loki679

4am here but thankfully no work tomorrow (not that it usually stops me ). I'm swinging between a pessimistic 0-3 and a vaguely optimistic 2-1. Think they'll definitely get at least one so i'm hoping we attack them and try and impose ourselves a little. An early goal for us would be a bad thing I think as I can see us trying to shut up shop and defend it and against an open, free flowing side like Wigan and with our shambles of a defence right now I don't think we'd be able to.

What the fuck? I sincerely hope that isn't true because every bugger else has known for the last couple of years. That doesn't fill me with hope either. Maybe he's playing things down for the press to manage fans expectations of the window?

We've got 14 points from 14 games and we've had a relatively easy run of games. We're struggling after playing games which we needed to win and we're looking at games which our current form over the last 6 games is the 2nd worst in the league. We are about to face a series of games where we'll be lucky to come out of with anything like a reasonable goal difference never mind points total. Of our 14 games played we’ve faced Chelsea and Man U away, apart from that we should be able to expect to get something from the others. We’ve vastly under-performed so often that we have no right to expect anything positive from any team either at home or away. How Everton performed under Moyes at any time is irrelevant to our current position. Of the games we have played, ignoring Chelsea and Man Utd away we have also played 5,6,7,8,9 th placed teams. They didn`t get there by just picking up points off us. West Brom and Swansea are both playing way above what we are used to them playing. Both of them have won bigger games than us. Your talking like all we needed to do was turn up because we are Newcastle and Pardew has made sure we lost. 2 games I think we would have won we ended up with 10 men. Out of all of the games this season West Ham and Southampton were disappointments. So have those teams overtaken us now? Their squads don't seem any better than ours so why are we consistently losing to them? I really don`t know the answer to that other than games are not played on paper ? The same reason Arsenal lost to Swansea or Chelsea lost to West Brom or Man City only getting a draw at home to Everton. There are too many varibles to place all the blame on Pardews Tactics. West Broms sqaud do not look like a 5th place team and Arsenals squad do not look like a tenth place team. Is Wengers tactics to blame, should he get sacked ? There are plenty of Arsenal fans who are saying so. City and Chelsea having a blip can't seriously be compared to losing 4 games in a row against some of the supposed weaker teams in the division. West Brom, Swansea, West Ham, Norwich. Four teams with squads weaker than ours who are outperforming us at the current time. Could it be our bad form this season has coincided with these so called weaker squads having a good run of form. Swansea beating Arsenal shortly after beating us. West Ham beat Chelsea shortly after beating us. West Brom have had a good season anyway. Possibly but we're 15 games into the season now, things are generally shaping up by this point. Swansea and West Brom have had good seasons and they've been playing good football along with it. Norwich are scrapping out results for the most part and getting draws instead of what should be defeats and West Ham are based on a fairly solid defence. We've played 14 games so far and I can't remember many good ones, if any. Maybe 90 minutes of decent football in 14 games, that's not bad form in my opinion, thats something else.

We've got 14 points from 14 games and we've had a relatively easy run of games. We're struggling after playing games which we needed to win and we're looking at games which our current form over the last 6 games is the 2nd worst in the league. We are about to face a series of games where we'll be lucky to come out of with anything like a reasonable goal difference never mind points total. Of our 14 games played we’ve faced Chelsea and Man U away, apart from that we should be able to expect to get something from the others. We’ve vastly under-performed so often that we have no right to expect anything positive from any team either at home or away. How Everton performed under Moyes at any time is irrelevant to our current position. Of the games we have played, ignoring Chelsea and Man Utd away we have also played 5,6,7,8,9 th placed teams. They didn`t get there by just picking up points off us. West Brom and Swansea are both playing way above what we are used to them playing. Both of them have won bigger games than us. Your talking like all we needed to do was turn up because we are Newcastle and Pardew has made sure we lost. 2 games I think we would have won we ended up with 10 men. Out of all of the games this season West Ham and Southampton were disappointments. So have those teams overtaken us now? Their squads don't seem any better than ours so why are we consistently losing to them? I really don`t know the answer to that other than games are not played on paper ? The same reason Arsenal lost to Swansea or Chelsea lost to West Brom or Man City only getting a draw at home to Everton. There are too many varibles to place all the blame on Pardews Tactics. West Broms sqaud do not look like a 5th place team and Arsenals squad do not look like a tenth place team. Is Wengers tactics to blame, should he get sacked ? There are plenty of Arsenal fans who are saying so. City and Chelsea having a blip can't seriously be compared to losing 4 games in a row against some of the supposed weaker teams in the division. West Brom, Swansea, West Ham, Norwich. Four teams with squads weaker than ours who are outperforming us at the current time.

Which other clubs would give him £90k a week? The only one I can think of is Lolerpool.

