merlin

I agree with all you've said but the likelihood of him going any time soon is remote. He suits Ashley's purpose and has almost achieved the stated aim of the board/owner which is PL safety...by default and mainly because we borrowed Remy and Cabaye decided to show prospective buying clubs what he could do. He has bought himself and Ashley time and only if a series of disastrous home defeats occur in succession is Ashley going to feel any need to fire him. I am still not convinced that Ashley will still own the club after the summer because everything that is happening now smacks of preparation for exit strategy and if he does go, Pardew's position is not going to be his problem unless any buyer insists he goes as part of the deal. If he stays, we will still have this con man as manager at the start of next season unless we fall away so badly in the next 3 months that attendances start to drop seriously. Ashley once again is paying for being a chancer...he gave Pardew an 8 year contract on the advice of Llambias and as with everything else he gets involved with, he hates to admit he was wrong and have to pay the guy out for getting rid of him. A look at Pardew's record in the past would have sent enough red flags to any club owner with half a brain, but we all know Ashley's record for taking chances...his 100m loss during the early days of the GFC was a gamble that failed and look what we could have done with THAT for the team. No, Pardew looks pretty safe for at least 3 months and probably longer.

Thing is, if he criticises he's unemployed. His need for employment obviously outweighs his self respect. Very true. Same goes for Peter Beardsley, who weirdly seems to have received some criticism on here of late. There's nothing 'weird' about it - I for one have criticised him for following the club line - its hardly as if he's on the bread-line - but I still gave him credit for being a great player, which he was. That doesn't make him an icon now......

They don't award silverware for that...its old hat now, we know it all and a fat lot of good its achieved...

John Anderson isn't worth listening to. He quite often wasn't worth watching either, but like Beardsley, he's joined the a---lickers group of former players so he gets a nice cushy little job with Radio Sunderland.

He is, as I expected, technically decent ; he is lacking in confidence but didn't hide at all despite his thankless task of being stranded on his own for long periods and he came back to help out the defence and m/f. Will undoubtedly benefit by having Remy to take some of the pressure off and I reckon that if he had a bit of coaching from the likes of Shearer at PL CF play, he would be an excellent acquisition. The problem is that the last bit is extremely unlikely to happen and also, de Jong might join Remy in thinking that he would do better elsewhere at the end of the season, which would be no surprise.

OK, I'll bite. One of our most expensive players was Shearer and he worked out perfectly for us, it was never what we paid, it was who we bought. We're 8th in the league and I refuse to accept that is our level while Everton are in the top 6, something which he seems to think is beyond us, if they can do it then we should be able to. Our fans being more unhappy when we lose is the same as the fans of every other competitive team sport so why even mention it? As for mega rich clubs, look at Everton. You don't even have to look at Everton, look at who won both domestic cups last season. So you're quibbling over not being 2 places higher in the league. Want us to return to the transfer policies that brought us Owen, Martins, and relegation. Not concentrating enough on the cups. And denying the cringe-worthy, spiteful, echo chamber this place becomes when we lose a few on the bounce? Yeah, he's the one in the wrong here. What a load of bollocks, you're just invented something I haven't said and Everton are 5th which is 3 places higher and they're in a position to qualify for Europe which is hardly quibbling. Oh, so where we finished not even two years ago. Have you never heard of the saying which involves chickens, hatching and counting..? I suggest you wait until the end of THIS season before you start crowing about either where we are now or something that we fluked 2 years ago and don't stand a cat in hell's chance of repeating. We're a hell of a lot closer to 5th than we are to 17th. I guess I need to spell it out - THERE ARE NEARLY 3 MONTHS LEFT TO GO..can you see where the next win - or even goal - is coming from..??

Beardsley was a great player but my opinion of him as a person couldn't be much lower...all he cares about is maintaining his own overly-comfortable life-style. Still, he has his cross to bear...MRS Beardsley..

This is a great article - says it all. Just compare it with Owen's self-satisfied and totally incorrect blunderings in the DT. This one couldn't be more right and his couldn't be more wrong, yet his is a view shared by many in football who fear NUFCs potential and also by the media outside the region.

