Dr Gloom

Newcastle striker Andy Carroll will not play any part in their game against Tottenham at St.James' Park on Saturday. The England striker has missed the Magpies' last four games, including their 1-1 draw with Sunderland on Sunday, but was thought to be approaching full fitness and a possible place on the bench against Harry Redknapp's high-flyers. However the 21-year-old has lost his battle for a place due to a thigh problem and will have to wait to make his comeback. Magpies boss Alan Pardew was hopeful Carroll would recover in time to face the team that were reportedly coveting his signature over the January transfer window. Pardew is likely to stick with the strike force of Shola Ameobi and Leon Best, who have both managed to plunder goals in their talismanic striker's absence.

where did you find that?

blatant mackem

I think new player contacts are going to be a problem, with relegation a possibility people will want silly money mackem alert. still smarting over us outplaying you home and away?

good player. i'm surprised he's flopped at villa.

why worry about keeping the smiths and guthries happy? they can both walk as far as i'm concerened. if, as we anticipate, ben arfa plays off carroll then we are woefully short of quality in midfield. take tiote and barton out of the side and we look very ordinary. routledge's final ball lacks quality but him leaving has weakened a midfield already very short of players with pace that can dribble and take men on. getting rid and not replacing him is asking for trouble.

Tottenham beat Chelsea in the race to sign Steven Pienaar from Everton http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2011/ja...pienaar-everton how many midfielders do spurs want? we should be sniffing around some of their rejects tbh

hopefully smith still injured

we should keep routledge and get swp in

i agree with that sentiment parky. we've weathered a difficult run of games and come out of it with some decent results and in a good position in the league. with those three players all set to return i can see us having a decent end to the season. i'm confident of a solid mid table finish though whether that will be enough to move us above sunderland remains to be seen. 50 points would be an excellent return and we're on track to get around that total. our form would have to nosedive pretty spectacularly for us to end up with less than 40 points.

we played some of the best football we've played in my lifetime with him as our assistant to sbr so i'm made up with the appointment. seems strange to give him such a short term deal

Good stuff

no chance.

I quite liked the white socks under gullit

we've been the master of those in recent windows like.

Villa are about as fashionable as turnup jeans imo. Sunderland, Villa, Everton three clubs who are about as sexy as Jodie Marsh. Compared to Sunderland, they're more fashionable. compared to sunderland, stone wash jeans, cowboy ties and tie-dye shirts are fashionable

the premium you pay for an english player is madness. £24m for bent ffs? he's worth no more thsn £10-15m tops if you ask me.

He's hardly bottled it. I don't recall Harper making that many mistakes this season. He's usually pretty solid. Krul looks like he could potentially be better in the long term - his shot stopping and agility is better than harper's but he's still very raw and young

I might start a new thread - herpes vs Chlamydia

Yeah, we're all crying ourselves to sleep about that. Massively overshadowed the second time in a season we've played you off the park.

The mackem bitch makes no mention of the kid invading the pitch to push harper over but bangs on about the magpie's wings being clipped!?! At least she accepts Sunderland were shit and lucky to get a point. http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2011/ja...-premier-league

How can you be confident when you look at the two derbies? We the better side in both games.

Harper is decent enough for now, krul one for the future. Other areas need improving more urgently. I can't remember the last time we had such a weak collection of strikers

That combined with the fact that he's total shit and not even any Spanish sides fancy him