Exactly. Comparing shots on target (ours then theirs) West Brom A - 7-6 Liverpool H - 7-6 Swansea A - 4-13 (19 in total for them, 5 for us) Bolton H - 4-6 Stoke H - 11-2 Wigan A - 3-8 West Ham H - 9-5 Swansea H - 10-9 Southampton A - 3-10 Stoke A - 6-5 A very confident and motivated team taking their chances (Cisse in particular) compared to an much less confident and unmotivated team not taking their chances? Something to think about/completely ignore due to agenda. A flawed metric. We could have 20 shots on target but if 90% of them are hit and hope from outside the box i'd rather have 2 shots on target from inside the six yard box. You need to look at where the shots are being taken from in addition to simply using the crude numbers.

Think you've missed the point? The debate is on the news that he is on £40k and he says he wants £80k. My point is if he wants more money, keep him on £40k and give him a decent sum of money per goal so if he churns in 30 in the league he would end up making the extra £2m a year from the goal bonus haul. By giving him the extra £2m a year in his contract automatically he could have a shitter and score 0 goals and get paid the higher amount of contributing nothing. I understand what you are saying but if NUFC put a goal bonus clause in Ba's contract the rest of the team would start wanting bonuses. Why would they? Just because it's in lieu of a double your money pay rise? Wouldn't the team all ask for double your money pay rises if he got that? I think not. Of course they would. It's the thin end of the wedge. You can't give bonuses to one player but not others. If Cisse scores a goal he doesn't get a bonus but when Ba does Ba gets a bonus? It would lead to trouble in the squad. For example, Krul and the defence would all want a bonus for clean sheets. Better to give no player a bonus than to give one player a bonus. If Ba wants to leave he will go. There seems to be a lot of stories about Ba moving clubs every time a transfer window approaches. All players earn vastly different amounts of money at the club. I just don't get why automatically doubling Ba's wages is more favorable to the rest of the team than to say to Ba you can have that extra money but only through bonuses. Surely giving someone double their money for nothing is worse for the rest of the players than to say you can have that money but only if you hit this target criteria? I'm sure if Ba's wages were doubled a lot of players would be demanding pay rises too. One of the reasons for ending goal bonuses given by Lambias was he said Martins used to shoot from the half way line. Aye but tbf you couldn't expect him to run all the way to goal at his age.

Tell him to do one. He's been with us one season in which he scored 16 goals, 1 goal every 2.125 games. Doubts over his fitness and entourage along with a seemingly arseholeish entourage. £40k is more than enough for him, if he doesn't like it, get rid and get someone else.

more insulation might resolve that problem i.e. a larger squad with decent backups nah I reckon Ashley would build solid walls and forget about the windows. Not sure the walls would be solid like. MDF at best.

We've got 14 points from 14 games and we've had a relatively easy run of games. We're struggling after playing games which we needed to win and we're looking at games which our current form over the last 6 games is the 2nd worst in the league. We are about to face a series of games where we'll be lucky to come out of with anything like a reasonable goal difference never mind points total. Of our 14 games played we’ve faced Chelsea and Man U away, apart from that we should be able to expect to get something from the others. We’ve vastly under-performed so often that we have no right to expect anything positive from any team either at home or away. How Everton performed under Moyes at any time is irrelevant to our current position. Of the games we have played, ignoring Chelsea and Man Utd away we have also played 5,6,7,8,9 th placed teams. They didn`t get there by just picking up points off us. West Brom and Swansea are both playing way above what we are used to them playing. Both of them have won bigger games than us. Your talking like all we needed to do was turn up because we are Newcastle and Pardew has made sure we lost. 2 games I think we would have won we ended up with 10 men. Out of all of the games this season West Ham and Southampton were disappointments. So have those teams overtaken us now? Their squads don't seem any better than ours so why are we consistently losing to them?

Do you think i'm saying 4-3-3 and imagining some kind of table football with the players lined up on poles? 4-3-3 is referring to their roles within the team as well as their nominal positions on the field. And again, Cabaye is too deep when we have only two central midfielders as they're outnumbered and he's having to do too much defensive work. Jonas and HBA track the opposition back and try and help out which is why they're picking it up too deep to do any damage and why Ba and Cisse are so often isolated. Look through pretty much any match thread this season and you'll see the same comments, 'too deep', 'isolated'. It's not hard to see.

