Chris_R

Instead of "Your support", it should be "Our football is fucking shit".

the shot at 0:50 I watched the whole thing..still more interesting than our game Was also going to post something similar, but it seems half the board are watching that vid in preference to watching us play. Says it all, really.

Don't worry, there's still time for Ba's knee to explode, sending shrapnel flying to mow down Coloccini and Krul.

Well, that's NHS waiting lists for you.

But it's our European kit. We MUST wear it. It is ridiculous though, should never be wearing anything other than B&W stripes unless there's a clash.

10) Jaws. Either: - A) A scary shark movie - B) Something that, following constructive criticism, people will need to re-wire 11) Do you get irrational feelings of anger when confronted by letterboxes?

Considering what a greedy, self-serving little wretch he is, I'd be astonished if the motivation for this is charity. Infinitely more likely (irrespective of whether a few pence goes the way of a charity or not) that it's just to raise his flagging profile and keep him in the news. Hope the c*** gets facial alopecia.

Simpson is a decent, defensive fullback. However he offers nothing going forward as he just gets the ball, panics, and turns round to pass it back to the nearest DC. This wouldn't be a problem if the rest of the team was great going forward. But they're not. So Simpson's failings are exaggerated and he becomes a microcosm for the team as a whole, and accordingly he gets a disportionate amount of blame. I'd love to see us replace him with someone better, but I don't want to see us sell him just for the sake of it as that benefits nobody. In an ideal world, I'd buy a left back and move Santon over to his proper position on the right, where all right footed wide players should play to enable them to deliver a cross properly.

If its Ben Arfa on the wing in a 4-4-2, it'll be rubbish. If we play him behind Ba, I reckon it could work.

But yet he is going to our training ground tomorrow. Guess he's expecting to find the entire area inhabited by people from Outer fucking Mongolia.

So what he does isn't important, it's what he's saying. OK. Fair enough. Ah. So it's not what he says. It's what he does.

Well he can look forward to some extremely sub-standard blowjobs now.

Doesn't matter if he doesn't play. He's only done well for us as the central striker in a 4-3-3, and he's not allowed to play there this season because Demba Ba has to play in the middle or he'll cry.

Recently, about as much as I'd enjoy 90 minutes of hammering nails into my testicles whilst someone papercuts my eyeballs. With a 15 minute break in the middle, of course. Sadly though where Newcastle are concerned I seem to be a terminal masochist.

For me, the midfield is secondary provided we go with a front three of Ba (left side), Cisse (Central) and HBA (Right side). It seems Ba isn't allowed to play anywhere other than in the middle though, and that's fucking us over. Ba's great in the middle, don't get me wrong, but Cisse can't play wide and we've nobody else who can play as an auxiliary striker alongside Ba and Ben Arfa. Also, When we do go 4-3-3 this season Pardew is doing the baffling thing of putting Hatem on the left which is just crazy, and Cisse on the right, meaning we're really playing 4-5-1 rather than 4-3-3 as like all players they want to play on their strongest foot and will tend to go wide. That's exactly what we'd want in 4-4-2 (But don't get, as Pardew then plays Jonas left and HBA right...), but not if we're trying to go 4-3-3. However to answer your actual question, I'd ideally want Tiote, Cabaye and Anita, yes. And as for the bolded bit of your post, I strongly suspect Ba is playing centrally simply because Pardew is shitting himself over the £7m release fee that's rumoured to still exist and Ba doesn't like playing out wide. Shame its our only formation where we actually look dangerous.

I find it fairly abhorent that he hates the English so much he won't wear a poppy, yet conveniently forgets his ideology when picking up his paycheck (Doubtless in pounds sterling) every week.

I agree entirely that people should be free to not wear a poppy if they don't want to. After all if they were forced to wear one, we would have a much harder time identifying the sectarian, bigoted retards in our midst. With that in mind, I support McClean 100% in his decision to abstain from it. The cunt.