You may not have noticed but players who have come to us with a mackem connection always seem to get better treatment from us than anybody with a connection to us gets from a lot of your fans. I genuinely don't see it. Aren't Johnson and Colback both Newcastle fans? As long as the stuff on the pitch is right then I doubt anyone cares. You don't see it..? Were you alive when Venison and Bracewell were in our promotion side and welcomed from Day 1..? We also had Montgomery as GK coach for a few years, and if you go back to the 80s there was Alan Brown on loan who was very popular and Joe Harvey signed Stan Anderson in the 60s... Incidentally nearly ALL of these players thought NUFC was a better club because of the fans....

OK, I'll bite. One of our most expensive players was Shearer and he worked out perfectly for us, it was never what we paid, it was who we bought. We're 8th in the league and I refuse to accept that is our level while Everton are in the top 6, something which he seems to think is beyond us, if they can do it then we should be able to. Our fans being more unhappy when we lose is the same as the fans of every other competitive team sport so why even mention it? As for mega rich clubs, look at Everton. You don't even have to look at Everton, look at who won both domestic cups last season. So you're quibbling over not being 2 places higher in the league. Want us to return to the transfer policies that brought us Owen, Martins, and relegation. Not concentrating enough on the cups. And denying the cringe-worthy, spiteful, echo chamber this place becomes when we lose a few on the bounce? Yeah, he's the one in the wrong here. What a load of bollocks, you're just invented something I haven't said and Everton are 5th which is 3 places higher and they're in a position to qualify for Europe which is hardly quibbling. Oh, so where we finished not even two years ago. Have you never heard of the saying which involves chickens, hatching and counting..? I suggest you wait until the end of THIS season before you start crowing about either where we are now or something that we fluked 2 years ago and don't stand a cat in hell's chance of repeating.

....and where NUFC would be THIS season without Remy's....and he isn't even our player...

I don't know how old you are but if you can't remember what happened in 1992 you can't have been following the club for long because before the Magpie Group succeeded in ousting McKeag, crowds were down to below 20,000 and we were heading for the old 3rd Div....after the takeover there was an immediate surge in attendances and by the time we played Grimsby in Nov 92, going for our 12th straight win(which we lost) there were 7000 people locked out. It wasn't until the ground was extended in 93/94 that we were able to satisfy anything LIKE the demand for tickets and as you may know, we had a 20,000 waiting list by 1995.... If you think the fans wouldn't be back under a better more progressive owner, you are way way wrong.

Why does anyone have to be 'next'? Because I think the atmosphere at SJP will become quite toxic over the remainder of the season. Yep, everyone knowing that we are pretty much safe bar 3 pts it could get nasty... If people think hard, they can remember that this comment was posted just 3 days after NUFC had been totally outclassed by Sunderland... No wonder Ashley keeps taking the easy money - far too many NUFC fans are satisfied with crumbs and getting bent over.. You couldn't make it up.

Its because of Llambias that we are stuck with Pardew...don't want him back at all.

Kinnear's departure is basically a sop to the fans to try to stem the mass of ST cancellations that are taking place now...so much for those fans who justify keeping theirs by claiming cancellation won't achieve anything...! However, you can bet your boots that he will have been paid up to the end of the season so if he HAS been getting 15 Grand a week, he has received roughly 750,000 Grand in the short and totally unproductive time he spent at the club - nice work for the Tax man who will have gained roughly half of it, but Kinnear has had a lovely little earner at the club's expense..nice to think that your ST money went partially to pay HIM, eh..? He will have had to accept a Confidentiality clause in his final pay-off so we won't be hearing anything controversial from him with the poss exception of slating the players etc., inevitably providing us with some much-needed amusement with his translation of their names. As there is now no transfer activity until summer, it is likely that Ashley won't replace him and leave Pardew to stew in his own juice, thereby not having to fork another salary out. I would love to think this is a prelude to Ashley buying up Rangers and selling us but there is no guarantee of this and I doubt whether we shall hear about anything like this until the deal is all but done and that is likely to be at the end of the season because all a new owner could achieve right now is to stop the STs being cancelled and most would renew anyway if a new owner came in during the close season. Apart from loans we cannot sign new players so a new owner would have their hands tied although they COULD make behind-the-scenes plans for signings and changes in coaching/management. Make the most of this news because there may be precious little else to get excited about in the coming weeks unless Ashley decides to dump Pardew as well which looks unlikely at this stage.

