Topic: Official: Andy Carroll signs on a free

[hobshobs]

I can't believe that someone think we are even worse than the relegated season. 

Do you ever read things and take it in? I said "With the squad he's got to hand he is easily the worst." Pointless trying to converse with some on here. Zero by name, ZERO UP TOP obviously

[Unbelievable!]

If you want to compare in relation to squad strength I would say last season he was easily the best manager since SBR. This season goes down as a major disappointment of course, but overall he hasn't done worse for us than the likes of Sounness and Joe f***ing Kinnear, and that's only going back a decade, let alone 45 years...

[Teasy]

Once again a master class in planning from our owner. Keep Pardew and let his number 1 transfer target go to another club without even putting a bid in.

So you think if we keep Pardew we should also start allowing him to make the signings?  That sounds like a really bad idea.

[QuakesMag]

Once again a master class in planning from our owner. Keep Pardew and let his number 1 transfer target go to another club without even putting a bid in.

So you think if we keep Pardew we should also start allowing him to make the signings?  That sounds like a really bad idea.

on the level of keeping Pardew.

[Skeletor]

Once again a master class in planning from our owner. Keep Pardew and let his number 1 transfer target go to another club without even putting a bid in.

So you think if we keep Pardew we should also start allowing him to make the signings?  That sounds like a really bad idea.

on the level of keeping Pardew.

[Mr. Slugworth]

I'd prefer us to sign someone that's good at scoring goals like.

[Zero]

I can't believe that someone think we are even worse than the relegated season. 

Do you ever read things and take it in? I said "With the squad he's got to hand he is easily the worst." Pointless trying to converse with some on here. Zero by name, ZERO UP TOP obviously

Easily the worst?  With a squad that we were even forced to play the likes of Sammy and Shane last Christmas?  Simpson as center back cover? Jonas as left back? And the all mighty Ameobi as our only cover for Cisse?  With only Obertan as our real winger? With 3 french imports who are thrown to the fire without any time for settling down and adjust to the league?

Are you serious?

[Beren]

I can't believe that someone think we are even worse than the relegated season. 

Do you ever read things and take it in? I said "With the squad he's got to hand he is easily the worst." Pointless trying to converse with some on here. Zero by name, ZERO UP TOP obviously

Easily the worst?  With a squad that we were even forced to play the likes of Sammy and Shane last Christmas?  Simpson as center back cover? Jonas as left back? And the all mighty Ameobi as our only cover for Cisse?  With only Obertan as our real winger? With 3 french imports who are thrown to the fire without any time for settling down and adjust to the league?

Are you serious?

Out of interest which squad in recent times is better than the one we have?

[BillClinton]

nufc.com were saying that since we allegedly have a 25% sell-on clause, we only need to bid £11.25m to match. It's a lot more reasonable at that price, in my opinion.. Liverpool still probably wouldn't want to sell to us though.

[Zero]

I can't believe that someone think we are even worse than the relegated season. 

Do you ever read things and take it in? I said "With the squad he's got to hand he is easily the worst." Pointless trying to converse with some on here. Zero by name, ZERO UP TOP obviously

Easily the worst?  With a squad that we were even forced to play the likes of Sammy and Shane last Christmas?  Simpson as center back cover? Jonas as left back? And the all mighty Ameobi as our only cover for Cisse?  With only Obertan as our real winger? With 3 french imports who are thrown to the fire without any time for settling down and adjust to the league?

Are you serious?

Out of interest which squad in recent times is better than the one we have?

On paper it looks like this year is the strongest.  In fact it isn't, due to the factors I've mentioned above.  I even forget to mention we got a captain who suddenly become "homesick" and tried to engineer a move away during January, and then further missed a few months after a stylish-but-meaningless acrobatic clearance.  You know what without Mbiwa we definitely would be relegated, imagine it's Williamson at the back instead of Mbiwa. 

Last year we were fuming that we only got Raylor as our back up side back. This year in many occasion we even hoped Raylor's there instead of Jonas. Oh yea we can have a starting eleven that looks invincible (in which I agree) but what's the cover for them? s***s and/or amateurs.

