OTF

What comments specifically? My take on what he said was that he wanted a move to a bigger club and that wouldn't be possible from Newcastle where he wasn't being played often and when he was it was not in his preferred position. All completely legitimate reasons for moving. Chuck Joe Kinnear on top of that and I'd be looking for any way out. That wigan were a bigger club. That's precisely what I believe he was misquoted about. "After four years at Newcastle, I want to reach a higher level of ambition. I don't think that is possible here." Fair enough to say that after being consistently played out of position, and infrequently played in general. "My objective when I left Newcastle was to play for a medium-sized club, before bouncing back in a big team. "I hope that will be the case next season. Everything comes to he who waits." Again fair enough. There was a perception based on some misquotes at the time that he was saying that Wigan were a big club (or a bigger club than Newcastle). That wasn't the case at all. He was saying that he ultimately wanted to move to a big club, and the best opportunity for him to do that would be to firstly go to a lower profile club where he could play in his preferred position. Doing so show what he is capable of and allow him to possibly catch the attention of a bigger side. Personally I don't think he's currently good enough to play anything more than a bit part at a high profile champions league side. Even a bit part might be stretching it because he has quite a few weaknesses. That's more or less my impression as well, but statistically he looks a little better than that. He's scored 9 goals effectively from midfield which is a very healthy total especially in a struggling side. In addition he has 5 assists, though he's their corner taker so I guess it's not really that important a statistic. In the Wigan side he's has taken the second most amount of shots. 38% of them are on target which is quite decent, and he has a pretty impressive conversion rate of those shots on target (scores from every 3.2 shots on target, or from every 8.4 shots in general). Of course analysing statistics like this doesn't even go close to giving a true indication of his worth. Fitness/Injury wise he has started 31 games and been a substitute in 2 which is pretty good (Jonas, Colo and Enrique are the only players in our side to better that).

What comments specifically? My take on what he said was that he wanted a move to a bigger club and that wouldn't be possible from Newcastle where he wasn't being played often and when he was it was not in his preferred position. All completely legitimate reasons for moving. Chuck Joe Kinnear on top of that and I'd be looking for any way out.

Seeing as you responded to me directly I feel I had better give the courtesy of a reply. Your opinion, in my opinion, appears to be whatever you read from the Chronicle or other NE news source. They print an article about a promising young player, and you start singing the praises of said player. An article about our chief player scout leads to you praising them. The club comes out about having to sell Carroll, you agree. You seem to grab on to 'ideas' very quickly and assume that everything you read in the media is an indisputable fact, as a result your 'opinion' can change quite erractically. To save you time, before you go off on a fact finding mission I'm sure there will be isolated cases where it hasn't happened, so please don't bother. Of course you haven't claimed to be an expert on football, noone here has done that. What you have done however is started threads on players abilities, such as the infamous 'Enrique on the wain' (sic) thread where you were left without a shred of dignity. That should have been the icing on the cake, but it wasn't. Instead you have continued to impart your knowledge of the game upon the rest of the forum by heaping criticism towards players like Jonas. I'm guessing somewhere along the line you picked up on the frustration that others felt towards some of the missed opportunities and poor final options that Jonas took after having got himself into good positions. You've taken this and run with it, to a point where you've used him as a scapegoat on numerous occasions. Eventually when others were commenting on how he's been one of our best players of late you've given up on that tune. Once that ship had sailed you've been bigging up players who you have seen very little of - Ferguson and Lua Lua being the two most prolific on that count. If you didn't feel you had some knowledge of the game you simply would not make such claims. As for your quoting articles from the club and local media I really don't have a problem with that. It may be good for people who don't follow these sort of things through twitter feeds and the like. It would be nice for once if you posted something and either had a different opinion, or just left it be and let the article speak for itself. I'll leave you with this saying; better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.

If only we could give the Tree and this guy their own section of the forum (that noone else can see) where they can 'discuss' to their hearts content.