Anything's possible TBH. It's also possible that Joe failed to do a couple of deals. Ashley has definitely made decisions as bad as appointing JFK in a genuine DOF role. Yes - almost as bad as getting KK to walk out almost 6 years ago....

Absolutely brilliant, Mick - you can be sure that although they won't admit seeing it, the gist of it will reach Ashley's shell-like via Kinnear. They'll hate that.... well done !

Utter nonsense - customers ALWAYS have a say...look what happened when M&S tried to introduce GM foods some years ago ; people stopped going for a while and they dropped the policy like a hot potato. If 20,000 stopped going to SJP for a while, just watch what would happen. Your argument is a cop-out. Someone's pointed out though, match day income is a fraction compared to say, TV money. M&S don't have that. Do you think Ashley would be happy to have match-day cameras scanning round a half-empty SJP at KO time...? Do you think he would like commentators pointing out that NUFC used to have 50,000 every week (until the fans got disenchanted with his policies)...? If Ashley cut even more from the virtually non-existent transfer budget to make up for lost fans, crowds would fall even more...we were down to 20,000 before KK arrived in 1992....

Utter nonsense - customers ALWAYS have a say...look what happened when M&S tried to introduce GM foods some years ago ; people stopped going for a while and they dropped the policy like a hot potato. If 20,000 stopped going to SJP for a while, just watch what would happen. Your argument is a cop-out.

They are all idiots - but most of all, they are ALL scared of offending Ashley, either because he might ban them or because he might sue them...huge wealth always talks..

This - nail on head absolutely. Santon is a poor defender and we would do well to sell him back to Italy if we can find a suitable buyer.

I watched the whole game live and it summed up the difference in the directions that the 2 clubs are taking. We looked and were, disorganised and fearful ; we played without a pattern and looked as if we were losers from the off. Every time they attacked we looked completely at 6s & 7s, they had confidence and showed it, we had none and showed it. They played a player they had just signed from a lower league club and played simple passing football, whilst Pardew kept a player who has played in the Bundesliga on the bench until we were well and truly beaten. There was NONE of the passing football we had started to play of late and an unwelcome return to the hoof-ball that Pardew prefers and it was dire - never looked like succeeding. We looked what we are - a club in turmoil on and off the field, players with no confidence in either the manager or, most probably, the people running the club ; the fans have little faith in either and are disillusioned by the whole affair. The absence of Remy was never going to help us but the whole side lacked any sort of co-ordination or real threat - any chances to score came from scrambles after a punt into their area rather than clever movement and passing. It is hard not to go along with some who have suggested that we were so bad that their had to be a hidden reason for it because the players, apart from Tiote, hardly gave it 60% let alone 100. There is something very rotten at the heart of this club and it is not going to be sorted out quickly - there are NO guarantees in football and because we have been a better club than Sunderland for most of the past 30 years does not mean that we will stay that way ; they are a club whose directors/owner clearly have ambition, hence Poyet's arrival, whereas we are a club riven apart by discord from the top to the bottom. No club can hope to succeed in that situation but the chances of it ending are not good. We now face 2 games which could both end in a similar disaster but nothing will be done about it until Ashley either starts losing money on NUFC or is offered a crazy sum to sell and neither now looks likely although I do think yesterday could turn out to be a watershed for many fans who have been patient up to now. There is only so long that you can keep banging your head against a brick wall and Ashley will find the truth of that statement sooner or later.

Ridiculous to think of writing off de Jong at this point - he came into a side which has just lost its best m/f player, was totally disorganised and losing by 2 goals to its Derby rivals and this after having just a few days to get to know his team-mates and how they play...I have to say that his first viewing probably sent his heart into his boots. Nevertheless, he tried to find space and made forward runs as soon as we had possession...he does look as if he has something but it will take several games to see what he is made of...look how the French players struggled to get up to PL pace after joining last January - we nearly got relegated. It even took de Jong's countryman, Dennis Bergkamp, a while to settle in at Arsenal and he was a much more highly-rated player than de Jong. Some players on our books are still 'finding their feet' after a couple of seasons...no names, no pack drill..!

Yes, there's always one....Mike has to have someone protecting his interests...

You need a Wreath..? Things are looking up...