Wallsendmag

If the team with the better manager won all the time there would be no point in football. The last time Pardew met Benitez at SJP Pardew came out on top and Benitez had by far the better team.

I honestly couldn't care less if we went down this season as long as we could guarantee Benitez staying on. The fact that he's somehow got this heartless rabble resembling a competent footballing outfit speaks volumes.

Can we have the points for once when we need them? You screwed us up 20 years ago and we don't want a repeat of that this time. We are not that lucky. For once we have appointed a manager everyone can get behind and you can feel the momentum building but have probably left it too late. He needed to be in around January if not December. I just hope our luck changes and we get a win here with Makems losing tomorrow Even if we'd peddled McClaren after the Chelsea debacle and brought in Benitez in time for the trip to La Manga I'm certain we would have taken points from the Stoke and/or Bournemouth games that immediately followed it. Not only that but we would have been far better prepared for the double header against the Mackems and Norwich. Even if we'd managed 6 points from those 4 very winnable games instead of the 1 we got things would be looking pretty good now and we'd probably be looking at needing only 1 more win to stay up.

They've been here and done this many times before. In fact it's in their own hands this time which hasn't been the case for the past few seasons. It's us and Norwich joining Villa and we've just got to hope Rafa fancies dirtying his hands in the Championship for a season as I've got no doubt he'll bring us straight back up.

The last one I can remember is the Cole hattrick in 93/94 That was at home. The 2-0 win sorry, same season though. Beat them 1-0 at Anfield in the cup the following season. Steve Watson with a belter in the last minute. Can't see us getting anything. Only hope is they take it easy against us to keep Rafa up.

Remember the days when the only way you could get a seat in the East Stand was to have a season ticket.

Well played Vurn. I make that 6 good games you've had since you signed for us now. In all fairness I'd keep him in the team at right back regardless of Janmaat being fit.

They've never had a particularly good away following despite what they'd like you to believe. They barely half filled their section at Chelsea on Saturday either. No problem with that, following your team away from home can be an expensive business nowadays but these were the original self confessed best fans in the world who will tell anyone who will listen that they averaged over 30k in the 3rd division (even though they didn't), everyone in Manchester supports City, and like you said used to come up here and sing "Where we're you when you were sh!t?, yet when they first moved into their new stadium it was rarely more than 3/4s full but now they're good they've had to extend it and have found an extra 20k fans, a far cry from the massive 3,007 fans they attracted for a home game against Mansfield during that season they spent in the 3rd division.

No defence for that. He was stood offside for best part of 30 seconds before the ball came in without ever being onside. As soon as the free kick went in the flag should have gone straight up.

We look a far better team with an up for it and on his game Tiote in it. Shame he's hardly shown that form for the past couple of years.

Crying shame he wasn't brought in a bit earlier.

Aye it's a bit much to expect highly paid professionals to give their all when they turn out once a week or occasionally twice. It's just not human nature. Whatever your job is, you need to feel a sense of purpose and have some positive influence coming from somewhere. Absolute tosh. Take in a Northern League game and you'll see players throwing themselves into challenges and playing like their lives depended on it with nothing really at stake and for little more than their travel expenses. 100% effort is a minimum requirement and a lot of players haven't given that this season. Yeah but that would imply that success is the aim. Explain success? Success for an Accrington Stanley player probably means something different to success for a Man City player. 100% effort should be mandatory regardless and if that had been given all season we all know we wouldn't be sat 2nd bottom and staring relegation in the face.

Aye it's a bit much to expect highly paid professionals to give their all when they turn out once a week or occasionally twice. It's just not human nature. Whatever your job is, you need to feel a sense of purpose and have some positive influence coming from somewhere. Absolute tosh. Take in a Northern League game and you'll see players throwing themselves into challenges and playing like their lives depended on it with nothing really at stake and for little more than their travel expenses. 100% effort is a minimum requirement and a lot of players haven't given that this season.

Aye it's a bit much to expect highly paid professionals to give their all when they turn out once a week or occasionally twice.

Great performance and desire from the players but all this proves is that they've been tossing it off and mugging the club and it's supporters all season. Too little, too late. If we'd played the way we've played in the last couple of games all season we'd be in the top half.

Shelvey, as bad as he's been lately, for Colback would have been my preferred team. Otherwise happy with that.

Never done it for a league game though, not even in the Championship and our ground has 10,000 more seats to fill than theirs.

Could have closed one years ago and nobody would have noticed. Fair point.

Just seen on twitter Villa have already taken the decision to close one of their stands for next season

Personally never had a problem with them. Been to Anfield about a dozen times watching NUFC and always found them decent even after the 2 times I seen us win there. Certainly far more pleasant than the supporters of the team at the other side of Stanley Park, again just speaking from personal experience.

Evidently not. For the record we played Liverpool in the away game previous to Villa. I was at both games and the reaction was completely opposite at both stadiums. Liverpool battered us 3-0 which in truth could have been 6 or 7. Everyone at Anfield that day knew we were down but the reaction of the Liverpool fans outside the ground that day couldn't have been different to at Villa Park. Handshakes outside the ground and every single Liverpool fan we spoke to afterwards had genuine sympathy for our plight and wished us well for the future. The hatred before and after the match at Villa Park was just bizarre. I don't think it could have been any worse if we had been at Sunderland that day.

That must be why a year later the Plymouth fans were celebrating our promotion with us even though they'd just been relegated themselves. A team we've played 22 times in nearly 125 years of existence and have had nothing to do with at all beyond that. We're widely derided amongst fellow PL supporters: deluded, boycoutt, horsepunching, SSN wongaloids, jealousy, rank individual after rank individual being associated with the club, 'hounding out' English managers. You've got your head in the sand if you think otherwise. Again you take too much notice of social media and the like. Match going fans of other Premier League clubs, with one or two exceptions, don't dislike us anymore than anyone else. In fact if anything the opposite is true and a trip to Newcastle us widely regarded as a favourite one which is the reason why we see so many away fans drinking in and around Newcastle with home supporters which doesn't happen at a lot of places. Likewise when I used to be a regular away traveller we were always well received by home fans with only a few exceptions. The problem these days is places like this, twitter and Facebook give the minority a voice to spout rubbish which in time becomes gospel but when you get out into the real world it's a completely different scenario.

That must be why a year later the Plymouth fans were celebrating our promotion with us even though they'd just been relegated themselves.

I don't, they f***ing loved us going down and had a big show of it. Hope they fold. This is a myth though. A few of their fans took the p*ss, that's all. A myth you say?