oldtype

I don't see a whole lot wrong with Newcastle United being a prestigious team in a prestigious league.

Will be good to have him available for Spurs just in case Tiote is actually injured.

So that's Cisse, Ba, Colo, Tiote, Ben Arfa out? Might as well forfeit.

Fingers crossed DiMatteo fucks up in spectacular fashion. Then they'll just pay off his contract sometime around January, hire the best manager money can buy, and still finish in the top four anyway. Pisses me off how there's no consequences for failure at some clubs.

Any Olympic medal, and gold medals from the Asian Games. 2002 WC squad got it too didn't they? That was a special case. Government has stated that they'll no longer do those and will only hand out exemptions for the Olympics now.

Any Olympic medal, and gold medals from the Asian Games.

The Brazilians really, really don't want their silver medals

Does that mean no national service exemption for him? Gonna suck if that got away cos of some naivety on his part. Meh, I'm sure common sense will prevail and we'll work something out for him. It'll be ridiculous if they actually take his medal away for holding up a piece of paper somebody in the crowd gave him though.

A bit of drama: a Korean player has been barred from participating in today's medal ceremony and could be stripped of his bronze medal after displaying a "political message" on the pitch after yesterdays match

Man, sorry Filipao. This must suck. Crazy that Mexico is winning it, they were so poor in the opener against us

The only thing that was missing was one of our boys scoring from 90 yards when their keeper came up for the corner.

Awesome. Love the disallowed goal. Makes it more painful for them.

Come on. More goals. I want this to hurt. I want them to remember this when they wake up in the morning every day for the next year.

three panic substitutions in the space of five minutes. Watch one of them go off injured now.

Too easy

What a beautiful goal at exactly the right time. That was what Park was like all the time pre-Arsenal.

It's going on now, just in case anybody cares.

Roughly eight hours to go until total meltdown of the known universe

Holy shit man Isn't Finland amazing at curling or am I just stereotyping all Scandinavians?

Having watched Allen get mowed by our midfield quite recently, I really don't think he's a 15 million pound player.

I enquired about that when we played in Tallinn and they would've sent them over. Ended up buying the tickets to the away end from the gate. I can confirm that the box office will send them to the away end if you ask for them to. Obviously for European games I assume you'll have to do it well in advance. Also, not everybody at the box office knows that they can do that so if they say they can't make sure to pester them until they find someone who knows how to.

Spurs have had that for years imo. (Can't speak as to the personal qualities of their "group of lads") Chelsea have infinite money so they don't need stability.

This, supporting Newcastle is about patience nowadays. I'm pretty sure we'll get two new players in before the window and I've stopped worrying who they are and where they'll play. We've got a great squad for the league but will struggle to cope with the cups. We always would unless our squad was five players deeper. I think we do the best business in the league so let's continue as we have done Think we're relying on the development squad to provide the extra depth needed for Europe. A mix of first teamers and kids should be more than enough to get us through the group stages. Once we're in the elimination rounds we can start thinking about playing something closer to a full-strength squad.

Thanks Americans. Hopefully we'll finish the job tonight.

It's much harder for us to progress significantly this year than it was last year or the year before. Finding players that would strengthen a promoted or bottom-half side was easy. But now that we're looking at 5th~7th, players that would improve us simply don't come cheap, which makes deals a lot harder to strike without spending foolish money. The way finances in football work, the amount of money required to make progress starts increasing exponentially beyond a certain point, while the probability that investing that much money will actually deliver returns starts decreasing at a geometric rate as well. It's a very tough spot we're in right now and I understand if the board wants to stick to their guns as much as possible rather than throw away money out of a misguided need to "make progress" every window. I'm not saying we should not sign players, but I don't want us to abandon the principles that have served us well just because we feel obligated to sign somebody.