Village Idiot

Human sacrifice! Cats and dogs living together! Mass hysteria!

After this, HBA, Tévez, Mascherano... I'm starting to be convinced that Pardew wouldn't recognize a good player if Ronaldo and Messi showed up at his doorstep and beat him up with a metal baseball bat.

"Alan Pardew blames mass hysteria for affecting Newcastle" You know, I thought it was a shop, but no, it's an actual quote.

Wait? Athletic lost against BATE? How is that even possible?

Is that for real or a shop? That's utterly ill-mannered for an official twitter account.

Never thought I would bump this in October but... There's talk in our media that Valdés is heading to Liverpool this month for fitness and medical tests.

Ah well, this was sucky, despite the late reaction. Worried about our midfield losing so many balls to set up the PSG counters, doesn't bode well for when we play other big teams.

Munir hits the post. Damn!

Cabaye coming on.

Our problem is that funnily we are losing the midfield battle today. This is way too direct for my educated tastes

Ouch

Alves' been brilliant so far this season, although I agree to a degree on the general assessment. We've looked shaky at the back against a good team, which I was afraid would happen.

We look rattled at the moment. That goal took the wind out of our sails when we had the game where we wanted it.

Aye, he's been excellent. Although I have to say Mathieu has settled in as quickly. I don't know, I think Mathieu has looked shaky but has made up for it with pace. Rakitic has been truly excellent. It's like he's been playing here for years.

I know PSG are - relatively - disappointing, but that's a lush squad they have. And that's without Lavezzi, Ibra and Thiago.

There you go 1-1.

That first caller Up to a couple of weeks ago I would have been convinced he was a troll but having seen the Hull game i think most newcastle fans are getting everything they deserve right now. It seems this place and sackpardew.com are the sane minority Yeah that was downright bemusing. How can not getting rid of him mean stability We're going down in a ball of flames and that bloke wanted to stick with him :-/ A stable ball of flames, though.

Or whatever Hughton got sacked for. What was that again? Getting beat by West Brom while 11th in the league? He got sacked for disagreeing with Ashley. The results had less to do with it. Wrong it was all Llambas work. He said Houghton is too nice a yes man. Pardew can stand up to him. Llambas said he use to watch Pardew Westham and he admired his work there. Ashley only stick to him because thats what he does on his business managers. The point is, the sacking had nothing to do with the results on the pitch. Results on the pitch lead to results in the bank account. Ultimately the threat of relegation will force Ashley's hand regardless of how much he wants to support Pardew. I don't buy the idea that Ashley is terrified of relegation. Newcastle is a drop in the bucket relative to his total personal worth. While the free advertising for Sports Direct is a nice bonus, all around the club probably makes him very little money relative to the trouble it causes him. Last time NUFC looked certain for the drop, he opened his wallet in January and brought a shitload of players to lift the team. So yeah, based on evidence I'd say he is worried about it.

Watch Roma flog him for €20m+ in a year's time like they've been doing with several of their CBs these past years.

Having watched the game yesterday, it looks even more ludicrous to me that he was just an injury away from putting on the England shirt.

I think it's a mixed picture, sometimes a great manager can be let down by not having the right resources. Martinez at Wigan for example. But either way, what you definitely can't have is a manager that makes every player worse and produces a team which is much less than the sum of its parts. That's what Pardew is doing. Yes, that's for sure. Your squad is way better than it shows.

It's ludicrous how many people underrate the importance of a manager in football. Do they think Atlético had the best squad in La Liga last season?

You want to look good in front of the owners in case there's jobs for the boys. Not too different from Barça, really.

Dunno, maybe there's some "cheap sacking" clause in AP's contract that allows for reduced compo if the team is performing badly after XXX weeks that's not been triggered yet. I have always thought there's no way they would have given him a 8-year contract unless there were some provisions.

Honestly, I think Riviére and Cisse would complement each other decently. I actually thought that was the plan once Cisse were fit and Pardew would switch to a 4-4-2. Seems not.