oldtype

Not sure what the precise circumstances were but the agent's version was that it was nearly a done deal but the Newcastle management pulled out at the last minute due to conflict between Mort-Big Sam.

Aye. Dyer is technically a good player. A good first touch, good pace, good movement and most of his passes found a team-mate. Attributes we sorely lack. We moaned about Dyer for 8 years but he's far better in midfield and upfront than Alan Smith. To be fair, he was crocked for something like 4 of those 8.

http://kr.img.blog.yahoo.com/ybi/1/8c/11/corealion/folder/7/img_7_15015_1?1184807499.jpg South Korean international midfielder Kim Jungwoo left for England today to have a trial with several Premiership clubs including us. He's apparently also stopping by at Wigan. Kim was part of South Korea's 2004 Olympic Squad which reached the second round, and was a key member of the 2007 Asian Cup squad. He's mainly a box-to-box central midfielder but is very versatile and can play anywhere in the midfield or even up front in a pinch. He's on a free after leaving his J-League club so he can join up immediately if we decide to sign him. Personally, I'm very happy that Keegan/Wise/whoever seems to be recognizing that we need emergency cover in the central midfield, but I don't think he'll make it. He has an amazing workrate and is at least a better passer of the ball than Butt or Smith, but he's painfully thin for his height (182cm) and just doesn't have the physical strength to go toe-to-toe with Premiership midfielders. Not the fastest of players either. Possibly a similar type of player to Scott Parker. Like Cho Jae-Jin, who we almost signed in January, he's not even an automatic South Korean first teamer so I don't see him being a starter in the Permiership. Maybe a decent squad player for a team like Wigan. Then again, not much difference between Wigan and us now at the moment is there.

Agreed, Owen is frustrating but you know he will pop up with a goal. You don't have that confidence in Martins. I think we need 2 new strikers. Precisely the opposite, imo. When Owen has one game plan and he sticks to it. You know what to expect from him. When he's playing poorly, he probably won't get a lot of goals. Granted, he's still a pretty skilled player so I'm not writing him off completely. Martins on the other hand, even if he's shit for 89 minutes, you never know when that speculative midrange screamer is going to hit the net (at WHL last year), or when he'll twist and turn impossibly in the box to get a body part on the ball (3rd goal at Bolton on opening day). That's one of the reasons I'm looking forward to seeing him play under Keegan. I think Allardyce stifled him a lot with instructions not to shoot too much from outside the box etc. Even more than his pace Oba's greatest asset is his utter unpredictability. You never know where the goal's going to come from and even if he's not particularly prolific, that's absolutely horrifying for a defender to defend against.

sshh...don't let the facts get in the way of a good slagging. Give your head a shake man for God's sake. Sorry but I don't see the point in complaining about Owen when he's scored two goals even though our attacking play was blunt at best. I'm not just talking about today. In the Premiership, your centre forward has to be able to do more than just score the odd from a set piece. With the ball at his feet these days, Owen is totally impotent. He just won't put chances anymore. It's a matter of accepting that rather than categorising it as "a good slagging." I find it insanely comical that the only goal Michael Owen seems capable of scoring these days is a header. He's like shorter pre-WC2006 Miroslav Klose Yes cos he's missed SO many chances on the deck hasn't he? About 3. Who cares what his goals are like? So what if they're headers? f*** me. I just find it funny that what used to be a small part of his game (his superb set-piece positioning) is just about all he has left to score goals. The worrying thing isn't that he's missing chances on the deck, it's that he has no ability whatsoever to create them anymore. Even then, he's missed far more than three easy chances with his foot this season. Honestly mate, what do you expect a player to do when the ball is constantly played to him in front of the defence? We next to never really get in behind teams, Owen gets the ball 'in the whole' because he's forced to drop in search of the ball. Owen in a team like Tottenham would be awesome. That's what they try to do every attack. Get the winger in behind and lay or chip a ball in. He ffeds off s****. He isn't the same player as when he joined us even, but still has it. Have you considered that he's only getting the ball in front of the defence because he's not fast enough/not mobile enough to make piercing runs in behind them anymore? Our central midfield may be incompetent, but they're not completel idiots. If Owen moves into a good position they will try the thru pass. It just hasn't happened a lot and when it has, it hasn't worke dout. Don't give me that, seriously. You probably think Martins is better cos he runs fast. No, Martins actually has the exact same problem because he doesn't have the footballing brain to pick out spots to run into. Can't finish either, but he's ridiculously agile and has a fuck hard shot, so he gets random goals sometimes. They're both horribly frustrating players.

