OTF

Jonas cracks it for a starting spot in the Argentina National Squad. Milner is a way off a starting birth for England. Milner is younger, yes, but in terms of experience he has had a great deal (almost 200 Premier League games), so to expect him to develop a great deal more than he has is naive. He may become better at reading the game, but that's not going to suddenly make him faster, better at crossing, or more capable of beating his man. All of those games were in the same league, so he's surely completely settled in terms of that. Jonas too is beyond the point where you can expect him to develop a great deal, however he is yet to fully adapt to the shite way in which Newcastle are currently playing football. When Jonas has performed at his best for us, it has been when we have actually gone out there and played football, not when we have aimlessly hoofed the ball at the likes of Ameobi. I'd take Jonas in the side over Milner in a heartbeat. The fact that we got Jonas for something like 4 million pounds, and sold Milner for a profit of roughly 8 million pounds makes Jonas even more appealing IMO.

Got to love Habib. Just a shame that we din't bring him here when he was a little younger. Could have sent that fat bastard Carr off long, long ago.

Get in man.

Don't have any problem with Shola hanging around the club. The problems come when he is played ahead of better players. If he starts in the next match it will be beyond ridiculous.

1-1 will do us nicely. Don't see it staying that way though.

In the end I think we've all got to be happy with the point, all things considered. Certainly now there is no need to keep the same team as some sort of loyalty move as a result of them winning the previous match (err.. West Brom). Nolan has also confirmed that Hughton can't take the easy way out again and just pick the same squad. It will be interesting to see who will replace Nolan in midfield. Anyone know when Guthrie is back? Otherwise Smith would be an option (please not Geremi, though I might be saying the same about Smith in a week). We have five central midfielders who are all capable of making horrible brash tackles (Smith, Guthrie, Butt, Barton and Nolan). I'd like to see Viduka and Martins up front in the next game. Lovenkrands fancies himself as a striker, but if that shot was indicative you can see why managers prefer to play him out wide. Certainly not prepared to write him off, but damn, that was a bloody golden chance with no defensive pressure at all.

I thought Butt was excellent. Ryan Taylor had a good game too. There's no way Butt was excellent. I just won't hear it. He made some good tackles, but he has no movement whatsoever off the ball. Dallies on the ball, looks for long passes always. Watch a proper team play football and the central midfield players will be making short, sharp passes and moving for each other. We're not going to get that from Butt at this stage in his career. He's a complete passenger when we have the ball. Ryan Taylor's crossing/free-kicks weren't bad, but he got caught on the ball on more than one occassion, and Dan Gosling skipped by his easily in the opening few minutes. Would be good if he had a little more pace.

Bassong man of the match. Enrique also played well. Our new boys all had pretty average/shite games, spare Ryan Taylor's free-kicks/crosses. Butt again a passenger who occasionally chimes in with a tackle.

Played midfield and defense for Sheffield. His ridiculous 'air jordan' handball in the final match of the season was the nail in the coffin for Sheffield's Premier league status. Lescott has been an awesome buy for them, but to be fair Bassong has been just as immense in defense for us, and he cost much less than Lescott, plus we got him at a younger age. As for why the Everton players have flourished while Newcastle's English defenders have not, I'd say that entirely down to the lack of stability at Newcastle, and the lack of an organised decent central midfield.

Looked like the keeper saw it late, but was probably more a matter of the power that Ronaldo put on it.

Portsmouth extra time equaliser was good for us.. they were leading 1-0 then Stoke got a rubbish penalty call. Less than two minutes later they scored again and it looked like they were going to get the 3 points. Elsewhere Middlesbrough and Wigan drew 0-0. Arsenal couldn't beat Sunderland at home!

Villa couldn't break through to score in the second half. Was a pretty entertaining match, with both teams pretty eager to attack. Bolton are rolling West Ham 2 zip at the moment. This is not the best result for us. Other matches of importance are 0-0 still.

When I eventually get over there to watch a match I will definitely go on the stadium tour before a match. A dream of mine to be honest.

Watched the first half of the Aston Villa vs Chelsea match. Chelsea are clearly the better more polished team. They've looked good with Anelka and Drogba up front. Aston Villa have looked dangerous on occasion with pace breaking forward. Chelsea got the first goal with what I must say was through some impressive close control from Lampard. Some tight touches manoeuvred him past two Villa defenders (who had over-committed), then he played a nicely weighted pass into the path of Anelka. Anelka's finish was top class, calmy dinking it over the keeper and into the back of the net. Villa came closest through an Ashley Young free-kick, that hit the underside of the bar with Cech completely stranded. James Milner is still the same player that he was when we had him. Can't fault his effort, gets up and down the pitch. Relishing the space he is afforded by virtue of Agbonlahor, Young and Heskey commanding the attention of the defense, but still lacking with his crosses. Still prefers to cross off his left boot, but has floated several of them into the welcoming hands of Cech.

