ikri

The Twitter thing just seems stupid to me. I can see that he's desperate to ingratiate himself to the supporters, but there is absolutely no way that being a mouthy twat on Twitter is ever going to do anything other than backfire massively. If he makes claims about the size and ambition of the club, he just looks stupid when they try to sign players and they snub them for "smaller" clubs. If he slags off the current players hell look like an idiot when the season starts and they're still in the squad - at best he's just pissed off his own players who will now be belligerent towards the club, at worst he's just told every potential buyer that the wage-sponge is not worth buying and he's stuck with a crap, belligerent player. It's better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than open it and remove all doubt. Just keep off Twitter unless it's something banal like welcoming a 39-year-old journeyman clogger of a centre-half to the club, or wishing the best of luck for the future when some other lunatic club buys one of their crap players.

Think that was the original plan to cut costs but in the cold light of day letting 100s of pissed up mackems loose with power tools would have caused a health and safety headache and they are getting skilled tradesmen in to do it instead. Is there going to be a community-led effort to find some lawyers when someone sues them when they're injured by a collapsing seat?

Can we clarify if LFC is Liverpool or Luton Town? I know which team is at their level these days.

Not sure that will even cover Cattermole & Rodwell's wages

So the club only has to find £25m before the season kicks off to fund previous awful spending and instead of having £35m parachute payment income as a buffer he'll likely have to give all of that to Short (and who knows how much in the future), plus they're still hemorrhaging money to pay for the shit players who got them into this mess? And the upside to all of this? They no longer have a billionaire owner to bankroll them if they struggle financially. They'll be in administration by September.

I was at the SJP game, honestly if I were them I wouldn't let that one die either. We had had the much better season finished some 6 points ahead of them in third, the first leg we got a good result 0-0 with Budgie saving a last minute dodgy pen they got. It looked all set for us to finish the job at home, we had a lethal strike force in Quinn and McGhee, but we just didn't turn up on the evening and all I remember about that night was that fat thighed bastard Gabbiadini killing us. In recent memory it probably the most important game between the two sides and they took all the bragging rights. Still annoys me to this day that they went up that year despite them getting beat in the playoff final by Swindon. And yet, if we had gone up that season we probably wouldn't have gone into the tailspin that led to John Hall's gamble on hiring a former player to give the team a boost in the hope that they could avoid the drop to the 3rd tier. In the long term, I think we got the better result.

Any players from Sporting that might get Rafa's attention? Given that their own fans just attacked the training ground it looks like their entire squad might be able to terminate their own contracts.

Cracking game

We really need to buy a striker who can actually score goals.

Notts County going up could be fun, they've currently got 3 ex-Newcastle players involved (and are apparently interested in signing Joey Barton) and there's the chance that Shola will delay his retirement just so he can play against Sunderland again.

That's the worst I've seen us play since we were relegated. Amateurish defending and utterly toothless up front, just embarrassing.

Utter crap

Poor. Not sure what it is about Everton that leads the team to play sloppy passes and fluff chances. Shocking referee too.

I bet he won't be there by the end of next season. Funnily enough, Joey just placed the same bet himself.

Superb result.

Fantastic result

Haven't there been rumours that he had to discuss the team selections with Llambias, or possibly Carr, before each game? Oddly enough it seems that he got out of doing that after we finished 5th, at which point everything went to shit surprisingly.

Absolutely unreal goal (if it's the same one I'm thinking of). Ball gets played to Beardsley & there's nothing on but he looks up, takes another touch and simply scores. From absolutely nothing. There was a moment before the cheering started as if everyone had the same did he just actually score? question before it sank in that he'd just scored. Beardsley is probably my favourite ever Newcastle player so I'm probably a little biased but that goal vs Norwich and the goal against Villa where the ball just seems glued to his foot are probably my favourites of his. Ginola v Ferencvaros annoys the hell out of me, not because it isn't a great goal, it's probably the best I've ever seen by a Newcastle player. It's simply because if it had been scored by someone like Messi, or scored by someone playing for Barca or Real, the media would still be masturbating to it 20 years later whilst it gets largely overlooked by non-Newcastle fans despite its brilliance.

The players they've given long contracts to on high wages (high relative to their abilities) are going to utterly cripple them if they drop down to League 1. Wages are capped at 60% of turnover in League One and their income is going to drop even further. They'll get something like £45m as a parachute payment next year but even if they've halved last year's wage bill they'll still be pissing away most of that on players like Gibson & Cattermole. They're in a horrendous financial position as is and if they get relegated again, even if they don't go into administration, they could end up being penalised by the Football League for breaching wage rules.

Quite correct It's a move motivated by desperation. If they could get away with charging £500+ for a season ticket then that is what they would do. They proved with the Johnson saga that this image they paint of being a family, community minded club is pretty questionable when they kept quiet and allowed a nonce to continue to ply his trade in front of 1000s of kids. The reality is that the fanbase has desterted them, crowds have halved in less than 12 months, and despite them staring administration in the face they've been reduced to slashing season ticket prices and are even prepared to give huge a number away for free. Seems a strange strategy when gate receipts become ever more important as the TV money starts to disappear. Potentially, if they can get more people through the doors they can offset the ticket price reduction through sales of food, drink and other merchandise. Assuming they haven't outsourced all of it already.

How would anyone distinguish them from the rest of the rubbish blowing around on the pitch?

Brilliant result

Frustrating as fuck, moreso considering the the chances we had to get a 3rd

It's depressing to think about how we went from the days of getting an attacking set piece and having Shearer, Robert & Solano eyeing up the situation and knowing that we had a hell of a chance of scoring, to the dark days under Pardew when we'd win a corner or free kick and know that, in all likelihood, we were going to be defending an opposition attack in a matter of moments.

Excellent result & thoroughly deserved