brummie

Davies looks good with a leader like Laursen alongside him, but without a strong character like that, he looks fucking awful, which is what he has been since Laursen's injury. He makes some fantastic interceptions when nothing is expected of him, but he just panics over relatively easy situations far, far too often.

I hope you'd had a full course of innoculations beforehand, and got yourself deloused afterwards.

The booing was the Villa fans trying to get the Newcastle fans to stop singing through it. How fucking precious is that? The bloke's not dead. Personally I was more interested in trying to support my team than pay any attention to what Martin Laursen was or wasn't doing. Maybe when we eventually make it back to Villa Park, you can use your giant scoreboards as an autocue to let us know when we're allowed to support our team. I mentioned you were singing through his speech as someone mentioned us "saying our goodbyes" or whatever it was. You were making quite a lot of noise. I didn't make out that you were pissing on his grave or something. They just wanted to hear what he was saying, which is what the booing was about.

Why shouldn't sections of our support take pleasure in your demise, if you're looking at it that way? You've spent most of the thread moaning about people acting tribally at a football match and then said "why shouldn't we act tribally?". There's no reason why you shouldn't. That's what football supporters do. I only mentioned Laursen in reply to someone else who mentioned him in the first place and I mentioned that your fans were singing through his speech. I didn't attach any negativity to the comment, you did.

The booing was the Villa fans trying to get the Newcastle fans to stop singing through it. Quite ridiculous. As Mowen said earlier in the thread, it wasn't a minutes silence that we were interrupting. Have you seen Cuellar and Davies play together in the centre of defence? It might as well have been.

The booing was the Villa fans trying to get the Newcastle fans to stop singing through it.

I've just been having a conversation with someone about this on PM, but possibly worth mentioning it here. I preface this with disclaimers about I know it is easy for me to say, and I know football has changed, but anyway ... ... when we got relegated in 87, the club was an absolute shambles from top to bottom, absolutely rotten to the core. Ellis had taken apart the team that won the league and EC, and we'd got relegated. Graham Taylor took over and said - similar to Shearer yesterday, actually - that the club was "a shambles", and set about changing it for the better, which he did a very good job of. The situation you are in now is that you've got the same chance. A manager who you want, who is untainted by the relegation (who in their right mind would point the finger at Shearer?), a chance to shake the club up from top to bottom - change the way it is run, get rid of those players on absurd contracts negotiated in the Shepherd era, shake the fucking tree as hard as you can. It isn't as good as staying up and doing it would have been, but in the circumstances now you'll find out who gives a shit about the club, and people at the club will be forced to look at the way they work with a critical eye. Look at Boro, and you'd struggle to see a single positive for them in being relegated, but your situation is different in that you have an absolutely priceless chance to sieze some good from it and change things definitively.

Nolan engaged in banter a few times with our fans in the front rows of the Trinity Road every time he came over to take a throw - saw him laughing with them a few times. I imagine they were making Delap related comments as he was drying the ball on his shirt before throwing. Maybe I'm a bit miserable and old school, but I don't like to see footballers smiling when staring adversity so closely in the face.

The internet was the worst thing ever to happen to football. Worse than Charles Hughes, Sky, and FIFA combined. not as bad as nicky butt though I actually thought he put himself about a fair bit yesterday and at least showed some passion. Certainly when compared with that toussle-haired spunkweasel Coloccini who only seemed to put in any effort when getting down the tunnel as quickly as he could.

The internet was the worst thing ever to happen to football. Worse than Charles Hughes, Sky, and FIFA combined.

Who gives a fuck? That's obviously a rhetorical question going by this thread like. Has anyone thought that, perhaps, if we were to take this with something approaching dignity then that might go some way to overcoming the negative stereotypes that a lot of people hold of us? All bullshit like this thread does is give them more ammunition to use against us. Football fans in 'indignant at being kicked when down' shocker. Sorry Indi, this is my issue de jour, as i can focus on this supposed slight from the Villa fans instead of reflecting on how shit a team we are/were. One of my mates was telling me today about the Newcastle fans (without tickets, some of them) he was chatting to on the walk to the ground yesterday, and what a decent lot they were and about as far from the usual stereotype as you could possibly find. I was telling him that this place is pretty much a good example of that, and that you can't judge vast swathes of people by stereotypes. My brother was out on Broad Street on Saturday night and got chatting to a few who were down for the game (there were a lot of them out on the piss, incidentally, who seemed to be having a good time, which must have been a struggle in such a boring city), and he said the same thing. I was reading on one of our forums earlier, one of our fanzine sellers saying that all the Newcastle supporters he came across were "a credit to their club", and there are shit loads of posters on here, who are precisely that. I understand you're pissed off, I've been in exactly the same situation myself, but you seem to have entirely missed my point, that by whingeing on about the way people behave, then sinking to their own level, you lose your claim to moral authority. Oh and I had you down for one of the interesting posters too, but reading this thread, you've come across as about as undignified as you possibly could. Smiley or not, that's pathetic and vaguely insulting.

