Stottie

Regardless of who is to blame, he needs to be playing and developing if he's not to end up a might-have-been.

madness from their side not to push like lunatics to get him imo, LvG's shitfest only has another year to run then they'll need someone The joke club in Manchester is now United. What a turnaround.

Craig bellamy's stats were rubbish too. Jamie Vardy took something like twenty appearances to get his second PL goal. Not that that's something we could afford our striker could do from now on. I just hope new arrivals don't mean disastrous tactical tinkering like the last game against Watford. It wiped out the positives from the Man U and West Ham games.

Looks all right on YT. With the crazy change to our tactics last week, I worry whether we can make something work when introducing Townsend and a completely different type of striker. We played well against West Ham and there were positives to build on. It seemed like they were all sacrificed for the LB situation.

fwiw, Gayle has only played 2300 minutes in the Premiership. That's 25 or so games, so that's 1 goal in just about 2 games playing in fits and starts. On numbers alone, the temptation is to say he's been Pardewed. I've barely seen him play and my lasting memory is of him coming on and wrecking Liverpool's title hopes in that 3-3 where Brendan Rodgers decided that trying to win 8-0 was more important than taking it to the last day of the season and keeping the pressure on Man City.

or he could get a premiership medal and play in next seasons champions league Well he's already got one of those medals and is still in the champions league, albeit not getting much of a game. If we weren't at risk of a relegation that would cost us the few decent players we have, I'd be all for Remy to Leicester. Their season is Premier League story of the decade. Since they ended last season with 7 wins in their last 9 games, their form looks too good for too long for them to miss out on CL, if not challenge all the way for the title.

In a nutshell Townsend looks like he's fast and has a shot on him, so here's hoping he can do the business. It's hard to know how good he is, because he's barely played for two seasons. Most of his Spurs game time was during that 13/14 post Bale, AVB -> Sherwood season. The club had all those new signings and their main striker Soldado could barely hit the proverbial cow's arse with a banjo. Sigurdsson didn't get a single league assist for them that year, though he's clearly a good footballer. Like Townsend, he didn't feature much under Sherwood in the second half of the season. The last six games they played 4-4-2 with Adebayor and Kane up front.

We're miles behind Leicester as a team but could maybe offer more playing time. And more money.

Very good! fwiw, all three of them scored against the mackems, so that's at least one monkey we might get off our back.

Does this mean Mbemba left back and Lascelles against Ighalo?

I suspect lots of them think he is deep down. It will all come out if he gets the England job. He'll get it much worse than Hodgson and possibly even McClaren. It's clear that David Squires and the blokes on the Football Ramble (one's a toon fan) already think Pardew is a joke. In general though, journos don't say anything because they don't think we deserve any better. For them, Newcastle are just a struggler, an afterthought. When Pardew left, someone linked to a Talksport (I know) program where Colin Murray said Newcastle have the third largest gate and eighth highest revenue, so Pardew has been a failure. He said the fans were right to expect more. But nobody really considers the resources at the club. We're just supposed to motor along somewhere down the league. It's the same for Everton and Aston Villa, teams that won the league in the eighties. Aston Villa can take three years to win a dozen home games and no-one in the media thinks it's an issue.

Big risk is Ighalo and Deeney bullying Colo and Mbemba. They are no. 1 in the league in long balls by 10 a game, about 15% more than anyone else. So when there's a ball over the top, our CH need to track the runs. Any bouncing ball, just deal with it. Put it out. Don't concede an easy one from a flick-on like the last time. Or fannying about at full back which gave them the other one. They average less possession than us, so we should see enough of it to work some opportunities. On recent form, we should be in with a good shout.

Mitro had a big contribution to our general team play against Man U and West Ham. Berahino is a better finisher but he won't be as involved. Berahino is a penalty taker, which distorts his stats a bit, and of his 14 goals last season, 11 were at home. We need to do better in away games. Normally this would just be an interesting tactical choice, but we're sitting in the relegation zone and the pressure is on. Since our midfield especially is improving, maybe see how it goes against Watford and then make a decision. Remy would be a snap-their-hands-off no-brainer, of course.

It's mad if Chelsea are ditching Remy. He's got 8 league goals in 9 games' worth of minutes.

Down to about 6 for me now. That's more on points total and errant finishing rather than general crapness. We're making more chances, and have shored it up at the back, even before the new signings. Eliot has surpassed expectations/fears, so credit to the lad.

Robert was a fantastic player. Better than Ginola, better than Nobby too. I think he was the catalyst for the Robson team. He had a hand in what felt like every goal we scored at the start of that season. Bellamy was a huge part of the team too, but it was Robert who created the initial momentum. I kind of suspect wide men, both wingers and wide forwards, is a position where burn out happens quickly. It's definitely a position where people soon get frustrated if its not happening every game. "People" here including managers who should know better.

Feel so sorry for the man. Deserves to be relaxing as we should have scored 5! Poor guy I can sense some gifs coming.

Poor man's Steven Gerrard my arse!

It's kind of ironic that we're selling him after he looked good against Arsenal, but they were off the pace and it was chucking it down. 8M is a lot for him. I hope it goes toward a striker.

That there is the worry.

Questionable buy to begin with. Not in form and made Ligue 1 worst 11 team last season. Once bought, not given proper go in poorly set up team with rookie striker and on the same side as a poor full back. A fine recipe for money down the drain. That said, he's not really applied himself enough to have much sympathy for him. If some money back means we can keep Sissoko and Perez, he's got to go.

I rate Shelvey and Saivet sounds okay, but this one smacks of panic button. Spend the money on Austin. Townsend's record on the left is poor, and I don't want to contemplate us playing him on the right because that probably means Sissoko being sold.

Joey Barton wasn't exactly Mr. Happy. Just a thought but maybe Shelvey's Swansea career went downhill because they resigned Sigurdsson. With Ki also in the team, that's a very unbalanced midfield. It sounds like the kind of square-peg, round-hole recruitment we do.

Saivet might get closer to Payet than we managed earlier in the season.

He's got 12 goals and 16 assists in 90 full games of playing time in the Premier league. Some involvement in a goal every three games, despite playing a deep role for the last 20 or so games' worth of minutes. Our entire team has only scored one in the last four games.