bealios

To be honest the support is less of an issue from now on in. The away fans always get behind the team, and if we're not safe by the last home game of the season then I think we're doomed.

Get in!

I genuinely think the medium term plan for the owner/board was to allow us to invest sufficiently to be a consistent top 8 club, and then see if the FFP regulations when implemented allowed a natural rise of the bigger clubs over the small clubs (in terms or turnover), which NUFC are one. This involves having a consistent manager and avoiding the upheaval and expense of changing managers. Pardew fitting that model perfectly, particularly after his 5th place finish, which followed a very near miss of 9th in the first season back bar a disastrous last game of the season. Not a top rate manager, but cheap, and seemingly good enough to work with the recruitment policy and keep us in the top half. The problem with that model is that it all goes to shit along with the financial planning associated with it if you are still dicing with relegation towards the end of the season. The bulk of the planning for next season is happening now, and it is incredibly difficult to plan for the following season if you do not know what league you are playing in. It also increases the risk of losing players in the close season even if you stay up. The likes of Cabaye are probably thinking now that another season like this without the lift to the squad that a new manager can bring is that last thing they want. The owner and board will simply not accept that. They may allow Pardew a blip, and he probably earned that after last season, but I cannot see a blip that risks relegation will be tolerated. The problem is that changing manager mid season rarely works out well. So they need to either decide now that he is staying until next summer and has earned another season, or he goes at the end of the season. The fear is that they make the mistakes of previous seasons, and take the easy option, give him a few games at the start of the season, and then if it doesn't work out well sack him, and then be left trying to find a replacement from the limited pool of managers who can and want to move in November/December. Have to admit, now that derby anger is subsiding, I'm still in two minds. Sacking Pardew now still means sacking a manager that has still achieved decent finishes for a newly promoted side. But if we are to get a better replacement, it has to be done at the end of this season. It is the right decision made by the head, and I think it will be weak leadership to take the sentimental route of giving him a bit of time next season. If he does go, I think despite the views at the moment, NUFC history will judge him well, certainly when judged against recent managers I will have enjoyed his overall tenure more than any manager since Robson, which is a decent accollade.

Fuck me, you must have been watching with your eyes closed for a lot of those games.

I disagree with this. These goals are memorable events and having the score and date provides context of the day. Makes it more memorable. By the way if this hits big time, you might want to consider filing some sort of patent or intellectual property protection. Otherwise some fucker will just copy your idea. Great idea this, but might want to follow the advice in the above post as a priority. Also, since you're looking to commercialise this, you might want to check that you are not breaching someone else's IP. I know Codemasters had the Sensible Soccer brand, and I can't imagine they would be happy someone else making cash out of this. Having said that, they might have just bought the name rights, not whatever intellectual property exists in the original graphics for example. It would still rest with someone though, maybe Jon Hare and the original guys at Sensible. It is not a foregone conclusion that they could prevent this (you are not after all releasing a computer game with the same graphics), but as soon as you start making money from something you will find that the owners of the IP will start taking a bit of interest in this. Might be worth just checking this point with someone before you spend a load of your own time and money on it.

This post should be made into its own thread and stuck at the top of the forum. well said. Agree with most...but the shola sub, come on! no excuses. He did fine as a sub last season for 5-10 minutes. He has been really really poor this season and sometimes like yesterday the task asked of him is very difficult to do. How cant pardew see that. If he came on for the last 5-10 minutes and was put in our own box to defend set pieces i could understand. But he cant run and takes away our chances of counter attacking. It would have been much better to pack the midfield, keep cisse central - not on the wing. Then we could have been a threat on the counter with cisse and for example anita running at them. With cisse out wide and shola on top we do not have anything and that is one of the main reasons why we were such under pressure. Point I was trying to make with the last bit is that sticking a player on up front who can hold the ball up and relieve pressure on the midfield and defence when you're under a bit of pressure is a perfectly acceptable tactic adopted by many managers who don't manage the top 3 team, often with success. Problem is that we have nobody who can do that except Shola, and Shola just doesn't seem to have it this season for any more than a 15 minute cameo, and was not replaced in the summer by someone who can. Pardew obviously formed the view that Shola at least attempting to hold the ball up was better than the alternative, which is to not have that outlet and be vulnerable to constant pressure from a resurgent Villa at home with the crowd behind them and an away side low on confidence. Turned out Shola was ineffective, so it didn't work out (although lets not forget we came away with three points). I actually think DL/MA have Carroll earmarked for that holding striker role in the medium term, and there is a reluctance to spend any serious money on replacing Shola until Carroll's long term future is decided. I might be wrong, but I think all of our striking targets so far has been the pacey forward types, and not a genuine ball holding target man.

