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I love that they play 'Pretty Vacant', a total insult to anyone who is thinking about betting. Voiceover: "I will bet" Concurrent Soundtrack: "We're so pretty oh so pretty, oh, we're va-cant"

Scores not selectable in betfair, so really anything where one team scores more than 4 goals. Well they can, none are exclusive. Its just that at over a million to one, it isn't so likely. However, I'll save that kind of reflection until circa 5pm.

Time for huge returns from small stakes today: http://img101.imageshack.us/img101/6905/be1c0.jpg and so on, until... http://img39.imageshack.us/img39/5899/be2mv.jpg

I totally agree but I think this only covers 1/3 of his assumptions when he bought the club. The full version would go a bit like: 1- (Short term) As you state – applying the Sports Direct approach to running the club. Buying undervalued assets and ensuring the fundamental premise is buy cheap, sell higher. 2- (Long term) The value of football clubs is constantly increasing due (due to fundamentals and demand) so as long as nothing goes spectacularly wrong, there is little risk buying one (bad assumption: in fact things went wrong not just with NUFC, but with the market for all football clubs). 3- (Personal reasons) To 'enjoy' the acclaim of running a football club. (Two huge signs of this: 1] that when he bought us he was so unknown barely a picture of him existed in the public domain, yet he deliberately stepped into the spotlight after the purchase. 2] his choice of buying NUFC of all available clubs) (1) Is coming to fruition. (2) Is related to market conditions and is impossible to affect. The one he can work towards is (3).

Just to clarify why I dredged this thread up: I'm not talking about what Ashley should do come the transfer window, I'm talking about what he might do despite his better options. In terms of Batman's enemies, I liken him to the Joker. You can make a list of all the things he wants quite easily: Respect (for his 'acumen') Adoration (unconditional respect) Entertainment (when bored of pursuing the above 2) Money (which he periodically decides can be converted into the above 3) “Fair enough”, you might say, who doesn't? But the problem with Ashley is that his plans to get these things (like the Joker's) operate by a weird internal logic which is hard to discern. And they run in parallel, not serially. It's like trying to untangle the Gordian knot only to find it is holding a Dutch-language copy of Lethal Weapon 2 inside a sandwich press. Giving Hughton a contact and leaving-a-good-thing-be is the equivalent of advising the Joker just to knock off couple of Post Offices and take a cheap off-season vacation in Cleethorpes. Okay, so it might keep him out of jail, but it just isn't what he got in the game to for. I think Ashley will move back into the spotlight and start throwing the dice if things are going well post-Christmas.

I think we might see something interesting from the owner in the forthcoming window. A number of his statements indicate that he conceptualises the running of the club in terms of biannual cycles between the windows (the claim about adding funds, aborted sale attempts, contact negotiations...). This may be the first window around which events are going in his favour rather than against him. Pure speculation here, but I think that the stars may align in such a way that he does something unexpected (of him at least). Not only is the team doing well in terms of results, but the popular narrative supporting this achievement will be much to his liking. The club is finally coming close to fulfilling his fantasies on one level and it might be time to kick on with part II: winning back the adoration of the Newcastle Fan. A nostalgic retrospective and limited mea culpa? A trophy signing offered as a festive treat to the great people of the Tyne? A three year contract for a manager and a three year plan to go with it? If we're in the top 8, I can see him buying an attacking player for about 15 millions, with some PR emphasis on the fact that the funds were from his own pocket, not the club's. He might not be the most sensible owner out there, but it is quite possible to read his motives. Any ideas?

Carlisle is so reasonable, he's even capable of changing his mind when confronted with new facts. Still, I'm sure Andy Gray will counterbalance it with a trailer-load of hyperbolic shite at half time.

