Interpolic

Aye, that must be it.

Answer the fucking question, Wullie.

You don't say, Alan.

He's sort of touched on it before, I was surprised he got away with these comments as I honestly thought he might get reprimanded/binned for them: http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/premier-league/newcastle-owner-mike-ashley-gets-confused-and-upset-with-football-claims-magpies-manager-alan-pardew-8878591.html

Because I'm not a gormless twat that just shouts at the sky over anything and everything. Raging at EVERYTHING leads to the likes of other gormless twats like Garth Crooks popping up on my telly saying he can't understand what Newcastle fans are moaning about, they're in 8th!! Those other ones Interpolic has mentioned are real cringe inducing fuck-wittery and should shame him. Anyone else have any others? Got an article idea based on his top ten. Well there are those quotes about how the idea of Newcastle fans having high expectations was a myth perpetuated by the Southern media, a point he has completely contradicted a few times when he's been under the cosh a bit.

Aye, stuff like that I can understand being criticised. Fair do's.

"Thank God we're not playing in Europe next season" "I couldn't care less if Arsenal beat us 4-0 next week" "Our fans should thank him because we are not as affluent as some other clubs" A few of my personal faves, off the top of my head.

The same thing could have been said about selling Carroll. That was different though - Carroll's value at that time was realistically about £20m but you added £5m because he's a striker, another £5m because he's English and another £5m because he was in an insanely rich vein of form for 12 months, way beyond what we've seen with Cabaye IMO.

Interesting analysis and bang on for my money.

The value of the players are relative to what they give the teams, we're potentially a shambles without Cabaye. Our shitty manager has used the sale as justification to abandon the type of football most of us look forward to watching. I agree we should have tried to fleece PSG, we didn't get the maximum price we could have done from that deal. But anyone saying we had any hope in hell of getting £35m-45m for him is off their rocker IMO.

He was worth a lot more than what we received. Mata and Ozil were not as important to the teams they played for than Cabaye was worth to us. Aye but Cabaye isn't in that world class bracket that the other 2 are - he'd improve both Arsenal and Man Utd IMO but he's not quite good enough to build your team around in the way those 2 sides are doing with Ozil/Mata.

We hardly robbed PSG, we should have pushed for a lot more. No way is Cabaye a £40m player. Nor is Ozil....except that was apparently the fee . Ozil is on another planet to Cabaye, in terms of ability and achievements. We could have perhaps got another £5m or so for Cabaye, but howay.

Well so do I, I think everyone at the club needs to share responsibility for days like yesterday. Owner, "DOF", manager, players all not good enough. However you're pointing to a bunch of quotes that absolve Pardew of any blame whatsoever, and asking if they're right and we're wrong/impressionable, etc. So you know, I think you've answered your own question.

See my previous post. Do you agree with those opinions then or not? i.e. Are those fans right about the situation, in your view?

:lol:

I agree that singling out Ben Arfa was harsh and a bit unnecessary actually, you make a fair point there but I think he's just frustrated because he knows the lad is capable of more and he's all we hung our hat on today. As you say, that's not his fault. I do agree with him that sunderland could have scored as many as they fancied today though, embarrassingly they appeared to let their foot off the gas at 2-0 but we still looked wide open every time they attacked us. I do honestly think they could have had 5 or 6 if they kept at us the way they did the first half hour, but they didn't need to.

Our best hope is a European Super League, whatever happened to that?

I think we'd get 8th if we were aiming for 5th or 6th to get into Europe, if you know what I mean. As it stands we have 14 games left and voluntarily seem to have decided that we have nothing to play for, so I agree with you - I think our season is in real danger or falling flat and we'll potentially drop down a few places. Players need motivation and they're probably being told the job's done, so it wouldn't be a big surprise to see us fall away from the DREAM of 8th in the league.

2 loan signings (players we'd already been linked with and had presumably been in touch with their representatives already) in 2 transfer windows suggest that the guy has simply been employed as a figurehead, a distraction, a target for hate and blame, a guy to call a cunt instead of the owner or the manager or whoever. Since it seems like some people can't grasp more than one concept at once and realise there are multiple contributing factors to the failure, stagnation and misery engulfing the club, employing him was a perfect tactic and he's doing a really good job of things in that respect, in the sense that he's a diversion from the real ills of the club. Ashley knew we hated him and he's played on it. It's depressing that the owner is this low in his behavior, but that's what we're dealing with. It's more depressing that a number of our fans fall for it tbh, I personally couldn't give a flying fuck about Kinnear - I'm annoyed he's at our club but he's not the reason we're not bringing players in or anything, he might meet the players before they sign or whatever but he's not deciding our spend or dictating our strategy or doing anything beyond what the guy with brains (Carr) says, the Douglas tale aside.