Therein lies my point. Sink to their level and you've not got a leg to stand on when it comes to claiming the moral high ground. Rant all you like, I'm just a bit disappointed to read crap like that coming from one as sensible as you, regardless of the circumstances. Well you know what to do if you don't like it! :-) Yes I do. Bye.

Therein lies my point. Sink to their level and you've not got a leg to stand on when it comes to claiming the moral high ground. Rant all you like, I'm just a bit disappointed to read crap like that coming from one as sensible as you, regardless of the circumstances.

Think he'll be off this summer. Not got much of a look in the second half of the season. He's a great tackler, and it is good to have a niggly bastard like him in the centre of the pitch at times, but his passing is really utterly woeful.

And did you really expect any different, had the match been played anywhere else in the country? I understand people getting annoyed, but my points are: 1. Schadenfreude. It is what football is built on. How this surprises anyone is beyond me, 2. People in this thread spouting utter nonsense like "shit boring fans, shit city yada yada yada" being probably the same people who - quite rightly - get the hump when others go on about fat blokes with their shirts off crying need to get a grip and think about what they're saying and what kind of negative stereotypes they're perpetuating. 3. If you'd gone down and nobody had batted an eyelid that's when you should be worried, not when it gets the kind of reaction and coverage it has just got. 4. Martin Laursen - we did give him a good send off. After we'd got your fans to stop singing through his speaking to the crowd, that is.

Expected a bit better of you, Chez, that's a bit like me spouting utter nonsense about Newcastle. There's no point trying to take the moral ground on something if you then immediately sink to the level of the people you're having a go at. Whatever the motives of whoever made the banner, look at all the people on here getting their knickers in a twist over it. You'd think you'd have bigger things to worry about, to be honest, other than a banner. Keep it in perspective.

Talk Sport's business model. Ill informed gobby presenter (ie Adrian Durham) makes contentious point. Even worse informed gobby co-presenter (ie Wright) takes contrary position (NB usually neither presenter nor co-presenter will actually believe the point they are making). Morons queue up to phone in, frothing at the mouth with indignation. Talk Sport truly is a moron magnet.

Like I said the other day, the time to worry is when nobody really bats an eyelid. Like if West Ham or another yoyo club had gone down.

Coming from someone whose owner currently has a net worth of two bob, I'll take that as a joke.

I can't believe anyone is really shocked to see football supporters taking pleasure in the misfortune of other football supporters, like it is some kind of new thing which doesn't normally happen. A Blues supporting fan was telling me the other day how much your lot were loving it when you relegated them the other year.

i think it was more the waiting for the lap of honour, to be honest.

I was quite shocked today. When we played Stoke at our place this season, they were the worst team I've seen us play for about 10 years, no exaggeration whatsoever. They had zero talent, zero ability, but they stuck at it and at least had spirit, and - undeservedly, admittedly - got a point. Then when we played Hull, they were very, very marginally less bad than Stoke were, but again, you could tell they had some spirit. They lost but you could tell it hurt, and they at least had a real go at us when they realised they had 20 mins left to get something from the game. Newcastle, however, totally different story, no spirit, no sign of fight, no struggle, not even in the second half, absolutely nothing whatsoever. Really quite shocking, they didn't even look that bothered at final whistle. That's the shame, the squad isn't very good, too many non performers, but on paper it looks way, way ahead of Stoke and Hull, but it is worth nothing without that element of fight and spirit. They've let you down massively, and the best thing you can hope for is to be rid of the majority of them.

Tell you what, and I'm absolutely genuinely not joking or in any way taking the piss here, but word has it that MON has told Zat Knight he can leave this summer. He's prone to the odd lapse, but of our four CBs, he plays the ball around miles better than the other two, and will do somebody a very good job indeed.

He came across as pretty dignified. Didn't duck the issues when asked whether everything at the club was fucked up from top to bottom, either.

If we don't score within an hour, you'll get a draw. We're incapable of holding on to a 1-0 lead no matter how well we play.