered themselves by going to other clubs and bought into the MSM and Southern view that NUFC is just a second-rate club and the fans should be happy with their lot. Heaven preserve us from pontificating former players who want to foist the benefit of their vast experience on to us - why don't they just disappear into football retiree-land..?

Cisse is an instinctive striker and his performances during the past 2 seasons were poor because initially, he and Ba were at odds over the central striking role instead of supporting each other and then because Pardew played him as a target man when Ba left. Cisse is NOT a target man, he cannot hold the ball up well enough and his pace over any more than a few yards is lacking. He has got goals in the last two games because he was in a position to ghost into the area and the second one yesterday was a great cross from Ameobi, one he probably couldn't repeat if you asked him to. I still think Cisse will find it tough when we play better sides who mark him tightly unless he has Riviere to take some of the pressure off from defenders. A better manager would utilise his talents far better than Pardew but Cisse himself has just ensured we will not get the chance to find that out for many weeks, maybe even months.

The game was notable only for the fall-off in Swansea's forward movement....this has dropped off noticeably since Laudrup was manager when they were always likely to catch teams on the break. In fact, they took so long to get moving forward when they gained possession(too many players were passing to a team-mate who was either marked or in their own half of the field)that it was like watching NUFC..obviously, Monk is from the Pardew school of management and it will be interesting to see how they do from now on in...they have already now gone 5 games without a win. As for NUFC, we would never have got anything from this game if a) Krul hadn't produced 2 great saves from Bony and Cisse had not suddenly decided to do what he is best at, i.e. instinctive striking rather than thinking about it. The net result is that Pardew survives once again and even a draw against Leicester will remove any pressure from him by Ashley until at least December. It is as clear as the nose on Shelvey's face that Ashley will do everything to avoid sacking Pardew, either from bloody-mindedness in wanting to spite the fans and 'prove' them wrong, or just to avoid a pay-out until he himself decides to leave the club...maybe even a combination of both. There is no doubt in my mind(or many others, come to that) that these players would show an improvement under a better manager but it will be a long time before that theory is put to the test. Only boycotting is a weapon and I suspect that many decent former fans have already opted for that...we will lose a generation of young supporters before Ashley goes.

I was aware of this at the time - Ashley went to a casino in Dubai instead of keeping the appointment with the Emiratis...they bought Man C instead....... No surprise that he has doubled his stake in Rangers - all he needs is them to be back in the SPL and it will all be going to his plan...

Not throwing the towel in yet as I think either Ashley or Pardew will crack eventually but there will come a time if this continues when people will get so p*ssed off they will jack it in and do something more enjoyable on matchdays. This - if we keep losing and Pardew remains, watch the attendances start to fall....

Yes, very close to the mark I think but he would rather we just scraped an avoidance because it wouldn't look good to Rangers fans if he left after relegating us through bad decisions. I would put the chances closer to an 8 at this time, but if we are bottom at Christmas and Pardew still hanging on, it will rise to a 10.

With an owner like Ashley in charge, it is pointless speculating over who would get the job IF Pardew is sacked. The only likelihood is that the odds are on someone from London as that is the circle in which Ashley moves, so try concocting a pool of names from there - Hoddle and Curbishley would be favourites. However, Ashley likes proven stool pigeons so an attempt to curry favour with 'those fick Jawdies' by appointing Beardsley cannot be ruled out - unfortunately.....