brummie

Our FA trampled all over our Wembley tradition when they started holding Cup semi finals there. it totally devalues the mystique of Wembley if you get to go there for the semi final too. seconded brummie. Agreed. Problem now is they'd never pay for the new stadium without doing so. pretty sure they could have afforded a better, cheaper stadium if it didn't HAVE to be in london. massivly overpriced and in a crap part of the country. especially when the majority of folk would rather the majority of england games were played in the regions. Agree with all that too. Should have been somewhere in the Midlands IMO. yip, they could probably have afforded the transport links to go with it aswell. The transport links are there at the site they were considering (see above).

Our FA trampled all over our Wembley tradition when they started holding Cup semi finals there. it totally devalues the mystique of Wembley if you get to go there for the semi final too. seconded brummie. Agreed. Problem now is they'd never pay for the new stadium without doing so. pretty sure they could have afforded a better, cheaper stadium if it didn't HAVE to be in london. massivly overpriced and in a crap part of the country. especially when the majority of folk would rather the majority of england games were played in the regions. Agree with all that too. Should have been somewhere in the Midlands IMO. Disagree. The site they were talking about in the Midlands was near the NEC, purely because it is near the motorway, and has a decent sized airport and a train station on site. The issue with that is it's close enough to London to make it worth actually building it in London. There was never any real prospect of it leaving London. I don't have a problem with that. Personally, I don't think we really need a national stadium at all, but if we are going to have one, it can't be anywhere in the provinces - no provincial city has anything like the extra attractions London has.

Our FA trampled all over our Wembley tradition when they started holding Cup semi finals there. it totally devalues the mystique of Wembley if you get to go there for the semi final too. seconded brummie. Agreed. Problem now is they'd never pay for the new stadium without doing so. pretty sure they could have afforded a better, cheaper stadium if it didn't HAVE to be in london. massivly overpriced and in a crap part of the country. especially when the majority of folk would rather the majority of england games were played in the regions. Dave is right, that's why we're playing semi finals there. As for the stadium, i was there in February for the CC final, and to be honest, it was underwhelming. When you're in the seat, it is very large scale, but it is the least atmospheric stadium I've ever been in. You think somewhere like the Emirates has its atmosphere killed by the corporate tier, Wembley is 10 times worse. Plus the concourses are horribly dark and dank - almost like they ran out of money at that point and just said "fuck it, pour a load of concrete down and stick some pictures of Geoff Hurst up". I do think the national stadium could only have been in London, though. Politically and financially, it had to be that way.

Our FA trampled all over our Wembley tradition when they started holding Cup semi finals there. it totally devalues the mystique of Wembley if you get to go there for the semi final too. seconded brummie. Rather go to Wembley than shitty Villa Park Hint: If you're going to fish, don't back your Vauxhall Nova up to the river bank, gigantic boot speaker exposed and blaring out cacky RnB bilge at top volume whilst you hammer away with a pneumatic drill.

Our FA trampled all over our Wembley tradition when they started holding Cup semi finals there. it totally devalues the mystique of Wembley if you get to go there for the semi final too.

Anything can happen in a one-off game. I wouldn't write Portsmouth off at all (although I'd rather play them than Chelsea, obv). There's also that romantic aspect of them winning it again which kind of sounds insane and unlikely to happen, but it makes you wonder a little ... Are you going, KD?

The only thing I can think he possibly means is to work hard to get the ball when we don't have it (he can't possibly mean anything else, mind). I was hugely impressed with that in your matches against Arsenal. It wasn't just about what you did when you had the ball, you worked unbelievably hard to get it back - and not just one man, two or three closing down the player with the ball. I read this week - and this is probaby not true, but it is still interesting - that in training at Barca, players are told that in practice matches, when they lose the ball they have five seconds to get it back. to be honest, the only similarity we'll have with Barcelona is the colours we wear.

I'm actually going to watch that one with some friends as a warmup to the Real Madrid - Barça game. Good luck there, brummie. Cheers. mate. I'm not one for watching matches that don't involve us, but having watched Barcelona over the two legs of the Arsenal tie and found myself with hairs standing up on the back of my neck several times, I'm recording your match to watch when I get home. I hope you do 'em good and proper.

