AyeDubbleYoo

Can't believe you missed this one:

From the video on the BBC announcement he doesn't look as defensive as I thought. http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/n/newcastle_united/8935006.stm Can anyone who's seen more of him shed any light?

Totally agree. The only position I can see Ben Arfa coming into is the one currently occupied by Nolan, either in rotation or as a replacement when Nolan goes 3 or 4 games without scoring. In games where we're more confident and attacking, I guess one of Smith and Barton could drop out.

No problem with that really, Ben Arfa can provide the flourishes while Tiote provides the brutal shafting.

I think we need to be wary of making too many changes too quickly as well. The continuity and team spirit we have is our biggest asset, Hughton should realise that he needs to introduce new players gradually and without damaging what we have. The advantage we have over most promoted teams is the amount of Premier League players we already have. We need to add to them with the right amount of new talent, while keeping the basic team together IMO.

I just wish we could have got Bellamy, that would have been amazing. As it is another striker would be good, you're right. Keane would probably be raring to go, but I've not seen much of him recently to know whether he's the player he was. Always looks intelligent and sharp though, which would make him a good partner for Carroll in theory.

No guarantees obviously, but I'm optimistic... we've addressed two significant weaknesses in the team.

Probably just a correction or typo or the content taking a while to reach all the web servers (they probably have two front end ones for load balancing). Web person post over.

It's still working, though. (the link that I posted here before) It's still there, it's just the second one in the carousel now. There's a new piece about Wolves game.

Not at £44.99 a year it ain't!

Just having a quick watch of his goal for France the other week.

Climb on board the Hugh-train man Steve, it's going places!

Finally, an excuse to get one of those brilliant Ivory Coast shirts and not look like a Drogba lover.

Perch Williamson Colo Jose Tiote Routledge Jonas Ben Arfa Keane Carroll Although maybe that would work in FM better than the real world There's a lot of responsibility on Tiote in that formation... I'd be happier seeing him with a central midfield partner until he settles in a bit.

I think we knew it wasn't because we were a better team TBH.

I reckon Hughton has a background in secret intelligence TBH, he's getting the hang of this stonewalling suspiciously quickly.

I want to get carried away, but will wait until we see the new boys play a few games. I just want us not to be shitting ourselves at the end of the season, would be nice to have a couple of months off from stressing about relegation.

What percentage of that is Man City?

I feel sorry for Hodgson, what was he doing taking the Liverpool job?

I'm beginning to tentatively believe that this might be possible. Obviously they'll always have the potential to make massive errors, but you can't deny they've done well over the last few months.

Question is, will he be demoralised that his thread didn't reach 300 pages? Ben Arfa will no doubt take the piss about it.

Yeah, all signs suggest we would never spend that much on a player of his age. I wouldn't worry.

To be fair, if even some of the quotes and reports have been true, it seems like we've behaved pretty well during this saga and stood strong for the deal we wanted. A little bit of credit must go to the club for that.

Only 1000? The window hasnt shut yet, still time for Ashley to hit us with a sickener......... True, he's probably selling Carroll to Liverpool or summat. (I'm not ITK on this by the way!)

Yeah, those are the only circumstances in which he'd say anything like this.