Lush Vlad

A slightly better record than Pardew. But I wouldn't really say McClaren is 'proven quality'. You have to think in his perspective that Mcclaren is a former national team manager which sounds more “classy”. It is f***ing stupid i know but that's true, just like some would prefer hire a former Oxford graduates than an ordinary secondary school grad, without paying much attention to their most recent job details and performance. And to make situation worse, there is an idiot who recommend this manager because he is too incompetent to find someone else despite publicly claimed that more than 100 managers are interested. Fair enough mate. I thought you were personally suggesting that McClaren was a decent enough manager.

A slightly better record than Pardew. But I wouldn't really say McClaren is 'proven quality'.

Nice v St Etienne 4 days after my birthday on May 7th. Tempted to treat myself to a bit of Ben Arfa watching as a present

Ryder is xenophobic to non-Geordies. He's had a pop at me on twitter about or on one of them awful opinion pieces before, I'm sure. He always mentions it when talking about Carver, Dummett and Colback. Like that somehow puts them above everyone else at NUFC. All three are absolutely shit and the fact they are locals, shouldn't make any difference on how we judge them. It's nice to have young players from the region in the team and it would be great to have a Geordie manager. But I'd rather they're not terrible.

My favourite so far

What are the views on him over there, VI? I always used to like Balague and dislike Hunter. Now I don't really like either. Hunter says everything like it's fact and comes across as arrogant. Balague has turned into a red top, sensationalist journalist. I used to like his views on Revista.

Mong Ryder doesn't have any bearing on my opinion of him, as I wasn't even aware he said that. I don't pay attention to his opinions on our players any way. He probably thinks Colback should be in the England squad. I certainly won't be tweeting him, calling him shit because he isn't as good as Zidane But from what I have seen of him. He looks slow, doesn't really beat his man and certainly does look half arsed. Has really bottled some challenges as well, the sunderland game comes to mind. Coming off the back of a shit season in France, where he was constantly rumoured to be turning us down and costing us a lot by our standards. I'm not particularly high on him TBH. Not that the price tag is his fault, mind. He does deserve a bit more of a chance to shine, though. Wijnaldum was much improved as a 10 vs Arsenal, after being anonymous out wide for a while and I'm not sure long term, Perez can play as a left winger. When Thauvin come on the other day, he seemed to be playing in some strange, very deep inside forward, on the right?! Not sure what McClaren is thinking with him. But considering how shit we are, we might as well try something different. He needs to play reasonably well on Saturday, assuming he starts. Otherwise I don't see his minutes improving too much. As for his bird. Fair play to the lad, no hate for him there! I respect him for that, for sure

This thread depresses me. I tell myself the reason I don't go anymore, is because of Ashley. But I know deep down, if HBA was still here, I'd be going regularly. Well, that's if he was getting games and not the occasional 20 minutes cameo every fortnight.

Isn't that like the fundamentals of football? Not that i'm disagreeing with your post mind. Yeah. It was sarcasm, hence the LOL at the end

The league as a whole is dreadful this year. More open and entertaining, perhaps. I agree with Kanji. The majority of the bottom half is pretty shit. There are teams in the top half who haven't even been particularly great this season. It's so inconsistent. I've not looked at the table for a while. I don't dare! But with the way everyone is taking points off each other. I'm sure a mini run of form could shoot us up the league. I'm sure we can go on a run of form. We just need to start scoring, stop conceding horrible goals and actually go into games with a plan

I said he wouldn't last until Christmas (2015). Surprised he has lasted this long TBH.

Leffe is correct.

The foul for the pen looked like it was about a yard out the box and the Coventry played leaped over the line. I like how he uses both feet. I've seen the majority of his goals and some of his efforts that have hit the woodwork. He isn't afraid to have a crack on his left. Really refreshing to see. There was a Coventry fan on another forum. Saying he looks better than Callum Wilson and that he's much further ahead with his development than Wilson was at 19. Means nothing ATM, but I still found it interesting.

