Lotus

Aye. "Sadly because of the way that Sky money controls football, cup competitions are not the priority of Premier League clubs" would be a lot more accurate. "Newcastle director gives honest answer to question" could be another. 'Premier League is priority' FFS man, any PL club would say the same. A constant whinge on here is about lack of honesty from the club. They get an honest answer - and a pretty obvious one - cue more whingeing. You're into this football lark for all the wrong reasons.

Pretty reasonable observation tbf.

f***ing hell man. We're playing Leeds at home and we haven't won a cup in ages. Looking to the next game and writing this one off has Pardew written all over it. Same with Inochi, god forbid we try and win. We might not so maybe we shouldn't try too hard and focus on the prem (in september). Baffling. You need to chill out!!! All the lads are saying is that they have no interest in seeing Newcastle win a cup competition. They're focusing on the desire to see the club finish somewhere around 8th-12th in the Prem because there's more money it in.

I must say, reading that further strengthens the notion that there is absolutely no sporting ambition at the club. Which is a little hard to take tbh.

Attilo Lombardo

I know it makes me a voyeur of intellectual violence but Polic is just about my favourite poster! Personally, i reckon you're next....

-------------- Tiote -- Bigi -------------- Marveaux ---- Gosling ------- Sammy ---------------- Gouffran ---------------- ... is what I'm expecting. Which looks pretty gash really; no definite goal-threat from midfield and an isolated striker who prefers to run the channels. Aye. I'd rather chew foil than watch that.

I'm not sure you can blame Pardew for lack of concentration though. Surely that's down to the players. Would help i think if the players were just a tad afraid of Pardew. Afraid to upset him anyway. Afraid to screw up, basically.

I'm happy with that progress. We finished 8 points from 8th last year and were absolutely s****. Anything over 50 points and you're pretty much odds on as you're really only the best of a bad bunch. It's only progress if we maintain it and/or improve upon it though. And Pardew showed last year that he's hardly reliably in that respect, especially without investment. We just need to steady the ship after the relegation battle last season, get some confidence instilled back around the city, our team is slowly building into something special we just need to keep trying to add little bits of quality here and there as we are never going to splash at big style like some teams do. We've came a long way already from the days of Barton/Nolan, we just need to keep pushing on. New owners and a new fancy manager would be nice but that’s not likely to happen anytime soon. Hello Alan. Sly dig at the fans in the end there and jobs a good`un. Do you go on my profile, check my posts and pick up on any you fancy? You've done it all afternoon. Just pointing this out because it's a bit cuntish tbf. Thing is you're contradicting yourself somewhat there Brett . You can certainly say we have come a long way player wise since Barton and Nolan, I would even agree. But why isn't our team any better than the one Pardew took over? Indeed some might say that the team is actually worse despite the personnel being of a higher quality of player. Why is that? It's a rhetorical question by the way. I've contradicted nothing in terms of my own opinion, i think this is the best side i've seen in years, i hope Pardew sticks with the majority of this team and blends it together, it has signs of the team that finished 5th but with more quality added to it. It should be but it really isn't. We'll see, just different opinions. I believe in this side. One day, probably something like a Tuesday evening when the mods are at a parents evening or something, this place is gonna be a bit quiet, largely unsupervised, you're gonna run into Interpolic. Won't be anywhere obvious. He might quietly follow you into a thread in General about ski boots or the like. Something innocuous. Then he'll start off with a few throw away comments, might even seem like he's trying to find some common ground. Then he'll get you. Turn you. We'll come in Wednesday morning to find you repeating a few incoherent lines about being loose at the back, a set penis and a big man to hold it up. Happens to all of you lot, eventually.

Would think Bigi in for Cabaye would be a decent swap and i guess it seems as if Tiote is in for Anita.

Spurs squad is starting to look ridiculously good. Waiting to see how strong AVB is mentally before deciding if they're that good though!

Poyet's analysis as a commentator has been great imo. Hardly an endorsement but it's been chalk and cheese to Shearer as an example!

For me, we didn't create enough because they blocked off the width of their box and we rarely went down the sides of it. When a team 'parks the bus' you have to go with width. We didn't. I'm actually worried that we can't!!!! If we'd been able to vary it a bit we would have been better going forward.

I think if Debuchey hadn't cocked up and HBA had bothered his arse to move another 10-15 yards we could've held onto the 1-0 long enough to see Hull have to come out to us more. Then i think the space would have been there. Pardew will have to work hard to remedy it because Pienaar and Baines are going to running at Debuchey full on for 90 minutes, that's obvious. Sissoko and HBA will need to help him. We do seem frightfully limited when we move away from plan A though, must be said!

