My two penneth so far........

I will start with a positive.

Haris Vukic has looked good in the pre-season. We heard alot about him over the last couple of years without seeing much on the field so hopefully this is his season.

Tavernier, Dummett, Sammy Ameobi, young up and comers have looked decent.

Cabaye has looked quality of the limited time he has spent on the pitch and although Ba has yet to score he has looked solid enough. Best to partner him for me by the way, not Shola or Lovenkrands.

Now the flip side......

Morale in the dressing room will be low. Last seasons captain has been shipped and two key players, Joey and Jose look likely to be next to go.

Hatem has picked up ANOTHER injury, hopefully only misses the first couple of games but is this a sign of things to come.... Dyer mark 2?

Player of the pre season to date..... Joey Barton

Player of the season last year..... Joey Barton

Player most likely to be sold/forced out..... Joey Barton

Erdinc doesnt want to come to us but we are still forcing the issue.... Owen anyone.....

The season starts in a couple of weeks and we are still playing right backs and youth players at LB instead of getting one in. I am still convinced the deal for Enrique is done and there will be an arrangement for him not to go until last day of the transfer window so we cant spend any of it.

Cant see us getting anything out of Arsenal, i just hope we arent stuffed so it doesnt do the lads confidence in for the derby game the following week. A bad result there and the heads could be right down......

Are we better than last season.....

Carroll out, Ba in

Nolan out, Cabaye in

Marveux and Abeid in

Maybe on paper but factor in the fact Enrique doesnt want to be here, Barton is winding everyone up, are we going to be as hungry for it this season as we were last year. The "team spirit" got us through alot last season. Will it be there this season.

I think we have enough quality to stop up but i get a gut feeling we will flirt with relegation throughout the year then start pulling away toward the last few games and end up 13th-15th.

 

summed up pretty much what my thoughts are

 

Wasnt worried... But now I am.

Cant see where the goals are going to come from and last night showed we have defensive problems with no cover whatsoever.

We had a threadbare squad last season and we have threadbare squad this season.

Ashley is now showing our intentions, crikey we have sold the only right winger we have today (I know hes not much good but we aint got any cover) apart from Jonas who is not a natural RW.

Jeez if we lose Barton and Enrique we will have such a thin squad thats got no leaders to keep spirits up.

The warning signs are there my fellow Geordies and the players are tweeting the facts albeit in dribs and drabs. The cracks are starting to show.

Remember last season in preseason when we got hammered 7-1. Last nights result may not be on the same scale in terms of the result but the impact could be just the same, however the key people who got the lads gan again are either gone or going......

Worrying times!

 

But the result could also have surfaced Cabaye or someone else as the next leader.

 

Our first choice 11 is really good. Add a top striker to that and it looks like a top half team, easy.

The problem is this though. We haven't even started the season and we've already lost Ben Arfa due to injury. Not for long I suppose, but Pardew's entire playing style this coming season has been based around Ben Arfa and Cabaye.

Both of them have took little part in pre-season.

It's been a shambles of epic proportions.


A few injuries (which we have already) and we look wafer thin in squad depth. Academy graduates and journeymen that just aren't up to the task.


This Erding saga is laughable. As if Mike Ashley will even spend the money anyway. We may get another striker in, but it will be a Bosman or a cheap deal from someone recently frozen out at his club.

This sort of transfer policy doesn't cut it. Not when you have £40m from sales.

I feel Ashley will find out soon enough that you can't run a football club like a stale, sweat-smelling discount sports shop.

 

The Erding saga is a complete waste of time.

1.) He says he wants to stay.
2.) His club want him to stay.
3.) His agent says he is staying.

Thus I cannot get around my head why our numpties upstairs think he would move. Its laughable. Now players are coming out and basically saying. "Go play for them.... f*** that the owners are muppets" and openly stating it. We have been snubbed by about 10 forwards around the world in the last 4-8 weeks and the only players we have managed to get in apart from Cabaye (who i do think is a good player) are injury prone, too young or unknown.

The club have been saying they have been TRYING to sign players knowing fine well its not gonna happen. At first we all thought that things looked promising but now we can clearly see its just lies to keep us off their backs.

PROVE ME WRONG ASHLEY! SURPRISE US ALL!

 

I think there is no argument that pre season has been an unmitigated disaster, and that in turn has led to frustration, which then has the knock on effect of a dipping morale and the media doom mongers latching on and making even the slightest tweet/comment a major incident ..

I'm not convinced that the dressing room has disintegrated as many are saying, that's just rumour - Joey & Jose have not had their ego's massaged by any major clubs making actual bids for them as was widely reported would happen by the paps .. so they're probably feeling a little bruised .. and Ben Arfa's injury took the gloss of the initial feel good factor everyone had a couple of weeks ago ..

That said, with a months to go in the transfer window, and the team back in blighty and all together again things will once again start to move .. agreed if Erdinc (and not his agent) is messing NUFC about then just cut him loose and move on to the next target, whoever that may be ..

There's been relatively little transfer movement this summer, so far, compared to previous windows by most EPL teams so with pre season 'tours' out of the way we can probably expect things to start rolling again .. so, crack out the camomile tea and sign up for some relaxation classes as the anxiety and frustration is only going to get worse .. not sure why we're not used to this, it's nothing new ..

Still confident we'll get the striker we need and ANother player .. Joey will still be here until January at least, have the same doubts over Jose as everyone else ..

 

i just think we are being strung along with the Erdinc sage and its all a ruse to try and show we are still trying to bring in a decent striker. God help us if Ba gets injured and we have to rely on Shola / Love / Best up front.

 

Er Ba will get injured. And so will Shola given he is the most injury prone player at the club. Actually Best seems to like injuries too. Lover has a fair few too but usually manages to get himself on the pitch. I'm not helping am I, I will shut up.

 

don't know where this threadbare squad thing comes from we've got a bigger squad than chelsea the difference is quality

 

Agree with everything gotcoffee said

 

Am I the only one who's not that bothered? So many doom mongers and pessimists just looking for drama.

 

exactly. that's where the 'threadbare' thing comes from though... we don't have strength in depth.

 

Not very often that happens

 

get real outside of the top six who does have the quality in depth compare our squads to the likes of villa/Everton/QPR/Swansea/Wigan/Blackburn/Mackems/Fulham/Norwich/Stoke/West Brom/Wolves/Bolton then come out with the doom and gloom if our squad is lacking compared to those i think if you look you'll find our squad holds up well/better than the majority i have posted.....stop the doom and gloom **** we had a good season and have added quality to the squad yes we need a striker but the time to panic is on the last day of the window and we still don't have one not now

 

get real??

haha OK mate.


I think you'll find I'm not one of these annoying doom-mongerers that have surfaced since we lost a PRESEASON friendly and Barton/Jose 'tweeted'.


See the whole of my other post in this thread, thanks.

 

re read my post was saying get real about our squad and glad you're not a doom merchant enough of those around as it is

 

I'd rather have our squad than any of the newly promoted sides or Wolves, Blackburn, Wigan, Bolton etc so I'd be very surprised if we were in a relegation dog-fight. We've got enough to be mid-table as it stands and I don't see Joey or Jose going yet.

 

Nobody else find Barton's twitter comments disrespectful to the new signings?

 

The new signing probably can't read English so they wouldn't mind either way, to be fair to them I could think of a large number of English players that probably can't read.....