Gallowgate Toon

I meant he has to prove that he can over more games or even a season. He's played 5/6 games but he's only had 4 good ones as everyone was rubbish against Stoke and the same for Wigan but that's beside the point, the fact remains he's still played 5 games, in all your time watching football how many players have you seen have 5 good games/or one good season even to completely flop later on, a certain Micah Richards springs to mind, as does Taylor when he first broke through and there's a hundred more i can name. If you're saying that playing well over a few games counts as consistency then that's just stupid, i'll call him consistent at the end of the season but not now. I like Bassong he looks a good defender and a great prospect but there's been enough footballers who have fallen into that category who have failed later on.

Did his knee last season and was out for 6 months iirc. Pretty sure he was injured for most of the summer too, when he was writing columns for the BBC. Not the first, nor the last, footballer to suffer a big drop in form after such a serious injury. Hope it's not permanent, he has the talent to be amongst the best in the Premiership, and was the real star a year and a half ago when Dunne and Richards were the in-form central defence partnership in the Premiership. I remember he also took a pretty bad knock to the head earlier this season, that like the Given injury might have shaken him up and lost some confidence.

I think it would be fair to say that Bassong's recent performances wouldn't have been as good if he hadn't been playing alongside such a talented and experienced defender, if you watch closely Colo organizes a lot he tells people where to go and when to go that's what you get from being a captain. Bassong has played three games, the key is to play consistently throughout the season not in just fits and starts. Colo for me has been playing at a consistently good level, not outstanding or excellent but good and considering he's played in the slowest leagues for all of his career that's impressive.

Taylor's never ever looked this good in the shirt tbh. not true Taylor loked pretty good when he first came through, very promising indeed.

I'd be careful here, he might turn into another Taylor if we get ahead of ourselves.

I heard Richards is one of the most down to earth footballers you'll ever meet and he'll never let fame get to him as he had a rough upbringing, am i right or is that bullshit?

Playing with one of the worst CB's in football, the great oaf Richard Dunne, says it all really.

Lennon got past a couple of time but you have to say there was also at least an equal amount of times where Enrique blocked him or tackled him well and started a counter attack.

Perfect club for him, his mentality was far too 'small club' to suit us.

Hands up here. I was sloshed on Saturday night, seriously hacked off with the shambolic result and was ripping into our players. Having said that, my true opinion is that, that HTT has mentioned above- a good player who's not offering a great deal of end product. Where's the player that had us all raving after the Man Utd game? Thats the Jonas i want to see. I accept the stuff about him playing out of position and with a load of knackers in our side, but forgive me for demanding a lot more. i think its the same jonas tbh. the difference is the rest of the team. we dont stretch teams any more. i haven't noticed much any real difference between the jonas now and the jonas then. the only difference is that we are not as a team playing as well and we overhype his performance against manure. he does exactly the same things now as he did then (going past players for fun, lots of running, good defensive work) but that doesn't seem to be good enough any more, whereas at the manure game it was. his end product is harshly treated as well. his ball to owen was sublime yesterday. get good players around him and he'll be brilliant imo. I don't think we overhyped the performance, i think it's taken him a while to get back to his incredible level of fitness, get comfortable with the league and get confident. The Jonas on the wing against Stoke (ok weak opposition) was very impressive and if he and Zog switched wings a bit more, they would be fantastic.

Beye should be captain like, i think he's a real leader, and if Colo gets more experience he is a definite contender.

Looks much fitter not than he has done, which is what he needs for his game, today on the wing he was excellent, and he's already got some assissts atm so end product shouldn't be questioned, his ball today was superb. He now looks to run more too which i like, perhaps he was just playing safe after injury but i'm glad he's gone back to his direct self.

Coloccini still probably isn't used to that side of the game in England, a guy in Spain would probably not have attempted that he would have just slowed down, held the ball up played around with it for a bit and then just passed it when extra men came. Colo will learn how to deal with these situations better, he has all the attributes he just needs the guidance.

Was inevitable with such a lightweight midfield against surely the biggest side in the league? They were just too physical and strong for our soft centre and ran through us. Too much pressure was put on the defence in the 2nd half because they had 4/5 men running at it with no help from Geremi or Gutierrez or Beye or Zoggy. Joe is a plank for his tactics though, yeah the players should show bottle but when you have a shape like we did in the latter stages, far too much pressure is put on you and you crumble. We lost shape because we had numerous square pegs in round holes which could have been so easily avoided if Colo had gone CM and Taylor CB or even Taylor CM but changing the team chemistry like that was ridiculous.