Are you taking the return of Beye and Faye into account when you say that? I actually think we may have more of a chance of getting something at Villa than we did today. ...actually, that's a huge exaggeration, but still with Beye/Faye coming back I don't think it's half as dire as it looks.

sshh...don't let the facts get in the way of a good slagging. Give your head a shake man for God's sake. Sorry but I don't see the point in complaining about Owen when he's scored two goals even though our attacking play was blunt at best. I'm not just talking about today. In the Premiership, your centre forward has to be able to do more than just score the odd from a set piece. With the ball at his feet these days, Owen is totally impotent. He just won't put chances anymore. It's a matter of accepting that rather than categorising it as "a good slagging." I find it insanely comical that the only goal Michael Owen seems capable of scoring these days is a header. He's like shorter pre-WC2006 Miroslav Klose Yes cos he's missed SO many chances on the deck hasn't he? About 3. Who cares what his goals are like? So what if they're headers? f*** me. I just find it funny that what used to be a small part of his game (his superb set-piece positioning) is just about all he has left to score goals. The worrying thing isn't that he's missing chances on the deck, it's that he has no ability whatsoever to create them anymore. Even then, he's missed far more than three easy chances with his foot this season. Honestly mate, what do you expect a player to do when the ball is constantly played to him in front of the defence? We next to never really get in behind teams, Owen gets the ball 'in the whole' because he's forced to drop in search of the ball. Owen in a team like Tottenham would be awesome. That's what they try to do every attack. Get the winger in behind and lay or chip a ball in. He ffeds off s****. He isn't the same player as when he joined us even, but still has it. Have you considered that he's only getting the ball in front of the defence because he's not fast enough/not mobile enough to make piercing runs in behind them anymore? Our central midfield may be incompetent, but they're not completel idiots. If Owen moves into a good position they will try the thru pass. It just hasn't happened a lot and when it has, it hasn't worke dout.

sshh...don't let the facts get in the way of a good slagging. Give your head a shake man for God's sake. Sorry but I don't see the point in complaining about Owen when he's scored two goals even though our attacking play was blunt at best. I'm not just talking about today. In the Premiership, your centre forward has to be able to do more than just score the odd from a set piece. With the ball at his feet these days, Owen is totally impotent. He just won't put chances anymore. It's a matter of accepting that rather than categorising it as "a good slagging." I find it insanely comical that the only goal Michael Owen seems capable of scoring these days is a header. He's like shorter pre-WC2006 Miroslav Klose Yes cos he's missed SO many chances on the deck hasn't he? About 3. Who cares what his goals are like? So what if they're headers? f*** me. I just find it funny that what used to be a small part of his game (his superb set-piece positioning) is just about all he has left to score goals. The worrying thing isn't that he's missing chances on the deck, it's that he has no ability whatsoever to create them anymore. Even then, he's missed far more than three easy chances with his foot this season.

Appiah is more of a box to box, or even attacking midfielder, than a DM. reckon he'd work alongside a cultured, defensive playmaker tho. Futilely suggesting cultured foreign central midfielders who we never get has become a tradition for NUFC fans over the past few years. The club will obviously just go for some top4-reject who will flop. Steve Sidwell or Darren Fletcher for 8m next up on our agenda?

sshh...don't let the facts get in the way of a good slagging. Give your head a shake man for God's sake. Sorry but I don't see the point in complaining about Owen when he's scored two goals even though our attacking play was blunt at best. I'm not just talking about today. In the Premiership, your centre forward has to be able to do more than just score the odd from a set piece. With the ball at his feet these days, Owen is totally impotent. He just won't put chances anymore. It's a matter of accepting that rather than categorising it as "a good slagging." I find it insanely comical that the only goal Michael Owen seems capable of scoring these days is a header. He's like shorter pre-WC2006 Miroslav Klose

Honestly, the way Sunderland/Birmingham and Reading are playing we could probably fail to win for the rest of the season and still be safe. For us to get relegated, we would literally have to lose every single game while all three of those teams hit a sudden vein of good form. I'm not saying it's impossible, but it's relaly not as likely as we've been making it out to be for the past few weeks.