Would disagree there. Has (or at least had) plenty pace. Yeah. Weaknesses were his inability to win 50/50 challenges, went to ground too much, and had a tendency to want to do too much with the ball when he had it.

Easy to defend for a team that is so far above the level of their regular competition.

It's all one person's fault, fuck that's a big call. He's painful in his ability not to play but to blame him on Leed's downfall is frankly laughable. Oh wait it's John Carew's fault Villa aren't going to win the champions league next season, isn't it? Then he went and redeemed himself by saying "Stick with Ameobi".

Hi Attain.

Good to see he (Xisco) still has a positive outlook. LIke Andy I still see him as having a future here. Obviously we need to see more from him to know what that future will be like, but he sounds like he'll have a better crack than Luque of getting back into the first team. I sense that unlike Luque, Xisco works hard in training. As for Colo, I think he has played in every game for us this season. He also played in every game for Depor last season. Having that sort of injury free consistency at the back is a good thing, and something we've not had much of in the past. He's made some mistakes this season, but on the whole it's been a reliatively decent transition.

I can't say I approve of that. Michael Jackson's penchant for back filling developing youngsters is what got him prosecuted in the United States. I'll set 'em up, and you knock 'em down.

Llambias and Ashley combined can only aspire to one day know as much as fuck all about football. But they have a five year plan to compensate, don't forget. Which I'm sure they drew up on a big sheet of butchers paper during arts and crafts time.

Llambias and Ashley combined can only aspire to one day know as much as fuck all about football.

A lot of the money that Ashley has 'put into' the club has been to seemingly improve the financial foundations of the club. Any significant outlay of transfer money was done in preparation for the shedding of players on high wages. Eg. Bring in a Xisco for 5 million, shed a Viduka who is costing you that much in wages. Xisco is young and promising, and so will seemingly become a saleable asset. He'll be on wages that are a fraction of the cost of Viduka, and in the design when purchasing I'm sure they foresaw a profit when he is sold. The fact that within their own company and structure they then proceeded to completely fuck up this 'initiative' by not only not playing Xisco in the first team, but also deriding his confidence by having the outspoken manager completely omit him from any of his media verbalised plans (despite having a significant crisis of injuries in that position) speaks volumes for the ineptitute of our Directors/Owner and Management. That's just an example, I personally could name more of their schemes, as could other members of this forum. What's hard for us to do is distance the Owner and his Merry Band of Miscreants from the history and tradition of Newcastle United.

Wise doesn't have the balls to face up to Newcastle supporters at all it seems. We've not heard a peep from him since the Keegan fiasco, and what he did say before that evidently came out to be a complete load of horse-shit. In fact so far removed from the proceedings is Wise, that despite performing in the figurative position of Executive Director (Football) he has seldom been seen overseeing any of the actual footballing matters at the club. This includes the Youth and Reserves matches where he is purported to be charged with identifying and more importantly developing young talent at the club. Anyone that makes a realistic suggestion that Wise would be a suitable candidate to manage the club is so far removed from the reality of the situation that they may as well for all intents and purposes propose that Michael Jackson be signed to back-fill Wise's current role of developing youngsters.

He was out with a serious cruciate ligament injury from Sep 2006 to Jan 2008. He went on to play most games for the rest of that season and then again played the most part of this season up until this latest setback for him. Another example of how stats can actually overlook the bigger picture. Even though Owen has had two bad injuries with us he has also like Viduka had far far more niggling little injuries. Don't exactly know why you're arguing so strongly for Bullard's reliability, but anyway - the bigger picture is how many games they are available to play for their club. End of story. But even if we were to entertain your inference, Michael Owen has like you say suffered two bad injuried with us. Like Bullard he took longer to recover than expected. As any good physio will tell you, when you are returning from a serious injury you are likely to reinjure that part if you don't adequately prepare it for the return to vigourous activity (ie. resting it until it is fully healed will result in the shedding of muscle, and hence when it is used again the potential for reinjury is high - so the muscle and movement needs to be built back gradually). By the same token the fact that all other muscles are not being used in the same manner as they would be during match play, renders them also more likely to be injured/strained etc. So I would argue that directly or indirectly the 'niggling' little injuries you talk about with Owen and Viduka are directly or indirectly related to their larger scale injuries. The same is likely to hold true for the ageing Bullard. By vurtue of his 'bulk' Viduka is likely to put his body under more considerable stress than Bullard or Owen, but by the same token Bullad and Owen will cop physical attention from opposing players.