Punk77

The reason why he doesn't get behind the defense is because he never receives a good pass. He's had some decent runs, but the pass is not arriving. The attackers are dependent on a midfield with creativity that can feed them. Without Barton all our creativity is gone. I don't have the statistics in my head, but I think we've not won one single match when Barton is out. It's not just Loven who's not functioning, the whole team suffers.

Loven is an attacker that chases the room behind the defense. Timely and effective runs are his specialty. But to function properly, he needs to play together with a midfielder that's able to hit those passes. But with Barton out, we have almost no creativity in the middle. We have an AM in Nolan completely incapable of hitting an offensive pass. And our wide men aren't what we call accurate either. In other words: it was not an coincidence that Loven started to play rubbish simultaneously with Barton being injured. Before that untimely injury, Loven acutally improved for each game. What an absolute load of rubbish. Then your football intelligence is non-existing. Instead of labeling my post as rubbish, you could try to counter-argument me.

Loven is an attacker who chases the room behind the defense. Timely and effective runs are his specialty. But to function properly, he needs to play together with a midfielder that's able to hit those passes. But with Barton out, we have almost no creativity in the middle. We have an AM in Nolan completely incapable of hitting an offensive pass. And our wide men aren't what we call accurate either. In other words: it was not an coincidence that Loven started to play rubbish simultaneously with Barton being injured. Before that untimely injury, Loven acutally improved for each game.

How good is Hatem at making friends? As Carr mentioned, the french media has written quite positively about our treatment of HBA. MAybe that gives us an advantage.

http://www.skysports.com/story/0,19528,11669_6810982,00.htmll http://www.teamtalk.com/news/2483/6813754/Marveaux-rebuffs-Reds-rumours

I haven't got much incentive to defend him, but I honestly believe he'd changed (in his own thick way) just before he left. He made statements to the effect that we needed to get on top of our finances and he saw appointing Allardyce as a part of the new approach - long term, developmental and low-budget. No comment as to what the future held, but I think Owen-type stuff was finished with him for the forseeable future. One might say that the only reason why FS said the buys ala owen were over, was because he had drained the club completely, The club had used sponsor money in advance and had the third highest wage budget in PL. We were economical FUBAR'ed. So his only option left was to say that he had changed strategy, hoping that this would save some of his reputation and entice some potential buyers. He said he would follow the brick by brick strategy, but the truth was that neither he or the club had no money to pursue it. So in reality, he was forced to just talk about a sustainable growth. Behind the scenes he however tried to offload the club as fast as possible, before the s*** hit the fan. Because if s*** had hit the fan before any purchase had been completed, every potential buyer would have vanished in thin air, leaving FS with a club nobody was willing to touch with an iron rod. Then the result would have been administration and FS losing all his money.

This! Some tend to forget to ask themselves: What would have happened if MA did not buy the club? As Toon's T. mentions, its' likely that we without MA still would have suffered relegation. That would have destroyed us since we wouldn't have had access to MA's money to keep us afloat.

Some good names, yes. But the players already had a reputation when Tham bought them. Except Taarabt and Ekotto, all those players were fairly sought after, but Tham managed to buy them first. How they managed that is an open question. Comolli might be a contributor, but need not be. The true difficulty is to pull off another Tiote..A player few people have heard about, but still manages to enhance the team. I've heard about Berbatov for years before Tham bought him. Getting him was probably about connections, but also about having the money available in correct point in time..

You're absolutely bunkers! Read this article, it gives you a pretty good idea of how fucked the club's economy was when MA took over. http://swissramble.blogspot.com/2010/12/newcastle-uniteds-finances-in-black-and.html MA did contribute to our relegation (probably because of his inexperience of running a football club), but everything was already set in motion by FS. MA bought a sinking ship. He would probably never have bought this club if he knew how bad state the club was in. If it wasn't for MA, FS would have continued his mismanagement, driving the club in to economical administration and NUFC would have ended on the scrapheap together with Leeds..

