acrossthepond

There's only one person at the club who is responsible for our pathetic also-ran status and it's Mike Ashley. For him, and him alone, this season is going exactly to plan. Pardew can't be happy at the complete lack of backing, support, or any investment in the team whatsoever - he keeps spouting his bullshit so he can keep the biggest job he'll ever get. The players can't be happy at seeing our best player sold with no replacement and the absolute lack of any interest in the club from higher-up surely percolates through to them. They're on holiday already, Pardew is out of his depth and has been hung out to dry, and Ashley doesn't give a fuck as long as we stay up.

I'm also considering going 'on loan until the end of the season without an option to buy.' NUFC will always be my heart and soul, I was born into this club and can't escape it, but it's so soul-wrenchingly wretched at the moment, and the fact that there's no end in sight whatsoever is what makes it unbearable. It was a real chore to turn the match on today. Normally with a 2:45 (for me) kickoff like this one I'd be busting a gut to get home from work, but not today and not since the transfer window closed. I'm thinking about following Palace as a second team as well. An interesting mix of players there, some of whom have a bit of class about them, and much more spirit than we're showing at the moment.

I don't think there's a team in this league who wouldn't fancy playing us. We look truly dire, despicably so, and I feel for the people who pay to watch those disgraceful imposters who stroll about in black and white, the fraud who picks them, and the fat cunt who has dragged us down to this level. This club needs to be rebuilt from top to bottom in the summer - owner, manager, coaching staff, and playing staff. We're going nowhere but down at the moment.

What a magnificent 45 minutes of football. Welcome to the rest of our season.

Speaking of comedy, that finish from Cisse.

Comedy defending from Santon there.

But when his prickishness is affecting his game, then it does make a difference. The local-hero centre-of-attention crap is what causes him to do his pointing routine, try improbable touches/controls, carry the ball miles out of defence for no good reason, argue with refs, take the piss out of the opposing keeper, and spend more time on making himself look good than on executing the basics of defence, which makes him an unreliable and therefore shit defender. All of that is IMO of course.

How many times have City beaten them since the takeover? I might just be selectively remembering here, but I can't shake the feeling that the mackems always seem to get a result against City.

Taylor is a known quantity. He's fucking gash and has been for years. Mbiwa on the other hand is still adjusting to a new league (it's been a full year now, but we all remember how awful Colo was in his first year) and hasn't had a settled run in the team in a while. I'd play Mbiwa every day of the week and twice on Sundays before Taylor got a sniff. That's not to say Mbiwa has been a defensive colossus, because he hasn't, but Taylor is a rent-a-quote moron who's been coasting for years on a decent season and his "local lad" rubbish.

And the mooslims.

Whoop de fuckin do. The damage is done. Fuck you Ashley, nobody is fooled by this blatant scapegoating.

He gives it both barrels now that the Ronnie is banned, but he used to be a run-of-the-mill Ashley lickspittle as recently as last season. Don't be fooled. Ryder just scopes out N-O and toontastic and writes what he thinks the best-informed posters are saying. Not that he needed to do any 'research' to know the fans' opinion on that disaster on Saturday.

Pardew is past the point of no redemption for me now, just like the numpties who run the club from above him. To be beaten by that pack of inbred cloggers 3 times going, and two 0-3 losses at home, is inexcusable. But that won't stop Pardew from trying to make excuses. This is NUFC: Players who don't give a fuck, a puppet as manager, a drunken moron decades past his sell-by date, and a fat chancer who only sees $$$$$$$$$.

Me too, sad to say. It's going to be an ugly mood after the past month's fiasco and if the mackems score first, all hell could break loose.

Don't worry, CT and BigWalrus will soon be along to tell us what good business all of this was and how pushing for a European place is just not sustainable in today's Premier League or some such other utter bullshit. We finished 5th on minimal outlay in 2012. We weakened the squad in the subsequent transfer window. That tells you all that needs to be told about Mike Ashley's plan for this club. The only progress we're making is on the balance sheet.

Never going to happen.

If I can use a local example, fans of the New York Mets (baseball team) have an infamous creed: "There's always next year." They've been shit literally for decades but since there's no relegation in American sport, they just linger around the mid-bottom places of the division and occasionally make a desultory push for a play-off spot. But every year their fans lap up the bullshit from their general manager (like a director of football) and believe that next year they're going places, and next year they're going to spend big and attract the top players. Sound familiar? The excuse that we did our summer spending in January last year to save us from relegation is hard to argue with. But I think the 2012-2013 summer already demonstrated that there is no genuine ambition at this club except to avoid relegation, and I think this summer will prove it beyond all doubt. This window has been another disaster and it's obvious to all that Kinnear is utterly useless except, as you said, as a distraction for the fans, first taking pressure off Pardew and now off of Ashley for their respective failings. If we see Ashley jettison him before next season and somebody else brought in and empowered to go after players, then we'll know that this has all been part of some Ashley strategy. If we see Kinnear still hanging around like a bad smell and loan signings of players we first scouted 3 windows ago coming in to replace outgoing first team players, then we'll know (if we didn't already) that we're England's version of the Mets.

Yeah, I reckon he's there to be had if we up our bid just a bit. Maybe this is Fat Mike's idea of playing hardball.

That's fucking bullshit. Another decision made against us by our friends at the FA. Did Ashley forget the Christmas cards or something?

Or, maybe, it was the obvious and massive gulf in class between our midfielders and theirs. We were simply better than them. We were forced into playing one striker one way or the other because of injuries, but I maintain that Remy is not suited for a lone striker role and has been ineffectual in that role throughout the season. He's looked a lot better, and so have we, I'd say, when Shola was up front along side him. If we just swap the suspended Remy for Shola or de Jong on Saturday I believe we'll struggle.

Has to be him and Shola up front if Gouffran is injured. I thought Sissoko was brilliant through the middle yesterday but we might have to push him out wide again with Ben Arfa on the other side - needs must and I don't think Sammy is ready to start a derby, especially one that might be a season-decider for both of us like this one. More likely is more of the one-striker shit from Pardew with yesterday's formation except Shola in for Remy. It's all speculation until we see who's out and who's in, but I think Gouffran's fitness will be key to this game.

Aye, like I said, send him back at the end of his loan if it doesn't work out.

He's a player our scouts have been looking at for quite some time and I'm actually reasonably confident that he will be a success here. This is not a panic buy of some unknown name an agent thrust at us, it's a player who's been on the radar of our top scout and even if he isn't a smash hit, I feel like Carr knows what he's on about and that this is a player who can do a job for us in the Premier League. Most of our signings seem to fall into the "bargain" category (i.e. Ba, Cabaye, Marveaux, Amalfitano, Sissoko, Gouffran) or the "thoroughly and patiently scouted over multiple windows" category (i.e. Debuchy, Cisse.) This might be both. Nowt wrong with that, and if he's no good, we send him back at the end of his loan. The only problem here is that our esteemed owner and director of fuck-all are likely to think this it's job done after bringing in a striker when we've needed 2 (3 even, since Remy is not ours and Cisse and Shola may soon not be either) for years.

Very good.

As much as he and Mike despise it. I also saw on the BBC that we were "in the hunt for the dubious prize of a Europa League place." I don't consider it a dubious prize at all. I would love us to compete in it every year and think winning it is not beyond us (or any decent PL side like us) with the proper investment and ambition. You only had to see how well our second team did in it last time round to know if we qualify we're in with a shout of making the quarterfinals or beyond.