Gemmill

Did you get this off the text service? Nah, Hedman came out with it on Swedish TV last night according to the Swedes on NO.

Apparently we've offered him a contract. He's only been retired a year.

As if you can be trusted to make arrangements months in advance.

Anything by Patrokles.

Craig Bellamy can't help Craig Bellamy.

With Bramble and Babayaro both facing suspensions, we have 5 defenders with Premiership experience, one of whom is coming back from an injury and the other (Bernard) is reported to be woefully short of fitness. As if the defence wasn't bad enough. Looking forward to Ronaldo and Rooney vs our back four next week.

What in god's name was the pink blazer/white polo neck combo that the European team wore for the closing ceremony all about?! WTF?! They look like they should be on a float at a gay pride march.

Despite that he had 3 or 4 good oppurtunities to score. So he gets into goalscoring areas allright. The worry for me is his finishing at the moment. Hopefully with a bit more match practise he'll sort that out. The fact that he had a few opportunities is not an excuse for his total lack of movement. He won't get that many chances very often if he remains as static as he is at the minute.

Emre's set pieces were poor I thought. Two corners straight out of play ffs. The floated in free kicks are no use either - whether that's the fault of our attackers or Emre I don't know, but they just seem far too easy to defend against. Fizz the fucker in.

Cheers Matt. I couldn't be arsed to type that out so had resorted to insults.

To be fair, and though the summer was a disaster, we clearly needed a striker and that's what the focus seemed to be. Now we clearly clearly need a full back or two and a very good central defender. So hopefully something will happen. Haway, be serious man. We needed all of the above in the summer and we ended up with a left winger and a striker, and three last minute "warm bodies required" signings. We had three months to concentrate on transfers, transfers, transfers, and we did the majority of our business at the last minute. Look at all the business other clubs managed in three months by hard work and forward planning - it doesn't take three months to do what we did in the window. Now the talk is that we're after another striker in January - who is to say that this won't be at the expense of other areas of the team? After all, Shepherd "knows how the Geordie people like their strikers etc. etc."

If you replaced Emre with Butt, you'd certainly notice the difference but I doubt it would be a good one. Well Emre and Parker isn't working, and of the two Parker is far more effective, so there's only one that should be dropped. Who you bring in is up for discussion but I don't think Emre does enough. I thought Emre was MoM against West Ham and he was decent today. We didn't get enough from Milner, Zog, Sibs and Martins tbh. This idea that we should have a CM who makes runs beyond the forwards would be a disaster for NUFC due to the fact that, aside from Moore, we have clowns for defenders. can't agree with the majority of that. I thought our wingers were our best players today. Me too. I was disappointed with Martins because of the complete lack of movement he seems to offer, but I thought Zog and Milner did ok today. I don't really expect anything from Sibierski so if he does something decent, I'll take it as a bonus.

I'm holding out no hope for the January window. I see no reason to have any confidence in them getting right in one month what they couldn't get right in three. I'm done with expecting a sensible transfer policy from Newcastle tbh. I expect the next window to be striker-tastic with the defence an afterthought.

You'd look a bit of a twat if you did say I told you so seen as we all knew it anyway. You cock.

If you replaced Emre with Butt, you'd certainly notice the difference but I doubt it would be a good one. Well Emre and Parker isn't working, and of the two Parker is far more effective, so there's only one that should be dropped. Who you bring in is up for discussion but I don't think Emre does enough.

I think you're being harsh to Milner. The amount of times he was in space absolutely screaming for the ball only to be ignored by his teammates, along with the contribution he made when he had it was more than enough to impress me. We'll be making a big mistake if we sell him in January IMO. Why sell him and buy cover when you've got him here already and know he can do a job?

I think Roeder's got a big decision to make about Emre. He's not offering enough and because of that you notice the lack of physical presence a lot more - if he was playing out of his skin you could probably overlook it, but he's not. I'd be giving Butt a go in the centre if I was Roeder. Or sticking N'Zogbia there when Duff is back. No doubt Emre has some lovely touches and he works hard, but it's not enough.

Listened to an Ipswich fan on 606 who called to talk about Bramble and basically said that he can play in a 3 when he's got two old heads to micro-manage him on the pitch. Didn't seem to think that he'd been looked after properly at Newcastle, which is perhaps true, but we can't be expected to build a formation around Bramble. Anyway, I've had enough of him. You can only persevere so long. His contract runs out in the summer, so that'll do for me.

On the plus side, Everton are something like 4th, and they weren't that good at all IMO. On the negative side, we couldn't beat them aand I don't see there being many games at SJP this season that we don't have to struggle for a win in. Pretty negative outlook, but if I run through most of the Premiership I can't think of many that won't present us big problems. Of course that's what happens when your back line is a shambles and you do nothing to put it right.

First time it's ever happened.

Because Luque is shit, and Rossi is going back in January. By the way, I'm not sure what to make of Rossi - he looks very slight and without the pace to make up for it. A bit like Chopra. Obviously I haven't seen nearly enough of him to really know, but that's my first impression.

Just in case it's gone un-mentioned, let's not forget that we tried to sell the best player on the pitch today in the summer. No way should he be leaving in January either.

While we're on the subject of our strikers, what is the point in Martins' pace when he uses it so ineffectively. His movement off the ball is nonexistent, then you give him the ball and he's reluctant to run at pace with it and commit defenders!? The only time his pace is in evidence is when he's chasing the ball or trying to recover possession from his own poor touch. In short, he's making no use of the fact that he's meant to be quick.

Couple of decent touches from Sibierski, but the rest of the time he looked like a fucking carthorse. Unnecessary criticism of Shola who looked a threat and was bossing their centre halfs until he had to go off.

Watching that useless lummox walk off the pitch today is the first time I've ever felt like booing a Newcastle player. I didn't like, but that has to be the finish with him now. We cannot go on playing this lad. Having said that, unless we get a decent centre half in in January we will ruin Steven Taylor as well. Listening to 606 on the way home having to hear some cretin say that he's "a wonderful ball player and can turn defence into attack" didn't help like. Fucking tit.