My point is that 4-3-3 naturally brings with it a greater degree of movement. We don't play down the wings and having 3 CMs and 3 up front not only gives more passing options but allows our dangerous players to play further up the field where they can damage the opposition. alternativly it gives fewer passing options when trying to retain possession as there's one less midfielder, it also means it's easier to be outnumbered and out manouvered by the oppo using the width it's difficuilt to cover with a 3. You're looking at numbers. Look at how we actually play in a 4-4-2. Cabaye and Tiote are sitting deep. Their only passing options are sideways or a long punt upfield to two strikers not suited for the role of targetman. 4-3-3 gives a lovely little triangle in the middle (like keegans little triangles) and the tip of that triangle has passing options backwards (2) forward wide (2) or forward centre (1). if only the game was played on a blackboard eh ? using that simplicity it means when cabaye gets the ball in our 4-4-2 he has 2 options wide, 2 forward and 2 back (tiote or further back to colo). the main thing with keegans team was movement, very simple pass and move, as it was in his first spell here when people had us down as a 4-4-2 or 4-4-1-1 team. No because Cabaye plays just as deep as Tiote in the 4-4-2. If he goes wide we have Jonas who, much as I love him, doesn't produce anything or HBA who is too deep at this point to do anything. Ba and Cisse are a good 50 yards up the pitch so the forward option is a punt to them with no support. Drop the ball back to defence and Colo may play it straight back but Willo will punt it upfield, generally losing possesion. The comparison with Keegan's team isn't really valid as most of the teams he was facing were playing 4-4-2 aswell. The comparison I made was of his philosophy of always having at least two passing options for the man on the ball, his little triangles.

What's that supposed to mean? it means there's been a change to the discussion about the january transfer window. Did we know what the discussion was before? we didn't. there some on here that would say pardew didn't either. So without that frame of reference it's an entirely meaningless quote. The discussion before could have been 'Right, Barca have accepted our £10 billlion bid for Messi, lets get it done' or 'We have £200 to spend and me and Dekka are having a curry out of it'. a touch harsh to say it's entirely meaningless because we aren't privy to what goes on behind the scenes. I don't think it's harsh and i'm not attacking anyone by saying it's meaningless. I'm just saying it's impossible to infer anything meaningful from that quote as we have no prior frame of reference as to the nature of the discussions. could it mean they've changed their mind on somerthing(s) but it's best not to tell. ie it could well raise prices etc. It could, but as I say, without knowing anything about the previous discussions we don't know anything.

My point is that 4-3-3 naturally brings with it a greater degree of movement. We don't play down the wings and having 3 CMs and 3 up front not only gives more passing options but allows our dangerous players to play further up the field where they can damage the opposition. alternativly it gives fewer passing options when trying to retain possession as there's one less midfielder, it also means it's easier to be outnumbered and out manouvered by the oppo using the width it's difficuilt to cover with a 3. You're looking at numbers. Look at how we actually play in a 4-4-2. Cabaye and Tiote are sitting deep. Their only passing options are sideways or a long punt upfield to two strikers not suited for the role of targetman. 4-3-3 gives a lovely little triangle in the middle (like keegans little triangles) and the tip of that triangle has passing options backwards (2) forward wide (2) or forward centre (1).

What's that supposed to mean? it means there's been a change to the discussion about the january transfer window. Did we know what the discussion was before? we didn't. there some on here that would say pardew didn't either. So without that frame of reference it's an entirely meaningless quote. The discussion before could have been 'Right, Barca have accepted our £10 billlion bid for Messi, lets get it done' or 'We have £200 to spend and me and Dekka are having a curry out of it'. a touch harsh to say it's entirely meaningless because we aren't privy to what goes on behind the scenes. I don't think it's harsh and i'm not attacking anyone by saying it's meaningless. I'm just saying it's impossible to infer anything meaningful from that quote as we have no prior frame of reference as to the nature of the discussions.

My point is that 4-3-3 naturally brings with it a greater degree of movement. We don't play down the wings and having 3 CMs and 3 up front not only gives more passing options but allows our dangerous players to play further up the field where they can damage the opposition.

What's that supposed to mean? it means there's been a change to the discussion about the january transfer window. Did we know what the discussion was before? we didn't. there some on here that would say pardew didn't either. So without that frame of reference it's an entirely meaningless quote. The discussion before could have been 'Right, Barca have accepted our £10 billlion bid for Messi, lets get it done' or 'We have £200 to spend and me and Dekka are having a curry out of it'.

What's that supposed to mean? it means there's been a change to the discussion about the january transfer window. Did we know what the discussion was before?

What's that supposed to mean?

because on many levels the debate between 4-4-2 and 4-3-3 is about rigidity (or it is if you read this thread). many are saying we played our best last season in a 4-3-3. quite often cabaye was further forward than at least one of the designated forwards (you could look at swansea away when he was often the furthest forward when they had possession), does that mean we really played 4-2-4 ? no it means it probably wasn't even a 4-3-3 as is described by most in this thread but a very mobile attacking 4 or 5 when in possesion and a flexible 4-5-1/5-4-1 when out of possession. Yes, that's one of the benefits of the system, it allows Cabaye (or whoever is playing there) to break forward beyond the attack or mop up in and around the box.

