AyeDubbleYoo

It's always 'if' with Mark Viduka isn't it? If he's up for it, and if he stays fit, and if his wages are high enough, he'll be a good player... too many ifs for a club to bother with IMO.

Nice to see Simpson has fallen in with the wrong crowd already! The Ranger boy is a straight up G.

This is a terrible idea. The rules of footgball are perfect and fine. The enforcement of these rules by incompetent officials is the problem. Fair point, I realised it was a bit leftfield! Referees do have a difficult time though, I suppose they could rectify it by only giving penalties if they were 100% sure they had seen a foul... but they would need to be backed up by their bosses and assessors. I have a feeling that as soon as managers started whinging that they weren't getting penalties they would end up losing matches and getting dropped from the Premier League list. What I don't understand is why everyone is so slow and reluctant to act on divers? And managers, WTF is Wenger doing appealing against Eduardo's ban? It doesn't benefit anyone - even teams that win the occasional penalty will have a number of unjust ones given against them for the same reason, surely?

I'm almost tempted to say get rid of the penalty completely, except it would lead to mad fouling to prevent goals! Maybe no automatic penalty but only if the foul denies a goalscoring opportunity. So stop players kicking the ball miles away from themselves and diving.

Harewood must be itching for a chance to play some football as well... might help make up for his basic lack of ability.

Yeah, you've got a point, but what teams like Man City do is breach of contract by proxy... they unsettle the player until he wants out, and his attitude becomes so bad that he is useless to his current club. Footballers should just stop signing contracts and just play window-to-window - they're meaningless anyway.

Seems a bit arbitary to me, this sort of thing happens all the time surely. Man City have spent the last six months inducing Joleon Lescott to leave Everton, I would call that tapping up.

Not a great player by any means but we need a forward at the moment and he's big and uncomfortable to defend against. Might give us an extra physical edge that we'll need against some of the poorer sides.

For all that Cardiff are a good side and threatening going forward, if we can put out our first choice back 4 we should have more than enough to cope with them. Best team in the Championship is still the equivalent of playing Hull or someone like that.

What I mean is that the top clubs move their players on when they're past their best. Shearer did a lot for us but there came a point when he was no longer top class. You could argue we weren't a top class club, but that's another thread!

I think you've got a major point there 2sheds, I love Shearer but we should have moved him on when he was a player, and we should be looking at proven managers. Our club has massive potential, we could easily be as big as someone like Man Utd. With Shepherd, Hall and Keegan firmly in the past we should be looking to bring someone in to take us to the next level. Perfect scenario - with promotion secured and a new owner in place I would think managers would be falling over themselves to get into the hotseat, no?

I think Everton have assembled a very strong set of CBs, including Heitinga. Vermaelen does look brilliant, but as baba says let's give him a few months before we judge.

You might be right, but it hardly makes sense to give him no credit when things are going well but prepare to criticise him if they turn bad, does it? Either he's influencing the players or he isn't, right?

I tend to agree with you, but I can't think of any evidence! Just out of interest, what are your main reasons for thinking Hughton couldn't make a manager? Lack of experience is obviously one, but Shearer suffers from that too.

Oba is actually 45, and Geremi is 86.

Probably the only team we've faced so far who actually pose a threat to the opposition's goal... Chopra will be itching for a goal but I still think we can take this one if we play as well as we have been. A draw would be more than acceptable, there's plenty of rubbish in this league we can get our wins off.

Aparently Chopra was out on Saturday night in town... my mates swear he walked past us. I didn't see him though, so this isn't a very interesting story.

Of all the players I thought might leave, I'm ecstatic we managed to hold onto Jose. He links up with Jonas very well, they seem to have a great understanding, and he's more than solid in defence (usually). A player too good for this league really, and potentially the future Spain number one LB.

i understand and agree with that but the fact that the minority of fans are pretty much being held at gunpoint with this is quite tragic. we always need a certain hero, not just any hero. Yeah, I certainly don't believe that Newcastle is particularly 'special' and needs a particular Geordie hero to be the manager, that attitude holds the club back in a major way. I'm not sure how many fans really believe that either though, if Mourinho fancied a crack at the job I'm sure we'd get on board with that! The only problem is that, to a certain extent, what a vocal minority shout for and what the press report becomes the reality. If we're always going to have the spectre of Shearer over the club, on TV etc, then it might not be the worst thing to give him a shot and see what happens. Also, he might be a success, which would obviously be amazing. Who will be next in line as the messiah though? S Taylor's a bit young to be manager yet!

Even if the Shearer era isn't a success, and there's every chance it might be, we need to get it out of our systems so we can move on as club.

I was wondering that as well, is there anyone at the club who is actually allowed to make signings? I'd be surprised.

Our players massively under-performed last season, for whatever reason(s) including the off-field nonsense. There's very few who aren't good enough for the premiership, if they perform to their best. Nobody can hack the premiership if they don't do that.

This - and I'm not convinced about some of them(Lua Lua for example). As Hansen said once - you win nothing with a team of kids. A couple of months before Man Utd won the title?

Hughton seemed very confident that nobody would be going out. He might not know anything about it of course.

I'm going to this one! Seems it will be the toughest test yet.