merlin

stop what you're doing.................everything.........and think about what you posted. No i think he has a point, i think if it's top 4, top 6, i think it's become irrelevant now, the majority on here will still want him shot and buried regardless of how this season pans out. I've mentioned it before, everyone was against him from the start, he won a lot of people over with a 5th place finish but the fair share of them switched back to hating him when it all went tits up last season and I can’t see them switching back to liking him again regardless of what he achieves this year. So whether it’s lifting a trophy or another fantastic league finish, at the end of the day it’s still Alan Pardew in charge and that’s always going to be a problem for many. Your faith in Pardew would be more understandable but for one thing...the guy's CV with other clubs. His failures have been greater than his successes and 1 5th place finish isn't going to alter that. Southampton's chairman told SJH, when Ashley took Pardew on, that he would be OK for a season or 2, then it would all go pear-shaped - and it has. We shall see but the standard of football produced by the players we have is not a good sign for the future.

He's keeping the best one up his sleeve for a few weeks' time; ' People keep moving the line so we can't get anyone over it'.......

20 years ago, we went to Ibrox to play Rangers in a pre-season game ; they were probably the major force in Scottish football at the time and NOT a piddling lower league outfit as they are now, regardless of why. It was just before we started our first season in the PL and KK's team shocked the Scots by winning 2-1 when Rangers were seen(by their fans anyway)as favourites. I can still remember some of their fans whingeing because they had lost to a 'newly-promoted team of nonentities from England', but many of them acknowledged the excellent way we had played and the support our fans had given the team and they threw their scarves down to the Newcastle fans because we deserved the win. Fast forward to last night and we have a team of supposed French Internationals/Argentine internationals etc and they are lucky to scratch a draw against a lower division Scottish side. Difference ? One Kevin Keegan as manager and a team fully committed to the cause, even though many of them were still relatively unknown....we went on to finish 3rd in the Premier League, earning the name of The Entertainers. Yes, 20 years is a LONG time in football.....

Athletic facilities are far better there and people from the south are more willing to live there - apart from pampered BBC news-readers who don't want to move to Salford from London..! Victoria Pendleton is a case in point - originally from Beds, now lives in Cheshire. In the 60s, Manchester did produce some good footballers - Nobby Stiles, Brian Kidd etc, but the NE had more...Norman Hunter, Howard Kendall, Colin Bell, Charlton Bros, Colin Todd, Pop Robson etc etc as well as those who were scouted and nurtured by clubs like Burnley. Much of the best talent left the NE because the local clubs arrogantly assumed most people wanted to play for them rather than making the effort to look for the talent - to a degree, this went on right up to recent times.

Totally agree - absolute nonsense .

Talented sports people - esp footballers - are produced in areas of deprivation....past history tells you that. The NE is nowhere near as hard a place to earn a living - or live on benefits - as it used to be. Workers had either the shipyards, mines or heavy industry to choose from and football was a good escape from all that. The maximum wage also meant that there was no advantage in leaving the area for other clubs. Jackie Milburn was a miner before he signed professional terms for Newcastle. The whole way of living is different now - people move away far more readily, kids do not play as much sport in their spare time(too busy on computers etc)and there is less competitive culture in school sport. Brazil used to produce the world's best players and lots of them, but rising living standards and poaching by foreign clubs has reduced the quality of players they have now. If you are going to quote France as producing young players, don't - most of their youngsters come from ethnic groups that usually have poorer families, so the same principle stands. Only Germany of the wealthy countries produces decent young players with any regularity and that is because their whole system is better controlled and run. Their players have a better attitude too...KK once told me that.

Good players on paper because they're French internationals, that's all. + 2 Argentineans, 1 Ivorian, 2 Dutch, 2 English (3 if we signed ince or Sinclair), 1 Senegalese, 1 Italian... Come on when have we had any depth at the back? Our glory years under Sir Bobby had Shola and Lua Lua as 3rd/4th choice, players like McClen, Brittain etc.. were getting games. This potential squad could be the best I remember anyway, even if it is a bunch of French and on paper Good as Sir Bob's spell at the club was, you cannot say it was our 'glory years'....under KK and SJH we finished second in the PL twice and were a far bigger threat to Man U than under SBR and Shepherd. We had a better squad and played better football. Even the KK era was hardly our glory years...we won the FA Cup 3 times in the 1950s.....

This is a good post - sums up the whole situation perfectly. The club will not improve until a) it gets an owner who is prepared to invest in it properly and b) employs a proven or very promising manager with a good record. May be some time happening....

Pardew is a tactical genius, a master at getting the best out of his players, and a man you could trust with your life....can't imagine why other clubs let him go..