so what if we have 3 midfielders in there, they may have 5 at that bgiven time and if so numerous things could happen, they may be very light up front and that could leave an ooprtunity for a full back to push in a bit or one of the forwards (not necessarily ben arfa) depending on the position on the field they are at that given time. we'll put that under the title of "AWARENESS". remember back to the entertainers, nominally a 4-4-2, in practise very fluid and a team full of movement and awareness you could take an in game picture and not work out a set formation or who was supposed to be where, the best teams usually are. right now you can take a snap shot in game and you can see the rigidity of our formation, you can close your eyes and if someone tells you we have the ball in a particular place on the place you'd have a90% chance of naming the player. you're right it's not rocket science but for many it's like a computer game. well 3 would get over ran by 5 so someone would still have to drop in or push in. think about it man, we are often getting over ran with 4 in the middle. Yes someone would have to drop in, but Ben Arfa for example wouldn't have to drop as deep as he has to now when we only have 2 there centrally. Surely you 've got to agree with me on this? And more importantly when we're about to regain possession again in our own third, Ben Arfa can take more chances going forward/finding space in a more advanced position further up the field before we play the ball to him as we have more bodies in there. And at the same time having someone like Cabaye there creating some playing depth to our other two more central cm's. all you seem to besaying there is that ben arfa shouldn't be the one dropping back all the time and ba/cisse should take a turn. if you stick rigidly to having three in the middle then we have to be outnumbered unless the opposition does exactly the same as us. all this talk of formations is taking place as if players aren't allowed to move. You're talking as if this is something we've never seen before, as if we'd be trying to play a 4-3-3 for the first time. Look at the games from last season. Where is your evidence that we play better in a 4-4-2? i never said we did, i've been an advocate of a 3 since we signed ben arfa, however without movement both ways are rendered crap and a 4-4-22 of sorts with movement would be better than 4-3-3 without. football is far too fluid for such pigeon holeing, the best I've ever seen NUFC play you couldn't really pin us down to a formation within the games themselves. when I put teams on here I always hesitate on ben arfa's 'position' or put a caveat in about movement of the nomianl 'front 3'. Why does the 4-3-3 have to be without movement?

so what if we have 3 midfielders in there, they may have 5 at that bgiven time and if so numerous things could happen, they may be very light up front and that could leave an ooprtunity for a full back to push in a bit or one of the forwards (not necessarily ben arfa) depending on the position on the field they are at that given time. we'll put that under the title of "AWARENESS". remember back to the entertainers, nominally a 4-4-2, in practise very fluid and a team full of movement and awareness you could take an in game picture and not work out a set formation or who was supposed to be where, the best teams usually are. right now you can take a snap shot in game and you can see the rigidity of our formation, you can close your eyes and if someone tells you we have the ball in a particular place on the place you'd have a90% chance of naming the player. you're right it's not rocket science but for many it's like a computer game. well 3 would get over ran by 5 so someone would still have to drop in or push in. think about it man, we are often getting over ran with 4 in the middle. Yes someone would have to drop in, but Ben Arfa for example wouldn't have to drop as deep as he has to now when we only have 2 there centrally. Surely you 've got to agree with me on this? And more importantly when we're about to regain possession again in our own third, Ben Arfa can take more chances going forward/finding space in a more advanced position further up the field before we play the ball to him as we have more bodies in there. And at the same time having someone like Cabaye there creating some playing depth to our other two more central cm's. all you seem to besaying there is that ben arfa shouldn't be the one dropping back all the time and ba/cisse should take a turn. if you stick rigidly to having three in the middle then we have to be outnumbered unless the opposition does exactly the same as us. all this talk of formations is taking place as if players aren't allowed to move. You're talking as if this is something we've never seen before, as if we'd be trying to play a 4-3-3 for the first time. Look at the games from last season. Where is your evidence that we play better in a 4-4-2?

Nailed it. That's the biggest problem we have right now regardless of formation.

This aimed at me? It's not really aimed at anyone, more of a theoretical question I think we can be guilty of oversimplifying things sometimes. My point of view is that by playing the 4-4-2 formation we're hamstringing ourselves to a certain extent. If we want to play the best we can then we will need to optimise all aspects of our game of which the formation is one. We have the players to get away with playing 4-4-2 if the other aspects of are game are being well executed but, all other things being equal I think we would play better in 4-3-3 than 4-4-2. That is to say that if we cloned our whole team and had both teams playing to exactly the same standard, same amount of movement etc etc with the only difference being the formation then I think 4-3-3 would win.

If Cabaye and Tiote are outnumbered and struggling in the centre, getting pushed deeper and deeper and hence dragging our wingers deeper, what would you suggest? edit to add: Saying the formation means nothing is just as retarded as saying it means everything. You need good players combined with a coherent gameplan, off the ball movement and a system that allows the players to perform to their best. It's not one or the other, you need to combine the aspects to build a team.