OTF

I was very dubious of this, not expecting anything to come of it. If he has been signed, even if initially on loan I'll be quite surprised and pretty happy, but only if it comes with the option to buy at the end of the loan period with the loan amount being taken off the final price. IE. If the agreed price is £8m then we would only have to pay £7.2m at the end of the loan period if we wished to retain his services having forked out £800k for the loan. That way we basically get to have a year long (expensive) trial. If he's no good at the end of the period bye bye. His age and reputation make this potential signing one that is in keeping with the proposed system at Newcastle. Surprisingly if it comes off it's for once a signing that will hopefully help to fill a quite significant void we have - creative players.

Agree he looked quite poor. When he moved to our left they had a field day down that side. Ryan Taylor as poor a defender as he is can put a cross in, and pops up with the odd goal. If Perch doesn't improve drastically as much as it pains me to say I'd stick Raylor there. Agree about Steven Taylor he's looked good at RB... Doesn't mind a gallop down he pitch to be a nuisance in the opposing box.

Guthrie more involved and just better in general in Barton, though he didn't have a great game and wasted a fair bit of ball. Nolan was pretty ordinary, didn't do enough throughout the game, would have been good to see Carroll and Lovenkrands out there together. Would have worked well against their defense IMO, but I suppose you can't blame Chris for putting out the same formation that will take to the field against manure.

If that was a fair shoulder I'm the Queen of England. Was funny seeing Shola sulking afterwards though! Stupid challenge back, and horrible marking as you rightfully point out.

Carroll needs more support up front. Whenever the ball has got through to him, he's had two or more guys defending him. His touch looks quite decent, but no chance against that many. Nolan needs to get more involved and at least try to create some space for him.

My inbox is quite empty and would appreciate any PMs...

Thanks Ferguson, next time open your gob earlier and save us 7 pages of rubbish.

I suspect we'll have a better idea of what he'll go with after the Rangers game. He'd be mad if he did anything but use his first choice side in their positions in the last run-out before season proper starts.

Yep, gotcha.. I have the same sort of pessimistic hunches. The kind that sees Smith replace Guthrie, and Barton on the right. <shudder> Yep, though wouldn't have backed us in 2008 either! Interestingly this was our side for the 2008 match... Newcastle: Given, Beye, Taylor, Coloccini, N'Zogbia, Milner, Butt, Guthrie, Gutierrez, Duff, Martins Subs: Harper, Jose Enrique, Bassong, Smith, Geremi, Edgar, Donaldson. N'Zogbia was played at left back with Enrique on the bench. Milner on the right, Guthrie and Butt in the middle with Jonas on the left and Duff in behind Martins up front. Not exactly what I'd call a strong side... though Beye is a lot better than Perch and Milner is a much more complete player than Routledge. It was a relatively weak Manchester United side with no Ronaldo or Tevez. Man Utd: Van der Sar, Brown, Vidic, Ferdinand, Evra, Fletcher, Carrick, Scholes, Giggs, Campbell, Rooney Subs: Kuszczak, Neville, Rafael Da Silva, O'Shea, Evans, Gibson, Possebon.

Good memory. Typical of Taylor to have been off getting treatment. Kitman - Routledge is the player who constantly has been mentioned throughout the pre-season as our most dangerous looking player and best at getting forward. It would be a travesty if we went there and played someone like Barton out of position in his place. That could go wrong in so many ways - likely one where Barton gets the shits at being outplayed and makes a brash 'challenge'. We have to at least try to play football or else we'll get no 'teamwork' value out of a game like this as we'll simply be chasing shadows all match, repelling wave after wave of attack. The afformentioned opener against Manchester United in 2008 we at least had a decent go at taking the game to them and came away with a draw.

Hope not, but I certainly won't be surprised if he does. Best player in each position please! If we play central midfielders out wide, they'll naturally push in and will open up space down the flanks that will be wilfully exploited. Harper Perch---Coloccini---Williamson---Enrique --------Guthrie Routledge-----Barton------Gutierrez --------Nolan Carroll----

2 years. :D 'twas 1-1 Martins header put us in the lead, they scored one back quite quickly can't remember who.

Guthrie was good when played in the middle, poor when played out wide, which is no surprise. Now that we've got that new wonderkid left winger* we won't have to see anyone played out of place out wide again thankfully**. * - yes I am taking the piss and talking about Xisco here ** - I guarantee we'll frequently see players out of position ie. Barton and Guthrie wide in midfield, Smith on the field. Some players who are decent at keeping the ball is what we need.

