Murrr

Oh but come on guys, it'll be "banter"! lolroflz

**Rolls eyes**

Thoroughly enjoyed the Murphys even though the sound wasn't great, especially their version of "Johnny I Hardly Knew Ya". I arrived pretty much just as The Briggs were coming off stage which I was pretty pissed at as I really wanted to see them... not much of a ska fan though, so the Mad Caddies didn't really do it for me.

Trying to serve someone on a phone is horrible, I've been working in retail part-time for over five years now and the ignorance of some twats is still astounding. These days I refuse to serve people who are on their phones though; if they're jabbering away I tend to find that a quick "back of the queue 'til you're off your phone, thanks" really gets on their tits.

I love winding up twattish customers.

Yeah, I thought it was great... I never thought I'd be able to sit through some dude talking for 3 hours and not get bored, but some of his stories were awesome. In fact, when he finished I almost got a fright when I looked at my watch and it was 11:30, seemed to go by so quick.

That's pretty savage like.

There was a fire in the block next door to us the other night (King Street). Me and my flatmate were watching the telly when we heard the alarm going off in the hallway; opened the door and shitloads of smoke poured through, we shat ourselves like. Fortunately one of our neighbours told us it was the next block, panic over. There was like three fire engines there, I don't think anyone was too badly hurt.

Some crazy-ass policeman then came to our door at half past midnight to see if we'd seen anything suspicious, and some woman from STV knocked on the door at 9am trying to get an interview for the news, which we didn't give.

Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darknes," and after that Conrad McCarthy's "The Road," ya dig?

Managers blaming the players is one of my pet hates; I'm of the opinion that if a player isn't performing to his full potential then it is the job of the manager to motivate said player into getting the performances out of him. For example, when Big Sam had a go at our players for underperforming a few months ago, I felt like driving down to Newcastle, going round his house and yelling "play them in the right positions then min!" at him. Bah.

The appointment will either turn out to be a masterstroke or an absolute car crash. Obviously I'm hoping that King Kev can pull it all together (which I think he will do in the short term at least), but there is still some doubt lingering in the back of my mind. I think he is FAR better suited to the job than Big Sam though.

I don't think I want Shearer around actually, it would undermine Keegan's authority having him hanging around being groomed for the job. That said, I'd rather have him than Dennis Wise (as has been reported in a couple of papers over the last few days).

ha ha excellent wind up. However I will justify it with these conclusions:

the reason all those managers have been sacked is because of Freddy Shephard's ineptitude and rash decision making AAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNNNDDDDDDDDDD:

Kenny Dalglish: took over from kevin keegan when we were in 2nd place mid season, finished 2nd. Signed Shay Given and Gary Speed. good work. summer time = sell all the good players we have and replace with below average foreign players like Andreas Anderson and Guivarch. When they weren't quite shit enough he signed fucking JOHN BARNES, IAN RUSH AND STUART PEARCE who were about 80 years old. Finished 13th. If you recall Keegan finished 3rd, 6th, 2nd and 2nd. You'll find the fans didn't actually call for Dalglish to be sacked when he was 6 games into the next season but Shephard decided that despite giving him lots of money to spend in the summer it wasn't worth giving him a chance.

THEN

Ruud Gullit: Strange appointment. didn't even live in Newcastle - he used to commute from Holland 3 days a week. he managed to make us finish in 13th and bought even more superb players like Frank Dumas and 8 million on Duncan Ferguson. he was sacked the following season when it was obvious he was shit and quickly turning us into aston villa - our decline would be comparable to arsenal's were wenger to leave now and dalglish sell all the players (obviously arsenal won cups first, but if keegan hadn't imploded it may have happened for the toon). Gullit was sacked when we lost 2-1 to worst premiership team ever Sunderland, having left top scorer Alan Shearer on the bench to prove a point.

Sir Bobby! Finished 11th twice in a row. SACK HIM! SACK HIM! Oh no wait, he was playing good football and making actively positive decisions that started to see an upturn in the club's fortunes. He signed many of the main stays of our current squad, including excellent youth players of the time (lua lua, nzogbia, milner, butt, carr, robert) but did waste money on (8 million)Carl Cort and Titus Bramble (who was highly rated back in teh day). Now then, after 2 years of mid table, but notable progress not seen under the last 2 piss take managers, Sir Bobby had us finish 4th, 3rd, then 5th. That's pretty good going for a team raped by gullit and dalglish who weren't 'given enough time'. enough time to what? fuck it up even worse than they had? Robson's next season started in bad form, a lot like spurs' this season and Jol was sacked too wasn't he? Robson was fired because Shephard was a cunt and rumours of no dressing room control made robson seem far less empowered than he should. So who else to sort out the dressing room nightmare which Keiron Dyer and Bowyer presented?

