Novocastrian

Spot on, too many unintelligent, wasted, passes, pointless long balls. The "footballing IQ" of this team is very low indeed. Doesn't help when we are missing "clever" players like Owen. Can't really fault the effort but you can't polish a turd and we have a few turds.

Too many non-performances to be in with any real chance. Beye very poor (Just back from injury), Bassong all over the place (Out of position) Duff very average (Shit player). No real impetus from midfield until Jonas and Barton came on. Shola once again showed why he'll never be a premiership player, never mind he has potential eh?

I used to wear Stone Island 10 - 15 years ago. Decked out head to toe in the stuff. I grew out of it........

I left 5 mins before the end and missed the last two goals. Lots of morons sat around me dragged the average IQ of the stadium down quite a bit. No alchohol being served at the ground!!!! Lacklustre performance but an inevitable result. I think England are missing a "playmaker" in the middle, a give and go man with an eye for the intricate pass. What Bobby Robson referred to as a "door opener". Gerrard, Lampard etc are not "playmakers" in the classic sense. I would maybe put Joe Cole in the middle, or the tip of a diamond behind the front two and let hims get on with it, he could pull the strings.

I'm off to this game. Capello has managed to infuse a bit of confidence in this side. Can't see anything other than a comfortable win: 3-0. First visit to the "new" Wembley, looking forward to it.

Duff is finished, what a transformation from jet-heeled winger to plodding donkey. There is nothing that can be done, it's not a form thing or something in his head. He just doesn't seem physically capable anymore. Now the pace has gone he has been brutally exposed as a very average footballer. He doesn't seem to have any confidence in his body's ability to take him past a man so he hold the ball up/cuts inside more often than not losing possession or slowing the attack down.

Sad iyam. to be fair me fatha is a cockney, was looking for a bite didn't get much tho :colo: I'm a Geordie, but I now live in London. If it wasn't for the "Cockney" Mags, and various others, our away end at Arsenal and West Ham would have been a bit thin, believe me.

In the history of the club these are relatively halcyon days. Ok, it's not the younger fans fault that they were only a blob of spunk when the club was really shit. However, lets get a bit of perspective, 45,000 - 52,000 crowds, awesome stadium, international players? How times have changed! I'll never forget that crushing feeling as a lad collecting the Panini sticker albums. How I wished to be able to lovingly collect all of Newcastle United's players and carefully place them into that well thumbed album. But no, Second Division clubs only ever got the team photo and the club badge and they were like gold dust on Tyneside! Fucking dark days indeed! :'(

Ah man I wish you hadn't just said that Milner would come in more than a little bit handy now as he'd have to be a better option than Duff or Geremi on the RW. Never understood his critics. He was clearly one of our best players. Fantastic young player. O'neil is no mug and paid £12m and Benitez wanted him too. Spot on, his critics didn't like him because he didn't run 150mph like a headless chicken. Twelve million quid is great but not when its sitting in some cunts bank account and not back on the pitch in the form of re-investment.

Totally agree, they showed the most important quality footballers should possess; intelligence. No wild boots into the ether, no panicking under pressure, always looked for a team-mate to pass to, made it look simple. Fair enough they were under the cosh for most of the match but they didn't set their stall out to draw Allardyce style, they went for it with two strikers and got their just desserts. Well done.

I have visions of the entire team trying to escape from the ground through the team bath, a la "Escape to Victory". Just as they are about to do a runner into the Newcastle sewer system and to safety a lone voice pipes up. "come on lads, we can win this". The players then head back up into the ground and out onto the pitch and we win 3-2!

Keegan was holding on for the end of the tranfer window. I'm sure he was as shocked as the rest of us that the new "management system" had let us go into the season as short manned and pitifully unprepared for a PL season. Those chickens are now well and truly home to roost.

The player deserve all the shit they are getting. A team of, mostly, current and former internationals with no pride. I'd rather watch Ardiles' team of young lads getting battered every game but giving their all for the team.

Can't see what Keegan has done wrong, not one player on the pitch at the moment is Keegan's.

Just listened to it. Love his honesty. Seems both Kinnear and Newcastle are after the same thing; a chance to restore some dignity and win back some pride. This appointment might turn out to be better than it first sounded. Just hope he doesn't go on too good a winning run or may get the job full time like Roeder!

It could be that Hughton might not want to do the caretaker job anymore and his current extra responsibilities must be having an effect on the job he's actually paid to do. In the current situation freeing Hughton of those duties could be more important than the job Kinear himself does. There may actually be some logic in that. For what it's worth I think we will beat Blackburn tomorrow, so hopefully he will inherit a team on a winning "streak".

