Alex

Bloke me Dad knows used to play with Pulis. Speaks highly of him and also reckons he's as hard as they come.

He's the best manager they've had Alan Durban got them into the old first division so I would imagine they love the bloke.

Stop derailing the thread.

yeah. absolute gash like the majority of the signings from that era Dumas wasn't a shit player though. He was a victim of Gullit's madness, cluelessness or whatever you want to call it. He'd spent his career playing in France as a classy continental-style sweeper then Gullit signed him and instantly tried to convert him into a central midfielder in the most cut and thrust league in world football. This was even dafter when you consider it was at the expense of Rob Lee, who didn't even get a squad number from Gullit. It's not really any surprise Dumas didn't succeed and went back to France but he'd probably have looked good alongside a big strong centre-back.

Solano was never that good though. Even when he was class for us he rarely performed away from home. I love Nobby as well.

Strangely I think if Man City still have a realistic chance of winning the league then we'll beat them. I think their recent upturn in form is more about the pressure being off than Tevez coming back (although that has obviously helped). I think there's a good chance they'll bottle it again.

I hope Birmingham do because of Hughton. Villa going the other way would be nice.

Duff was a fantastic player for about 2 or 3 seasons.

If only he tracked back. he does...now Massive oversimplification this notion he wasn't grafting and now he is (purely because of Pardew's input) and he's a changed player. I don't think his work rate was ever that much of a problem. It was more giving the ball away in dangerous areas. I put this down to trying too hard whilst still not being fully recovered from his injury. Even prior to West Brom away (the first game where he looked like he'd finally got that yard of pace back) he was still often our most dangerous player during our relatively poor spell. When Pardew would play him that is. He was often the sacrificial scapegoat during those poor performances, getting hauled off at half-time etc. I know he was shit away to Brighton but so was the whole team. I think Pardew has done very well overall but I think Ben Arfa could've been integrated into the side a bit earlier. He seems happy and playing well now though so that's the main thing. It would've been a hell of a shame if he'd just faded away and left this summer because talent like his doesn't come along very often. I think our season might well have petered out too.

I'd have been surprised if we weren't trying to sign him.

Shearer under SBR.

I think the club would do cheap ticket deals for the Europa League this time round as well as well which would help in terms of getting numbers at the matches.

Like you did when you said we'd never qualify for Europe via the league under Mike Ashley?

We've been very successful with our transfer policy of late so whether you agree with it or not it's simply not realistic to expect that policy to be thrown out of the window for a player like Samba (age, wages too high etc.). He's a good player but he's certainly not the sort of player you'd break a wage structure for.

Just about everyone has expressed those concerns at some point. Just some of us aren't obsessing over it when we're level on points with the team in 4th with 5 games left.

if you don't take a shot, you don't score a goal. You will have to understand, that not every transfer deal succeeds, nobody has ever had a 100% record. We could sign a duff player in August just like we could have done in January, so what is your point ? We took a punt on Cisse and he's been (so far) a massive success though. Not signing him and giving Watford an extra half a mill for Mariappa would've been a far safer bet so I don't see your point either.

Reading the OP is a bit like watching Stoke.

There's several potential reasons. We're reputedly after Douglas and Pieters. The former has almost completed 5 years in Holland, at which point he can play for the national team and the latter was just recovering from a bad injury. You call people naive on one hand then go on like it's a piece of piss to sign all the targets you want. It's especially difficult in the January window as good players will often be at clubs who still have everything to play for.

You can always improve on what you have but while a centre-back in January would've been great, Cisse has got us more points than we've lost due to playing Williamson (who's done ok in the last few games). Even Perch has played well there. We went for Mariappa as a stop gap and it didn't work out. We were just about the only top half side to improve / spend big in January and look where it's gotten us. Fair play to the owner on that score.

This is spot on. If we can't enjoy it while we're competing for a champions league place then what is the point of it all? I think everyone is enjoying it, I certainly am. I can't imagine any Newcastle fans are not enjoying this season. But it shouldn't stop us talking and debating where the club is going in the longer term. Its possible to enjoy it and still be very concerned that the excellent season we are having will not be sustained with the current policy of selling your best players and replacing them with lower cost alternatives. Aye, but that's all he goes on about. You only post to back him up as well.

I hate it when keepers time waste for almost the full 90 mins then get a token booking with about 5 minutes to go. The damage has already been done by then. Also, there are few things better than seeing a side who've been time wasting suddenly hurrying after conceding a late goal and going behind.

Anyone remember a lass streaking at a match at SJP (well, she was topless anyway) and running onto the pitch and giving Carl Serrant a kiss? It was probably the highlight of his Newcastle career.

Never heard of them but I'll check them out, cheers.

This is a good site: http://www.statto.com/football/stats/england/premier-league/2011-2012/table Use the drop downs to select the table at different stages in the season.

Evra wouldn't even get in Man Utd's side of the last 20 years never mind the PL.