oldtype

Should we arrange a Skype call or something?

Come on all you people actually living in Newcastle, surely going and camping out the airport and SJP is a more productive use of your time.

Surely they wouldn't make something up about him actually being here. Too easy to disprove.

My mind reached into the past to retrieve the miniscule amount of French I learned in high school just so I could read that article and be excited.

Disco has got it right. The main thing is sponsorship deals. Loads of gigantic companies lining up around here to associate themselves with Man U or Liverpool. I shudder to think of how much money Man U makes off their sponsorship deals with Kumho Tire or the Seoul Municipal Government. (Was quite happy to see the back of the idiot mayor who sanctioned that.) Chelsea's shirt sponsorship deal with Samsung is another good example. Sewelly's point about merchandise selling well in the more developed Asian countries is also true. We're not all third-world wearers of fake shirts

I think statements like this are utterly pointless. Well, that's my dose of unnecessary hostility sorted

There's plenty of money to be had in Asia, it's just that Man U and to a lesser extent Arsenal and Liverpool have already laid claim to most of it. Despite being glory hunters, most Asian fans aren't going to suddenly change allegiance just because Newcastle just bought the latest Asian star.

I think a lot of managers who could have been good or even great fall through the cracks because they aren't given enough time. Very few of the "great" managers of our time go to a club and produce instant results. Most of them had a period where someone took chance on them through tough times and they had the opportunity to really put their stamp on a club as a long term project. This sort of experience allowed them to achieve their full potential as managers. I think a big part of becoming a good manager is experience rather than natural ability, and you're obviously deprived of much of the experience you need to improve your managing when you're just sacked a the first sign of weakness and bouncing from failure to failure, eventually washing out of the game. Not necessary saying that Pardew is one of these people, but it is true in principle.

Where was that post I made ages ago? Oh yes, here it is. Do agree that we need to look at the Asian markets more. There are established internationals here that would move to ANY Premiership club that would give them a chance for next to nothing.

One thing's for sure, our approach to transfers isn't going to change any time soon (and rightly so in many regards), so with the mega cash bonanza next season he'll be able to claw that back much more quickly than up to this point. If we stay up. I'm with you on the transfers, i think we go about it the right way to an extent. But you mustn't refuse to buy to the detriment of the team, like we did in the summer. I think this is where their lack of football knowledge kicks in, any fool knew we needed more players, all we got was some nonsense about purple players. Such non football speak from non football men. I'm hoping they learn from each mistake. Every plane crash stops a hundred more, to steal a strange fact that floats about in my brain. It's not "lack of football knowledge." Just a different set of priorities.

Thankfully not even bothered.

I'm not even worried about transfers. It's who we'll actually appoint that scares me shitless. This board's record with appointing actual managers is, in order, Kevin Keegan, Joe Kinnear, Alan Shearer, and Alan Pardew. There are few things I fear more than letting them pick another manager.

Time for people to think of alternatives as there's every chance we'll get nothing at Norwich either. I'd like Martinez, but I don't see us spending much so I've already given a cheap alternative in the other thread. Who else is a candidate? I don't know the foreign market very well. Realistically we're looking at the list of unattached managers. We won't spend money for a manager and based on track record and the board's personality I highly doubt we'd go foreign. People like Mark Hughes, Shearer(), Owen Coyle, Alan Curbishley, Roberto Di Matteo, Gordon Strachan...

My head still says it's the wrong decision, but I really just can't take it anymore. He has the next match and that's it as far as I'm concerned. Not that my opinion matters.

Embarrassing shit. I'm normally rational to a fault but I don't know how much of this I can take to be honest.

Blaming Pardew is much more productive than turning against Sammy for playing badly at age 20 in a struggling team.

The admins here are evil

There's a great deal of complex thinking and preparation that goes into a match of professional football. Go read a book or something. Have you played? You can tell me to read all the books you like, pouring too much thought into other teams and their tactics and worrying about what they are going to do is not a good thing imo. Don't get me wrong, preparation is key. Vital in fact, but it has to be preparation to play to YOUR strengths. This is what I mean, it's a simple game it really is, don't spend days worrying about opposition. I agree. I think you've got to know the opposition, know how to exploit them and how to stifle them but do it in a positive, constructive manner which focuses on your own teams strengths. You've got to do both really, play to your strengths and stifle the opposition. You're teams "strengths" also don't exist in isolation, you need to analyze how they interact with the opposition's qualities so you can leverage them for maximum effect. Either way, in no way, shape, or form is top level football a "simple" game. That's honestly just something fans make up to slag off managers and players.

There's a great deal of complex thinking and preparation that goes into a match of professional football. Go read a book or something.

Nothing to do with Pardew, but this is one of the worst and most ignorant stereotypes about football at the top level.

Switching Cisse centrally would put Marveaux up front and then somebody who wouldn't normally be playing in the center. That's three players displaced from the formation they've been practicing all week. It didn't pay off but it's a somewhat understandable decision. We won't be having this problem again, at least. He could had played Bigi. Tiote and Anita in midfield. Right, like I said, that's three players (Bigi, Marveaux, Cisse) displaced from the positions they'd been drilling for all week. (Closer to two I suppose, since Bigi would have been preparing to play CM anway)

Switching Cisse centrally would put Marveaux up front and then somebody who wouldn't normally be playing in the center. That's three players displaced from the formation they've been practicing all week. It didn't pay off but it's a somewhat understandable decision. We won't be having this problem again, at least.

It's a shame because if we were only doing moderately badly and mid-table mediocrity was pretty much a foregone conclusion, we could put a lot of effort into the cups. As it is we're going to need to basically throw these matches and focus on the league until survival is likely.

Lots of teams have relied on long balls against us this year, probably because they've realized that we can't deal with them.