Newcastle Thread

I thought they tried both through the middle at first with HBA and Jonas as conventional wide midfielders, then gave up with that as it wasn't working very well. What I thought happened was that Cisse was put to LW at first, then to RW after Ben Arfa got injured, though that might be wrong. I always felt Marveaux was underused in 2012-13, so him as a wideman wouldn't have been the worst idea in the world. Last year he was shit when he played.
EDIT: When I went to QPR at the end of the 12-13 season, I remember we had Ben Arfa as a central striker with Gouffran wide right and Cisse wide left. The mechanics of that are still baffling.

Elsewhere, Yanga-Mbiwa has said he made a mistake in joining Newcastle, which means he probably won't be coming back, while Ben Arfa did one of those open letter things.

Meanwhile... https://twitter.com/UtdForNewcastle

Assuming what they've just posted is true (and given the amount of control on club communications to the outside world, who knows), any wild guesses who they might be?

I remember the Spurs game well, and yeah Cisse and Ba started upfront, and Ba moved to the wing in the second half.

If it's true 'fan' means it's most likely, Taylor, Dummett, Ameobi or Armstrong. Very unlikely to be Taylor, Armstrong and Dummett aren't likely to be too keen on a loan. So by process of elimination Sammy. Although I doubt it's true, I doubt senior players would confide in a fringe player their thoughts on Newcastle, and I doubt the fringe player would confide in some random about the inner workings of a football club.

Plus it says Coloccini, has no personal problem with Pardew but also wants away from Pardew.

That twitter page is a fucking embarrassment as well, with it's Bobby Robson avatar. - Remember when the fucking fans demanded he was sacked. Total selective memory. Even though there was no replacement lined up, leading to Newcastle giving the job the 6th choice, Graeme Souness?

And lets not kid ourselves the club was already on the slide when Robson was sacked, we scrapped into 5th on the final day ahead of Aston Villa. After 2 seasons of being outside challengers for the title.

The big question should be at Newcastle, why for every one season of success, does it take about 5 to recover from?

Yes, I think Ba cut in from a left flank position to score his goal v Spurs. The attempts at Cisse out wide came later in the first half of .the campaign. Most likely after Ba bitched and moaned about being a sub early in the year.

Its always complex to know with these sort of things whether they're accurate or not. I'm not sure its 100% true but I don't think its completely false. Its probably somewhere in between, but the only way we'd ever know what's going on for sure is if we were actually on the inside. Though I think it implies he wanted away because he fell out with Pardew in January 2013 but chose not to go, and is now thinking "Why is this idiot still here?"

That's the best explanation I can think of, and even then that might be pushing it, although I do recall rumours of them falling out before we beat QPR in December 2012.

EDIT: Maybe its just me but I never wanted Robson fired, plus I don't recall the away end shouting "Robson Out" when I was at his last game back in August 2004 and Souness was from the get go a lousy idea. I do recall the media being stupidly harsh to him from the random conjunctivitis but that's about it.

Just remembered the Everton game when Ba was dropped and brought off the bench to score twice to salvage a point.

Robson was no where near the scale of Pardew, but then Robson was sacked a lot quicker. (If Pardew was sacked in Jan2013 for example he certainly wouldn't be viewed this negatively)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/n/newcastle_united/3611456.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/n/newcastle_united/3610042.stm

Change the names and them articles could pretty much be printed of Pardew was sacked today.

If Pardew was sacked in Jan 2013 his time at the club would be looked back upon in a similar way to Glenn Roeder's time at the club not Bobby Robson, he had a decent enough start but in the end proved himself to be nothing more than average.

I'm sorry, it's a bit of a pet hate for me this guy's reign being compared to Robson, Keegan mk 1 and during stabilitygate even Alex Ferguson.

I had no idea Shearer was even a candidate, let alone the early favourite, after Sir Bobby was sacked

Don't listen to Shola, he twists stats in a way that no other fan could.