[Beren]

When was the last time that wasn't the case though?

[LateRegistration]

I can't believe that someone think we are even worse than the relegated season. 

Do you ever read things and take it in? I said "With the squad he's got to hand he is easily the worst." Pointless trying to converse with some on here. Zero by name, ZERO UP TOP obviously

Easily the worst?  With a squad that we were even forced to play the likes of Sammy and Shane last Christmas?  Simpson as center back cover? Jonas as left back? And the all mighty Ameobi as our only cover for Cisse?  With only Obertan as our real winger? With 3 french imports who are thrown to the fire without any time for settling down and adjust to the league?

Are you serious?

Out of interest which squad in recent times is better than the one we have?

One could even argue the relegation season squad was on paper one with which we shouldn't have been relegated. Our strikers were Owen, Viduka, Martins, Lovenkrands and still had Carroll, Shola. If you look at some of the rest of the players the Taylors, Nolan, Barton, Beye, Bassong, Collocini, Jonas, Enrique, Duff, Guthrie.

Fair enough in hindsight its easy to see that some of the players were on a downward trajectory, some were much better after settling - Nolan, Enrique, Collocini. But we don't know whether the likes of Cisse, Tiote will pick up form, we don't know whether our recent arrivals will be better once they have settled. 

[Mole_Toonfan]

I can't believe that someone think we are even worse than the relegated season. 

Do you ever read things and take it in? I said "With the squad he's got to hand he is easily the worst." Pointless trying to converse with some on here. Zero by name, ZERO UP TOP obviously

Easily the worst?  With a squad that we were even forced to play the likes of Sammy and Shane last Christmas?  Simpson as center back cover? Jonas as left back? And the all mighty Ameobi as our only cover for Cisse?  With only Obertan as our real winger? With 3 french imports who are thrown to the fire without any time for settling down and adjust to the league?

Are you serious?

Out of interest which squad in recent times is better than the one we have?

One could even argue

Should have stopped there.

[Zero]

This is our squad for the relegated season:
Given, Beye, Coloccini, Bassong, Enrique, Jonas, Barton, Nolan, N'Zogbia, Owen, Martins
Covers: Harper. Raylor, Saylor, Cacapa, Guthrie, Duff, Smith, Geremi, Butt, Lovenkrands, Ameobi, Viduka, Carroll
Ignored: Milner, Xisco, Edgar

I don't think it was that s*** on paper as well.  However we all knew what happened.

[Skeletor]

I remember us doing okay before the January transfer window. Not well granted but a repeat of the same form over the second half of the season would have seen us comfortably safe in mid table (same as the two seasons before). It's when we sold Given and N'Zogbia and had to change our manager twice that it all went to s***. We had 23 points on the 14th January 2009. We finished with 34...

[Zero]

When was the last time that wasn't the case though?

It sounds strange but i do think the team we were able to field out last year has better quality on average. Tiote, Cabaye and Colo were incredible last season, Ba, Cisse and HBA just cannot stop scoring goals, and Krul were having a career year as well.  Most of them were free from injuries and always available for league matches.

[Beren]

When was the last time that wasn't the case though?

It sounds strange but i do think the team we were able to field out last year has better quality on average. Tiote, Cabaye and Colo were incredible last season, Ba, Cisse and HBA just cannot stop scoring goals, and Krul were having a career year as well.  Most of them were free from injuries and always available for league matches.

For fairness, I'd like to point out in the season you've picked Shola got almost double the game time than he did this season, Sammy got more minutes, we had three centre-backs for the entire season (a touch more serious than Jonas having to play LB after two recognised left-backs in Santon and Haidara were unavailable I think you'll agree), we had to field Simpson-Perch as a CB pairing on one occasion (which, again trumps your 'Simpson as CB'offering) and we didn't have Debuchy, Sissoko, Haidara, MYM and Gouffran for half a season, or Anita for a full season.

Oh, and f***ing Obertan got over three times as much game time. Leon Best was good I grant you, but he wasn't that good.

