Rayvin

I love how this list has been presented entirely without context

Advise your wife that it is never, under any circumstances, a good idea to go into business with people you know well. If you think she's pushy now, having only just started, surely it's only going to get worse as the difficult decisions come about. Who has final say? Do you have a right to veto? Is her colleague senior to her, junior or the same level? Finally, do you need this woman to be involved? If not, why not just go it alone; more profit that way.

Ah come on, it's not like Carver was ever going to win this. Until we have a new manager in, it's pointless to hope for anything. With any luck though, this is ensuring that Carver is replaced sooner rather than later.

In depends how you define stronger I guess. As a business entity I'd say yes. As a competitive entity, I'd say no. As a focal point for a fanbase and wider community, hell no. In terms of overall reputation? Probably also no.

I dunno, the league seems to be opening up... remember that Liverpool almost won the league last year. Arsenal certainly could do it. I think the influence of the financial clout of teams like City and Chelsea will diminish actually. Sure they can keep buying all the best players but look at Southampton. They had all their best players bought over the summer save for Schneiderlin, and it's not held them back at all. The elite clubs can't keep buying all of these players, they don't have space in their squads. Well built teams will eventually trump them, I think.

I love the Arsenal TV channel - they have old guys on occasionally who totally lose their shit. Saying that, Wenger has been there for bloody ages now, and I'm not hugely convinced he's ever going to win them the league again (and if Liverpool can do nearly do it, Arsenal certainly have it in them).

Gerrard apparently throwing the towel in after the season. Shame, could have done with seeing him continue to compromise LIverpool for a while longer.

For me, the latter. Controversial I know, but there it is. Glorious failure all the way, baby.

Yeah, kinda fearful. Shame as well as Pardew probably would have won this one after scoring in the 40th minute and then defending for our lives for the whole second half. As he was fond of doing.

I think the thing here is that people state that Pardew has us where we should be. Fair enough if all you're concerned about is league position, but I think that fails to consider how many of our fans feel about the style of football more than anything. I was thinking about this the other day, and my favourite season in our PL history was the first one when we scored 80 odd goals. No chance of winning the league, but we were devastatingly good going forward. Honestly, I prefer that season to the two 2nd place finishes (although the Man Utd 5-0 season was a close second). I'd take that style over 20 years of defensive football that might win us a League Cup one day or something, without question. Glorious failure is what this club is about, and I take some pride in that. Yes, Mashely is the problem, but Pardew was never going to be the guy to put that attacking philosophy into place, and that's why there's no harm in getting shot of him. So we might get relegated - so what? Might encourage Ashley to sell, and clearly it's not going to bankrupt the club, he's made sure of that - the media would have a field day but then they always do. As a result of relegation, we might get someone who can actually put into place a good attacking philosophy since we'll be loaded with PL class players who should be more than capable of taking the game to championship sides. Alternatively, Ashley hires a better manager now, and we see an immediate benefit. The worst case scenario is we get a like for like replacement, but that's exactly the same situation as we would have been in had Pardew been here until 2020. Thus, there's no real risk here from my perspective.

Presumably there'd be compensation involved though...which makes it unlikely.

Utter waste of time. I wonder what it was about him that made playing him nonviable.

What if we had Hoddle just till the end of the season though? If it didn't work out we could get rid. I'm sure he can't be worse than Carver...

All good points, but you have to consider the players who lost form as well, under Pardew. Tiote being one. Cisse last season. Sissoko last season as well actually, though he stepped it up again this year. Gouffran.

http://www.theguardian.com/football/2014/dec/31/steve-bruce-rules-out-newcastle-united Not disagreeing that he'd take it, but they asked him if he was ruling himself out and he said yes...

I'd take McClaren I suppose. Nice to see Bruce ruling himself out - avoided all the usual rubbish so far.

This is one hell of an introduction thread...the guy got Fish's back up in less than 5 posts.

Is Colo really going to be able to go toe to toe with other managers in this league though? Pardew was generally a dismal manager, but he at least managed to outsmart some of the bigger names from time to time.

Yeah it'll be Beardsley till the end of the year so that we all end up thinking he'll get De Boer, and then he'll hire Sherwood.

Sky have suggested Steve Bruce. That sounds chillingly possible.

Where was that information? Was he even approached or just asked by journalists? I can't quite believe that Ashley would have started approaching people as good as De Beor, but if he has, then at least it's a positive sign.

Or Pulis. To think we could have fallen so far as to end up with Pulis...

Not Tim Sherwood.

Quite possibly, but this is a more difficult one for Ashley. He can't balls this up or he'll jeopardise our top tier status. He might have to overshoot to be comfortable. Then again, he might consider that he can afford the risk with our current placing in the table...

Agreed but then we're never going to get anywhere with Pardew. As such, we've nothing to lose - yeah we could get relegated but honestly, the prospect of that bothers me far less than the mediocrity of the next few years under Pardew...