Pardew would never be looked on as favourably as Robson ffs

Also - there's not one player in that dressing room with maybe the exception of Tim Krul I'd rather have than Ben Arfa.

If Pardew had been fired in January 2013 after the Reading game - and I was among many who called for that - then he would've been remembered as having the same spell he had at West Ham, where he followed up one exceptional season with one total disaster.

Meanwhile the Mirror is reporting Siem de Jong maybe out for 4 months with a groin tear. Joy.

Aye - going to expose a real lack of depth in our squad that.

We have no real replacement for de Jong.

We've got no creative centre midfielders either - going to be a long season this - we didn't strengthen at all in the summer - unsure why Ashley hasn't learned his lesson from 2 years ago.

Does Mike Ashley actually give a fuck about Newcastle United?

Well, first you'd actually have to ask him that, and the last time he was interviewed by any media for anything was... not sure if he ever has been.

This window is a puzzle as we spent £35M (figure I've seen quoted - could be more, could be less, but its tricky when almost everything is undisclosed) but the bulk of it came from selling Cabaye and Debuchy, so our next spend for the calendar year is less than £5-10M. Not exactly confidence boosting considering the £80-oddmillion we got for a top half finish last year would be enough to have paid for at least one more player. Plus we still have the same incompetent fucktards that made the end of last season nauseating.

So... who knows. He likes the free ad space for SportsDirect at least.

I'm sure he cares to a degree. It's not in his interest in us losing our Premier League status. But he certainly has no ambition upwards of keeping us clear of the dogfight. That much is evident.

We have the same 3 senior centrebacks that we did in the Championship ffs. Two aren't good enough.

We still haven't replaced Cabaye or Remy properly who carried us last year.

My point was if Pardew was sacked quicker he would be viewed for what he was, an average manager. Not this hilariously evil creature who jealously sells all the good players because he's jealous of them, or whatever people delude themselves into believing.

And it's also very, very easy to suggest players haven't been replaced, but it's very, very hard to directly replace players who have left the squad to go onto better things. It's totally reductive Liverpool haven't replaced Suarez, ManUtd haven't replaced Ronaldo, Newcastle still haven't replaced Shearer, Arsenal still haven't replaced Henry, Messi will never be adequately replaced at Barcelona etc.

But our midfield when Cabaye arrived was Cabaye, Tiote and Guthrie it's now Tiote, Sissoko, Colback, Anita and De Jong (+Bigi and Abeid possibly). Newcastle are seemingly hoping the improved quantity will mask the lack of absolute quality.

Newcastle strikeforce last year was Remy, Cisse, Shola and De Jong, Now it's Riviere, Cisse, Ferrerya & Perez.

3 senior CB's that also finished 5th but whatever.

De Jong picked up a thigh injury and apparently early indictations are a few months out. Said they will do further tests at the start of next week.

The strikeforce maybe the same numerically as it was in May but 3 of those are brand new to the BPL (of which, Riviere seems to be struggling to adapt and Ferreyra has seemingly vanished), while the other is a man who has been out of form since Demba Ba threw a hissy fit. Also, same 3 CBs but Coloccini and Taylor are not as good as the players they were in 2011-12, and Williamson is not as catastrophically bad as in 2012-13, but is still inconsistent. Certainly, it was not a stable defensive unit last year, but the lack of evolution is a bit of a concern - not least we're two injuries away from throwing the kids in at the deep end.

I'm not sure what Pardew's reputation would've been had Ashley pulled the plug on him in January 2013. Better than when he arrived and better than if he was sacked today at least, given his manager of the year award was still fresh in the mind. But its an odd one - his spell with us is the second longest he's ever managed anyone (and if he's still in charge in mid-November it will have surpassed his longest previous stint) and all of them have ended in some form of acrimony, albeit in different ways to the current one. Its certainly not comparable to the legal action Reading took out on him after he tried to resign to force his move to West Ham, for example.