We haven't invested as we could or should have done, but the players that we do have are good enough to play teams like West Ham off the fucking park. Now I don't expect that every week, because players are human and games have a large random element which is why football is the popular sport that it is. But we've played nobody off the park for bloody ages, whilst other teams regularly make us look second-rate. That surely must tell us something? Pardew got manager of the year last season as we enjoyed a great season and finished 5th, and that achievement buys him a lot of time and respect from me and others. However I'm starting to wonder if we finished 5th because of Pardew or in spite of him. Let's face it: Ben Arfa, Cabaye, Ba, Cisse, Coloccini, Tiote, Taylor, Santon, Krul. OK, we have to stick a couple of duffers in there too and there's the usual injuries/suspensions etc, but where the merry fuck should that collection of players finish if not around 5th in the league? Did we REALLY over-perform last year? Or did we just exceed our own extremely modest expectations, giving us the erroneous impression of over-performing? Should the gong for our 5th placed finish have been more accurately awarded to Alan Carr? Alan Pardew is eloquent, intelligent and an excellent man-manager from what I can tell. It's not like he's some washed-up fucknut who's stumbled into the job and is incapable of comprehending the task at hand. However, he does seem to be repeatedly making some fundamental mistakes on an alarmingly regular basis. 1) Playing the wrong players in the wrong positions in 4-4-2 I have a feeling I've mentioned this before, and I have a feeling I'll probably mention it again. If we're playing 4-4-2, we need a left-footed left winger, and a right-footed right winger. No exceptions. No excuses. I'm pig-sick of Gutierrez on the left and Hatem on the right meaning that when we attack we've got 3 options: a) attempt a cross with a foot that's best used for standing on, which is almost invariably shit. b) check back inside, give the defenders a chance to ready themselves, then play an inswinging cross in that the defenders are facing the right way to deal with and head to safety. It simply DOES.NOT.WORK. Never has, never will. c) cut inside and shoot. Why? For the love of all things good, WHY? What the hell are Ba and Cisse for if our gameplan is to score with our wingers cutting inside? And how is this scoring with wingers working for us exactly? Not like we've got clones of Cristiano bloody Ronaldo out on either wing. We've got 2 of the league's best marksmen standing in the box, as time and again our wingers fuck about doing the wrong thing. We've seen time and again that if you supply them, they will score. So let's fucking supply them instead of trying to mess about on the flanks. The same "correct people on the correct flanks" also applies to a lesser extent to fullbacks. People say Santon is best on the left, but that's with hardly any time watching the poor chap to play on the right and he's not exactly setting the league alight with his goals and assists on the left now, is he? 2) Playing the wrong players in the wrong positions in 4-3-3 Similar to above. But when we go 4-3-3, on those rarest of occasions, we still do it wrong. It seems that Ba simply has to play centrally (see below) but then we again put the wrong people on the flanks. Under a 4-3-3, your 2 wide men are auxiliary strikers and need this time SHOULD be cutting inside to shoot. However Pardew seems to still get it wrong and under his 4-3-3s this season we play lefties on the left and right footers on the right. Remember when we played 4-3-3 successfully last year? Ba, Cisse, HBA. Worked beautifully. Ba didn't score as many as he could, but he contributed to our play greatly and the other 2 were magnificent. This season we're more likely to see HBA, Ba, Cisse in that order across the front line, and it means that we're effectively playing with one striker in Ba and 2 wingers to supply him. It's really 4-5-1 as neither HBA or Cisse are operating as auxiliary strikers when stuck on the left and right sides respectively. 3) The elephant in the corner of the room - Demba Ba Let's look at some things here regarding Ba: - Pardew said close-season that Ba would play centrally a lot more. - Ba had (And allegedly still has?) a £7m release clause in his contract that he'll get half of and we'll only get £3.5m if he goes. - Ba doesn't like playing out wide. - Our best play last season was with Ba out wide in a 4-3-3 - We're trying to get Ba to sign a new contract, and for whatever reason he won't at the moment Ba (Left side), Cisse (Central), Ben Arfa (right side) worked last year and worked bloody well for the most part, yet how many minutes have we played that formation this season? I'd be astonished if it's even half an hour. In fact I can't recall seeing it at all. Pardew's no mug, he's an intelligent bloke, so he'll be well aware that 4-3-3 worked well for us as above. Yet he's going out of his way to avoid playing it this season. The only possible answer is that Ba has him over a barrell, so to speak, and it's a case of if he doesn't play centrally then he's off. Whether this has been implicit or explicit remains to be seen, but I cannot see that this isn't Pardew's thinking when lining up on a match day. This is hamstringing the whole fucking team. Now I don't know what the answer here is, I really don't. If Ba is doing what I suspect, then it's shit and puts Pardew in a really difficult position. Ba is a tremendous player and I love seeing him play for us, but it's nothing short of astonishing that we've not started a game with him on the left of a 4-3-3 after it worked so well for us last year. Maybe we can play 4-4-2 successfully and keep Ba and Cisse happy, but not with the personnel that we have. For me it's 4-3-3 until Christmas and get some new troops in if we simply must go 4-4-2. Or else let Ba go if he simply won't play out wide, sad though that will be, and move on. Players dictating to clubs, however that is done, never ends well.