Well, I don't think there's any chance of us agreeing about Nolan, though you make some good points: I know the season is young, and that there aren't enough games played to form a final judgement, but I think this will be totally wrong this year. There seems to have been a shift away from long ball = survival in the league. I think that Blackpool and WBA will stay up playing progressively, and that teams like Stoke and Wolves will do badly. The games we've won have been more about the opposition failing rather than us playing well. This concerns me. What I fear is that we're going to be conservative – and I mean it in the worst sense, endlessly trying the replicate past successes while disregarding failures which were contemporaneous with them - and it's not going to work. So we waste a season, not just as fans watching a frustrating side, but the team itself won't get any better; will not build for the future. The only way to do this is with a holistic approach to team-building, rather than one which values players as individual abstractions. I've harped on about this before, but the key to a good team is knowing how you're going to score, and replicating those same ways of scoring goals. When I say Nolan will get 'guaranteed goals' I mean that historically he get 5 – 10 goals over a Premier League season, but when we ask how he get these goals there isn't really an answer. The ball will be crossed in, he arrives late and knocks it in, but there is no established pattern of play leading up to this. I'd rather have a player who has more roles in the team, even if that means losing Nolan's goals in the short term. That's the route to more goals in the long term. I'm not saying that he's sending the club backwards, I'm saying that he isn't helping us move into the future (maybe not even that, just to catch up with the now would be good). Is having a captain who take the team out bowling, and is only seen in Aspers or the Diamond 'often' rather than 'frequently' the best you can hope for? I'm not saying I expect a captain who gets the lads round on a Thursday night to watch re-runs of 'Brideshead...', but in the best case, the bar must be a bit higher than (and he not seen at it quite so often) Nolan, surely?

Nolan's 'importance' is a symptom of a fundamental problem, namely our reliance on 'guaranteed' goals as the key to survival, rather trying to hone a system which focuses on the quality of possession and the creation of chances. Selecting a player on the basis of his ability to pop up with a goal every other or third game (vast quantities of statistics evidence the otherwise inefficaciousness of his play) belies an attitude that the road to safety lies in a misguidedly conservative approach (hoping the past will repeat itself without considering the conditions which caused it). However: 1)It can go wrong: Selecting a team which statistically 'should get the job done' without any greater plan doesn't work (c.f. the relegation season), especially when you are carrying more than one of these players. 2)It lacks ambition. Nolan is never going to do more for us than score a few goals from inside the 18 yard box. Good players in the team should offer increasing benefits when combined with additional good players (i.e. all other players with skill off the ball will benefit from the ball being at the feet of a good player). In Nolan's case, he contributes nothing to play, and can only be considered a liability with the ball at his feet in the middle of the park (too slow, too negative with his passing). 3)It encourages unattractive football. Who would rather watch Bolton of Noaln's heyday than Coyle's current version? Considering his captaincy, regardless of whatever short term gain he brings to the team, the long term damage he causes outweighs it. Having one of the 'old guard' as our figurehead delays the professionalization of the squad. The one thing Newcastle United desperately needs is a change in the attitudes of its staff. Application of North European-style sports science still offers improvements in the effectiveness of the team, but the truly significant contemporary revolution in football is the Mediterraneanization of player's personal lives. We are among the worst clubs in the Premier League in this respect. For almost two decades we've been acquiring young talent which is slowly squandered as it is introduced to our club culture. After frittering away their early twenties on the Quayside (or lately, on Osbourne Road, or the Diamond Strip) the sensible ones consider the position they are in in terms of their career, their longevity and their legacy, and move away. Those without ambition marry, move to Darras Hall, live the life at 50%, and enable the next generation to follow them. (This is wildly drifting away from the topic of Nolan, but I think it is what he stands for, rather than what he does which causes the polarisation of attitudes towards him)

