furney89

it doesnt matter who's owner or the chairman we have.... 35million for Carroll is HUGE. any past board or chairman would have to consider it i dont want carroll to leave at any cost, but its difficult to turn down this size of offer.

imagine if we got dealt 30mil and NGOG? jesus, that would be shit.

theres obviously something happening while pardew directy wont be involved with transfers and the dealing and negotiations, theres no point in there being a press conference when theres such speculation and the chance he will leave. unless they are certain he wont leave then im sure things would of happened as usual, but its obvious liverpool will be making an improved bid, just depends how much

ireland would be a good addition to our squad, people forget we need to build a squad and be able to swap players around. the more options the better. around christmas our squad looked exhausted, but we had little option to rotate, so this can only be seen as a positive. its stupid to be drawing up formations and placing ireland in there expecting him to be in the first team, hes coming into a very tight group of players where we have a settled team and formation, ireland wont change this unless hes stupid enough to alienate himself. he would only come into the team if he deserves to, by working hard and putting good performances in when he gets his chance players such as nolan,jonas,barton etc will be automatic starters ahead of people like ireland, and rightly so, because they've worked hard and had some decent games, granted there not consistently great all the time,but they've all had good seasons so far and have worked hard. ireland has shown he can cut it at this level, so theres no reason to see this as a negative. if it doesn't work out, no big deal, we wont sign him permanently, im sure he'l put some effort in so he doesn't have to return to villa.

pardew is the easy scapegoat for most of you, but the players were utterly gutless, the players selected were more than good enough to get a result and every single one of them was shocking. the starting line up was fine, we simply do not have the squad to rest every first team member. i dont think ive watched a worse performance than that for years. was utterly appalling in every sense. tiote's card should be appealed, but what was the need to lunge like that at that position on the pitch, player was going no where. clueless but not a red. time to move on...next

All that we need is a any kind of a win in this game. A scrappy 1-0 or a sweating 4-3 scare i really wouldn't care. We have a really depleted team and i hope we don't lose any key players like barton,colo or jose to silly injury's before the derby. id happily be humiliated against stevenage than lose the derby. Being in the championship would of given alot of the lads the experience of playing in these types of game so i think we will actually do well. Playing in a small tight ground against a team that will press hard will be something the lads will be used to from last year instead of being a total shock making them feel uncomfortable. A win would be mean a perfect week and the team would be full of confidence ahead of the derby

Would be a good solid signing. we need squad players, our first team when fit is pretty decent. but we need more depth. Over christmas our players looked drained at times, and we had little quality to rotate players People talk about him on here as if he'd come into the first team but i cant see pardew moving barton around to accommodate larsson.

carlton cole? are you joking? seen him a couple of times during christmas, shocking. yeah he scored a couple of goals but two of them were gifted to him. look at his goalscoring record on wikipedia...sholas is better! quality!

I really worry about this whole speculation. Clearly theres been something happening behind the scenes and 'arry is sniffing around. Despite all the denials from 'arry in previous weeks i think they obviously want to make an attempt and i hope that we stay resolute and keep saying no. Its going to be a long january. I'd like to say we wouldn't be tempted to sell carroll but with our owners you just dont know.

I think Pardew will try him out in several positions. I dont think he'l play upfront, hes not a out and out striker, but i think he'l play wide left, but alot higher up the pitch than a general winger like jonas is and would come inside abit too. i just reckon hes more of a player who does his bit outside the box, feeding players in or having a go himself like he did against everton. If he played straight upfront some of the more physical defenders would mark him out the game and i think he'd be inaffective. For example Barton Tiote Nolan HBA Striker* Carroll * New striker or existing one I think that would be fairly balanced and would be very flexible. That all said weve not really seen enough to judge properly wheres hes most effective.

This will be a tough game. I think West Ham will come here for a point and be very compact and narrow. Probably play on the counter attack. We could do with an early goal (or to score the first goal) to open things up abit as we play better on a edge with a lead. Aslong as we dont make any mistakes at the back like we did against Blackburn and the two early goals against City im confident of shutting West Ham out unless we gift them goals. I hope Shola fancies it tonight, if he doesnt put in another decent performance then we will struggle. You can never tell what performance he's going to put it and we generally struggle when having a shocker and leading the line and 1-0 toon. Come on!

I had doubts in the summer, but when selected he has been consistently decent and made very little errors. Hes also looked neat and tidy when in possession and ping'd in some great crosses too. He's getting stronger and improving week on week and doesn't look out of his depth like some others have in our squad Overall hes been pretty decent for the money he cost and is improving too. Keep it up lad

This is never going to happen on so many levels. All the quotes from Pardew that the media have sauced up all relate to whether if a player of his quality is available then he would look into it and leave "no stones unturned". Unfortunately DB isn't available to us. Even if all the complex financial side of the deal got agreed and mike and dell boy stumped up some cash from nowhere im sure Beckham would have many other attractive options. I'd love to have him here, he would mix well with the squad, but where would you play him and who would you sacrifice with HBA returning in february too. He's simply a luxury we dont need and a financial burden we could do without. But i wouldnt say no if he did want to join