For me he's still one of those players who has a very good highlight reel but may effectively need to be carried by other team members. Just on the small amount I've seen of Ben Arfa he's a vastly more technically gifted player (ie. doesn't have his head down when running with the ball and can pick out team mates with a variety of passes). I think for the money Wigan will want for him it wouldn't be a wise move. If it's the same price as we let him go for then fair enough. I honestly don't begrudge him leaving us originally as he was played out of position and rarely given a chance in his preferred area. On top of that he had to deal with Joe Kinnear. He was widely miss-quoted when leaving regarding ambition but I'm sure he's a little wiser about everything now and probably has a better idea of his own level.

You're no doubt right, but I'm sure Ashley will have been in Pardew's ear about it and it's up to him to motivate the players. There is possibly some honour in finishing in the top half of the table though, and nothing less than a win would realistically afford us that.

You definitely get a different perspective from watching a match live that can often paint a more complete picture of events, but by the same token there's some aspects of the game that are much better viewed on TV with the ability to more closely view, analyse and replay key incidents. You're at the will of the producers of the show though as to what they do and don't scrutinise. Whatever the case I'll continue to add my 2 cents from my couch/bean bag

Exactly right. He's one of the best technical players in our side regardless of position. Has hit a couple of volleys this season on target that most of our players could only dream about. Has the composure and ability to play it out from the back, and even when there's not a short passing option available he's got a decent long pass that he can usually pick out our players with. Doesn't cope well with pace though, but usually has the positioning to make up for it. Just on our spending habits, Peasepud's arse will pretty much certainly remain constrained by pants. If you look at our entire team now there's only one player for which we outlayed more than £10M, and thats' the afforementioned Coloccini who cost £10.3M and came before Ashley had realised the reality of the finances of Premier League football and the absolute financial position of Newcastle United. The next highest priced player is technically Xisco at around £7M though hopefully he'll be completely off the books by the summer. Enrique is the third highest priced player (£6.3M) and he's likely to leave. After that it's Alan Smith (£6M), the less said there the better. Barton next up at £5.75M, then Jonas at £4.5M. So of that bunch Enrique is likely to be sold. Xisco is likely to be sold (at a massive loss). Barton is stalling on signing a new deal. There's talk about Jonas' future at the club. Now there's speculation about Coloccini coming into the mix. If they all went that would leave Alan Smith as our most expensive transfer* (and he'd be on the highest wages). Of course they'd be desperate to get rid of Smith but I don't think that would be possible. * The complete price of Hatem Ben Arfa is not really clear and could be anywhere up to £7M. I'd say it's more likely to be around £4-5M.

Thee time for reflection on the season is definitely after and not before this 90 minutes is up. Just based on the financial implications (partly because of the very congested nature of the table) there's a lot riding on this - significantly more than winning the Europa league final. We didn't get the measure of West Brom in the Championship and they turned us over easily earlier in the season. Based on these results there's no reason why they couldn't do it again and so going into this match with anything but full focus would be foolish.

Someone's getting a bit too big for their britches. The point was that you don't ever have an opinion of your own. It's always based off the media articles that you seem to take as gospel. You clearly don't have any idea about football, which in itself isn't a problem, but quickly becomes one when you attempt to masquerade as though you do. In the end it quickly comes crumbling down around you and everyone gets a quick laugh. The more it happens though the less likely people are to take anything you say seriously and that's precisely why you're routinely met with ridicule that unfortunately for you is just about always befitting.

He doesn't like to commit himself (because he knows he's slow) so he instead backs off and tries to stay goal-side looking to get a block in. As a result he pulls off some good blocks, but there's not a lot between one of them and a deflected goal where the keeper has no chance. As others have mentioned he has good value from set-pieces. I'd say he's better than Williamson because he doesn't use his hands as much and has a little bit of aggression which can be very useful for a defender. Defense is very much about the entire back four though, so he really needs to get continual game time alongside Colo and our fullbacks (whoever they end up being next season).

CB would be relatively low down on my list of priorities. Steven Taylor was once oretty decent and will hopefully come back to form with a full pre-season behind him. Wasn't bad on the weekend and always is a chance of scoring from corners. Williamson is definitely a serviceable replacement for an injury to Colo or Taylor (much more likely to be Taylor based on previous records). Options are pretty short thereafter, with Kadar having shown promise he'd be next down the pecking order but seems to be plagued by injuries. Simpson had a good first half to the season but seemed to deteriorate towards the end so an alternate right back could be a consideration. First position to strengthen is of course up front where we really need two new players (will only get 1). Thereafter I'd be looking at bringing in a new wide player preferably someone who can play down either side.