In our game I've gone for a draw, specifically a 2-2 draw. For some reason my odds program loves this outcome: -- West Ham : 3.74 Newcastle : 3.83 The Draw : 2.13 Under/Over 1.5 : 4.64 / 1.28 Under/Over 2.5 : 1.93 / 2.09 Under/Over 3.5 : 1.42 / 3.43 Under/Over 4.5 : 1.08 / 13.89 0 - 0 : 11.05 0 - 1 : 16.34 0 - 2 : 27.57 0 - 3 : 29.23 1 - 0 : 15.67 1 - 1 : 4.48 1 - 2 : 18.62 1 - 3 : 24.02 2 - 0 : 22.80 2 - 1 : 13.61 2 - 2 : 6.72 2 - 3 : 70.16 3 - 0 : 38.03 3 - 1 : 50.49 3 - 2 : 76.30 3 - 3 : 169.23 Any Unquoted : 20.02

nolan could have had 3 or 4 given better finishing. My take on this is that our response to Wolves' anticipated long ball tactics was to do the same thing and hope that we were more efficient than them in converting chances – basically that we'd be lucky. I'm ambivalent about the whole thing: I can understand on one hand that going that way will see us pick up a few points from teams around us and probably ensure avoiding relegation; however, we did have more flair than Wolves and, if we got the ball down and passed it, could turn matches like these from a lottery (or more aptly: pinball) into probable wins. (For an extended version of this: http://eintrachtnewcastle.wordpress.com/2010/08/28/wolves-1-1-newcastle-we-have-never-been-modern/ )

Just watched Monaco - Montpelier on betfair video, Montpelier look really well drilled. They have the ex France U21 manager Rene Girard in charge.

I'm trying to do a bit of Zonal Marking style analysis of the Newcastle games this season myself: www.eintrachtnewcastle.wordpress.com . If anyone has any comments I'd be interested to hear them, there's a bit of room for improvement.

So you only rectify mistakes made by the worst players? A little Pareto efficiency never hurt anyone.

Something needs to be done about the left side of the pitch, it's like a naughty boys club out there: Colo, Enrique and Jonas encouraging each other to arse around at the back. As I have said somewhere else: On the right, Perch was guilty of making several bad passes, yet his failed passes are at least going substantially forward, allowing some regrouping before the inevitable return of the ball under Manchester’s auspice. Of more concern is the situation on the left hand side of the pitch, where the triumvirate Enrique – Coloccini – Jonas operate. The latter two have habitually been guilty of overplaying the ball out of defence. A game like this is an interesting litmus test of their ability to accurately calculate the odds on such behaviours. While in the Championship, this strategy certainly was useful in maintaining possession and building more stable attacks. Whether it should be replicated against one of the stronger Premier League teams at their home ground is debatable (at best!). A map of Enrique’s passing shows him losing the ball in positions which are far too deep. The one against the touch line was the responsible for the genesis of their third goal. Other errors are equally apparent: Berbatov’s first goal was gained by robbing Jonas in the middle of his half as he ran out from the left side of defence. After 53 minutes Coloccini followed a mistake by charging up the pitch – ostensibly to rectify it, in fact exacerbating it – leaving his position exposed and allowing a dangerous phase of Manchester United possession. Some attention should be paid to the frequency of these errors, replicating them every game could be disastrous.

Does anyone know a good source of photos of the game? I'm looking for zoomed out ones showing players positions rather than the close ones. I tried Getty images, but no joy there as yet.

Well, in that case the whole team is relatively further back, and you look to play through the opposition on the counter rather than go long immediately. Delimiting one guy's position to being 'defensive' and telling him to win the ball back is going to prove futile in stopping good teams attacking anyway, beyond his one opportunity to foul and pick up a yellow card.

The required defensiveness of the midfield is proportional to the attacking-ness of the fullbacks, so given that: a) we have only one good fullback, b) we will have wingers providing width further up the pitch, c) the optimal shape of our back four is fairly flat; the main effect of forcing the midfield to hold would be a huge hole in the middle of the pitch – a kind of 'O' formation if you will – and the channelling of all of our attacking play down the flanks, leading to the one of the most wasteful forms of attack, the cross. Sure, the holding midfielder has a role to play sometimes, but given every other known factor about how this season will play out, it seems woefully inapt.

