That was horrible to watch. Ipswitch were terrible. But that is expected. Newcastle were also rubbish. Mainly because we came to dead ends in the last 3rd. The reason? Shearer/Cort will never work. Ameobi is just Cort in disguise so I will never understnd why he replaced him when the partnership wasn't working. It is easy to say a draw was a fair result but when I think carefully about chances, they had 2 which went in. We had a lot more opportunities. Cort / Shearer had a couple of free headers. Robert had a couple of shots. Dabizas missed when it was easier to score. Shearer had 2 disallowed and missed a penalty. So although we were terrible I think we still deserved to win in the end. But I'm making no excuses for them because we simply cannot play like that again if we want to play in the champions league.

Can anyone explain what BR might have possibly been thiking when he brogh Dyer on for Jenas and Ameobi for Cort. Dyer = Jenas and Cort = Ameobi. We needed to CHANGE the team.

And as for bringing Solano off for LuaLua?

I expected Dyer to come on for Cort giving us a real boost of speed. If BR had done this 20 minutes from full time I would have thoroughly expected a win. Or maybe even Luax2 for Cort and dyer for Shearer.

The fact is that we would have done better to bring Lua on for Cort and leave Dyer on the bench. By this I don't mean Dyer should not have played. I mean that it would have been better to leave our star player out and have a descent formation, than lay the crap that BR put out.

We really looked like scoring from a header all the game. We seemed to be winning everything in their box whether it ws Cort or Shearer they always got a head on it but missed. Anyway, my point is that we looked terribe but looked like we could possibly score from a cross so WHY bring Solano off who had been putting great crosses in all game?

*Not criticising BR at all as I'm sure he knows what he's doing. I just really can't see where he got those Substitutions from. Also I'm not just writing this because we lost. I'm writing it because of the choices of subs.

I believe that the reason we didn't play like our usual selves today is because of who was upfront. That is not Blaming everything on 2 people. I just don't think Cort / Shearer works. They were going up for the same balls at times it was awful!

Shearer / Choprah. --- Why not? It couldn't be any worse than Shearer Cort.

I am still confident of a champions league place simply because Bellamy is coming back (thank -God) and it looks as if the mackems are going down.

And try to remember that if someone had said to us at the start of the season 6th place and above the mackems we'd have snapped their hands off. Now we're looking at a worst case scenario of 6th place and the mackems staying up!

-- Anonymous, March 16, 2002

Answers

I lay the blame for today mainly at our defence. Distin wasn't his usual self, playing some strange passes and amazingly running out of play with nobody near him. Hughes again looked like he lacked confidence and was caught too often in the middle helping out Dabs and O'Brien. Our two centre backs were poor. Collectively they were to blame for both of their goals, and they have to hold their hands up.

In truth 90% of our chances (and they were very good chances) came from the left hand side. He scored a beauty of a free kick and set up Shearer's goal. He laid a goal on a plate for Dabizas, who smacked the ball wide. Can't really ask for any more.

If we had scored early on, which in all honest could easily have happened, we would have been comfortable, but the non existent sound from the crowd as well as the complete and utter lack of movement whenever anyone was in posession helped us throw away a must win game.

Again the bloke behind wouldn't bloody shut up about Robert being a French t*t. Cort didn't really do that badly. Some of his touches were good in the hold up of the ball, this was followed by decent crosses but again nobody making a run to get on the end of them. Unless the wingers hold the ball up for a long time, Shearer will rarely be on the end of them. Cort missed a coupld of chances but in truth they were difficult opportunites.

One question. If BR had subbed off Robert instead of Solano (the former arguably adding a lot more to our game than the latter) would the crowd have booed?

-- Anonymous, March 16, 2002

No they wouldn't. I think many would say, "What the F*ck did he do that for." Many would cheer, but no-one would have booed.

-- Anonymous, March 16, 2002

Sorry but it has to be said that the substitutions were a nonsense.

Jenas was the only midfielder in the middle/rigth making things happen, he has a brightness that would/will work well with Dyer, obvious to pair them up.

Lua2 for anybody is always a strange subsitution, but fot Nobby was daft. The crowd made their feelings known.

Shola for Cort is not a straight one for one swap. Cort can't trap the ball, ha sno pace, seems to like the ball in the air, but can't head it. Shola has decent to good close control, prefers the ball on the ground, but can cope if it's in the air. If I was Shola I'd be pretty upset at not getting more of a chance, maybe when he moves on he'll be given more than 10 minutes a game a dozen times a season.

I thought Robert made the chances but the forwards weren't attacking the ball. I had a wonderful moment where a kid behind, mimicked his dad and shouted "Robert why aren't you challenging" as the ball went to the region he would normally be in. Robert had just chased their full back down the wing blocking the overlap and was defending deeper than Distin

-- Anonymous, March 16, 2002

In Robson's defence it ought to be mentioned that the score was 1-2 with the starting XI and 1-0 with the subs on.

Having said that, I too was baffled by the removal of Jenas and Nobby as well to a lesser extent. YBR may have thought Nobby was tiring as he did get through a lot of work. In the case of Jenas, do we know for a fact that this was purely tactical? It's just possible he might have had a knock - I don't know.

As for the subs, Ameobi had little chance to shine, Dyer was reasonably efficient without setting the world alight on his first game back but Lua*2 lifted the pace of the game and drove Newcastle forward a lot in the closing stages. It was Lua who supplied Robert who crossed for the equaliser. Lua also took a couple of very threatening corners.

I can't help feeling there's some prejudice about certain players. Some have made up their minds that Lua*2 is useless and will only notice evidence that confirms this conclusion. They couldn't have seen much yesterday. I watched him very closely - he hardly ever lost the ball, drove us forward several times, had an excellent shot blocked by the hand of an Ipswich defender (outside the box) and as I say took a couple of wicked corners and was in the build up for the equaliser. I thought he was the key player who changed the game in the closing stages.

I thought Ipswich were very mediocre and it's a great disappointment to lose 2 points. There was a lack of urgency about our play until we went behind. Funnily enough, even at 2-1 down and 10 mins left, I was convinced we were going to win and felt vindicated in this belief when the pen was awarded. A shocking miss and 2 vital points thrown away. If a player such as Barton had done that, a lynch mob would have been been assembled.

We could look at the 2 disallowed goals and I don't know if the first Ipswich goal was offside, but the fact is that we should have won this with something to spare. We lacked the cutting edge up front and I think we can only blame ourselves and not the ref on this one. I didn't notice anyone have a bad game but somehow the whole was just a touch lacklustre. It was nice to see Al showing some leadership in the first half and shouting at the lads to lift the game as we struggled to get into gear.

-- Anonymous, March 17, 2002

Thanks for providing a different view of Luax2, Jonno. I haven't seen him enough to have formed much opinion either way, and figure he must have something for Bobby to keep picking him. Possibly another case of player people need to be patient with?

-- Anonymous, March 17, 2002

It's not so much being patient but actually seeing him play. 10 minute substitute appearences aren't suitable to judge a player.

On from the start would be.

-- Anonymous, March 17, 2002

10 minute substitute appearences aren't suitable to judge a player.

Well he's already been judged and damned by a few on here. :-)

-- Anonymous, March 17, 2002