If you're going with this school of thought would it not make sense to take off games for Oba settling in to the league which Owen has never had to do, then also take off games for playing on the wing under Allardyce.

I don't think the fb's don't get forward because they don't want to, i actually think its more to do with tactics, JK plays more long ball stuff, so full backs aren't really needed as we have wingers, hence endless hoofs up to Ameobi.

Exactly, that's more of what we should be seeing from Jonas, none of this run around everywhere stuff, if he wants to be the focal point of our attacks, controlling everything he should be playing CM, but he's playing on the wing, and he should try and stick there beating his man. Wasn't A Cole quicker then Henry? If so Jonas is bloody quick cause Cole was nowhere near him.

Diouf in Fratelli in Ponteland, with his wife/girlfriend they were on the phone to different people for their whole meal, then he walked past uttering 'what the fuck is this man', his wife/girlfriend is a bit on the beefy side like.

Something is not right with him, but i can't quite explain it. The form he showed against Man U is so different to the inconsistent one now. I get the feeling that he's had too much pressure put on him by Kinnear, and he's not fit or adapted enough to carry it all atm, he just seems to try to hard.

Staggering. Why? Jonas was crap against Villa until the last 10 mins, which is what i wrote. He passed it poorly, never really ran with the ball, lost it cheaply and look knacked by half time. I know he likes to defend but christ if he didn't tun all over the place as much then he might last a full game. Its okay defending in the slow Spanish league, you can catch up with play there but here he's just tiring himself out for our attacks. I must have been watching a different version of the Villa match because I dont remember him being anything but a threat. Until the run for the goal he was extremely inconsistent, passing was off, runs didn't go to many places. He needs to learn that he hasn't got to be here there and every f***ing where, this isn't Spain where you can gallop from one end to the other and the ball will be slowly getting passed around the midfield. Whether he thinks owes the fans something after injury or he's getting fit and doing too much like sprinting everywhere he needs to stop it because he looks too tired in the places that matter and is then unfocused and sloppy for our attacks. You're exaggerating tbh, in my opinion. Even if he's not playing at his best he's still one of our most essential players. I like him, i think he has the potential to be one of the best wingers ever for Newcastle United. I think i'm being harsh to judge as he is coming back from injury, but you would think he'd have a bit more discipline. He plays to a level where you have to be ridiculously fit, running everywhere, never stopping but when you've just come back you should probably play a little bit easier. Maybe he just hasn't sussed out the league's pace and thinks he can keep up with the level he plays at but for me its just wasted energy.

Staggering. Why? Jonas was crap against Villa until the last 10 mins, which is what i wrote. He passed it poorly, never really ran with the ball, lost it cheaply and look knacked by half time. I know he likes to defend but christ if he didn't tun all over the place as much then he might last a full game. Its okay defending in the slow Spanish league, you can catch up with play there but here he's just tiring himself out for our attacks. I must have been watching a different version of the Villa match because I dont remember him being anything but a threat. Until the run for the goal he was extremely inconsistent, passing was off, runs didn't go to many places. He needs to learn that he hasn't got to be here there and every fucking where, this isn't Spain where you can gallop from one end to the other and the ball will be slowly getting passed around the midfield. Whether he thinks owes the fans something after injury or he's getting fit and doing too much like sprinting everywhere he needs to stop it because he looks too tired in the places that matter and is then unfocused and sloppy for our attacks.

Staggering. Why? Jonas was crap against Villa until the last 10 mins, which is what i wrote. He passed it poorly, never really ran with the ball, lost it cheaply and look knacked by half time. I know he likes to defend but christ if he didn't tun all over the place as much then he might last a full game. Its okay defending in the slow Spanish league, you can catch up with play there but here he's just tiring himself out for our attacks.

Jonas was again poor, like against Villa for most of the game. He looks to me like he's still adjusting and getting fit, but i also think Kinnear has put all the attacking burden of the side onto his mending shoulders, which isn't too clever.

Must say when i saw Cacapa instead of Taylor my heart sank. Taylor is a very average defender, but miles better than Cacapa shows the lack of squad depth. Really miss Aby Faye Another question, what are our tactics?

Its not a case of we missed Steven Taylor cause he's good, we just missed him because Cacapa is so bad!