He certainly is a mixed bag. You really dont know what you are going to get. Today he showed everything, good, bad and the strange. While i can take some of his usual annoyances such as silly needless fouls and the awful first touch at times i have one particular gripe: His offsides. I cant believe how an experienced striker struggles with the basics of the game. Today there was a perfect example of this which he has done many a time. He was positioned wide out by the touchline with plenty of space and the nearest defender yards away. barton pings a great cross field ball to him and he steps forward offside. He doesn't move! Hes looking right across the line and he just stays in the same position ball watching. All he has to do is keep inline with the back four which hes in a great position to do. There was space to let the ball go infront of him. He cant run the line whatsoever. You can let him off now and again but its because they are really simple ones which makes it more frustrating. And its so frustrating because this is an area he could easily improve. Hes been a good servant to this club, Yeah hes been very poor often at times and has been very inconsistant but despite his shortcomings hes a geordie and theres been much much better players here who have treated this club and supporters like shit and put very little effort in. i like to think he genuinely tries his best every time despite his lack of ability.

got to be when we haven't got much to spend. the position of the player in discussion is as much an issue as the player himself. thats a very fair point. but the fact that we are trying to sign players at all is encouraging and we all know that any player we sign wont be breaking the bank as its clear most deals we are doing are pretty low budget on sensible wages so im not too worried about the financial details aslong as we get decent quality players in. More specifically about Bentley i think he would provide a lot more balance to the team instead of having a center mid playing wide right, even though barton has impressed abit in that position with his delivery but clearly a natural wide man would allow barton to play his best in his proper position. Routledge is not good enough to start, plenty of effort but you cant rely on him, so Bentley for me would address a position that needs attention.

zog not playing is a huge huge bonus but not have ac is also worrying. shola is so inconsistent and ranger makes alot of effort but lacks the quality at this level at the moment. Definitely relying on Nolan or Barton to come up with something Wigan are the leakiest defence in the league so we should start positive and not be too cautious Huge game, i hope it isnt a gutless performance. Big week with playing West Ham too. Come on the toon

People are becoming very picky when it comes to signing players. We need to build a decent squad and add some depth. Right now players like Bentley and Keane are the type of players who would keep us up. Tomorrow is an example where those two players would come in handy. Instead we have Shola who isnt exactly fit or mobile and Ranger who does not have the quality at this level (yet at least) leading the line in a very important game. The current players look mentally and physically fatigued and we simply have no decent players to fill the gaps for when the likes of Nolans, Bartons and Carroll are missing which is bound to happen over the course of the season at one time or another Against West Brom when missing Nolan and Barton plus Colo it was evident that we were missing alot of quality in key areas. I'm sure players like Bentley or Keane would at least provide us with more options instead of relying on guthries and ameobi's who are clearly at times out of there depth I remember some people not being bothered when milner left stating he wasnt a great player and "just worked hard" and that we could buy better. But it just shows how far you have gone backwards when i'd kill for him in our team and it felt that we simply disposed him. You need players like milner in your squad

people have got to move on, as much as iam embarrassed and feel sick about what happened this week, its done and now weve got to get on with it i'l miss chris, i liked the way we played under him, and despite the recent wobble where key players were missed (which was shown by the difference in the liverpool performace) i still felt the team was slowly progressing. its not pardews fault he got offered the job, and however average he appears, and however shit his record is, it doesnt matter. hes now our manager, so lets just judge him on how he does for us. we must keep behind the lads at least so we dont implode again. watching the nolan interview on bbc website, its obvious the players are keen to move on so we must too.

im counting down the days till our next appointment. when there is this much hostility then its never going to last long - and in this case its a good thing oh dear

http://img194.imageshack.us/img194/8807/klinsmann.jpg we all need hope its not pardew

iam bewildered with all this talk of pardew. where has it come from and whats the link to why mike ashley would give him the job. makes no sense. i really think it will be someone else. someone just as obscure. as we have seen with the board in the past, there will be NO plan in place and they will be merely sitting round a table discussion possible appointments now. after allardyce was sacked it was a couple of days later when keegan "got a call". seemed all very thoughtless. likewise with kinnear,it wasn't a quick appointment and even then it was short term for "a couple of weeks" which led to an extended stay. madness. i would like to think like everyone else that there 'must' be something in place, or a good reason why they would shamefully discard chris, but i simply think there isnt.

john toshack

while yesterdays performance was shocking to say the least, do you not feel now with this news coming out that maybe the players had been told he was leaving? ive not seen this 'group of lads' play with such little effort with them all looking off tune this much for a long time. hughton talked to them for over an hour after the game maybe to explain he was leaving or what was going to happen? i cant belive this decision to sack him, it has no logic. ashley is single handedly destroying us time and time again. we dont even have any coaching staff left to be caretakers. what a joke

my mate is a delivery boy for dominos here in carlisle, and he is delivering pizza to the nufc team bus after the game! the order was worth over 250pound! i wonder how much of that pizza is for nolan. hes well excited to hopefully meet the players.

geremi being lazying and getting offside