OTF

Shola butchered the chance there, made Carr look like a good defender. There's plenty of space in behind them here. Good game for the likes of Routledge it could have been. Would be nice to have some pace off the bench. 'Luis' Enrique at least 3 times from this commentator.

Barton putting the speccy in... Foster saved the goal kick

Yeah he has looked a little heftier than usual. Slim down a bit and take owenership of your role on the pitch (stop pointing about like a disco queen) and Saylor could make a good partner for Coloccini. Both are dreadfully slow though, which is a worry, but Williamson is no quicker anyway. That's where Tiote's importance in shielding them comes into play. If we lose Enrique that's all our pace from the backline gone. Simpson isn't slow, but only has one speed, which is far from blistering. He looked like he would kick on and become a very solid fullback for us but instead he's weakened as the season has gone on, exposing some of the deficiencies in his game. Kadar's been out in the wilderness through injuries and being loaned out, but he had looked a good prospect in the past. This next season for him will be time to get back into the squad. At only 21 he's still got plenty of developing to do as a defender, but much of that will need to be done on the pitch. This season has been a wasted one for him where we didn't get a chance to see whether he's a decent long term prospect.

Disappointing that he won't get to play this season. I've always thought that getting back on the pitch this season would do him the world of good mentally, and would help with his preparations for next season. Can only hope for a good off-season, coming back stronger than when he started.

Largely attitude/personality I think. Needs some mongrel. It will be good for Saylor to get some games this season. He's not great, we all know that, but he has been decent in the past yet has looked far from that since coming back from injury.

Even if he is the real deal it's hardly going to help his development kicking around on the training pitch with Shola, Ranger, Best and Lovenkrands. That will make it hard to get the most out of him. Carroll got his confidence and earnt his stripes playing for us in the Championship, but at that stage he already had a fair bit of experience under his belt. I don't know much about this kid, but if he's not at the same level that Carroll was in the championship then he might find it tough to step up with the expectations a high price signing would have at Newcastle. It would be an interesting signing, but I'm thinking we'd need to bring in an experienced quality forward to play alongside him to get the best value out of Wickham. A player like that doesn't come cheap.

'twas Nolan's push and Viduka's goal. Not that I'm bveing pedantic or anything.

People love rewriting history like. If he's half as good as Dyer was at his peak he's worth it. would rather chuck in a £10m bid for sturridge, then when we get told to fuck off look at this lad. Well with the Jose money, that should be near £45m, we should try and get both of them. THREE strikers are the priority not one. Two new strikers of sufficient quality is enough I reckon. Bumping Shola down to third rung will do wonders for his motivation which will hopefully translate to more effort when he's on the pitch. As it is he couldn't give two hoots as no matter how bad he plays he'll be in the first 11 if he's fit. On top of that Ben Arfa or Nolan will likely see some time playing behind one striker. Lovenkrands is at his level as a late sub, and Ranger should be loaned out. Leon Best is not good but sounds as though he's useful on the training pitch.

Nailed it.

So, the material is better than the paper-thin cheap shit of this season? Current one is good to play in and nicely taylored IMO. The worst part about it by far is the massive black plastic sponsors logo.

Those images aren't showing up for me, but I figured out which strips you're talking about, and they both are actual stripes. The black sleeves complicate it a little in the 01-03 shirt, but they're still obviously stripes. The older one (76-78) is again still stripes.

Which two above?

I've gone one better and have already unfollowed in advance of Sunday.

The one Shola is wearing is quite nice. ..and I'm already starting to come around on the new strip. It still bothers me though, that's it's just a black shirt with white sleeves and two white lines down the middle. Tradition dictates that it's supposed to be a black and white striped shirt, which it isn't. Again the patch on the back is ridiculous and means that a shirt without name and number looks almost as stupid as a shirt with the name and number of our best player three months after he signs a new five year deal. Won't be getting.

Looks like a fucking singlet on Nolan. It's crap, but I suspect it will grow on us. The long sleeved version looks better, but in a Kelly Osbourne looks better than Rosie O'Donnell way.

Wages would be key. If he's willing to take a big pay cut then that's a good sign that he has the right intentions. Yakubu is fat and doesn't give a fuck. Saw him play for a few minutes the other day and he went to ground with no contact, not because he was attempting to win a free-kick but because he tripped over when trying to run, having long forgetten how to do so.

Hollywood Babble On is good listening. Ralph Garman with Kevin Smith. Garman is a Hollywood Radio DJ who does some awesome impersonations and is just pretty funny in general. Based around the happenings in the film capital of the world though they talk lots of other bullshit along the way. Will have to give Rogan's a go, though I've got a pretty full menu already. Does he talk UFC on it?

If we hadn't sold Carroll, would anyone be happy if the club came out and said in the summer we need to sell 15M worth of our players, plus another million or so to cover the wages of Carroll (costs that they haven't had to pay currently)? There's no way anyone would accept those terms, except you know what, some here have accepted worse because they're effectively the same as what the club are proposing now except we don't have Carroll! It's ludicrous.

This is such a foolish naive comment. Running costs and wages would need to be paid regardless of the 35M from the Carroll sale. Running costs and wages will far exceed 35M so in fact, by your logic even if none of the 35M was spent on bringing in new players it will all be 're-invested in the club' in the form of running costs and wages. They've done a fine job on you, and I'm sure one day you'll realise it.

Douche. He's a far better defender than he is getting forward. His first touch isn't great, though he is hard to dispossess. I'll assume you mean 'He and Jonas' there, and ask if you've actually watched any Newcastle games? The majority of our possession is down our left hand side and together the two of them are very good at keeping possession and frustrating opposing teams into giving away free-kicks. Combined their crossing isn't fantastic, but they have still created a fair few goals. The amount of free-kicks and corners that we win down our left is massive. Add to that that we've scored quite a few off these sort of set pieces (largely when we had Carroll) and that shows their true value. Two young defenders on 25k per week will be shit, there's no two ways about it. We already have enough shit defenders and certainly don't need any more to clog up our bench and reserve team. You may not be aware of this, but you can only have 11 players on the pitch so it doesn't really matter how many cheap, shit, average, or even semi-decent players you have in your team, if you can't field a premiership quality first 11 then you won't be in the premier league for long. I, however have made a critical mistake by trying to make a point against a fucking idiot.

This thread is such a waste of what is actually interesting information.

Jonas was a class above the rest of our team today. The amount of corners and free-kicks that he earned was insane. Barton's set pieces were horrible. Williamson did not have a good game, but that was not a penalty. Suarez felt a brush of contact from behind and went down softly. His piss-poor headed clearance for their first was horrible, but he is incredibly inexperienced at this level, so to some degree there has to be some leeway given for him to get that experience and improve. Coloccini leaving his leg in earlier in the game could easily have been a penalty, but wasn't because that time Suarez stayed on his feet - cancelling that out was what should have been a penalty for Ameobi. It was a lazy effort from pretty much the rest of the team. Ameobi and Lovenkrands might as well have not been out there at all (Lovenkrands in particular). It smacked of a we, don't really care about this game at all performance from many of our players, especially our lack of tracking and general laziness in defense. It was stupid of Pardew to come out and say that we're safe, even if he thought that we were. If that's the case there's pretty much nothing left to play for.

Welcome. What are you doing whilst you're here? Fist has it bang on the money. Sydney until tomorrow, then Perth for a week. Freakin' horrible weather though Yeah the weather has been an absolute disgrace here. My game is off this weekend because of all the rain. What have you seen while you've been here? I just got back from a week on the Gold Coast to make the weather here seem even more ordinary. It's not normally this wet this time of year.