Hughesy

I am sure this was posted already but I'll post it again. http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2013/apr/30/newcastle-pardew-transfers-french-coaching Maybe we should ask Tor if Rene is likely to come..

8th in the all time PL table And before the Premier League?

Yep - being a regular top 8 club just isn't true.

Article heading is completely misleading and doesn't really make any difference whatsoever to us if we go down.

Being 1 place above relegation with 3 games to go doesn't have any appeal in the slightest. This season isn't fun, but at least we are in the top division. I don't get the appeal of the Championship - always thought it was one of the biggest myths of our last relegation.

Winning games was far more enjoyable that losing games has been this season. Each to their own I suppose - but I didn't enjoy it much. Yeah, it was nice winning, but I'd rather be bottom half of the Premiership than top of the Championship. Beating teams like Doncaster and Preston loses any appeal after the second week.

The Championship was crap.

I'm on a 5. I just think it might be a bit too much for Wigan to do to be honest.

Just out of interest.. if Ben Arfa does stay beyond this summer, I assume you will retract that?

Jonas will be knackered.

Before we played West Brom we'd lost our last 4 away games, why should the 2 after WBA be any different to the 4 before? Our last game at home is against Arsenal, that should be a piece of p*ss. By the same token, why are you so certain that Wigan are going to get 5 more points than us? Their form might be getting better, but there is a reason why they are 5 points behind us.

Wigan woeful? What the f*** does that make us? Well... they are currently 5 points below us, so it would be hard to argue they are better than us.

Stojkovic Bielsa Zeman Laudrup Go out and get one of them. Give them a bit of cash and let them get on with it.

I imagine any properly advised manager would look at and carefully consider every clause of his contract. His severance terms would be pretty high on a list of things to look at..

I am still not convinced that Cisse misses that many more chances than most strikers to be honest.

Where...?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2313324/Tottenham-fans-celebrate-beating-Arsenal-shoes-chant.html

This is one of the things that p*ss me off, honestly our attacks are far too slow. Yep - I don't think I have seen a time move the ball across the pitch slower.

Ray Houghton?

Isn't the point of sport to try and do better than 'average'? Yep - I would agree. Hence why I said I hope we are always aiming to do better than 8th. I suppose what I am getting at is that we don't really have a history of being a consistent top 8 club and therefore any expectation that we should be doing better than that is possibly unrealistic. No more unrealistic than Swansea or Wigan being in the Premier League at all but I doubt they'd keep their manager if he suddenly took them down two divisions and tried to claim that's where they're meant to be. Spurs have been a mid-table side nearly my entire life but they've seen the big time once and now won't accept that again. We on the other hand continue to treat fifth place like some sort of magical achievement that we can never aspire to again. It's ludicrous. I don't think anyone is treating 5th place as something we can never aspire to again. I just don't know whether it is something that we can expect to achieve on a regular basis. I think above 5th place would be a magical achievement though...

Isn't the point of sport to try and do better than 'average'? Yep - I would agree. Hence why I said I hope we are always aiming to get as high up the table as possible. I suppose what I am getting at is that we don't really have a history of being a consistent top 8 club at any time in our history and therefore any expectation that we should be doing better than that is possibly unrealistic. Especially given who we are competing against.

Quick caveat - I hope we always aiming to get as high up the table as possible. But, for those people who think that finishing 8th isn't good enough - what is our 'average' placing in all our years in the top division? I would be surprised if we have actually finished in the top 8 as many times as you would think. I can't, however, be bothered to trawl through every league table to find out. Wikipedia tells me that in the all time Premiership table, we are 8th.

I mentioned him earlier - someone said that he is leaving at the end of the season.

Yeah - I don't particularly want Martinez either.

Exactly, every time the goal-line technology debate comes up I raise this argument. The goal line is the least of our worries. True. I think there should be video review for every big decision, so goals/red cards/penalties. I agree to a certain extent, but was discussing this the other day in relation to how far you take it. Do you review every single offside decision given or just ones that lead to a goal being allowed/disallowed? Do you review every single phase of play before a goal? Say, for example, the ball is played over the top and Cisse would be one on one with the keeper, but Cisse is incorrectly flagged offside - do you review that kind of decision? If you do review it and realise that Cisse wasn't offside, how do you rectify it? You can't recreate the exact scenario..