Though it is certain Pardew and Ben Arfa fell out (although by the sounds of it, the rest of the players fell out with HBA as well after that), and it is quite irritating and perhaps a wee bit predictable that our old number 10 could've been used as a replacement for our new number 10 given he appears to be injured. Again.

Rubbish window.

Club confirm de Jong out for months. Yay.

yeah its the 3 same centrebacks that finished 5th - thats the problem.

Teams need to be freshened up once in a while.

That's what baffles me though!! You've a top stadium with fans who seem absolutely mad about the club, I mean they'd sell it out to play almost anybody so pushing for European football and investing some money could potentially be worth hundreds of millions. Like I've often thought what would have happened had Abramovich taken over you lot instead of Chelsea.

The general consensus is that he fell out of love with owning the club in 2008/09, but having been unable to sell it during the season we spent in the second tier, we're now basically stuck with one another and it seems as though neither party is particularly happy. I don't know for sure because Ashley rarely communicates in person, so he hasn't personally said about whether or not he still wants to be in charge - some fans think he's preparing to sell up and others think he's in it for a longer haul. So who knows.

Meanwhile, Aarons scored one and set up two in the England U20s the other night. Could be a key player this season.

I'd rather not be the vanity project of a billionaire in truth. Especially if the average ticket price absolutely skyrocketed. I'd rather be shit and have the option of going, than be good. Otherwise what's the point?

We're £120m in debt to Ashley anyway. Newcastle are quite simply not any sort of value for money for investors looking for pragmatic reasons. - And it would cost £100s of Millions to actually be able to get up there. And absolutely bleed money over the next 10 years. Chelsea for example have posted one profit in the past decade of £1.4m.

Odd thing is we could be a billionaire vanity project given Ashley is reputedly of enormous wealth, and to a degree, we were at first. Just happened to have a man who thought a £30million warchest was perfect for Czech, Senegalese and Brazilian defenders that were barely capable of the art. But it feels like we lack imagination with the funding that we do have. Its been established we could've spent to build on 5th in 2012, waited until we were in a relegation battle to do so, and have been stumbling since.

But yes - Ashley is going to take a blockbuster bid to sell up. The £120million of club debts to him and the £100-odd million asking price would be the bare minimum of his asking price, and there are very few people wealthy and/or insane enough to spend that kinda cash.

I genuinely couldn't care less whether we post a profit or not. Doesn't concern me in the slightest unless we're getting sanctions on the pitch for spending too much.

If Ashley decided he wanted to spend 100m in a transfer window I'd be very excited.

I am of the position of spend within reason. What annoys me is one more striker and defender is not baseless excessive spending. We received £100million from selling Cabaye and finishing in the Premier League top 10, and still had a net spend of less than £10million for the calendar year.

My point wasn't we should have good books.

My point was more that it takes £100's of millions to take a mid-table club to the 'next level' without any sort of guarantee of ever getting much of a return. - This is why there is no mystery investor ready to step up. Unless they're running it for their own ego or to promote something else, like a Middle Eastern country.

As I said above - any investor looking to buy us would be looking at a price north of £300million and there are very few people on this earth wealthy and/or insane enough to stump up that kind of big money. But I'm not talking in terms of trying to compete with the European places as it would be a pricey endeavour. What I just wanted is a squad that feels like it can compete, and it feels like right now, we're lacking 2/3 players for that to happen.

Meanwhile, the club has confirmed a new scoreboard is being put on the cantilever structure by the away end. Which has led to the inevitable "Are you just going to paint the words Newcastle 0 on the side of it" comments on the club's FB page.

I keep seeing photos we have a green and blue halves third strip. Looks terrible but only seen computerised mock-ups. Any ideas if its true or not?

According to various sources Ashley is trying to sell us to buy Rangers, and according to the Express Pardew has 2 games to save his job.

New board and new manager would be quite a good tonic for the poor transfer window we've just had.