This is our strongest squad in a good while. Not perfect, but not even a a fifth as bad as some will have you believe*. We're not Chelsea/Man Citeh, and we've never in my lifetime (even under SBR/Keegan) had like-for-like replacements all over the park.

It's very easy to pick the odd game and say "oh but Dabizaz had to play right-back that game" in emergency situations - emergency situations will happen every season - the trick is to not be so catastrophically s*** a manager, that your team isn't ready to adapt to new personnel, because your team will have an ethos and a strategy which isn't centred on individual performances bailing the team out. Pardew has a fantastic squad - even this season with injuries/absentees.

His complete failure to impose any kind of style on the team last season during our very fortuitous, largely injury-free season is the reason why we couldn't rotate players even if we did have cover all over the pitch. That's why he is a contender for shittest manager we've had.

* - I don't think Ashley will remove Pardew in time for this to be fully repudiated as it ought to be, sadly

[Beren]

4, 3, 2, 1...

[Ronaldo]

When was the last time that wasn't the case though?

It sounds strange but i do think the team we were able to field out last year has better quality on average. Tiote, Cabaye and Colo were incredible last season, Ba, Cisse and HBA just cannot stop scoring goals, and Krul were having a career year as well.  Most of them were free from injuries and always available for league matches.

I'm not having that at all. Cabaye and Tiote had good games and bad games. Tiote had far more bad than good, actually. But it was ignored because we were getting goals and winning games.

[QuakesMag]

What a bizarre way of looking at things.  Saying that the 2008/09 team was decent enough on paper and shouldn't have been relegated as some sort of f***ed up justification for making your case for Pardew?  Somehow this empowers Pardew because he avoided relegation by the skin of his nutsack?

Some people need to learn some simple basica programming to understand simple cause and effect algorithms.

[Zero]

Beren, that's not a fantastic squad. I would never call a squad "fantastic" with Shola and Obertan as "covers". My point is, last season we were f***ing lucky to have most of our core players available and so even if we have to play the likes of Sammy and Obertan our system/performance was not massively affected. You should agree with this. We were able to put out a better team last season due to luck. This season we have a better squad but we were unable to put out a better team on average (nevermind Pardew's idiotic prudence).  Our squad is f***ing thin that without Colo/Cabaye/Cisse we are done. This is not a fantastic squad, never. And the ultimate criticism lies on Ashley and Llambias, who refuse to gave Pardew long-dued resources until the last last moment.

Just to clarify, Pardew deserved the sacking because he should do a lot better even with the injuries.  I would not argue for this.  But then I definitely would not agree that "this is the lowest point ever". To say "we avoided relegation with this squad" is a lower point than "relegation a few years ago" is f***ing ridiculous.

[Zero]

What a bizarre way of looking at things.  Saying that the 2008/09 team was decent enough on paper and shouldn't have been relegated as some sort of f***ed up justification for making your case for Pardew?  Somehow this empowers Pardew because he avoided relegation by the skin of his nutsack?

Some people need to learn some simple basica programming to understand simple cause and effect algorithms.

Read all the posts before replying, please. Don't tell me you agree with hobshobs that relegation was not the lowest point in recent times.

[QuakesMag]

I will definitely agree with you there, Zero.

[QuakesMag]

and yes I did read the posts.  I just thought the reasoning in that part was a bit off.  This is in no way worse than relegation though.  Anyone who actually thinks that has recently been chasing the dragon.

[Zero]

When was the last time that wasn't the case though?

It sounds strange but i do think the team we were able to field out last year has better quality on average. Tiote, Cabaye and Colo were incredible last season, Ba, Cisse and HBA just cannot stop scoring goals, and Krul were having a career year as well.  Most of them were free from injuries and always available for league matches.

I'm not having that at all. Cabaye and Tiote had good games and bad games. Tiote had far more bad than good, actually. But it was ignored because we were getting goals and winning games.

We have the best defense when we got Colo, Tiote and Cabaye together. As an individual Tiote didn't play well, but our defense deteriorated a lot when we played Guthrie instead of Tiote last season. Defense was the key for our 5th position, that's why I included Tiote there.

Not this season though. A complete disaster.