Saturday's result against Hull was awful. There were some positives to our play though imo. We played some nice balls along the deck into Cabaye through the middle. Suprised me as the passes were actually quite long and i thought risky but we were quite accurate with them. They cut out a fair bit of the Hull side. Some of our football was definitely better. There were moments of moving the ball around well, quick passing, pulling their players about and dragging them from their positions. I understood what we were doing when we were playing it around at the back. We weren't being aimless and showy or having a lack of ideas, we were trying to drag them out, to invite them to press a little higher so we could pass the ball into the space they'd vacate to do that. Hull were so compacted around the width of their box i understood sometime you have to try long shots and see if anything falls for us. It did fall for us, twice. Our problems were (as i saw it): 1) We rarely got any real width. A Debuchey cut back, occasional left footed cross from Remy/Santon. Not enough. If a team compacts the way Hull did we needed to go down the flanks effectively. We didn't. Part of that is only having 1 player out 4 on their natural foot. 2) I was worried that if played a 4-3-3 we would lack the tactical discipline to make it work. The Villa performance made me think i'd misjudged that. The Hull one made me think i hadn't. Anita played it well but both Sissoko and Cabaye left too much space between them when we didn't have the ball. They didn't play with the necessary discipline/intelligence to make it work (against Hull). Also, our wide forwards did not track their FBs. 3) Lack of intensity. We were lacklustre after 20 minutes in the 1st half and came out slow again in the 2nd. Pardew said it was a bad day at the office. Every team can have those. It makes me hopefull that he wants to stick with the system and some of our ideas but just improve upon them. When he made subs and we started changing formation we just fell apart. Bad squad depth as well as a bad plan B. There was plenty wrong with Saturday. Plenty. But, there were also some good things that i think have been overshadowed. I hope we can reduce the mistakes, both individual (see Debuchey) and system/formation (see lack of width and midfield players 30 yards from one another) and improve on what we started to do well, some decent passing and at least 20 minutes of good movement!!! From what i've seen so far, that's still our best 11 to play Everton, such is our dirth of options.

Pass it. Yep. Pass it to players running into the spaces that Hull left by crowding him out. Hardly rocket science is it?

Thought he was ok today. Some nice things at times. Some others not so good. A hugely crowded midfield isn't really going to be right space for him to play though tbf. I thought he should have dropped deeper and made up the numbers today and then either him or Sissoko could have ghosted forward when it looked promising.

Seriously i don't think the rest were that bad.... but Debuchy was f*cking horrific. He's the main reason we lost today and i'm in a vile mood, thanks a lot you french t***. MYM and Colo were terrible too. I really don't think they were..... neither were to blame for any of the goals.... there were all Debuchy's fault.... the first two were due to his awful positioning and they both should have been picked up by him and even the third he was awful for and the midfield not picking up Aluko if he wasn't playing we win today IMO. I honestly couldn't blame Colo or MYM for any of the goals. MYM invited pressure tbh and Santon was often well out of position when we lost the ball. Bollocks. Nah, it takes more than 1 out of a back 4 having a bad day to be THAT all over the place. The whole backline was defending alone all game, which makes it look worse. Nope. Anita was dropping into positions when one of the back 4 would go for a run around. Aye. As intelligent as that is from Anita, he can't do it every minute. Then his FBs need to think about the game from the POV of being defenders 1st. Also, when MYM wandered around with the ball and lost it, who had dropped into his position? Anita, which was a good thing.

He was outdone by his RB having the worst performance i have seen in years.... nothing to do with Steve Bruce. Well, tbf. Targeting Debuchey was a fairly obvious option. We're playing 4-3-3 with a narrow midfield and only HBA to help him out. It's going to happen a lot because, for the oppostion it works.

Thought he played well today. Aware, quick responses. Good team player.

Seriously i don't think the rest were that bad.... but Debuchy was f*cking horrific. He's the main reason we lost today and i'm in a vile mood, thanks a lot you french t***. MYM and Colo were terrible too. I really don't think they were..... neither were to blame for any of the goals.... there were all Debuchy's fault.... the first two were due to his awful positioning and they both should have been picked up by him and even the third he was awful for and the midfield not picking up Aluko if he wasn't playing we win today IMO. I honestly couldn't blame Colo or MYM for any of the goals. MYM invited pressure tbh and Santon was often well out of position when we lost the ball. Bollocks. Nah, it takes more than 1 out of a back 4 having a bad day to be THAT all over the place. The whole backline was defending alone all game, which makes it look worse. Nope. Anita was dropping into positions when one of the back 4 would go for a run around.

Agree with that regarding lineup. They need to work considerably harder in training to try and look like a team though.

True dat !

Seriously i don't think the rest were that bad.... but Debuchy was f*cking horrific. He's the main reason we lost today and i'm in a vile mood, thanks a lot you french t***. MYM and Colo were terrible too. I really don't think they were..... neither were to blame for any of the goals.... there were all Debuchy's fault.... the first two were due to his awful positioning and they both should have been picked up by him and even the third he was awful for and the midfield not picking up Aluko if he wasn't playing we win today IMO. I honestly couldn't blame Colo or MYM for any of the goals. MYM invited pressure tbh and Santon was often well out of position when we lost the ball. Bollocks. Nah, it takes more than 1 out of a back 4 having a bad day to be THAT all over the place.