Rayvin

Agreed, I think he's really making a difference for us. Does this mean that it was a lot better than all of the fuss made it look, and that he'll be back shortly? I didn't think I saw a return date. Unless he's just ok after all?

Y'know, I think this is as much to do with Man City being shocking as it is to do with Southampton playing well... I feel like they've been this way for a few weeks now as well, ever since that defeat to QPR.

I'd agree with this. Even with Swansea in there I'd be a bit disappointed not to win all of them. Just seems like we've stepped up a gear (or five).

Shame we lost but hard to argue with Bale's quality. Even if they sell him for £30 million, whoever and however many players they bring in won't make it up for him not being there.

Labour didn't spend all the money, that's just lies they feed people who get all their information from newspapers. http://www.economicshelp.org/macroeconomics/debt/government-borrowing.html See graph one on that page. That's our debt as a %age of GDP. Notice how it was consistently high through the 80s under Thatcher. It spiked a little when Labour took power, presumably due to the boost in public spending, and then dropped to sub-40% levels - largely due to sound economic policy. This is where the IMF encourages countries to have it during booms. It shoots up when the financial crisis - the global one, beyond the control of domestic politics - takes off. The same damn thing would have happened if the Tories were in power. It's not as a result of higher Labour spending, but as a result of a fall in GDP; spending was roughly the same, but the boundaries changed. Also notice how it is continuing to rise now, as GDP is not being bolstered, because the Tories aren't spending. GDP = Government Spending + Consumer Spending + Investment + (Exports - Imports) Government spending has fallen, Consumer spending has fallen (due to no one having any fucking money), Investment has fallen because they've made the interest rates so low (to encourage people to spend all the money they don't have), and we're importing more than we export. Net result = GDP goes down, debt as a %age of GDP goes up. This can be reversed by any of those factors increasing - the only one that can be increased, is Government Spending. This does however show why Milliband is so frustrating. He's given up persuading people of the actual economics of all of this!

16/1 we beat Spurs 2-1 - not bad odds to be honest.

This^ Well put indeed, sir.

If Labour had a stronger leader this wouldn't even be a proper debate, Labour would be winning by a landslide - I'm really disappointed with how weak Milliband looks. He should be making the public aware of the economic reasons why austerity doesn't work, and telling them how many millions of jobs we'll lose if we pull out of Europe. Instead, he's saying similar things to DC as he doesn't want to risk attempting to turn public opinion and having it blow up in his face. On the plus side, the political split in the left (Lib Dem vs Labour) shouldn't continue much longer; I would think Labour will win a couple of million Lib Dem voters this time.

I was reading that while Adebayor is going to play, he's far from 100% fit. To be honest I don't much rate him anyway, I've watched them a couple of times this season and he's done very little of any great note - spurs fans don't seem too enamoured with him either. Of course, I'd rather he was out. At least we can enjoy this one a bit more without feeling like everything's going to go to shit if we lose it.

I know he gets a lot of stick but I dunno, Pardew seems to make a lot of sense to me.. It'll be interesting to see where we are over the next couple of years.

QPR must be in some form of danger from this though... Haven't they spent about £60mill this year alone? Not sure what their revenue admittedly.

The joys of international travel...! Although I once saw a large Chinese guy walking down a road in Beijing with a Newcastle shirt on which quite made my day - didn't speak a word of English unfortunately. They're mostly all about Man Utd over there though. As for England - I think the grounding of expectations has helped massively; they look more relaxed these days.

I was in Beijing at the time, but I'm in Newcastle now. The Chinese were really up for the World Cup though, it was good; just a bit embarrassing that England were pants.

I'm not going to comment on the overall arc of the debate here, except to endorse this point. I work in academic publishing, and believe me, universities follow the money. As governments begin to invest more in particular projects, it has become harder for universities to remain impartial. If the only way to get funding is to take government projects (with government/corporate interests at heart), then you'll take it. On the wider note of the debate (flying in the face of my initial statement) - I don't think there's an overarching 'thinking' conspiracy; but I think the system is set up to protect the individual interests of those who know how to play the system. They all just play it the same way.

Not a good thing (the future Presidential candidate bit). Ever since she came out with that insane story about landing in the Bosnia under sniper fire, (with it later emerging that she was in fact greeted by a small child who gave her a flower), I've not been able to take her seriously. I mean, I know all politicians lie but I feel like once they're exposed doing so, it shouldn't just be ignored.

Yeah I found that a bit bewildering. I still haven't forgiven them for 0-0 vs Algeria in the last WC... stayed up till 4am to watch that shit.

Bale scored tonight...seems to be on fire at the moment, annoyingly. With that said, he's the only goal threat Spurs have.

I would far rather he went to PSG than Liverpool. I think if anything, they're trying to capitalise on our poor season.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2013/feb/05/liverpool-newcastle-hatem-ben-arfa How's that for bad news? Liverpool want to sign Ben Arfa. And we somehow come out of that deal with Carroll, as if that makes it ok. My hatred of Liverpool would be forever entrenched if this happened.

While I wouldn't seek to argue that the EPL is a world leader in quality, it surely must be considered more entertaining than the others mentioned; as evidenced by it's larger international appeal.

This is just hilarious. Why does everything seem to be going our way at the moment... I guess it's overdue but it makes me uneasy.

We should go for it - I'm all for consolidating our league status but really, are we going to remember a season where we valiantly strove to 9th place in the table after a poor start, or a season where we finished 14th but got to a Europa Cup final? (And won it?)

Could we not just sit back, go 2-0 and then bring Adam Le Fondre on in the last 10 minutes? Seems to have just worked (again!) for Reading... Of course we'd have to sign him tomorrow first...

I actually think Villa would have been all over anyone in that second half, it's like the penny dropped and they realised that they're actually going to go down. I think we did well to hold it, it was always going to be a containment job from then on. Hell of an entry to the new boys, if they didn't know what to expect from the PL, they do now...

Thank fuck for that!!! I couldn't breathe for that. If Villa weren't so shit going forward we'd have died there.