I guess Williamson will start against Rangers. Last match before our season starts should not be a time for experimentation.

Team: Harper (Krul 46), R.Taylor, Enrique, Perch (Tavernier 51), Coloccini, Barton, Xisco (Gutierrez 46), Guthrie (Nolan 46), Carroll, Best (Lovenkrands 73), Routledge. Where was Williamson? He wasn't listed in the players not available on .com: Surely he has to be one of our first choice centre backs alongside Coloccini for the start of the season, with Steven Taylor not available and Sol Campbell not yet fit?

They look thrilled. That really is horrible news about Barton, I guess it was foolish for any of us to believe that with a solid pre-season behind him we'd see anything but the Joey Barton who has stamped, fouled and sulked for us already.

Klasnic should actually be available for nothing now, having cancelled his contract with Nantes. If there's no other choice I wouldn't mind bringing him in, surely we could match Bolton's wages. ...Not likely to happen though with Hughton carrying on about all the depth we have up front

Thank God you ain't our manager anyway. Yeah, because having a strike force of (for example): Roque Santa Cruz, Andy Carroll, Peter Lovenkrands, Nile Ranger, Haris Vuckic with Kevin Nolan and Alan Smith ....is worse than having: Andy Carroll, Peter Lovenkrands, Shola Ameobi, Leon Best, Xisco, Nile Ranger, Haris Vuckic, and Kevin Nolan Santa Cruz doesn't have to be the player, but the point is clear. We have a list of supporting strikers, with noone standing out as an established proven premier league player. I'm pretty sure the FA won't cut us any exceptions that allow us to field 12 players because we have so many average forwards on our playing roster so the key is to improve our starting 11. The wages in total would be similar, it's the initial outlay that would need to be made available. An outlay that without question would be much much much less than the difference in income between a Championship and Premier League club, a difference that we seem to be in danger once again of discovering. The difference this time would be that we don't have a squad that we could sell off 30 million pounds worth of player like we did last time.

Agree 100% We're going to struggle to get goals. In the Championship for patches when our forwards were struggling to score we had Nolan, Guthrie and even Ryan Taylor chipping in, it's hard to see them being able to fill the void. Chris must be looking and thinking the same, but due to budget restraints he's going to have to try to get the best out of what we have, so all the noise we hear coming from him is to that effect. I'd much rather get rid of three guys on moderate wages to pickup one on a higher wage. If we had injury problems we have the likes of Ranger and Vuckic who could step up and do a job, gaining valuable experience in doing so. We also have Alan Smith who once upon a time was a striker.

Plenty of options up front Chris, sure, but how many of them are any good? None are really proven in the top league, Shola despite playing many many Premier League games. Xisco I don't think anyone is in a position to say whether he's any good. It's hard to judge Santander's use of him also, as like us when we had Rossi on loan he could be getting limited minutes simply because he's only there on loan and isn't part of the bigger picture. The problem is that we'd need to see him given a run in the side to see whether he's any good, and that plainly is not going to happen when he's already so far down a weak but lengthy pecking order. Selling him would be Best (him too) for all involved, but that's not likely to happen, so we'll have another name on our playing roster who probably won't add much to our chances of any sort of success this season.

I'm not going to bother with this, injuries, form and signings both now and mid-season bring too many variables into the mix. The only thing I'd say for sure is that the winner will be one of three sides, Chelsea, Manchester United or Arsenal, and that we'll be in the bottom half because we'll struggle to score goals and don't have the resolve or ability to hold out most premier league sides.

So we'll be able to wear them for most of our matches in the premierleague this season?

If the back four is Campbell, Coloccini, Ryan Taylor and Enrique then I'll be quite worried. Three of them are very slow. Their lack of pace will no doubt look to be exploited by everyone we come up against. Even with Simpson or Perch there we're not that much quicker, and with no real specialist defensive midfielder so shield our centre backs things could get pretty messy. To be fair Campbell probably is ok once he gets moving, it would just be changing direction and initial accelleration that he's poor at. I guess we have to hope that at the first available chance he clutters into opposing players and slows them down that way. Steven Taylor has looked pretty good for us at right back in the past. Going forward he's not great on the ball, but he does love to push into the opposing box and has a decent knack for chipping in with the odd goal. Unfortunately he's also far from express.

Plus it was only natural for people to be excessively pessimistic after being relegated... and in turn it's only naturalfor them to be excessively optimistic after being promoted as 'Champions'. I think we'll survive, but it will be a long long long way from pretty... and Dan Gosling won't have a say in it.