I was speaking to a couple of neutrals, who have already called him shit. Probably based on watching MOTD and maybe a game or two. My point to them, was that he gets very little in the way of service and only seems to get a couple of half chances or one decent chance a game. There is massive pressure on him because of this and it just amplifies his misses even more. You get someone like Giroud, who misses some great chances, but plays in a superb attacking team. So he's usually going to get another opportunity to rectify his miss, perhaps even 2 or 3. I don't think he is ever going to be prolific. But I think he is far from shit. I like his hold up play, it can be a thankless task up there on your own. But he usually puts himself about and gives defenders something to think about. He has shown the odd glimpse of good link up play, too. The worrying thing is, he is quite similar to Riviere when he gets near the goal If we still had Remy or Ba on the books. It would be great to bring him on slowly and take a bit of pressure off. No way we'd have two expensive strikers like that on the books, though. It was always going to be a huge gamble, to go into the season with Cisse, who has been shit for a while, plus he has had issues with the club and a nagging knee injury for some time. Riviere, who has been awful and never scored a premier league goal. Plus a 21 year old striker, who has never played in the league before. What a great transfer policy we have.

Somehow, they look even worse than us! I think the current bottom 3 stays pretty much as it is for the season.

We'll stay up with SMC if we get an average quality holding mid, centre back and left back. We'd have won the villa game and drew our last two and those points would have made such a difference, and that's only over 3 games. We'll be nothing but bottom half after that like. Don't see it. I have no idea what we are even trying to do this season. Just a load of players out on the pitch, that look like they barely know each other. McClaren should be shouldering a lot of the blame. Even with this mediocre/crap squad. We are underachieving IMO. As everyone keeps rightly pointing out. Long term, nowt is changing until Ashley goes.

Unless we get a reasonably compotent manager and 2-3 quality players in January. We're down.

Gallas wore 10. Unacceptable.

Graham Hunter is absolutely unbearable. I used to like Revista de La Liga. But Balague turned into a right weirdo and pretty much just a tabloid journo. Never could stand Hunter and his patronising tone.

I'm not sure why his inclusion bothers me so much. As others have said, the fact that he's keeping Perez out is giving me blinding, lung-aching nightmares of the HBA situation where any and every excuse was wheeled out to keep him on the bench. While the likes of Gouffran, Jonas, Raylor, Gosling etc. all started ahead of him. And anytime we won, it was doubly justified keeping them in the team. Quite apt. A good play on words when describing de Jong. Bit harsh, mind. Not his fault he has dodgy lungs!

Terrible news. Always seemed pretty passionate about NUFC, even after his career was over. Hope he pulls through.

Spurs are comfortably better than us. But we matched up with them pretty well. That's not to say I don't fancy Everton to batter us by 2-3 goals

I think the difference will be Lukaku. The last two teams haven't had a beast like that. I thought Benteke would give us problems, but Liverpool were unbelievably bad against us and he has been pretty poor for them TBF. The form Lukaku is in, he'll eat Colo alive. Oh and Mbemba, too. I better put this in to stop the Contrarian quoting me again.

Disagree with this actually. His final ball is pretty decent imo. It was shit against Villa and it was shit against Spurs until near the end. He gets in promising positions quite regularly. But he also often loses the ball, makes the wrong decision or puts in a bad cross. All that said, I do agree that he's still our best/only attacking outlet. If he was better in the final third. I'm not sure we would have signed him in the first place and he probably would be playing the Champions League football that he craves. I sound like a massive Sissoko hater. I'm not. He's probably the first name on the team sheet TBH. But I do find it is easy to pick out the flaws with him. Due to how often he bottles challenges and just his general demeanour, how lethargic he can be at times on the pitch and want-away comments in the past. It hasn't really helped endear him to the fans. This is the best we can hope for now. We're not going to get a great all round player.

Yep. Gestede gave Colo fits and he won pretty much everything in the air. Quite glad he didn't start.