Graeme Fucking Souness. Finished 14th. Started even worse than Robson the next year.

Everyone must appreciate that he HAD to go. No one wanted him there in the first place. fans, the players, even the media weren't excited.

THEN

Glenn Roeder took over mid way through the next season (Souness was given half a season to prove everyone wrong) and we finished 7th and in a Uefa cup place. The next season, a cup which was Newcastle's to lose was lost due to Roeder's tactical non-know how as we lost a 2 goal AWAY advantage by playing in a style that completely suited AZ's Louis Van Gaal's vastly superior footballing knowledge. This game all but sealed Roeder's fate. He had just broadcast how very, very, very non premiership a manager he was in a very obvious way. For anyone who didn't see that game you won't understand and will say 'you fired a manager cos of one game lolz'.

Then BIG SAM

I wasn't too pleased he was appointed, but duely applied myself to support his team as I had the last few. He very quickly signed some players that seemed quite good, got rid of some bad wood and appointed 23 additional backroom staff to analyse EVERYTHING. All positives till we started playing THE WORST FOOTBALL I HAVE EVER SEEN NEWCASTLE PLAY. Week in, week out. Fucking hell it was boring. The dressing room had a revolt with one player (rumoured to be Butt) shouting in disbelief during a team talk "but what do we do when WE HAVE the fucking ball?!"

Allardyce was probably the best appointment Shephard could have made, but not the best Mike Ashley and Chris Mort could have. In fairness to Ashley, he put with half a season of this shit.

The only way to restore some sort of pride in the club was hire someone who understood the passion involved and how important the style of football is. Attacking football scores goals. Goals win games. We weren't going to get any of the top tier managers, and Wengers only come around every so often, so the best thing to do was get someone who understood the club, was good in the transfer market and had the backing of the fans and dressing room.

And this my friends, is the end of my essay that should have seen the time better spent on revising for my exam tomorrow.

Superb post above. I think we should have made a move for Sir Bobby when Keegan left the first time around actually; he'd have been the perfect man to carry on the progress that King Kev had made and of course he'd have been a bit younger so we'd have been able to have him around for longer. I do think that by the time we parted company with Bobby he was beginning to show signs of losing it (as evident in the last couple of months of his last full season in charge) and that we were right to dispose of him, but the timing was terrible and I'm disgusted at the way Fat Freddy treated him. We should've offered him a role upstairs in the boardroom that summer and brought in a new man, but that just isn't the Newcastle way, is it?

I think our problems stem not only from the ridiculous expectations of much of our fanbase but also from the ridiculous ineptitude from our board over the years. I was over the moon when Fat Freddy left the club just before the summer as I think he's done us no favours by making countless wrong managerial appointments over the years. While I will always give a new Newcastle manager my full backing, I wasn't happy with the appointments of Souness, Roeder and Gullit (although at least he had the good grace to hold his hands up and take the blame for his shortcomings) but I guess that's just how things go.

I'm not your typical deluded Newcastle fan; I don't think we should be in the top 6 every year, and I don't think we have some sort of God given right to be title contenders. I recognise the fact that we are, at the moment, a mediocre midtable side, but one with bags of potential. However, I don't see getting beaten by the likes of Wigan and Derby regularly acceptable for a club of our size, and I absolutely loathed Big Sam's disgusting 4-3-3 "if the ball enters our box just hoof it at Viduka or kick it in the stands, lads" style of football.

For this club to be successful (I'm convinced we're cursed tbh, no domestic tropheys in 52 years and all that) the manager needs to receive full backing from the board, and above all else, he needs TIME. Keegan will certainly get a lot more time than Sam did but I'm still worried that if results don't start to go our way then the board will make another rash decision and replace him with a nothing manager like David O'Leary.

I guess we're just the epitome of a badly run club *shrugs*

Such is the rollercoaster ride that is being a fan of Newcastle United. Wouldn't change a fucking thing though.

After a dire 0 - 0 draw with a Bolton side determined to play a hideous form of anti-football it's off to the Emirates on Saturday with our ridiculously depleted squad... Shola Ameobi for England!

Anyone going to Pittodrie tomorrow night? Got my tickets today, should be spectacularly dire.

