David Kelly

New Alt J album has leaked. Rather good.

Leazes surely isn't it?

Judging from the last six months he lost the dressing room a long time ago.

Hopefully it will influence Pardew to fuck off though!

It's really impressive how professionally they have went about this and personally I agree that remaining anonymous is the right way to go to keep personalities out of the equation. I hope it's a success (whether or not Ashley listens to any protests) and it's nice to see some genuine action.

Yeah I personally think he could have contributed last season (had be been fit which he probably wasn't for most of the time) but if that's a football decision then so be it. A lot of other supporters don't rate him so I don't think that's necessarily the club acting badly.

Exactly. The man is just incompetent and people are letting their hatred for Ashley blind them to the obvious. The other one I hate is when people say you should always back the manager as he's managging our team and trying to do the best he can. By that rationale no matter how bad it gets whoever has the job is always the best man for it. Morons.

I'm sure he'll find something else to blame.

I'm not really sure what the club have done wrong with this like. You could say that they could have paid for his treatment but he is (I assmume being a premiership footballer) a weathly bloke so I don't really think it's out of order to for him to have paid. It doesn't sound like they have put him under any pressure to come back when he wasn't ready and they've just decided he wasn't a necessary member of the team. Throughout it all they respected his privicy. I'm all for having a go at our current regime but I can't really see a problem with what's went on here.

If he's here much longer I've no doubt he will.

It always seemed that his signing was something of an oppertunistic attempt by Ashley to make money off him becuase he wouldn't return to the Urkraine. Seems odd that a kid who did nothing wrong in the friendly he played hours after signing, scored and had a hand in another goal in the reserve game he played and has a good scoring record wherever he's played, looks so bad he can't even get a chance on the bench.

No there wasn't a lot about the whole thing that made sense either way really

There's no way he's younger than me. Nearer me fathers age. I took the missed a mornings takings to be from Saturday rather than a trip along whitley road. Maybe I'm mistaken though.

.com are suggesting that the club have actually allowed him to home to Argentina for his treatment and (hopefull) recovery while still honouring his contract. I'm not sure where they get this from but I hope it's true and fair play to them if that is the case.

I think there is still a reasonable amount of people who still don't want to see him out. Personally I find that staggering but you can't underestimate the stupidity of some of our supporters.

What I find more annoying at the moment is view of some people that seems to be that Pardews lack of final say in transfers some way absolves him of being a completely shit manager. Yes he may have been able to see that we needed to sign a proven striker and may have even asked for one (no doubt in a very forcefull way too!) but that doesn't mean he needs to use a tactic of trying to hump the ball up to Rivere who's on his own. It also doesn't mean that he should stick with the same set piece for four years that has never had any success. And it doesn't absolve him for headbutting (sorry pushing) an opposition player. I had a fair argument about this with some of the lads I play football with in the pub last night (which also included the old better the devil you know argument). I really can't understand how intelligent people can defend him at all now.

Best of luck to both Jonas and toonotl. Hopefully this just explains why Jonas has been away from the club and very little has been made of his absence. It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if they have just told him to fuck off and deal with it himself. I have no respect at all for anyone in the clubs hirachy now so nothing like would come as a shock any more. That said I really hope it's not the case and something has just been misinterpreted.

Aye. A couple of my mates sit right behind the dugout (close enough for Pardew to tell one of them to "shat ap you mappett" when he was telling him he's shit last season) and they said that you could hear him shouting hit shola every time he was on the pitch and Williamson or Colo got the ball.

I've just tried printing one out at work man. It's fient as fuck. I need to see if we have any spare cartridges.

Depends how me ink holds up

I'll certainly be printing one of them off before Saturday

Hopefully they are doing enough to get most of the crowd worked up against him on Saturday so he can't take it any more and resigns. There are a growing number of journalists who are saying Ashley wants him out now but wants him to resign and there certainly seems some logic there. In his post match interviews on Saturday he looked a beaten man so hopefully he will for once do the honorable thing.

Anyone who hasn't watched the ESPN piece with Shakka and Stewart Robson from just before Pardew arrived really should do. First of all it's refreshing to see pundits not just trot out the same shite about managers and actually question what he would bring to us and highlight his issues. Robson particularly sticks the boot in and I have so say he perfectly predicts what would happen with Pardew. He says that Pardew will tell you he plays attacking football but doesn't (backed by Shakka confirming that when he played under Pardew they were told to hit Marlon Harewood early). He says there is no creativity in his midfields. He says he's not a fan of his touchline antics and that when things are going well it's all about Pardew but when things go badly he hides in his dugout. Hislop also questioned how he would be able to handle senior players with big egos, Barton, Carroll & Nolan are mentioned. None of them are here now and neither is Ben Arfa funnily enough. You would honestly think they had seen the future and were telling us what would happen here. Of course Pardew isn't totally to blame, the players that are here should have some professional pride at the very least and he should have been given a new striker and centreback this summer but none of that excuses Pardew's failures. He should be able to do better with what he has. He should be able to construct a team with some sort of attacking idea. He should be able to come up with more set piece ideas than floating it to Williamson at the far post. And he shouldn't be head butting opposition players and calling opposition manager old cunts or pushing linesmen. All of this is beyond him so he's clearly not (as Charlton, West Ham and Southampton have already realised) capable of doing the job.

I thought he didn't look particularly trim when he came on like. He's a professional athlete not a lad who works a full time job, has ten pints on a saturday night followed by a kebab and plays for the local pub the next morning. That photo doesn't make him look bad but he looked (comparatively) tubby last night. Personally I would be delighted to be in that shape but I'm not the professional footballer.