Colo viser sin enorme hurtighet der.

Og der sin enorme hodestyrke. Klassespiller

Med den forsvarsfireren vi stiller i dag er det dømt til å gå til helvete.

Skaper vi flere enn 3 sjanser må jeg si meg fornøyd. Starter lovende med at Colo er på benken.  Kunne dog tenkt meg Guthrie sentralt og Løvenkrands på kanten på bekostning av en håpløs Nolan.

The Times say Martins is a doubt - has not trained this weekend.  Shearer apparently not impressed.

Vanskelig å si da de fleste av spillerene er ren møkk, men går for Beye.

Sir Bobby taler igjen, og som vanlig er det meste av det han sier rett.

 

The irony is that whereas most owners are arrogant enough to come into football and think they know it all, Ashley has been naive. He has acknowledged his lack of experience in the game and given his employees a free rein.

Wise, his cohort Tony Jimenez and Kinnear were all out of their depth and that is why the club are in such a mess and relying on an unlikely result at Liverpool today to keep their Premier League survival hopes alive.

I remember asking Ashley soon after the club signed Kevin Nolan in January what homework had been done on the player?

I wanted to know how many times he had been scouted and what reports had been done of him. Ashley shrugged, he genuinely didn't know the answer.

I told him I'd be more careful about spending his next £4.5 million! Who would have thought such a successful businessman would be so trusting.

My guess is that a lot of the recent signings at Newcastle have not been checked out properly. Wise thought Xisco was a good idea. So Ashley paid £5.7m for a striker who has gone on to score one goal all season.

I don't know who recommended Fabricio Colloccini, but Ashley put his hand in his pocket for another £10m. Colloccini would have struggled to get into Newcastle's reserves a few years ago.

When things started to get desperate in January, it seems the club started to listen a little less to Wise, and more to Kinnear.

But the result was the same - more of the wrong type of player. Nolan lacks mobility in an important area of the pitch, just what Newcastle didn't need!

Peter Lovenkrands was also signed. OK, he didn't cost any money, but that doesn't matter because he simply isn't good enough at Premier League level.

One of the few good players left, Charles N'Zogbia, went to Wigan. Newcastle got Ryan Taylor in return. I know for a fact Wigan were delighted with the deal - they never rated Ryan as a Premier League-class player.

None of these things were Ashley's fault, beyond the fact that he put the wrong people in the wrong positions and wrongly believed they knew what they were doing.

The penny may have dropped now. Certainly the appointment of Alan Shearer was the right thing to do, albeit arguably too late.
Alan Shearer

WORTHY: Alan Shearer is the right man for Newcastle job

And, of course, I wish Kinnear all the best in his recuperation after an operation because nobody likes to hear of a fellow football man being unwell.

Anyone mocking Alan for not turning things around yet doesn't understand what he's inherited. The only saving grace is that among the problems there are enough match-winners, Oba Martins, Mark Viduka, Damien Duff, Michael Owen, to try to keep the team up this season.

But there has to be a massive turnaround in the summer if Newcastle are going to improve long term. The squad is unbalanced, it is short of legs and pace and it is no fluke they are in the bottom three.

I hope Alan has the desire to see this job through, because I believe he has Ashley's confidence. In my view, Alan is the first person really worthy of the Newcastle hot-seat since I left in 2004.

What he lacks in experience, he makes up for in knowledge about the club and, more importantly, his knowledge of the game in general and his ability to communicate that knowledge and make positive decisions.

I have watched in disbelief and near horror at some of the things that have gone on at Newcastle in the past year.

Jaja, da var nedrykk et faktum. Ikke veldig mange som er overrasket over dette spillet og resultatet tipper jeg.

Jeg synes det er vanskelig å sammenligne.

Når Keegan kom inn hadde vi flere kamper igjen å spille en det vi har i dag, så vi hadde muligens en kamp eller to å prøve ut nye ting. Og ikke lå vi like langt nede som gjør i dag heller, situasjonen er langt mer prekær i dag enn det den var for Keegan når han kom.

En annen ting er det at 433 er et langt "enklere" system å innføre i et lag som er vant med 442 enn 352. Vi spilte egentlig ikke 433, Owen fungerte som en offensiv sentral midtbane spiller, men tok også mye av det defensive ansvaret. Så selvom vi hadde tre spisser på banen så gjorde Owen såpass mye bakover også at det ikke kan kalles en ren 433 formasjon. Resten av laget kunne fortsette mer eller mindre på samme måte som de gjør i et 442 system.

Enig, og det er bare å håpe at vi stiller i en vanlig 442 hjemme mot pompey slik at vi nok en gang slipper å kjempe i motbakke.