Very good.

With you on that. It's just gone on too long. Even this season, where lots have said we're having a good season, there has only been a few games where he hasn't got dogs abuse for stupid decisions where even when we've won he's made games that should be comfortable wins into nervous wrecks. Now many argue, like in the 5th season, "hey we won that's all that matters" but they are missing the point. Sure winning is the most important but it set dangerous signs when you can rarely win a game convincingly and as soon as you score you retreat and end up hanging on every time. The 5th season was so similar to the first half of this but then we went on that great run towards the end which Pardew got massive credit for and we benefited from actually spending money on a striker in January and trying to kick on. However the cynic in me now wonders how much of that was because we may have expected to lose Demba Ba that winter and Cisse was his replacement? Bottom line for me, Pardew has a talented squad that he simply can't get the best out of. I actually think we've dominated far more minutes of football this season compared to that season if you take early February as the yardstick, we were generally getting a result in scrappy games that neither team really deserved to win before Christmas that year, whereas we've had load of games this year where we've played fairly impressive football in a manner where we dominate the the opposition for 30-45 minutes, then frustratingly revert to defensive football and hang on. I kinda feel like this season we've been very lucky. Considering some of the games we've won and some we've lost, you'd think it would be the other way round. I think we're lucky Gouffran turned out to work so well despite him being no world beater, Remy coming in, Williamson stepping up, Cabaye playing so well after the Summer debarcle (and the incentive of moving in Jan), Tiote improving, probably in reaction to Cabaye, the Spurs game... In the 5th season, although we had a good share of luck, that back 4 was solid through some hard work it would seem. There seems to be very little work this season, that list above that I've labelled as lucky, I can't see much work from Pardew et al to create those positives. I think with this standard of squad Pardew is capable of having us finish 8th-12th every year if he doesn't have the Europa League as a complication, I agree that a few things have fallen his way this season but by the same token a few things have gone wrong (Coloccini's fitness issues, Ben Arfa not being Superman for him these days, a few daft suspensions such as Debuchy's when he was looking our best player, aliens, etc). The trouble is that I don't think 8th need be our ceiling, the likes of Spurs and Everton are there to be caught but I don't think he's getting the best of a very good (but admittedly quite imbalanced) squad. The Man Utd, Spurs and Chelsea results were a bit misleading, it makes it seem like we've done better than we have.

With you on that. It's just gone on too long. Even this season, where lots have said we're having a good season, there has only been a few games where he hasn't got dogs abuse for stupid decisions where even when we've won he's made games that should be comfortable wins into nervous wrecks. Now many argue, like in the 5th season, "hey we won that's all that matters" but they are missing the point. Sure winning is the most important but it set dangerous signs when you can rarely win a game convincingly and as soon as you score you retreat and end up hanging on every time. The 5th season was so similar to the first half of this but then we went on that great run towards the end which Pardew got massive credit for and we benefited from actually spending money on a striker in January and trying to kick on. However the cynic in me now wonders how much of that was because we may have expected to lose Demba Ba that winter and Cisse was his replacement? Bottom line for me, Pardew has a talented squad that he simply can't get the best out of. I actually think we've dominated far more minutes of football this season compared to that season if you take early February as the yardstick, we were generally getting a result in scrappy games that neither team really deserved to win before Christmas that year, whereas we've had load of games this year where we've played fairly impressive football in a manner where we dominate the the opposition for 30-45 minutes, then frustratingly revert to defensive football and hang on.

2006 since we've been behind in the Premiership at half time and won. Does anyone know how common it is generally, out of interest? If you can be bothered this might help, select seasons and stats. http://www.soccerstats.com/table.asp?league=england&tid=i I can't be arsed right now but I might look into it at some point. I think getting the first goal in a game is usually a good indicator you'll end up winning it statistically, but I remember times when we used to turn around deficits fairly regularly. Seems quite rare now.