Can't fault the bloke's realism and honesty. Just a bit bemused why a Ashley and Wise and co think a bloke who hasn't had a job for several years and with no real long term track record of success will do a better job than the current caretaker manager who has been working with the players for months.

I respect your opinion Di', but the at the end of the day, you don't have to be a shouter to be a good captain. Shearer was an exception, he could show them what to do by example, and could shout at them and motivate them. Michael Owen is probably the highest quality player we have at our club, and if anyone is fit to captain us, then he has to be in with a shout. The only other person I could possibly give it to is Shay Given. Here's some reasons why; - Given and Owen will play nearly every game - Given has been at the club a long time - Both have dozens of International caps - Shay is a bit of a shouter not much, and Owen has good reading of the game - Both have reasonable positional sense (apart from when Shay doesn't collect crosses) - Both are experienced - Both are players the fans look to. to show a bit of class That's my opinion anyways, turning on Michael Owen saying he is a s**** captain sounds to me like making someone other than Ameobi a scapegoat. For me, Owen is one of the few players who is emerging with any credibility from the current debacle. He has spoke sensibly to the media and led by example on the pitch. He's never stopped running and created his own chances and half chances, nicking a couple of goals. If a few more in the team had Owen's self belief, discipline and professional application we would be a lot higher up the table.

Great player, better than Keegan. Can't really see where he would fit in at the moment though. Although he still has more pace than Geremi. Maybe play him in a withdrawn role behind Owen or Viduka.

True, if we were not going to bring anyone else in why sell Faye and Milner? They both would have been v.useful and given us extra options yesterday.

Just back from the match. f***ing shambles. We could definately be flirting with relegation this year. West Ham are pretty poor and we actually created enough chances to win. Defending was diabolical, anyone giving Taylor grief wants to check out Colo, one of the current "European scouting system" golden boys. Maybe he would look solid in a competent, tried and tested, defence but he is as poor as anyone at the moment. Duff is finished, as many of us already know, the last time he actually beat a player he was wearing the blue of Chelsea. Totally shot to pieces. N'zogbia, biggest footballing fraud on the pitch, an a coward to boot, I don't care if he doesn't want to play left back. He is fully equipped to be able to play that role comfortably. He's just not interested. Edgar at right back? Give me strength. Xisco is well off the PL pace at the moment. Despite the midfield pairing of Cacapa and Butt we actually didn't seem to have too many problems in the middle, a testement to how poor West Ham were, it seemed to be down the wings we were exposed. So much for the continental scouting system, we've been crying out for a left back, was it Wise et al who were trying to sign Warnock? Seems more like a Keegan type buy to me. To actually strengthen in a position we were weak. Not meant to be an incisive footballing analysis. I was too angry/pissed by the second half. I'm still blaming Ashley for putting us in this situation and believe that Keegan could at least keep this shower up. Secondly, I blame the players, not enough heart, rolled over too easily. A lot of finger pointing/shirking of responsibility after the first goal. All in all a bag of s****.

The Owen situation is just another example of how the new, much vaunted, "system" has singularly failed to do its job. How long do they need to offer him a contract, ascertain whether or not he'll sign it and if not sell him and bring in an alternative? Rumours that he was hawked around the PL in the dying hours of the transer window just exemplify the sorry mess we have been left in.

Not true, we have failed/are failing to reach our potential. When clubs like Portsmouth and Blackburn are regularly finishing higher up the league there is a fundamental problem with the way we are being run.

For me, what we have seen already is just the "thin edge of the wedge". As stated by Ashley's cabal of crooks "every player has a price". How long do you think Xisco will stay with us if he sets the PL on fire, or Spiderman, Colo or anyone. Selling Milner for a hefty price tag is one thing, but not replacing him is indefensible. The club seems to be being run in a more shabby and unprofessional manner than the previous regime and who thought that was possible? It seems official: we are now a selling club. :-[ If Fat Mike raised his chubby head from behind his barricade and explained exactly what was going on, set out a real vision for the club and promised £50m for new players in January, he might just placate some fans. But then again, after the shit his crew have pulled who would believe him?

The heartbreaking thing is that if we could of added a "modest" £30m* or so to our new arrivals and Keegan had been allowed to bring in another 3 or 4 top quality (£8-£10m) players we would actually be sitting in an excellent position now. Keegan would still be at the helm and the new signings would have galvanised the team. Finishing fifth would of been a real possibility in my opinion. Instead, fat Mike seems reluctant to invest in the playing side of the club which makes me think that a) he is waiting for a buyer to come along so he can make a tidy profit, or b) he is an asset stripper who wants rid of the high cost/high wages players like Owen etc so he can replace them with younger, foreign, players who can be sold for a profit. All the while using the club as a promotion vehicle for his charva tracky bottoms empire. *Modest in comparison to what some clubs have spent, you know the ones with real ambition.