acrossthepond

I work Mondays and can't see any of our games that day, so this is a blow for me.

You sure it wasn't Ade Akinbiyi?

This division is woeful, and even with a squad of 15 first teamers backed up with another 6/7 young hopefuls, promotion will be achieved very very comfortably. This is not arrogance or delusion - this is based on knowledge of the fact that we have far too much quality in a veritable sea of mediocrity. Your right ofcourse but the crowd outweigh the crowd. How is baseless optimism any better than baseless pessimism? All the signs point to our inability to compete in the long term in this league and you're still wanting a parade for winning a handful of games as the season opens. Wait until we've got 6 or 7 injuries to first-team players and we're out at Blackpool in the pissing cold fielding the likes of Ngo Baheng and Tozer and then try to tell me we have 'far too much quality.' We've played 5 league games. There are 46 in this league. Let's not break out the champagne yet. Do we have a first XI that is better than any other first XI in this league? We do and I have said it many times. But NUFC's continued success depends on too many factors to assume as blithely as the two of you are doing. You both direly need a reality check and I hope for our sake it doesn't come in the form of a 4-0 humping off Sheff U because Danny Simpson and Nile Ranger weren't up to it.

Get fucked.

To be blunt my Owl friend, although I have plenty of respect for your club this is the attitude of a club who has given up and accepted becoming a "fallen giant", never making promotion pushes, never in contention to return to the top flight. We cannot allow ourselves to feel this complacency. Complacency is what sent us down in the first place.

Were you formerly known as 'I R Toon Fan?' What happened? Forgot your password?

Are you trying to be a fucking idiot or does it just come naturally? I was trying to have a reasonable debate about it, theres plenty of proper fans of newcastle and other clubs who dont see the premier league as the be all and end all - give me a cup and a day out at wembley any day. I will continue to criticise whenever a weakened team is played in any of the cups I think your above response shows who the fucking idiot is and by the look of it it comes quite naturally to you Listen, given the choice, yes, I would choose to win a cup. But we need to be realistic here. In cups, we will face top-flight opposition, and if we get far enough, almost certainly a top four team who will simply take us to pieces and it will all have been for nowt. If we focus on the league, we set ourselves a realistic task that, once achieved, will put us in a better position to make cup runs in the future. I wouldn't mind beating P'boro and advancing in the cup, of course, but only if we send out a significantly weakened side for any cup games.

Wenger certainly had some balls to pull that stunt, I have to say he went up in my estimation. I watched that game and never has it been more apparent that that Dean is the biggest cheater on two legs. Stonewall penalty appeal from Arshavin bluntly ignored, very soft penalty given after Rooney went down (but the ball was already bouncing out of play - he would never have reached it!), calls going Man U's way again and again.

Tuncay to Stoke for 5m. Excellent deal for them. Strange to think that in the age of 28mil for Lescott and whatever stupid amount it was for Glen Johnson, there are class players like Tuncay (5mil) and Chamakh (7mil) on the move for bargain prices.

Don't see it mentioned anywhere else - Everton have signed Distin from Portsmouth. Hopefully that will put paid to the Taylor - Everton links we've all had enough of.

Tramps the both of them, sickening groups of fans. How about the tumour chants for Roeder? Scum.

"We will not win automatic promotion." You don't say? Can't wait to see him stage his latest walk-out. Nice to see some mackems are finally realising what a serial bottler he is.

Fucking bullshit. There'll be no sale, it's as we predicted all along, just stringing us along until the transfer deadline.

Load of shite. The article states that he wants to leave Newcastle so he can play for Argentina, but then says Maradona's ok with him staying here as long as he plays well. It also says he has been looking for a move away from us while also saying "whether he remains at Newcastle or moves to the Catalans isn't of great concern to him." The only quotes are him saying he'd leap at the chance to play for Barca - obvious - and that he's ok with playing as a wing-back. And all of that comes before the goal.com link

How much longer?

Ryan Taylor bumped up onto the right wing...oh joy.

Tudgay was class for them last season. Apart from him though that side is the kind of Championship dross that we will soon be. We'll beat them comfortably this time around, but come the return fixture when a few more of our PL-quality players have gone, the shoe will be likely on the other foot.

They're a proud club and I think there's plenty of similarities between us. I wish them well but can't see us losing on Wed.

And I see us getting mugged quite a few times before this season's over. OP is living in cloud cuckoo land.

Shocking stuff from that ref like but I admit I was hoping to see Warnock's face go red and steam start coming out his ears. His 'cheating' allegations are a bit off as well considering you can see some Bristol City players signalling it was a goal to the ref in that clip, after the Palace players try to talk to the linesman.

Shouldn't have let Lovenkrands go in the first place, he would've done a job in this division for sure. If we keep everyone we've still got (Duff going obviously) and get a proper manager in, we might well reach the promotion players. But I think it's obvious that won't happen.

Sign him up.

CT's irrational hatred of Jonas seems to be the new thing now that previous scapegoat Martins has gone. We will be worse off for losing him, I guarantee it.

Unexpected and deeply satisfying result. Been a while since I've had occasion to laugh and cheer during a match.

Apart from that glaring screwup at the start of the half I think Jonas has looked vastly better than his terrible performance last week. He actually took a shot, for one, and it gave us the corner we scored from. Reading have had good possession - this Karacem lad looks especially quality - but they have never looked like troubling us and I hope we can maintain this level of decent performance. Carroll a total non-entity in this game, as is Nolan.