To understand what happened it is necessary to look at what was going on outside of Newcastle United at the time. The time this thread refers to is contiguous with the final modernisation of the Premier League. Keegan's team had the last chance at winning the Premier League's in its initial period when it was still a frontier economy. By the time Dalglish took over the new paradigms money/professionalism/internationalisation had rendered our – shall we say – 'morale' based approach to team building obsolete. As much as anything, Newcastle's old stagers were overtaken the future. Keegan has always had a conservatism in his approach to the game, and as Dalglish's short tenure was characterised by swapping like for like rather than moving forward, and I agree with most of the above criticism on this count. But the problem at that point was that Newcastle had already missed their chance. Bobby Robson was Newcastle's attempt to modernise – our 5 Year plan if you will - but his over-investment in an economy of velocity would eventually be the cause of its own collapse. The structural problem with the club is that we have never been modern. Each manger since Keegan (partially exempting Bobby) has been handicapped by some streak of paleo-footballing prejudice which has barred the way to reconciliation with the contemporary. Sadly, in the period when even second-rate teams like Spurs or Liverpool have made this transition, we have fallen behind.

I think it is important to distinguish between absolutely disliking the World Cup and disliking the way that the World Cup is presented to us in England. I would never place myself in the former category, but there is some validity in the latter. I wish we could treat the World Cup as the international festival of football which it is – where (at level 0 of complexity) 32 different narratives intertwine with each other in a fascinating story of epic complexity - instead of the “Rooney-hurt-his-foot-now-'we'-will-loose exercise in simplification and re-working of what is, essentially, a much more interesting situation. Many things are objectionable. For example: the coverage in the national media which tries to reduce the number of and modify the content of these narratives to the level of the lowest common denominator (white flags on a car; player name recognition based on frequency of tabloid headlines whilst whitewashing over the reasons for those headlines; some simplistic historical construct that resembles a map of a transportation line (one dimension) rather than a constellation ( I think the official England Line has 4 stops: Myth of '66, Gazza's tears, Something about penalties, and all terminating at Former captain's self mythologising)) . The event 'The World Cup' is great, but the way it is worked over by the media can be soul-destroying at times. I have a certain ambiguity towards the broadcasting rules which – though keeping all games on Freeview – prevent coverage on more analytical networks like Eurosport. Oh yeah, and there's that thing about not supporting the parasitic Norman State which has been oppressing the North since 1069 (Go Honduras!).

Tottenham boss Harry Redknapp admits fullback Benoit Assou-Ekotto can be "hard work". After victory at Stoke City, Assou-Ekotto could be seen walking to the away dressing room all on his own - this came after a bust-up with teammate Vedran Corluka. Redknapp said: "Charlie (Corluka) was upset that he didn’t come back and do his job. Benoit is a strange boy. He’s a bit highly strung and hardly speaks English. If you say something to him he’s hard work. He hasn’t improved his English in the couple of years he’s been here." Asked why the player had walked off on his own, Redknapp replied: "He didn’t know the result! He probably thought we’d drawn. "He’ll turn up Wednesday and play great, but he won’t know we’re playing Fulham until someone tells him. That’s how he is. He’s unreal. He walks off and he’s thinking about the music he’s going to play when he puts his headphones on."

If you want a pure 'technique' sport how about golf? The idea that people don't cheat in high level sport – when the difference between players who operate at a peak level is so narrow – is childishly naive. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/golf/2317259/Drugs-in-golf-a-fact-says-Gary-Player.html Football is expectational in some respects, but if you want lessons in HGH, look at Messi etc. There is always an edge.

Looks like there's some value in aways in the championship this weekend, have gone for doubles and trebbles of: Scunthorpe, QPR, Bristol City, Sheff Wed, Plymouth, Peterborough, Derby. With doubles, 2/7 would break even.

about 9.5

Canny that, the winners list is smaller than you might have thought Brazil Italy Germany Argentina Uruguay France England I suppose from the top sides that leaves Holland Portugal Spain as realistic first time winners. £5 on Honduras for the win @ 1000-1