how big a game is birmingham v newcastle?

[TheChipPrince]

Brum, Brum, Brummies!!!! 1-0...

[TightEnd]

Brum, Brum, Brummies!!!! 1-0...

Newcastle go to Birmingham playing a man short in midfield??!?!

KK strikes again

[kinboshi]

Owen looks like a lost little boy....

[TheChipPrince]

Owen looks like a lost little boy....

Same to you Phillips, pff...

[kinboshi]

Owen looks like a lost little boy....

Same to you Phillips, pff...

LOL you daft arse!!

[Karabiner]

Should I stick or twist ?

I'm on Brum. @ 2.42 and could lay 1.42 giving me a free £x, but the Nwcs. look so clueless...

[scotty2hatty]

Owen looks like a lost little boy....

[kinboshi]

Owen looks like a lost little boy....

He's much more suited to being in the box than running around in the middle of the park.

[TightEnd]

credit where its due. Newcastle are giving it a good go with a lot of spirit

encouraging, whatever the result tonight

[TightEnd]

very decent second half performance I thought by Newcastle

perhaps a slight lack of confidence, understandable, by Keegan in taking Martins off when the game looked there for the winning.

Fulham game next is a big one!!

[Rooky9]

1-1, never in doubt! 

Out of that 11 I'd like to see 5 still in the squad next year, probably three starters. Some awful players out there. Cliche time - was good to see a bit of character and bottle in the second half. It lines us up to put it out of reach by winning our next three home games - you can't really ask more than the opportunity we have.

They'll be a few more twists yet though!

[mondatoo]

very decent second half performance I thought by Newcastle

perhaps a slight lack of confidence, understandable, by Keegan in taking Martins off when the game looked there for the winning.

Fulham game next is a big one!!

Totally agree we could've kept martins on but then got hit on break and lost which we wouldn't have deserved (i.e blackburn) i would've taking a draw before the game and would've snapped your hand off 4 it at half time we couldnt afford to lose it played some good stuff in the 2nd half now it's a must win game on sat no draw allowed lol

HAWAY THE LADS

P.S How Joey Barton keeps getting to pull the beloved black n white stripes on i will never no he's a disgrace to himself and hope that he goes to jail, even the commentor said his performances had been terrible for us.He can share a cell with his brother the prick.

[fergus8]

wow, newcastle get worse by the week.

being a rangers fan i know mcleish tactics, after 1 nil after completely dominating he decided to sit back and defend.

newcastle are the most disjointed "team" ive seen in a few years, especially being one of the top spenders

faye the centre back, barton in midfield and owen up front are by far the 3 worst/overated/past it players in that team

faye is seriously retarded at clearing the ball, getting goal side, positional sense, which was shown at the half time

bartons touch,passing and general awareness is unbelievably bad, i must say ive hardly seen him play for man city where he got his rep, but ive seen 3 or 4 full
games for newcastle over the season and he is hopeless in every single minute of every game.

owen, wow, talk about dining out on a previous reputation, this boys had free meals since he was 23. to me owen has always been a one trick pony, and to be fair it was a good trick. though not once was a ball played over the centre backs for owen to run on to? wtf. most of the game he was on the wing or even worse picking the ball up from deep, this is absolutely the worst use of owen i have ever seen, not a great fan of his at the best of times, but hes playing gash, and now out of position.

keegen has to be the most tactically naive managers ever seen, though in the past he made up for it with  the best brand of attacking football the prem had seen up to that point, i hope newcastle survives, and i hope he has a clearout, starting with owen,barton,faye,baye,enrique,taylor,emre,milner must be more i cant think of

keep viduka, martins, harper, given, duff and butt

martins and duff should be world class

[mondatoo]

wow, newcastle get worse by the week.

being a rangers fan i know mcleish tactics, after 1 nil after completely dominating he decided to sit back and defend.

newcastle are the most disjointed "team" ive seen in a few years, especially being one of the top spenders

faye the centre back, barton in midfield and owen up front are by far the 3 worst/overated/past it players in that team

faye is seriously retarded at clearing the ball, getting goal side, positional sense, which was shown at the half time

bartons touch,passing and general awareness is unbelievably bad, i must say ive hardly seen him play for man city where he got his rep, but ive seen 3 or 4 full
games for newcastle over the season and he is hopeless in every single minute of every game.

owen, wow, talk about dining out on a previous reputation, this boys had free meals since he was 23. to me owen has always been a one trick pony, and to be fair it was a good trick. though not once was a ball played over the centre backs for owen to run on to? wtf. most of the game he was on the wing or even worse picking the ball up from deep, this is absolutely the worst use of owen i have ever seen, not a great fan of his at the best of times, but hes playing gash, and now out of position.

keegen has to be the most tactically naive managers ever seen, though in the past he made up for it with  the best brand of attacking football the prem had seen up to that point, i hope newcastle survives, and i hope he has a clearout, starting with owen,barton,faye,baye,enrique,taylor,emre,milner must be more i cant think of

keep viduka, martins, harper, given, duff and butt

martins and duff should be world class

As far as faye and barton go on this performance i cant disagree like i said above barton is a joke however faye has looked ok in other games (but don't think he is good enough)

However, cant understand you criticising owen when you say yourself he was giving nothing but scraps to feed of in the first half and was battling for the team all over the patch.Although he's lost some of the pace he had he's still world class imho.

I'm also quite suprised that you say that you've watched 4 full newcastle games yet you feel duff is world class(was duff not playing in these games) he can't beat a man ne more every defender in the country seems to have him in there pocket can't think of a good game he's had since he signed for us.He's certainly not the player that he was when he played for blackburn.If we do manage to stay up i feel a lot of players will be leaving the club(this seems to be the case every season now and is one of our big problems).

[Rooky9]

Tacatically naive would be playing balls over the centre backs for Owen to run on to - he has no pace. He can however put the ball in the back of the net and he'll continue to do that given half chances. Similar to Shearer, Owen can keep hold of a football and bring others into the game, it cant be that hard to do but some seem to struggle. On that basis I dont see an issue with him coming short as long as he's where he needs to be when the ball falls loose in the box like he was twice last night.

I dont think anyone who has seen Barton this season would disagree with him looking awful but we have no other options at the moment.

Duff has been nothing short of useless apart from one back heel that set up the 4th against AZ Alkmar last year. I still hold hope that he'll come back to play like he did for Blackburn and a bit at Chelsea - but there are far more signs of Owen getting back than Duff.

Faye had a shocker, he can look good at times, but he needs to exterminate - in his Newcastle United association at least.

I'm tired of people just jumping on this Kegan tactically naive stuff. Very rarely can anyone come up with actual football tactic arguement to support it.  He played a form of 4-3-3 last night against a 4-4-2 but both the Birmingham wide players like to be on the ball and play more narrowly than you'd think - so by playing three holding midfielders like we did then it really didnt cause a problem and let us (in theory) go for their weakness of not keeping clean sheets.

We're slowly on the climb back, sometimes things have to get worse before they get better, and I think we've been through that. Plenty more confidence can be gained over the next few weeks and even this group of muppets will look like a different team. Hopefully that wont prevent the clear out though.