Ronaldo

thats the line up id like to see Sorry to p*iss on your parade but Bassong is suspended. I thought his suspension was only 1 game? EDIT: Forgot it was his 2nd red of the season, meaning a 2 game suspension

Dawson vs Martins is like watching the Tom and Jerry show

He only made a few errors to be fair, a lot less than Mr fkin Dependable Jamie Carragher

I'd absolutely love us to play against Michael Dawson every week

Couple of half decent games and suddenly they think they are established prem stars. They need to stop reading player reviews off forums. Well I seem to remember us being the only club sniffing around him. He's 23/24 would one season kill him, just pisses me off we aren't even relegated and he's talking about buggering off. exactly. the c*** has some f***ing neck telling us he wants to f*** off. we signed him, we made him (somehow) into a decent defender. he is just another c*** along with the likes of bernard and distin made him into a decent defender my arse

Benzema is a great signing but he'll blatantly take a while to adjust to England

Eto'o 7/1 to be premiership top scorer next season, what do the bookies know?

Can do a job in the premiership I guess, decent signing

Not defending by any means Shepherd buying players behind the manager's backs at the time, however he wouldn't dare do that to Shearer. Fair point, but what happens when he sacks Shearer? He'll probably see himself as the only Geordie icon left to manage the club and appoint himself I wonder what the odd are on Shepherd appointing Keegan after sacking Shearer?

I can see Shepherd coming in and getting rid of the deadwood at least

makes me laugh that James Milner is still in the under 21's. He's 24 years old in 6 months ffs

What does that matter? He replaced people that fans were saying weren't good enough (Dyer, Parker, etc), and had plenty of money to replace them better (£12m spunked on Barton & Smith alone). People hide behind this "net-spend" thing, but fact is, that summer we spent a canny bit of money on average players. my point was, we may all have a considerably different opinion of Sam Allardyce right now had Ashley not bought the club. Shepherd's appointment was a good one imo. Allardyce's biggest problem was the fact he wasn't Ahley's choice.

How does 9th at christmas translate to going down in May? Under Ashley, Allardyce's net spend was zero lets not forget

It would be more Freddy's style to take over a day before Owen's contract expires. Then drive him to Goodison Park in his Range Rover Sport and stick footage of himself lowering his window and laughing maniacally on Youtube

very fair point. What are Shepherd's motives here? He wants the club to move forward and yes he probably wants to be the geordie hero he always saw himself as. From my perspective those motives are a lot more psoitive and sincere than what we've experienced in the last 2 years

What did we manage under Keegan? No wins from his first 6 either. We were in very poor form as a team, but Allardyce didn't do that bad a job. Allardyce saved Blackburn and would have had us finishing mid-table. He certainly wouldn't have let our best fucking defender leave the club for peanuts and i'm confident he would have eventually got rid of the deadwood like Butt and Owen

It would be if we were hunting for a new manager it's not just that. remember those times whebn we said emre,parker,duff etc wouldn't sign for spurs or everton as they couldn't afford the wages.............well neither could we. nobody is saying it's ideal. But his managerial fuckups (Allardyce isn't one imo) can't really be brought into the equation at this point in time. Aye, Allardyce had us flying up the league playing exciting free flowing football didn't he? Well except when we didn't put a shot on target against the worst team the Prem has seen. Get a f***ing grip man. nobody said he was Sir Alex. We were however, 9th at christmas 07 were we not? Have we got near that since? Clearly not a bad manager to be honest

completely agree

It would be if we were hunting for a new manager it's not just that. remember those times whebn we said emre,parker,duff etc wouldn't sign for spurs or everton as they couldn't afford the wages.............well neither could we. nobody is saying it's ideal. But his managerial fuckups (Allardyce isn't one imo) can't really be brought into the equation at this point in time.

It would be if we were hunting for a new manager

IF true i'll be very, very happy indeed

Go back in time 2 years and post that Shepherd's coming back and most of us are happy, incredible

why didn't you say then ? Because it's a rumour, if I posted everything I heard down the (massively nufc orientated) pub i'd have more posts than Dave

I'm still really looking forward to the start of the season tbh i'm confident Ashley will be gone and Shearer will be in.