Everybody's second favourite football club...

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shouldbeinbed

Rollin' along
Location
Manchester way
That second favourite club tag is a bit old hat now, a throwback to the days when you had Ardiles and Keegan in charge with their banzal 11 centre forwards and we'll always try to win 6-5 mentality. They're just another brand in a hideous Meccano set stadium that used to have a very stupid name now.

As one that follows their football at Croft Park up the coast and used to spend roughly equal time on the Gallowgate and Fulwell end's of the big clubs, The Mags and Mackems both need a kick up the backside reality check if they want to be better than lower-mid table nonentities. The league is improving and as shown blatantly with Mike Amos's northern league isolationist stance, the North East simply isn't keeping pace nationally with football moving forwards into ever more expensive corporate blandity at the top level and stupid amounts of money to run clubs hoping to make the league further down. Look at Gateshead last week sacking Ian Bogie, a decent man and a very good manager who, albeit with a £20 million sugar daddy, has dragged them from being utter no hope dead men in the lower reachers of the Northern Premier regional div 1 to one of the consistently better teams in the Conference, a couple of years time and they'd be very realistic promotion chances far more so than many of the the ex-league clubs, like how Burton Albion went about it.
A first bad run of results after a pretty outstanding 6 years and he's gone without a blink. The Tyne mentality is not one conducive to building solid foundations.

Newcastle still has the same nonsensical sense of entitlement like West Ham and Tottenham living in this fantasy land of expected success completely at odds with over half a century of stark reality and hold a delusion that the rest of us are surprised and upset when they fail year after year after year after year after year after year after year after year after year after year after year. You mags need to get over last year and see it for the Blip that it really was. Remember Peter Reid's first top flight season with Sunderland a decade back, a few surprise decent loanees (Shay Given being the most notable) and being a bit of an unknown quantity, they were second at Christmas & finished outside of Europe by a point. It took the rest of the league a couple of games first hand to suss him out and realise he hadn't got a Plan B, next season, disasterous. Same with Pardew in my opinion.

Maybe your lot shouldn't have been so implaccably resistent to Allardyce and his ideas or so trigger happy with Houghton. Both are better off in real terms this year and from the starting point of both their current clubs are massively out performing your never did anything of note as a manager and on the scrapheap until being gifted a last chance by his poker buddy.
 

Archie_tect

De Skieven Architek... aka Penfold + Horace
Location
Northumberland
How can Sunderland, Middlesbrough and Newcastle ever hope to keep talented players or afford to attract quality player to stay for long so far from the draw of the big clubs? The stadium is locked into the St James's Conservation Area and should never have been allowed to stay where it is, at least Sunderland and Middlesbrough had the intelligence to move out to better stadia... but where could you put a new St James's Park without getting right up the noses of everyone in Newcastle? No-one in their right minds would allow Ashley to build on the Town Moor... it's all too much hassle.
 

shouldbeinbed

Rollin' along
Location
Manchester way
Despite all his dodgy money-making tricks, he's stuck with it... :laugh:

More that he is stuck with it than he has stuck with it

He was desperate to flog the club for a quick buck, stopped spending on them and saw them relegated before the penny dropped he needed to speculate to accumulate or he'd see his investment go the way of Leeds or Portsmouth.

He put an entirely unrealistic £400 million price tag on them and sat on his 'arris expecting the offers to flood in. they didn't
 

Archie_tect

De Skieven Architek... aka Penfold + Horace
Location
Northumberland
That's easy Greg, they just aren't up to it!
 
You're so far from the pitch, you may as well be watching from the Metro Centre, which you can see more clearly from some of the seats than you can see action on it. You need a telescope the size of the Jodrell Bank one to get any idea of what's happening several hundred metres below you
1/4 mile apparently between the away supporters area and the goal at the opposite end of the pitch. I'd have trouble seeing that far.
 

DiddlyDodds

Random Resident
Location
Littleborough
I'd be amazed if it was anybody\s second favourite club, particularly if they'd bothered actually going to that atrocious stadium they play at. You're so far from the pitch, you may as well be watching from the Metro Centre, which you can see more clearly from some of the seats than you can see action on it. You need a telescope the size of the Jodrell Bank one to get any idea of what's happening several hundred metres below you. We've stopped going to that one because of the way they have us over (financially) and we won't put up with it.

Plod kept all the coaches in the park once and made us all wait until about 5 mins before kick off before allowing them down to the ground, we got off and went through the turnstile as the kick off whistle was blown, by the time we climbed the 4000 flights of stairs to our seats we were 1-0 down .

Never went again , as you say what a rip off it is where away fans are put and treated.
 

ianrauk

Tattooed Beat Messiah
Location
Rides Ti2
I'm with Paul
St James Park is a crap hole for visiting supporters.
To get to your seat you need an oxygen canister to help you scale the stairs.
Overrated club, overrated ground, overrated fans.
 

dellzeqq

pre-talced and mighty
Location
SW2
I don't see the problem. He's got the same players as last year. Coloccini isn't the same player as last year, but that's a head not a heart thing, and he's still a good player. Cabaye and Ben Arfa are still good players. Krul is still a good goalkeeper. And Ba is brilliant.

Here's a prediction, Newcastle to finish in the top half.
 
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