Wembley again tomorrow. I've been telling myself since the draw that we won't get anything, that I should expect nothing, and that it'll be just another decent day on the piss. That seems to have gone out of the window today and I've spent the entire day thinking about it, and the fact we've actually - 7-1 excluded - got a more than decent record against Chelsea. *shakes fist at sky*

Can i just say, if we're depending on a few core players like Harper, Nolan and Carroll then we're f**ked. That article isn't informative in the least. Actually, i might doing it a disservice, he's writing for the broader public not diehard Newcastle fans who know the realities. Not going to go into the merits or not of the players you mention - I don't see them as often as you lot do - but surely, for any team which is newly promoted, you have to do precisely that - pick a core group of players, and rely on them. The alternative is assembling an entirely new nucleus to your squad, which is just infeasbile - both in terms of the time you have got to do it (especially with a World Cup in the summer distracting the usual business of football transfers) but also in terms of how much it would cost (unless you're Man City). Surely the clever thing to do is pick one or two areas where you can improve, at a decent price, and do that? No point throwing the baby out with the bath water.

McClaren looked a witless chump at England, but he's not the first manager to fail in that job. Much like our (well my) own Sir Graham Taylor. He did well at Boro and is doing well in Holland. You can't really argue with that. If only he didn't make himself look such a total twat with such frequency.

I didn't go, but my mate did, and that is almost word for word what he said as well.

According to my mate, Doug Ellis was there last night. It's too easy to label him as only in it for the money, when he's turning up for youth team matches despite being clearly not long for this world. I find myself liking him more and more these days.

First bolded bit, damn right. Second bolded bit, damn right. Most fans of other clubs would raise the Sky bumming you got with tht "everyone's second favourite club" malarkey for a while. Third bit, damn right. Journalists need something to write about. Given what has happened at Newcastle with poor managerial appointments, Shepherd and co, Ashley and relegation, it is manna from heaven to them. They're going to go into overdrive if Liverpool finish 6th or 7th. Just like they'll go into overdrive if Spurs finish fourth. Just like they went into overdrive over a load of entirely unsubstantiated rumours about our manager last week. Just like they'll go into overdrive if West Ham get relegated. I'm amazed that so many people (not talking about on here in particular, just in general) fail to see these points.

She's getting murdered in the comments, though. It's like a journalistic equivalent of Messi systematically taking Arsenal apart.

I always read the Guardian, but recently in employing fuckwits like her, and that droning self-obsessed harpy Lucy Mangan, I've come very close to switching to the Telegraph. If only I didn't find Tories even more nauseating than shit journalists, I'd have done it by now

Is she for real? So, an unsubstantiated rumour starts on a message board, possibly started by idiots, yes, but is then broadcast on TalkSport and in the Mirror. So who, precisely, are the idiots at question here? The people on the message boards, or the trained journalists who really should have known better than to be broadcasting / publishing it.

Ha ha ha, excellent stuff. Made me exhale a small amount of wine through my nostrils.

Those who can afford tellies, obv. Both of them.

Chelsea out last round, Arsenal systematically dismantled last night, and now Man United getting shat out of the competition. I'm not one for watching matches that don't involve Villa, but I must say, this week's European games have given me a quite amazing sense of schadenfreude. I was thinking tonight, listening to that cunt of a commentator on ITV go on and on and on about no England representatives left (as if we, the vast majority of fans who don't support the Sky 4 are supposed to somehow give a flying fuck), that if i were, say, Scottish, I'd probably have punched my telly in this evening. It gets on my tits enough as it is as an Englishman, god knows what it must be like for the Sweaties.

Absolutely staggering. I'm a 41 year old man and Ive just found myself having goosebumps watching a footballer for the first time in about 20 odd years.

What's to be embarassed about? There are plenty of big clubs who went down and continued to go down, and stayed down for a very long time.

I spoke to Mike Ashley the season before last. I said something along the lines of "Hello, Mike". I can't remember exactly what, but it was a platitude. He was coming through the car park at the back of the North Stand, and passing through a load of Villa fans. Many of our lot recognised him and engaged in what is (annoyingly) termed "banter" these days, but many patted him on the back, wished him well, and asked for photos / autographs. He was very obliging indeed, posing for pictures, signing autographs, and took the mild verbals he was getting with considerable good humour. I thought he seemed quite a pleasant billionaire.

The obsession of modern footballers with always wearing oversized headphones makes me want to PUT MY FIST THROUGH THE FUCKING TELLY every time I see it.

Yep, that's about right. And a decent striker, too.