They're pretty fun live but I think their music is ridiculous to the point of hilarity. On the one occaision I saw them the room was full of crazy fuckers waving plastic swords and shields in the air...

this will be the shittest album ever made by anything that resembles a human

Agreed, this and the new Metallica CD. Looks like 2008 will be the year of the old farts

my fondest memory of watching newcastle play was when they visited the abbey stadium to play cambridge in the old second division back in 1984 - we had gone over 30 games without a win (33 i think it was in the end) and the newcastle team featured keegan, beardsley and waddle and were gunning for promotion whilst we were already well relegated.

a young andy sinton scored with a penalty after 6 mins and we hung on for dear life to win 1-0, by the way we celebrated after the game you'd have thought we'd won the european cup! the faithful geordie travelling support just looked bemused!

Andy Sinton is a poor man's Ruel Fox

I have a MOTD video from 94 or something- their 30th anniversary one and there is a fantastic game between Newcastle and Arsenal where Malcom MacDonald scored a few in. It was for Arsenal I think as he just moved from Newcastle(or the over way round).

Brilliant game though.

It'll have been from Newcastle to Arsenal. Supermac... complete legend, bit of a cockend though. Still, he scored the goals and that's what matters.

....aaaaaand I'm done 8-). Now I've got a whole week with absolutely nothing to do, could get pretty boring...

Finished at 11am tomorrow, thank God. Criminal Law too, should be a piece of piss...

There was an interview with a deluded Newcastle fan on BBC's FA Cup programme last night: he intimated that he'd rather watch his side lose 7-6 than draw or win with an ugly performance.

What an idiot.

Unfortunately we have a lot of those... every club as a substantial mong quota in their fanbase, ours is waaaay above average. Just watching and listening to some of them on Sky Sports News, Jesus Christ... "I think Mike Ashley should take the job with Gazza as his assistant," without a hint of irony. Says it all really...

I saw that too... throughout the duration I was constantly wishing for someone to run up and smack the self-satisfied little shithorn upside the head with a big stick

Very one-sided arguement tbh, focusing on all of the negatives and none of the positives... no mention of the fact that he took us from the brink of the old Third Division to second in the Premiership . Yeah, I'm not living in the past...

I do have a couple of reservations (given his tactical mongness and temperament) but I can't but be really excited at the moment. He'll get more time than Sam as he is Mike's appointment and very popular with the fans, and he'll at least play the players in their right bloody positions. I'm a big fan of Sam Allardyce and if he was given time I do think he'd have been a success, but he played players in stupid positions (Zog at fullback when we've got a 6.5m LB sitting on the bench, Oba on the wing, Smith in midfield, Milner on the left) and tried to get us playing a formation that we clearly lacked the players for. He was far too slow to react to what he was doing wrong, which I'm very surprised by because I do think he's a terrific manager.

Keegan will galvanise us in the short term, no doubt about that... hopefully he'll have the presence of mind to bring in a creative midfielder, a right winger and a couple of defenders, then we should be able to make a decent push for a top 10 finish. The style of player doesn't bother me too much, I'd rather play boring winning football than sexy losing football (the whole "Newcastle would rather lose 5-4 than win 1-0" thing is bullshit btw) BUT I am looking forward to hopefully seeing a bit of invention from our players once again.

'Mon the KK

Calderwood now has 200,000 to spend from the sale of Chris Clark to Plymouth. Trained with them today and he will be playing for them on Saturday.

Very good bit of business I would say...

Good luck to him though.

Good news, just hope the money doesn't go towards someone like Scott Dobie...

You'll all be shouting for his head within 12 months when it starts going wrong, though........

Three months, tbh.

Yas min!

At the moment my head is saying "no" but my heart is saying "fuck yes!".

Let's see how this one pans out... at least we won't be playing this 4-3-3 long ball pish anymore .

My schedule has been pretty savage thus far... yesterday I had Legal System and Microeconomics with just a 1 hour gap between 'em, and this morning I had Management. I've got Criminal Law on Friday at 9am and that's me done, thank god.

I'm with you on the whole revision thing; I'm absolutely terrible at it. Still, having all four of my exams in such a condensed period kind of forced me to get off my arse a little earlier this time round.

Another lineup change? Dave loves that shit.

So what size is he? I'm really tall, but skinny, and a total wimp. Despite this, bams seem to think that "big"=tough and I never, ever get any hassle.

Ditto that. I'm 6' and have never had any trouble in the city centre, even up at the far end on Union Street on a Saturday night when the trolls come out to play. Meh, it's probably because I look like a caveman