colinh9

Would be happy to see him off in the summer

Martinez, de boer, ole Gunnar sosjkaer would be my top three no particular order.

Alright then lads, didn't want to make my own thread over this but here we go: Booked a nice last minute trip for the Anzhi (h) and Wigan (a) matches. Know folks over there already but if anyone wants to have a pint with an American Toon supporter and get to know the face behind colinh9 come meet for a pint! PM me if ya like!

Good thread thus far. Ideally a club will be stupid enough to come in for Tiote for 15-20 million and we can reinvest that on a striker and DCM. I'm also hoping an Italian club will be stupid enough to come in for Santon around 10-15. He's decent going forward but defensively been a nightmare. We need more depth up top to challenge Cisse. I'm confident at some point he could regain his form, but at the moment he looks out of sorts and we don't really have anyone to challenge or even to bring on as a second striker if we need. Would be nice to get a top quality striker in to push on. Would like to get a proven CB in and a young CB in to challenge for places. Wouldn't mind moving on Jonas if the price is right but that's a pipe dream. I just don't think he is suited to play in this team anymore.

Oh shit, Llambias posts here? :cheeky

I'm assuming CT did (though I didn't see him say that) because I never said it was a tactical error or anything like that

I don't have a ton of complaints either. As you said, bit of a merry go round here so I won't press on....I think we both get where the other is coming from and neither is ever going to be "right" Again, I don't blame Pardew for today's result. If that's how it is coming across, I apologize. My only point was I thought he could have made an impact with substitutions and instead I thought we petered out and by the 80th were offering nowt going forward. It was one stupid defensive error, but let's also realize we took our foot of the pedal and looked content for a point.

Again, as I said before his movement was really poor. Didn't get involved at all in the first half and plenty of times he was in an offside position which prevented the ball from being played to him. And yes, from 13 yards out I expect any quality striker to hit the target at least. Ameobi would have been a straight target player to hold up the ball for Gouffran, Sissoko and Marvuex. My original post was that three people could have performed better, the rest were fantastic. I'm not blaming Pardew for the loss, as I've said a couple of times now it was one stupid lapse and a lack of finishing. Nothing Pards can do about that. However, I thought he could have made those changes and I think on the basis of play and what they would have offered off the bench against an already exhausted team would have worked.

I'd love to have a better option off the bench, but Cisse deserved to come off. As I said his movement and finishing were subpar again today. To me that was the second substitution. Marvuex for Jonas was the one I really wanted to see. Jonas works his socks off but at that point we were creating havoc with players who could run at them. Sissoko, Gouffran and to an extent Santon were causing great danger going forward. To have fresh legs in Marveux was the obvious choice to make and he can create on his own. Look, nobody is saying if he makes those changes we automatically get 3 points. Or that we didn't deserve to have 1 barring a bad defensive mistake...it's just my opinion on what should have been done and that's that. As I said, full faith in Pardew and let's hope this doesn't have any effect on his desire to go at Anzhi on Thursday

For the record, I've rarely been critical of Pardew over the course of the season. I still am behind him, I just really think the game was there for the taking today and he didn't take a chance on it. Obviously if we finshed our chances it is a different story, but Cisse's movement and finishing wasn't good enough for me and Ameobi having Gouffran, Sissoko and Marvuex running off him could have caused real havoc. Instead I think Pardew stuck to plan A, and we didn't create the chances our domination deserved.

Exactttttly

This is what happens when you don't take your chances. Gouffran and Cisse need to do much better and Sissoko and Cabaye just didn't have that slight bit of luck with their long shots. On the balance of the match a draw might have been fair but if anyone deserved to win it was us. We started really poorly (after the first five) and didn't match their work rate. As soon as we started to their passing was easier to deal with and we dominated. Thought the midfield was absolutely terrific today, back four outside of Santon was great. He was at fault for the entire first half letting players get behind him and at this point I'd be happy to see someone take him off for 10 mil +. Cisse again wasn't great. Still wandering 9/10 into an offside position which makes him an impossible target, even on crosses. I don't understand. Held the ball up decently well at times but if that's the standard then Ameobi is Messi. Outside of Cisse and Santon the only other poor performance was from Alan Pardew. Terrible match management. Around 65 it was obviously they were being dominated and couldn't handle runs from deep. That was the time to bring on Marveux for Jonas and Ameobi for the faltering Cisse. He sat on his hands and it showed.

Why would they need to agree to it? He made an agreement with PSG, pay the children's charity XXX, you write it off, I write it off, we all win! What about it? He has his academy in Los Angeles but it's not like he was running the day to day operations before he left. He will be back in the States in some role in the near future

This is the most important thing he said for my money. They recognize that everything isn't going to always work out perfectly and that they need to be more aggressive and flexible instead of fickle

It's most assuredly not unprecedented and even a beginner's knowledge of Newcastle in the past 15 years will show you that it's actually about normal. You are spot on re: luck we had last year. I banged on that drum a lot, we had luck in a lot of areas and needed investment blah blah. They got it wrong, simple as that. Correct, but the fact is they KNOW they got it wrong and while they are putting an excuse on it, they realize they screwed up. I'm happy for that. And I'm glad they are big enough now to come out and say it. Also glad they made the investment now....it's a shame as I think we could have had European football again next season if we had the current squad in August.