What amazes me was that Alan Smith was being linked to Cardiff for a season-long loan during the summer. Then we go along and buy him for 6m. Staggering.

I'm strongly considering just refusing to watch the rest of the season. I think we're going to survive but it sure as hell won't be pretty.

I don't think anyone's going to disagree with the topic. Just amazed how much people bigged up Butt last season.

I think we can all agree that Dean and his band of fools just had a lot of questionable decisions all around tonight. It's silly to think that they had a vendetta against any particular team of course. Bad refs are like the weather. Their calls can be good or bad, but you can't really do anything about it either way. We've just had more than our share of bad weather this season.

Just like last season, and the one before it. Reminds me of this restaurant in my neighborhood. They were getting a decent amount of customers but they just keeped renovating and chaning their menu every year trying to get better. They never did and their renovation costs ended up driving them to the ground.

any decisions on Keegan will have to be reserved until next season when he has his own players and has had time to impose himself on the team. Have to say though, the rush of good feeling that was one of the biggest strenghts of his appointment has now truly and completely disappeared. He'll have to stand purely on his own merits now.

Both have been injured a lot so they haven't been featuring that much I think. Although Nobby at leats has been key on the right wing when he does start. Remember him having a great game when I watched them against Spurs in November.

And I'm not saying he'd be a great player now, just like how I wasn't calling him one last season. Just pointing out how I'd much rather have him than Butt/Smith/maybe even Barton at this point.

Aside from not having a striker who can actually score goals, Boro really are a team superior to us in every aspect. (Well, maybe not Schwarzer. Worst goalie in the Premiership IMO) Any one of Wheater, Huth, Rochemback, Arca, Downing would walk straight into our team. Arca would have been a canny winter buy, actually. Hold on, they're superior to us in every way because they have 5 players who would get into our team in your opinion?.. Don't you realise that means we have 6 players who would get into there team? mackems.gif Individually we're about at the same level but as a unit they funciton far better. It's a silly point, but Pogatetz - Enrique, Gary O'Neil - Milner are debatable anyway so really only Given, Owen, Viduka/Martins, Beye would probably walk into their team. Not sure if they'd consider Beye a significant upgrade over Luke Young either.

Boy do I wish we still had them right now. I don't think I need to talk about why we're missing Solano. Would've been an amazing help for us right now. Granted, his departure was forced upon us so it's not like we had a choice in the matter. As for Parker, he got slated while he was here as a hard worker with no skill who defended well enough but couldn't distribute the ball. What people didn't notice was that Nicky Butt, who was being universally praised last season, was just about the same thing, just older. Now that Butt has lost his legs completely, the prospect of a midfield grafter who might not be the best passer in the world but definitely helps us keep posession doesn't sound too bad at all. I think selling Parker immediately has to be one of Big Sam's larger mistakes in the summer market. There were various contributing factors (falling out with the fans, needing the cash to get Barton etc.) but I think we let him go much too soon. Certainly would rather have him than Smith at this point.

Barton was very good in the middle. But he needs an extended run in the team to truly be comfortable in that position. You can understand why that might not necesarily happen.

Aside from not having a striker who can actually score goals, Boro really are a team superior to us in every aspect. (Well, maybe not Schwarzer. Worst goalie in the Premiership IMO) Any one of Wheater, Huth, Rochemback, Arca, Downing would walk straight into our team. Arca would have been a canny winter buy, actually. Agree besides Rochenback,hes a complete donkey! He's a pretty decent player who has a lot of suspect patches. Their version of Emre. Would still have him over Butt or Smith in midfield.

Carr hasn't looked too bad. Keep him, put Beye in the middle of defence and ave Faye in midfield. Even though Jenas and Parker got slated for their square passes at least they kept the ball... Butt was terrible. I think we're actually missing Scott Parker a lot. He would have done well as a DMF in our current system I think. Hastily selling Parker/Nobby to West Ham was probably our second biggest mistake during the summer after buying Alan Smith for 6m.

Aside from not having a striker who can actually score goals, Boro really are a team superior to us in every aspect. (Well, maybe not Schwarzer. Worst goalie in the Premiership IMO) Any one of Wheater, Huth, Rochemback, Arca, Downing would walk straight into our team. Arca would have been a canny winter buy, actually.