It's difficult to try and retain a balanced view when we have looked dreadful at some points this season. But we also looked dreadful at certain points last season, at least as bad as this season. However when you're in the top 6 and scraping wins, with the odd excellent performance (Man Utd, Liverpool etc.) then people tend to worry about it less. So far this season we have had the Euro games to contend with, the terrible summer transfer window, injuries to key players (Cabaye, Ben Arfa, Taylor), the Ba situation to deal with (and by that I mean accommodating his wishes at the expense of Cisse in the hope he would re-sign in the summer), the recent Colocinni situation (which I think has affected his form a little over the season), and a serious drop in form by some squad players who managed to do a competent job last year even though they are not fan favourites (Williamson, Shola, Jonas). Is that bad management, or is that something outside of Pardew's control? We can't just ignore it and say it has no affect, it must do. Has Pardew become a bad manager over the summer? Has he been "found out"? I doubt it, and to suggest that he has also suggests that last season he had an element of tactical genius which other managers couldn't work out, but now they have. Hardly likely is it? You might say he was lucky last year, that the team performed well in spite of Pardew. Seems a bit unfair, to suggest that if we do well then its the players dragging us along despite Pardew, and if we do badly its due to Pardew and not the players. The most likely answer is probably the lease interesting - Pardew is not a terrible manager and he is not the best manager in the league. We overperformed last year, and the joy of finishing 5th tends to erase the memory of some dreadful performances, and some lucky scraped wins. How many points did Ryan Taylor win us? Move forward a season, throw in a load of Euro games, and squad depth becomes a hell of a lot more important. Add to that a drop in form of the sorts of players who make up the squad depth, then you can see how it can start to affect performances. It would take a top top manager to take that scenario and turn it into a season the fans would be pleased with, and Pardew is not one of those managers. However, very few of those managers exist, and those that do are not coming to Newcastle in the near future. Michael Laudrup is the current hot name in management. How do you think he will do if he is still at Swansea next year, they are likely to be in Europe, and lets just assume they have the same lack of strengthening we had this year, and the same issues to deal with. I've seen nothing to suggest that he would cope any better than Pardew, and I would say the same about most managers in this league, perhaps Moyes and Ferguson aside. When you're pissed off with the manager it is always easy to point to specific perceived tactical errors that do not work out. Sending Shola on last night and taking Perch off looked like a bad decision in hindsight. However with Shola on a good day (as was the case at some points last season) it sometimes worked well, and he defends corners well and if he holds the ball up properly it takes pressure off the midfield and defence. However, he didn't do that job well last night, so it will go down as a bad decision. Trying to give a balanced view probably comes across as relatively Pro-Pardew, which I'm not. I just think that unless you bag a really top drawer manager then the best you can hope for is a manager who is reasonably competent and that the players want to play for, and Pardew would fit that bill.

Probably a bit of sour grapes here, but how does this all fit in with the Financial Fair Play regs? Does anyone know how QPR were performing financially, whether they were breaking even? I suppose it doesn't matter if they never make Europe, but why spunk all the cash just to survive and be a bottom half side if you have no ambition to break the top 8 or so...

If the Financial Fair Play rules are adhered to then anyone should be able to afford to run a football club, it should run itself. The extortionate TV deal will help. Buying it in the first place is a different thing of course. Not that I think the rules will be enforced properly, or that FIFA will have the balls to stand up to a big club entering into dodgy sponsorship deals with associates of its owners (I'm looking at you Man City...)

Lee Clark

Agents and fixers - Laudrup probably fancied a job in the Premier League, not a chance he was going to go straight into a top 6 or 7 team, so the only way to make it to the Premier League is to take a perceived lower job. Cue agents etc. making it known he would be interested. In the background you don't know who has applied or indicated they want the job. For all we know Shearer told them he would be interested. Chairman/DOF draw up shortlist from applicants/agent tip offs and anyone doing particularly well elsewhere who they think they could get for cheap, and then work out best man for the job given the role and resources likely to be available. Dead easy really.

Probably on balance a good idea, but a few points against it: 1. Stupid crowd countdowns. 2. The anticipation of the final whistle going, knowing it is close but that there is still a chance there is enough time left for the other team to score does add something to the matchday experience, and the sense of relief once the whistle goes. If you know there is 10 seconds left, you lose that a bit. 3. If you don't put the time on a scoreboard to avoid points 1 and 2, then you might have absolutely no idea how long is left, given that the ball is in play these days for 50 - 60 minutes. Don't understand why they don't trial it though. Also, can see Fergie's point. The reason why he seems to moan about it more than most is that Man Utd probably have to deal with a team coming to Old Trafford and playacting/timewasting and going for the draw from the start than others.

