YankeeToon

Luque's gone now...

Don't know many Lauderdale bars off the top of my head, but Churchill's Pub in Miami shows almost every game. About a 30 min drive - PM me if you want directions. Alternately - http://www.soccerbars.com/modules/soccerbars/bars_by_town.php?country=USA&region=Florida&town=Fort%20Lauderdale

ARSENAL!

What did he do? Shook it up like a champagne bottle and sprayed the crowd. Forgot to open the cap first, though...

Beye off, Edgar on

Shame. He'd been on the decline but was really working to bring himself back. One of the best in the world, in his day. Hope he can bounce back and keep it going a little while longer.

We'll squeak through, even if we only pick up a single point between now and the end of the season. This is my inexpert opinion based on absolutely nothing but blind faith and the performances of the teams below us. Yet I am confident it will prove correct.

What, no "They're quality and shouldn't be dropped" option? Not even for a laugh?

Nice though a win would be, I really can't see it. Maybe if we get a bit of luck and a ref that actually knows the rules of the game.

At the end of the day, it was a game that was undercut by poor refereeing. If Owen's early goal hadn't been wrongly disallowed, it would have been a very different 90 mins. Boro would have been forced into a more open game much earlier on instead of stifling us for the entire first half. We may still not have won, but it would have shifted momentum our way much earlier on. Unlucky, frustrating, disappointing, and demoralizing. No use crying over spilt milk, though. Still fairly confident that there's 3 teams in the league worse than we are.

Semprini!

He's a fantastically talented player. Definitely one of the top in the world. Still, if he lost his leg in a traffic accident tomorrow, I'd fly halfway across the globe just to track him down and laugh in his face about it.

Its easy to call him a cheat, but hes smart. If you come up against a team with aggressive foulers like Smith and Butt, players who get "stuck in", why not take advantage of it? It only really happens to players who are stupid enough to run around making late challenges. You won't find any argument from me about Smith's stupid challenges, but he never even went near him! Ronaldo sliced a shot and thought he'd better have a little cry about it - so they gave him a free kick for getting his feelings hurt. It's criminal that a player like him has never had a serious injury when so many others do. Give the little bastard something to cry about I say. There's very few players I would seriously wish a career-ending injury on. Cronaldo's at the top of the list.

Much more impressive to eat walls and punch holes in babies.

I like it. It's got the element of surprise.

Link us this is the last page..... http://www.kumb.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=94535&start=480 just that they thought they deserved at least a point, one says we were an "inferior team" and another says we were "fucking gash" for most of the game. Dunno if it's me, but the 1st and second halves were mirror images of one another. To be fair to them, they had us under the cosh and chasing the ball in the first, but in the second it was the other way round. Being as least bias as possible, I really do think they're just bitter - we did deserve to win. I'd agree with that. Based on their play in the first half, I'd say they were looking more likely to win. But once we got the 2nd goal in, we turned the game around on them. They couldn't keep the pressure on, and we took full advantage and deserved what we got. To say we were inferior throughout the game smacks of sour grapes, but what else do you expect from Hammers fans?

http://z.about.com/d/gohawaii/1/0/Y/0/1/lost_01.jpg you what, mate? Actually pretty funny. LOST. As in, this poster is...

Great player today, and this season so far as a whole. Pity about his haircut, though...

Drinks on Ashley! Just what we needed after Monday, a convincing victory to build up confidence again. But Oba, seriously, wtf? How can you miss an open net? Beye looks immense at RB, hopefully Enrique will match him so we get Zog on the wing where he needs to be. Good win, just hope none of the injuries are serious.

Yes, Parky. That's exactly what I mean, all our players retrained as electricians. I'm surprised you don't remember Martins' DIY advice column about re-wiring your kitchen on a budget... I mean, among other things, the musical-chairs approach to managers the club's used the last 3 seasons, the mid-summer takeover, and Allardyce's efforts to rebuild the squad and completely restructure the backroom from the ground floor up, along with trying to integrate an unfamiliar playing formation. If that doesn't count as upheaval in your book, fine. But if you think that stuff has no effect on players' mindsets, you're smoking some serious crack. You should read the rest. I'm sure there's plenty of other confusing sentences in there. Hell, I don't know what half of 'em mean, and I wrote the bastards. None of that's meant as a defense of our performance on Monday, by the way. It was absolute shit and embarrassing to watch. But that doesn't change the fact that, judging from what Sam's said and done, he has his own priorities for this season, and I don't think a high finishing position is necessarily one of them.

But that's the thing... thinking that we would do anything better than mid-table this season was certainly unrealistic, in my eyes. With all the upheaval at the club, with the past seasons of unrest and mediocrity and inconsistency, with all the changes that have happened and all the ones that need to happen still, a top-6 finish this season would have been downright miraculous. A top-8 finish would be a serious uphill struggle. Even top-10 will need determined effort. But I'd say, based on what Allardyce has said and done so far, that we should not be focusing on our position in the league as an indicator of success for this season. We should be looking for significant improvement in our defensive performances over the course of the season, and that's really pretty much it. Allardyce obviously made the decision to focus primarily on strengthening our defence this summer, since it's generally been our weakest area. He brought in Viduka, Barton, and Smith to kind of pad out the front/attacking mid areas but didn't really work on strengthening our attack, because generally it's in much better shape than our defense was. Except for those 3, every signing we made was either a defender or a defensive mid. Some may argue that he should have been looking for more options up front instead of focusing almost exclusively on shoring up the back, but I don't necessarily see it as a mistake. I see it as a long-term strategy. A somewhat risky one, but a strategy nonetheless. I'd expect Allardyce's plan for this season was to focus on defensive improvements, trying to stop us from leaking goals and organizing our back line and in dong so, trusting our existing midfielders/strikers to get enough goals to give us a semi-decent league finish, a stance which I think is backed up by his deliberate efforts to play down any speculation of a top-6 finish this season and by quotes about needing several years to really implement his plans for Newcastle. I'd say he's not going to be looking at a high league position this season as an important goal, merely shooting to finish slightly better than last season. What he's really looking for is a tighter defense that works as a team and concedes fewer goals. I really think he'd be happy with even a 12th or 13th place finish as long as our defense looks competent and composed by season's end. If we do finish top-10 or even top-8, so much the better. But if we don't, it's not a huge problem as long as we show definite signs of improvement where we need to. Fix the defense this season, worry about the midfield and attack next season. Don't try and rig a half-ass solution to all our problems all at once. Focus on them one at a time, fix them completely, and then move to the next. Incremental steps forward. I'm just not sure most fans are patient enough for it. It's an unpopular viewpoint, I'm sure, to think that we shouldn't be focusing on pushing up the table, but I think that putting too much emphasis on results undermines efforts to really address the underlying problems with the team. Don't make it about must-win games, make it about improved performances in target areas. If we do that, then the results will come in due time. Assuming we're patient enough to let Allardyce see things through, that is...

Just fucking typical if we give Derby their 1st win of the season... Plenty of time left to get it back, though.

1. Newcastle 2. Reading 3. Everton 4. Man City 5. Aston Villa 6. Arsenal 7. Portsmouth 8. Fulham 9. Derby 10. Birmingham 11. Bolton 12. Wigan 13. Blackburn 14. Boro 15. Man Utd 16. Chelsea 17. Mackems 18. West Ham 19. Spurs 20. Liverpool

Nice goal for Man City. 1-0

D'oh!