Double post.

If it is, it's frankly f***ing crazy. Aside from the obvious point that there's no way Cisse can play on the right. Almost sick of saying it, but under a 4-4-2 you need your wide attacking players to have their strongest foot nearest the touchline. Ie lefties on the left, right footers on the right. Under a 4-3-3, as the wide attacking players are playing as auxiliary strikers, this should be reversed.

We've got a decent collection of players, but the test as ever is what formation Pardew decides to assemble them in. I worry that following the recent Ba/Pardew interviews, Pardew is pandering to Ba and playing him centrally come hell or high water. There's no way Cisse can play out wide, so we'll see 4-4-2 again with the wingers yet again on the wrong wings so they're unable to get early balls into the box, and have to stall our attacks and check back inside every single time. Hope I'm wrong and we go 4-3-3 with Ba out left, but I'm worried that Pardew is obsessing over keeping Ba happy at the cost of everything else.

Of course it's utter bollocks. All the players who played gash today didn't feature against Brugge. We keep playing reserve teams in Europe but looking good because the right players are on the right flanks (Obertan and Santon on the right, Ferguson and Sammy on the left), then we play our first team in the league and start sticking people all over the fucking place and are predictably and repeatedly shite to watch. I'm incredulous about it all to be quite honest. There's no sign of it yet so if the penny is dropping for Pardew it must be coming down from a hell of a fucking height.

No, it was 4-5-1 because to be effective in a 4-3-3 you need players on the opposite flanks to their strongest foot. To play 4-4-2, you need players on the same flank as their strongest foot. this is not true Really? Give me some examples of teams that have made it work with players on the wrong flanks in a 4-4-2 or the right flanks (so to speak) in a 4-3-3. I'm perfectly willing to be proven wrong, but all the evidence I've seen so far (Not just at Newcastle) indicates that some things work and some simply don't.

No, it was 4-5-1 because to be effective in a 4-3-3 you need players on the opposite flanks to their strongest foot. To play 4-4-2, you need players on the same flank as their strongest foot. Until Pardew realises this, we're going to continue to look utterly shit, fail to build coherent attacks, fail to worry the opposition, stall our own progress by being unable to get the ball into the box early in a 4-4-2 or fail to be able to threaten to cut inside and shoot in a 4-3-3. I don't mind whether we play 4-4-2 or 4-3-3, that's for Pardew as manager to decide, but he simply has to have the right players on the right sides of the pitch. I'm as bored of saying it as you all are of reading it, but I'll not stop until everyone's so sick of me saying it that the next one of you to bump into Pardew in a car park or supermarket will grab him by the collar and beg him to sort this shit out. And at fullback, Santon must play on the right if we're going 4-4-2 so he can overlap with the winger. I don't care who plays on the left, until we can buy a leftie put Simpson there for now. He's solid defensively but all he does going forward is get the ball, shit himself with terror, turn 120 degrees inside and pass it back to Williamson or Coloccini. I'm sure he's equally as capable of doing this from the left flank, so we'll lose nothing there but gain massively in a 4-4-2 from having a competent, attacking winger who can bomb forward and get crosses in as well.

Beautiful pass by Sammy Ameobi, picked Cisse out perfectly. And Cisse, goalscorer that he is, nonchalantly knocks it in with his arse.