Pilko

As shit as he is, I doubt we'll get a clean sheet this season without him in the side.

I can see us falling behind to an early goal and clawing it back to 1-1 late on. A fruitless attempt to find a late winner will see the fans turn on Pardew.

Does he not mean Edmundsson, the fella who never even came close to playing for us?

Do you think you would still understand it had we lost? Results obviously have an almost holistic influence on our opinions after a match, but I'm almost always against what I see as Pardew's way of playing for a draw. If he told me that Man United and Arsenal away were his way of playing for a draw in those situations then I'd probably say 'fair enough', but then we won't take the same risks to score like we do against the bigger teams as we do against the smaller teams, for fear of being hit on the break, for me it's illogical. At the start of this season there was a lot of talk about our firepower, and rightly so. At the time, it was thought that we'd play the front 3 of Ba, Cisse and Ben Arfa with Cabaye behin that were, at times, brilliant last season. Teams should have been fearful of those players, but instead they were played out of position and asked to put half of their energy into what I think Pardew sees as being accountable, not going AWOL etc, but in an attacking sense I see as being unpredictable to the opposition and creative. No one is scared of them anymore imo. Not because they aren't capable, but because they're not being allowed to show what they're capable of. I've used this analogy loads, but the way Cabaye and even Cisse have have been used this season, it's like hiring artists to emulsion your walls. Aye, they can do it, but what the fuck is the point? I think there's an element of truth in that for sure, I would have taken a 0-0 before kickoff fwiw as I think today was just about not losing the game. Whilst we looked pretty good going forwards in those two away defeats at Old Trafford and the Emirates, we looked dodgy as fuck in defence and that's probably the biggest concern, shipping 4 and then 7 goals away from home (and then losing a home game) will have shattered the confidence of the team, particularly the defenders, and a 'keep it tight' away draw might help restore that. Who knows, if we'd set up like the aforementioned games we might have ran away comfortable winners today. It's hard to say.

I didn't see the game today, and as shit as Norwich apparently were, I can understand setting up for a point. We needed to stop the rot today, desperately. You've got to hope the clean sheet will give us some confidence. EDIT: And having Cabaye (and even Gutierrez, out of form or not he's a senior player I guess) back can only help. Hopefully Taylor will be back for Reading, although I bet Williamson keeps his place due to today's shutout.

It's a dangerous game but I wonder if Pardew might offer Colo leave to South America in-between games if there's ever a gap long enough, and when we're mathematically safe from danger he might be allowed to go as soon as that happens?

So his wife is ill, she gets on a flight to South America and leaves him on his own with the two bairns? How odd.

If his wife is that ill, football will be a massive distraction to him whether it was at NUFC or San Lozenge. I don't really know what the best solution would be. I'm glad Pardew is 'confident' of sorting it out though.

Got to pray that we're purposefully not saying owt until the Norwich game and then hopefully we'll deny it afterwards with "did that look like the performance of someone's who leaving?" from Pards after we win 0-1 after getting battered all game long.

The same one we said no to before signing Kuqi, no less. Fucking staggering.

Sorry if Giggs but this photo is strangely ominous Cabaye In Canaries Contention

Same here. I think a lot hinges on tomorrow; a loss, particularly a heavy/comprehensive one, would be absolutely catastrophic.

Yeah, let's just travel with Cisse and Adam Campbell and take only two strikers.

Without us they'd have filed for it ten fucking years ago.

Agree. I think a good old-fashioned win would do wonders at the moment.

The most telling thing IMO is that if this was untrue (or even a half-truth), Colo would have come out and rubbished/explained the situation by now.

I'm not at all surprised but if he does leave us in January now then all my good feeling towards the guy would be gone. He is the fucking captain.

Thank fuck, a link to a player quashed. Get in.

Aye I was wondering that. We're f***ing desperate for a striker of some sort of quality and this bloke must be a bit good if we've continued the pursuit. Its because his story dragged on for fucking ages. So why was everyone so delighted when we got linked with Debuchy again in late December?, because that was a cunt of a saga too. I know we've signed him now but as soon as links towards him resurfaced everyone pissed their pants in expectation.

Aye I was wondering that. We're fucking desperate for a striker of some sort of quality and this bloke must be a bit good if we've continued the pursuit.

Gareth Southgate is our new striker coach by the look of it.

Gonna make a prediction - Cabaye will make the bench, we'll bring him on at 2-0 down, still lose and he'll get injured again.

Dummett must have really improved during that stint at St. Mirren, he was nowhere near the first-team pool prior to that really.

Shola is panic-inducing tbh. Unfortunately, not for the opposition. A fair point. I do think there's a strong element of panic in most of the cynical posts, though. It's sometimes hard to separate the two, especially on here. It's far too early to panic though, the time to panic is deadline day when we start to hear David Craig telling SSN about eight hours before the deadline that 'NUFC are done for the window' and we've not got the bodies.