No - against FA rules.

thats your opinion but ... Pardew got a clean sweep of the 'Manager of the Year' awards 12 months before ... and Ashley probably realises he didn't fund (aside from Anita) transfers last summer, so, since we weren't relegated, is willing to give him another chance to prove himself. Pardew had a disappointing season and didn't meet his targets. He overachieved on his targets the previous year, giving himself a little extra breathing space. If he had got us relegated he deserved to be sacked. Since he didn't (just...) he deserves another shot, but if Oct/Nov we really look like its another season of battling relegation, I'm expect Ashley will sack him There has to be a little loyalty, a little long-term thinking and continuity ... Or, we are like Chelsea (the most successful Premiership club in the last 10 years) changing manager every season. Ok by me, if we invest in bringing in managers that are probably in the top 5 (or at least 10) in the world, as Chelsea tend to (not always with Grant and Di Matteo, I admit) You're off your rocker if you're being serious there like. Not much wrong with that IMO, Pardew earned a bit of leeway because of his previous good season. Don't see how that's crazy at all. So you think that's OK, but that we should ignore his previous record of flopping at other clubs...? Seems a bit selective to me.....

We're already offering more than I'd ever expect us to in this situation. Who knows what we value him at but personally I'd value him at 10m Euro's if he had a lengthy contract. So I expected us to offer no more than 6m Euro's given he's only got one year left and is agitating for a move here. I think 8m is such a good offer, they want 10m btw. From the little I have seen of this guy and bearing in mind age, contract length etc, I would agree with this. The very fact that the club have - as usual these days - left things to the last minute and limited their choices so much shows that the increase in the offer was made in some desperation.

What was very interesting is that Liverpool played Melbourne Victory a day ago at the MCG - they had a crowd of 95,000 to watch, which is twice their capacity at Anfield..... We can make disparaging comments about them, but with interest like that around the world, they are the ones having the last laugh..... With a board/owner like ours we are light-years behind them, let alone the Top 4..

Amusing to note that whilst NUFC fans are debating about a friendly against a mediocre team from a country that is financially bust and from where we are unlikely to gain any merchandise sales or new fans, Man U and Liverpool have been over in Australia and S.E.Asia - where the fans will be getting better incomes/spending power etc - and playing friendlies to cement their already wide fan-bases in these areas. Just illustrates the thinking and lack of investment from the top in NUFC......Kinnear probably doesn't even know where S.E.Asia is....

Still - he got one 'over the line'.....!

I said this same thing a few weeks ago Mick - things going from bad to worse but at least we had hope in those days ; none now because there are very few men capable of buying out Ashley and even fewer who want to. This could drag on for years....

'They've given us something to think about...' Just as Sunderland, Liverpool and Man City did before them.....

Saw him once playing for France - underwhelmed frankly, looked a bit cumbersome but probably the best NUFC can get in his position. Upgrade on Shola but will not get as many goals as Cisse would in a better organized side.

It's only got so many good players. Sooner or later you end up scraping the barrell when other teams beat you to the good stuff. Spain? Holland? Belgium? Germany? South America? Balkan countries? why can't we expand our market, there's talent to be found everywhere as teams like Udinese prove by leaving no stone unturned. And with the TV money English clubs have an advantage over more or less everybody. If we've got more scouts then why aren't the finding other players? Why do we keep going back to one small shortlist of Ligue 1 players that have contracts situations we can exploit? Agree with this - penny-pinching probably to blame again.. France have won the WC ONCE - in their own country, just like England....

Its when the likes of Liverpool start to do it that its time to worry. Oh, wait........

If so, who would blame him for that ?

There are a surprising number of people who seem to think that Pardew is suddenly going to metamorphose into a top class manager, despite all the evidence to the contrary on his CV and they are basing their views of a much better performance next season on that. I find this staggering because we have not even improved on the squad we had last season as well as looking likely to lose some of our better players. The optimism displayed by some is entirely without foundation - there is very little happening at the club that is positive.

This - a right-footed LB who looks good going forward but actually creates very little when supporting the attack. Defensive limitations exposed is several games, Saints at SJP springs to mind.. The top Italian teams rarely make mistakes by selling good players to English clubs, especially defenders and they weren't happy with Santon as a LB. Haidara will be a far better player in that position when he has played as often in the PL as Santon has. Full backs are first and foremost defenders - end of. Attacking skills are a bonus.

I sort of agree but it's all relative. I mean, Swansea and Norwich are arguably progressing more - but they also have pretty much the exact ambition we do, to stay PL teams. Do you think they'll be risking their stability on a push for the Champions League any time soon? I don't. I find this jealously of those clubs from NUFC fans hard to come to terms with. All they've done is sign a couple of promising players, like everyone does at some point. We have a team packed with players they would take in a second. ...managed by a disaster of a manager who, despite all the January outlay in influx of these 'players other clubs would take in a second', struggled to avoid relegation until the last day of the season.. And you wonder why NUFC fans are jealous of the likes of Swansea.. At least they won some silverware last season...something that has been beyond our 'giant' of a club for over 40 years. Get real for heaven's sake...

Agree with this - there are far too many NUFC fans who will ignore anything the club(i.e. owner etc) does as long as they can still get into SJP once a fortnight. Nothing will change as long as this happens. More indignities lie ahead.