Couldn't agree more..

f*** him. If Liverpool is after him, he's probably no good. Except some honorable exceptions,, their track record on the transfer market is not the best. But now they have Comolli who is pretty good finding great players. Fuck me!

And bye bye Delap freak throws.

Don't want us to be the new City.. Wtf? Who said that we would be the new Shitty just because of a new owner? A owner with some ambisions would be nice for a start. some what? Ambitions. A new owner that is willing to continue what we've started would have been nice. But I fear that because of the size of Ambani's wallet, he's liable of splashing the cash widely, just to prove himself.

Don't want us to be the new City..

Fuck him. If Liverpool is after him, he's probably no good. Except some honorable exceptions,, their track record on the transfer market is not the best.

Man, I can't wait to see him patrol the box with all his whopping 6 ft 7 in..Dangerous corners, bye bye !

Forster has done well at Celtic. I know their fans have been speaking positively about him. Also I think a full season as a number 1 keeper playing week in, week out, playing in front of a demanding crowd at Celtic Park will have been far more beneficial than sitting on the bench for half the season. This! That's why I have more belief in Forster right now. He's received glowing reports both in Celtic and Norwich.

I'm not sure I want a takeover. I like the current development with focus on youth, finding promising players in europe with a desire to play for the club etc. The way City and Chelsea are run is ruining PL: inflated ticket prices, ludicrous salaries, highly owner-dependent, players that only think of salary but have no feeling for the club. When they score goal, they celebrate as if it was a matter of course. The joy is gone. I could be pro a takeover if the new owner is interested in continue the work laid down by MA. That mean not getting world stars on idiotic pay, but buying the best talents out there. With a wealthier owner we could simultaneously purchase talents such as Gervinhio, Gameiro and Eriksen . If we then have the competence to further develop those players, we could win a trophy without being run like City or Chelsea.

Exactly alpal, that's what I'm been trying to point out. Jonas and Enrique should have trained more on triangle play. Then they would have been much more effective in attack

But the player group was in total disarray. Owen (c***) was only present on training, but left for home immediately afterwards. I even read rumors when players were together they grouped according to race. if you were trained by imbeciles I guess that would have affected your mood. Football players are not machines. If their boss stink, that will affect team performance. That goes for us too: If our boss is incompetent, or there's bullies at your workplace, those factors will make us perform below par. If you had slotted HBA into the group environment which Martins had to suffer under, he would probably gone on strike, demanding to be sold..

When we brought Martins, he was one of the biggest attacking talents in Europe. So that justified the no 9 jersey. The problem was that he arrived at totally wrong point in time. He was very unstable as a player. Had some terrific displays ( I will never forget his goal away against Tham) but also some matches where he could miss everything. Had he benefited from the wisdom of Sir Bobby we could have molded him into a good player. But instead he served under some of the worst managers known to man. No wonder we didn't manage to realize Martin's potential.

I think we need a central distributor when we're up against better teams. Nolan doesn't have good enough tempo or passing ability. And his possession play is bad sometimes. We've been counterattacked because nolan was not able to keep the ball

Exactly. The reason why I've always been against Taylor is his salary. He's so much weaker as a player compared to Tiote, HBA or Barton, but is almost earning as much as them. We got to trust our club to find better talents that is younger, have more potential, is less injury prone and earn considerable less.

A couple of crossers he's made should have been taken better care of, yes. But generally his crossing is not good enough. On two occasions against Bolton we outnumbered them inside their own box, only for Enrique (Jonas was the culprit in the 2nd attempt) to blast the cross to a throw in, and he was not under pressure at all. And as I said, Enrique's defensive play has overall been good this year.. that implies that he's not been up to his usual standards the recent matches..He's running much forward, but his involvement does rarely result in goals. And as already mentioned, that's mainly because both he and Jonas makes football more difficult than it has to be. Enrique is not using Jonas when he overlaps, and vice versa. And They're not attempting triangular play. They rely more on dribbles. That's fine when playing against weaker teams. But against better teams, you're dependent on passing the ball quickly to create chances..