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shocking the lack of leadership and passion in our dressing room considering how many captains/ex-captains/vice-captains we have. Nolan (Bolton) Cacapa (Lyon) Owen (captain) Geremi (ex-captain) Beye (Marseilles) Butt (Vice-captain) Taylor (England U21s) Viduka (Australia)

The thought of him in the Prem on the other hand is quite tasty. Championship though, he'll get raped anally. Surely if he's good enough he can figure out a way to get through the talentless cloggers who try to rough him up? I wouldn't think that the defending in the Norwegian league would be nice and fluffy compared to the Championship either.

Just asking the players to take it easy would probably work just as well and look a lot less suspicious than Beattie, Etherington, Delap, and Faye(s) all suddenly succumbing to "injury"

At the very least, Carroll's already made it, Vukcic looks like he's going to be pretty damn awesome, and Kadar would have probably made the first team by now if he didn't break his leg. And even if only one or two of the others get anywhere near the first team, we'll have done about as well as most of the youth academies in the country. So while there's no sense screaming "play the kids," I wouldn't lose all hope quite yet

well, there goes the "just stick the kids in, they can't possibly be worse" theory.

why did we sell ab faye again? stupid. Because he didn't get along with a manager who was going to walk out of the club 2 weeks later.

I wasn't there but from my experiences at SJP I'm relatively certain that the vast majority of the ground wouldn't have been singing if Danby hadn't got them started like that. It might have been "cringeworthy" or whatever, but it did accomplish its purpose. (Well, at least for about 45 minutes it did) It's an unfortunate reality of out times: the vast majority of home fans are always going to be silent. And if throwing a fat, drunk opera singer out there to get them riled up is the only way to change that, I don't mind it one bit at all.

I remember seeing a Depor game where he plugged in a shot form inside the box pretty much exactly where he was standing for that last volley in Saturday. When he took the shot time just froze for a moment and I was feeling sure that it was going to hit the back of the net. Of course, reality came calling pretty quickly Would have been such a class moment.

The Boro game will pretty much consign one of the two teams to certain relegation, that's for certain. Of course, we could just draw and go for the "both" option.

Can we have some sort of marking put on the title of threads that he's polluted so I don't accidentally walk into them?

If its that easy, you become a pro footballer. Who one of the EPL greatest strikers. I feel like NE5 in regards to this, good fun. Oh I'm sorry, I wasn't aware that you weren't allowed to slag off any of the players unless you were actually a better footballer than them Stop trolling and f*** off back to your hole please. I'm just going to stop biting before s*** hits the fan again.

To be fair, he's just about twice the finisher of our Number Nine (7 goals out of 70 shots!)

If all you can do is tuck the ball into the net when it's given to you on a plate and even then you only get to do it once every 4 times, I'm sorry but you are absolutely fucking shit. There's no other way to put it.

Basically any of the academy players in the first team(Taylor/Carrol/Edgar and downwards)

All I'm going to say is that if you went anywhere in the country right now and suggested that Owen would be a useful addition to the top 4 side, you'd be laughed out. Just like you're being done right here right now.

I'd say a striker who contributes absolutely nothing anywhere else on the pitch and plunks it straight at the keeper 14/27 of the time is exceptionally poor. Arshavin has 39/46 by the way. Adebayor has 30/35. I stopped checking after that because this was obviously going to get depressing. Hmm... I seem to be forgetting something. Oh yes. IDIOT EDIT: Jesus Christ, even Martins has 18/20

You seem to be implying like there would actually be a debate either way I'd gladly give away every player in the senior squad right now for Arshavin, never mind just Owen. I'd swap him easy for any of Arsenal's attacking players. And yes, that includes the Danish Ameobi.

As far as I'm concerned all of those were scored by a different player. So we have a striker who scores just under 50% in a s**** side and he's finished as a player? Not good enough for anywhere else, not even Newcastle. He doesnt play well for us for the simple fact he relies on service. Jonas, Butt, Nolan, R Taylor, Duff cant move the ball quick enough, beat their man, pull of a slick passing move, cant play an intelligent pass. Also the fact we aint had a target man pretty much the whole season. His first 10 in 16 don't count either. Again, different player. So that leaves us with 17 goals in 52 matches, which is just about around Afonso Alves territory. Oh, and he's on 100k a week.

As far as I'm concerned all of those were scored by a different player.

At the moment he's basically the Damien Duff of strikers. I really don't see anybody wanting him and his wages that desperately. I think just maybe if shit gets truly desperate he might try to play the hero card by going down with us to the Championship. He's a guy who gives a lot of thought to what will be good for his career/legacy and he just might think that having a storming season in the Championship and becoming a local hero in Newcastle by bringing them back up might reflect upon him better than toiling anonymously at Fulham or Wigan for a year. Not implying that any of this is particularly likely but it's an interesting thought.

Lovenkrands is pretty much tailor made to replace Martins in this, so I'd like to see that tried.

Probably get Kris Boyd or someone to play for us in the Championship.

Keegan could have not taken the job in the first place. I highly doubt he was offered it on false pretenses. i.e. "Kevin I'm giving you 30m in the summer, promise. And no Dennis isn't going to undermine you or anything, I just have him around because I like funny-looking cockney dwarves." He could have walked during the summer the minute he knew he was getting undermined. He could have walked after seeing out the season/his contract. There's any number of things Kevin Keegan could have done other than working out at the worst time possible in the most acrimonious manner possible. We'll never know, but if it was SBR or Shearer in the same position, I'm convinced they would have acted differently. But this is an old argument that we'll never agree on, so I'm willing to be smart and let it go.

What is completely beyond me is why people think you can only point the finger one way. Ashley may have loaded the gun, but Keegan pulled the trigger. There is no way Kevin Keegan walks out of this with no blame whatsoever just because our owner is a complete fucking idiot. It can't be just "you're either for Keegan or your for Ashley." That's NE5 thinking right there.