John P

Also, why the fuck were they in a club last night? Have these elite athletes not got training today to work on our defensive shape?

What club was this by the way?

He did to stoke didn't he? sure keegan sent him to stoke aye of course Also I'm pretty sure he was on his way to Ipswich at the start of the 2008 season but injury stopped the move or something (surprise surprise)

You're absolutely right. Not that I disliked either of them as well, the opposite is true. It's been debated before but Robert wouldn't have got into Pardew's team and been seen as a luxury that couldn't be afforded, despite him being one of the best players in the league under SBR. You just have to look at him under Souness to see that. I don't want HBA to defend. I want the less capable players to cover for him and allow him the freedom to get on the ball and motivate him to push forward. Happy to score 6 and concede 5 than to score 0 and concede 4. Having HBA just hanging around in their half all game immediately draws out 2-3 of the opposition players. I said this last week, but 4-5-1 / 4-2-3-1 / whatever you want to call it would allow us to do this. It gives the defensive cover in midfield that Pardew craves by instructing one of the 3 centre mids to cover the wide area if the winger is upfield, whilst allowing our most creative players to be on the pitch at the same time. Fat chance of it happening though

The worst thing is that we've been playing 4-4-2 to seemingly shoe-horn De Jong into the side. And to stop Hatem gifting the opposition goals of course.

I doubt Colo was spoken to after the second goal. And I've no doubt he'll be starting with the captain's armband on Saturday, despite also being at fault for goals conceded against Everton. I bet Gouffran starts as well and he was shocking against Man U The double standards imposed on different members of the squad is absolutely ludicrous like. Gouffran has offered pretty much no defensive cover in his last few games, and also offers nothing going forward at the minute. Even if Hatem does have a game where he offers little defensively, he'll always create at least one or two moments resulting in a chance at the other end. Playing 3 central midfielders would help alleviate the 'risk' of Hatem playing, as one of the central midfielders (Sissoko or Anita?) could be asked to cover the right hand side if Hatem is caught upfield. Little chance of tactical alterations to fit our best players into the team under the current clown in charge though. 4-3-3 eh ? A system that brings the best out of Hatem, and the rest of squad tbh. Why would Pardew want to go back to that, it's not as if we've been playing too badly Absolutely staggering that we've barely played 4-3-3 recently. Also incredible that Hatem has only started 15 games all season, fucking hell man, talk about a waste of talent

not a clue who they are Lacazette is very good, probably the best possible replacement for Remy if we can't sign him. No idea who the Perez kid is though. I've seen a couple of Lyon games this season and Lacazette was excellent on each occasion. Don't think we have a hope of signing him though, there must be some better teams than us in for him

I doubt Colo was spoken to after the second goal. And I've no doubt he'll be starting with the captain's armband on Saturday, despite also being at fault for goals conceded against Everton. I bet Gouffran starts as well and he was shocking against Man U The double standards imposed on different members of the squad is absolutely ludicrous like. Gouffran has offered pretty much no defensive cover in his last few games, and also offers nothing going forward at the minute. Even if Hatem does have a game where he offers little defensively, he'll always create at least one or two moments resulting in a chance at the other end. Playing 3 central midfielders would help alleviate the 'risk' of Hatem playing, as one of the central midfielders (Sissoko or Anita?) could be asked to cover the right hand side if Hatem is caught upfield. Little chance of tactical alterations to fit our best players into the team under the current clown in charge though.

I doubt Colo was spoken to after the second goal. And I've no doubt he'll be starting with the captain's armband on Saturday, despite also being at fault for goals conceded against Everton.

I've got a vague memory of Roy Keane doing this to Gary Speed at St James' many moons ago. Or it might have been the other way round, anyone else remember it?

No actual Pardew quotes to back this up, but if true then Pardew only has himself to blame for dropping him for Steven fucking Taylor when Mapou was playing great at centre back.

I thought after the Spurs home game that it looked as if he'd lost the players. We obviously got a couple of wins since but Saturday looked very much as if he'd lost them again.

Love this guy, he needs a song:

Or put in a blinding performance then get dropped next game for no other reason than 'the managers an idiot'. See Stoke in December. Wasn't it against Villa that he and Remy played on each side of a striker and we did really well winning 2-1 although we looked pretty comfortable only for him to be moved to a left-midfielder in a 4-4-2 and then being blamed on for conceding three goals against Everton the following days? While also being arguably our best player in the first half (not that that's saying much, we were f***ing woeful in that game) and then "hauled off" at half time. Ben Arfa wasn't our best player in that first half, he was as woeful as the rest

Yeah, same for me, but when Remy got the ball on the left just after the tackle was the loudest where I was sat

Utterly f***ing pathetic Isn't true in my opinion. We completed at least 3 or 4 in the first half that I can think of off the top of my head. yaaaaay I'm obviously not endorsing the way we played, which was utter shit hoof ball, but the article is a load of rubbish.

Utterly f***ing pathetic Isn't true in my opinion. We completed at least 3 or 4 in the first half that I can think of off the top of my head.

Well there wasnt 194 long balls for starters. Absolute rubbish article. Yeah, what exactly is the source of this 194 long balls article? I'm pretty certain that Shola won at least a couple of headers from long balls, so how is that not 'completed.' He also took a couple of long balls from Iron Mike down on his chest in the 1st half so I think it's a load of bollocks.

Newcastle update from BBC's Ben Smith: "Newcastle's bid for Lyon midfielder Clement Grenier has stalled and there is no sign that the clubs are prepared to restart talks. At this stage, no other arrivals are expected at St James' Park before tonight's deadline." Thread closed until summer

This would make the season ticket decision a lot easier. Looks like a load of bollocks thankfully though

I'm the same. I'm a little bottler though. Can't decide, man! I'm struggling with it too, so hard to let go of it!

I can almost, almost, see the argument behind only getting Remy in in the summer. It wasn't what we were hoping for, but when you look at the squad we had and the realistic transfer targets for our club, it was hard to improve on without a major investment - we had options at full back and centre back, central midfield was quite well stocked with Anita adjusting to the league and we brought in Remy to play up top. We probably could have done with another striker or winger/wide forward but we weren't looking too bad. However, now is a completely different scenario. We've lost our best and most influential midfielder, Cisse seems completely incapable of doing anything productive on the pitch anymore, Jonas has gone (not a starter but was capable of filling and covering a lot of positions when injuries struck), Colo's injury problems persist and he will possibly be gone next year. And what do we do? Sod all apart from bring in another loan striker, and that is what is completely unacceptable. We have lots of weaknesses in the squad now (as evidenced by the state of our bench on Tuesday), we have lost our best player (and judging by his quotes we knew he was going to be a goner this month), and still we don't do anything and haggle over a couple of million here or there. Compared to the situation in the summer (which was frustrating enough in itself) it's absolutely incredible we still don't have a single permanent signing this season.

And some people claim we have a strong squad...

You didnt need an article to tell you we had done sod all this window did you? Not really no, but would have been nice to think that we had at least made a single bid for someone

From today's De Jong article: 'Telegraph Sport understands that, although Newcastle have talked to clubs this month about players they are interested in, they have not made a single bid and time is running out.' Not sure I have much confidence in us making a bid, negotiating and signing someone in the space of 3 days like PSG did