Hughesy

To be honest, whether or not people think Jonas is any good or not, the way he has been treated is classless. So utterly befitting of the regime we have.

Far too many people seem to be regurgitating the crap about Hba not producing enough or working hard enough.

I like welbeck - think he is underrated to be honest. Would score goals as a number 1 striker.

If we hadn't signed Colback, I'd have been interested in us going after one of Sandro, Dembele or Capoue.

Some absolutely bizarre signings made to be honest and such vast sums spent. It sort of reminds of playing fm where you forget what players you really need and end up buying players you don't need and overlook the glaring deficiencies in your squad.

Decent article by Mark Douglas on Hba. Still some idiots on twitter standing up for Pardew..

Bielsa is not manager for clubs where he must be with players every day. Zeman is far away from Premier League standards, and quality what Newcastle need. Manager for Seria B teams. Bilić is nothing more then average European manager. Vaha would be interesting, but I don't think he will be there long under this transfer policy. To be honest they were examples of how relatively easy it is to think of alternatives. I am sure people can think of reasons not to appoint all of them. But in reply - not sure what you mean re Bielsa, Bilic did a very good job with Croatia, and Zemen has done enough to clearly be better than Pardew.

Hit me with them. Are you asking me if Ashley would realistically appoint them or if there are better managers who hypothetically might be prepared to come to us if asked? Off the top of my head, I think we could have approached and had discussions with Bielsa (before he went to Marseille), Tuchel, Paco Jemez, Dragan Stojkovic, Zdenek Zemen, Laudrup, De Boer, Ketsbaia, Eddie Howe. I don't see a reason why the above list that I came up with in one minute could not be enlarged with extra thought. Clearly not all of them would be prepared to work for Ashley but that wasn't what I said. is there a reason you didn't mention moyes btw? Forgot about him to be honest. I'd like Moyes here but I suspect his wages would be too high. I think in general, as with English players, better value seems to be found abroad. For example, I think Bilic is only on 600k a year, and the Algerian coach was on 300k or something low.

You could add to that list Slaven Bilic, the Algerian or Chilean manager.

Hit me with them. Are you asking me if Ashley would realistically appoint them or if there are better managers who hypothetically might be prepared to come to us if asked? Off the top of my head, I think we could have approached and had discussions with Bielsa (before he went to Marseille), Tuchel, Paco Jemez, Dragan Stojkovic, Zdenek Zemen, Laudrup, De Boer, Ketsbaia, Eddie Howe. I don't see a reason why the above list that I came up with in one minute could not be enlarged with extra thought. Clearly not all of them would be prepared to work for Ashley but that wasn't what I said.

I hate the 'there's no-one else to appoint' argument that some idiots run. There are loads of realistic appointments we could make.

If he's instructed his agent that he's staying put then there will be very little in the way of false press speculation... find that line of thinking difficult to believe unless he likes the idea of playing with the reserves for a year. At the very least you'd expect him to be looking for a loan move to actually play games. I'm sure he'd rather be playing, but it's not in his hands. He can easily see out the remaining year on his contract then have a much bigger pool of clubs to choose from in January. It's Pardew who's cutting his nose off to spite his face here. And a much bigger salary/signing on fee if he is on a Bosman. Bit of a no-brainer really for HBA.

Yep - he's a much better player than people are making out on here.

He had plenty of chances to establish himself at Chelsea, especially in the 6 months prior to Mourinho's arrival and with a shot Torres as his only competition. Fact is he looked useless in the Premiership in front of a midfield that contained the likes of Lampard, Oscar and Mata, and only really came alive in the cup competitions. His all round game just isn't good enough. In fact, he's a p*ss poor footballer outside of the box, and needs goals to mask how mediocre he is elsewhere on the pitch. I've never really understood why so many of our fans considered Ba to be a good all-round footballer when he did the sum of sod all in general play and slowly progressed from "meh, runs into the box alright" to "can't control a ball or pass it" during that 4-3-3 period where he was out wide on the left and his confidence dropped with every goalless game. Not sure that he did get a run to be honest - I've only had a brief look but he only started 16 games in the league for Chelsea and made 17 sub appearances. That indicates to me that he didn't get a consistent run of games in his time there.

I was thinking the same. I don't know which game it was, might have been against Stoke where he stepped up to take a free kick and bent it right into the top corner from 25 yards out. Then there was that volley from a 60 yard long punt against Man U. He's got far more ability than he gets credit for IMO. Scored a couple of cracking goals against Man Utd. in his time here. Is he a world class striker, no? But he's in that segment below who could do a good job tactically, in rotation or off the bench for most top sides. Which is important in case of injury. Would agree with that analysis really, but I think it would have been interesting to see him playing regularly in a top 4-6 side and see how many goals he would have scored. I reckon he'd score enough to certainly have a chance of starting for top sides on a fairly regular basis.

People can make of it what they will, but there is some US statistics guy on twitter who think someone mentioned in the Riviere thread who rates him pretty highly. I think he could come good to be honest.

Ba would undoubtedly score a lot of goals in a top 6 team like Spurs or Everton. I think people are underrating him quite a lot here - he never got a chance at Chelsea.

I don't necessarily have a problem with signing Colback on a free - he looked decent on Sunday and was better than I had expected. However, my issue is that buying him has effectively stopped us actually fixing the problems we have in central midfield i.e. creativity and he is no better than Tiote, Anita or Sissoko in their preferred positions.

Imagine him and Cabella running at defences - would be beautiful to see.

Looks promising - hopefully he will keep his composure a bit more in the future, but certainly has potential to develop into a good striker.

People seriously, and misguidedly, underrating Tiote in here.

Dummett really isn't good enough to play in the Premiership.

So many great goals to remember - I do love the Villa one as well. Almost feel it is an underrated goal by non-NUFC fans because it was Shearer i.e. people didn't expect that kind of touch finish from Shearer. In fact, Shearer generally had such an underrated technique - his first touch was consistently excellent. It's amazing to think that he could have been even better and scored even more goals if he hadn't had those injuries and essentially missed 2 seasons of playing.

he's awful defensively imho, even during that period when he was doing what pardew wanted he did little more than stand in front of the guy with the ball...can barely remember him ever making a tackle but during that period he did get back in position well enough I'd agree that from a tactical and technical point of view, he isn't a good defender, but I think he does pressurise people and puts the effort in to track back. To be honest, I can't think of many wingers who are good tacklers of the ball, so in my view it isn't really relevant. As long as he is putting in the effort to be a nuisance and close people down, Pardew shouldn't have any complaints at all.

I never get the workrate argument anyway - I don't actually think HBA is even that lazy or defensively neglectful. It is just a lazy argument.