I know where you are coming from, but I have more of a problem with the efforts by UEFA to maintain the current status quo by their FFP rules than Man City. I suspect, but confess I have no evidence to prove it, that FFP would prevent any club from doing what NUFC did under Hall and Keegan. And to me having a closed shop is worse than having some clubs buying success. Not sure that's right. I don't think Newcastle at any point really overspent what was coming in, otherwise the Halls and Shepherds couldn't have taken so much out of the club over the years. Compared to the TV income, occassional European income, full stadiums and merchandising, I don't think we were consistently operating at a trading loss. I think it was only towards the end when we started chasing the diminishing prospects of the Champions League that things got a little messy.

Carroll's latest quotes about wanting to stay are clearly a message to Liverpool that if they don't accept the NUFC bid he is not going anywhere else (i.e. West Ham). Wouldn't surprise me if someone at NUFC is speaking to his agent and telling him what to say to get a move.

Back to the original post, its pretty much average so far. As we stand I think we are a slightly overall better squad than last year, not just the swap of Anita for Guthrie and the younger lads coming in for the likes of Best, Lovenkrands and Smith etc., but as other have said, an extra year for some of our more recent imports. Ben Arfa in particular looks a far better all round player, and seems to have added something to his game in terms of helping out the team. What I'm more worried about is the fact that with a lot of extra games we really needed to be improving by a bigger margin to maintain a top 6 challenge with a decent cup run. Of our rivals, I think Liverpool and Everton look stronger than last year. Arsenal are probably a bit weaker, but started off being a lot better than the rest of our rivals. Spurs are a bit of an unknown, but I expect them to make a couple of decent signings, although still not convinced about AVB. I think the squad as it is and with our likely demand this year, we're looking at 7th/8th, with a decent UEFA run. I think we're 2 or 3 signings away this window from being able to maintain a top 5/6 challenge with the extra demands on the squad.

I like Danny Simpson, and think he has done (and could continue to do) a decent job. But... I was at both the Tottenham and Chelsea games and one thing that was fairly obvious watching the full match and not just the highlights was how many times our midfield received the ball, Simpson was in acres of space pretty much on his own, and they realised who it was, and went for another option. I'm pretty convinced that his own team do not trust him as an outlet when an attack is building up. Contrast that with Jose who had a fantastic partnership with Jonas and was a fundamental part of our attack for at least two seasons. Full backs are such an undervalued part of any team, but I strongly believe that having a decent set of full backs who can do a job attacking (it is a given that they should be able to defend) is how a top four team differentiates itself from a top 8 team. It is often said that a decent striker will make the difference between going down and staying up for the lower teams, and I think the same should be said for full backs in the top teams.

Carroll playing at the level that he was at when he left us was a handful for defenders. If your defenders are pre-occupied dealing with someone like Carroll, and they will be, then a lot of opportunities fall to your other players if they are in decent attacking positions. I'm pretty sure that is why Nolan scored so many.

The club will see Carroll as a no brainer (financially) to be honest. He either comes and picks up where he left off, scores a shed load of goals and becomes a £20m + rated striker within a season. Or he doesn't, but he is always going to have the attributes which make him an attractive buy for the likes of West Ham/Stoke etc., easy £10m +. The new TV deal next year will lead to inevitable inflation in transfer fees for average players, so given his relatively young age, a failed Andy Carroll at NUFC will still sell for £10m + in two years time.

Why the hell are the BBC leading with a picture of Cheik above the "Sportsday - Latest Transfer News" link, I've just spilt tea over my keyboard in sheer panic. That will be another piece of equipment IT will need to replace.

It just shows how poorly managed we were that year. A team with Coloccini, S Taylor, Jonas, Given, Martins, Owen, Duff, Jose Enrique, Nolan, N'Zogbia and Beye should be nowhere near the bottom 3.

Great find! Yes, that must be her. Bouncey bouncey sums it up.

There were two fit lasses in the east stand on Saturday near where I sit, although both of them are hidden from view on the picture. I checked before I even checked for myself. From where I was standing there also seemed to be a tidy girl in a tight pink top to the left of the Gallowgate goal, I noticed her jumping up and down vigorously after the first goal, a wonderful sight. Too scared to look for it now though as I will need to get my computer replaced again.

Ok, something wrong with that link. Managed to find myself, and then seconds later get a call from IT asking me to reset my computer immediately and switch it off, it has triggered some sort of high alert virus ticket in the states. Seconds later an engineer is at my desk removing my computer and replacing it. Just wasted a good couple of hours this morning. Although the fact I was trying to find my face in the crowd at work suggests that I could afford to

On my way the game, is there an away pub?

That quote from RAWK made me laugh for some reason.