He does that everytime he gets subbed tbf gives a proper wave Was about to say the same. Whenever he comes off he just about always gives a good wave to the crowd. He's got manners and likes to interact with others as evidenced by the way he'll often joke about with the ref prior to kick-off. Financially there's a fair bit riding on this result. In 2010 there was £800,000 difference per place. That was up from £760,000 the previous year so it's like;y that this season the difference will be more than than. We could finish as low as 14th or as high as 8th (unlikely) so there's potentially a difference in prize money of £4.8M. Nothing to scoff at, it would pay the wages of two highly paid players for a season.

Should be looking to line up a French side; Marseille, Lille, PSG or Lyon. As France is no doubt where we'll be doing much of our scouting over the coming years we might as well try to improve the club's profile there. Likewise with the Dutch league. Matches against the local sides should be used for giving our young players some time on the pitch in the pre-season. Save our better players for the more important matches. I see the American tour as a good move TBH.

Larsson, while he doesn't excite would have made a healthy contribution to us this season if we had picked him up in January. Given he will cost less in the summer there's no reason why we shouldn't look at bringing him in (that's if irreparable damage wasn't done during contract negotiations in Jan). There will be some other handy players doing down that could be available that we should look at, but I'd like to think we already have our eyes on our primary targets so the relegation fodder will be fallback options.

So, Lovenkrands is the most accurate of the bunch (52% of his shots are on target), Best is the most deadly (scores every 5.5 shots) but also the least accurate (27%) . In total the Newcastle trio score once every 7.4 shots and has 36% of their shots on target. The Tottenham trio score once every 12.2 shots with 32% of their shots on target. If you consider every game started as 70 minutes played, and every substitute appearance as 20 minutes played then the Tottenham 3 played 4,240 minutes compared to 3,520 minutes for the Newcastle three. Assuming two strikers were on the field at the same time that's one goal scored every 103.5 minutes by the Newcastle trio and one every 141.3 minutes for the Tottenham group.

I'd say Leon Best's minutes per offside would be close to if not worse than Bents?

Interesting thoughts regarding Coloccini. His perceived value will certainly have risen. I'd say he would be well suited to Italian football. Not too sure exactly what he's being paid, but if it's particularly high then wages could prove to be a stumbling block to any kind of deal that they try to initiate. With Enrique highly likely to go the chances of Coloccini and Jonas departing would increase. It's all speculation of course but plenty of reasons for believing that it's a realistic possible outcome. That sort of summer I think would have long term implications for the value of the Newcastle United brand.

Talk about a luxury midfield I'm thinking in the vicinity of 10-15m will be spent. I don't expect there will be players sold apart from Enrique, though anyone will have their price and I think they'd accept anything in double figures for Tiote. The more players we sell the lower our net spend will be because the club will only buy lower priced players as replacements in the hope that their values will improve as that is the model of operation that they have continually indicated that they will be using.

Agree. When I've seen him he always looked lively but just wasn't very good at putting the ball in the back of the net. Hope to heck that we're not interested in Carlton Cole.

The benefit of going to France is that they'll be on lower wages as a rule (obviously not in all cases). The problem is you never know what you're going to get.

Mine too, though I have been working on getting them down if it's any consolation.

Selling Andy Carroll for 35m was in isolation a good deal. What made it less appealing was the way in which the deal was conducted and the just a little bit too convenient timing of it. What will make it a good deal for the club is if we end up with a better side as a result. It should be very possible for this to happen with additional money from the 35m still remaining, but the reality of it is something that we can only speculate on. It will ultimately show whether it was a good deal for Newcastle United or simply a good deal for the owner.

That's just about how I feel about him, though it's interspersed with freqeunt but sporadic moments of anger when he misses a sitter or does something stupid, and the occassional moment of delight when he does something Shola special like that goal against Sunderland.

Bloody hell. It's one thing if you're good on the pitch, but as yet he's not even that. He makes Ameobi look graceful.