As it's a PA article it'll be most of them, all slightly reworded. However, whilst Jim's always bob-on about the artciles, the articles themself are often bobbins. No doubt Coventry and Rovers will deny the story tomorrow and as there are no quotes it's definitely a "flyer" by the paper concerned. Yesterday they had McCarthy in the frame. If even you doubt it's authenticity was it really worth a new thread?

If we did get him he'd bring his mate Stan as first team coach in his jog pants and white trainers.

Some mugs obviously believe it as he's been backed as short as 3/1 on Betfair. However he's now out to 35/1 if you want to believe tabloid codswallop.

I was thinking the same. As soon as the question came he just started talking about his Welsh players and picking them up again. No comment one way or the other. Contary to earlier press reports I certainly don't feel he's ruled himself out.

Correct me if I'm wrong Brownie but does the graph not show that there's been about 14k lumped on him in the past hour or so. Youre right, the spike is quite out of the ordinary. That's a hell of a lot of money to be throwing at such a bet. It's either someone 'in the know' or someone with more money than sense. I'm going for the former and expect him to be installed before the Portsmouth game. The grey bars on the graphs on Betfair are induvidual bets so the £14,000 is just one bet! One very plausable reason for this though is that a Bookmaker may have gone a top price about hughes on Monday (say 9/2 compared to everyone elses 4/1) and got hit quite hard. Now it looks like he is a very realistic option they could be trying to offload ttheirhere liabilities on the best price they can find which would be with Betfair. Still a staggeringly large bet though which never happened on Newcastle's Manager betting until Souness was all but confirmed. The Moyes betting pattern is similar to the Advocat betting from Monday and as we now know Advocat is interested in the job. Theres over £3,000 on Moyes now on Betfair which has practically all gone on today. This is more money than on people who have been ranked as decent contenders all week such as Glenda and Houllier. Geroge Graham and Gary Megson have just been added.

Advocaat now 8-1. You can only take what's avaliable, you can't crash in on Advocaat. Someone is taking every price that becomes available. Have to say when I made the post at dinner I'd not seen the betfair market since this morning. having looked at Advocat now I'd say he's defo in the frame. Not saying he's gonna get it by any stretch of the imagination but I bet his CV's on the table. As an alternate point these 2 days are one of the few times I've read most of the posts as they happen during the day. DO YOU LOT NOT WORK?

I think the fact we may be fired up and may actually play our best players in the correct positions will lead to us getting a 1-1 draw. Jon Stead to break his duck for the season and Shearer for the Magpies.

With regards to the betfair situation, when looking at the market click on the name of the manager to get a graph on how much money has been traded on each manager and at what price. Now I've not looked since this morning (banned at work ) but compare the amount of money on Dick Advocat to the amount of money on Mark Hughes and Strachan. If people with inside knowledge of Advocats' appointment did know anything then they are hardly getting stuck in are they. If the next Newcastle manager market is still available to view look at the graph for Souness. Ignore the looky sod who had £3 on at 1000/1 for a moment. When his price started to crash multiple bets of well over a grand were placed. By early yesterday morning bets of around £20,000 were piling on Souness albeit at small odds. One report in a Newspaper or on a trustworthy site could bring people to put there fivers and tenners on any one manager. Apart from the top few there is not an awful lot of money around trying to lay the so called outsiders. This means that if 60 people put a tenner on on the basis of one Newspaper report then £600 has been chucked on and the price could drop quite rapidly giving the 66/1 into 25/1 syndrome. It very rarely means anything until significant bets are being layed.

If thats not having a bit of a pop I don't know what is.

Bergs having a bit of a pop. http://skysports.planetfootball.com/list.a...+backs+Pedersen

I wouldn't start worrying too much yet over getting Dick as manager. There's only £350 been traded on him in total which is hardly enough money nationwide to start us panicking. Compare that to Mark Hughes where there's over £10,000 on him with single bets of over £300 regularly occuring and it puts Mr Advocat into the shade a bit. However don't get too bothered about Betfair. I remember about a year ago John Williams denying a London Evening Standard report that Souey was off to Tottenham as absolute nonsense. Souness' price still contracted to about 1.8 where I layed him for a nice sum. he was back out to 5's the day after.

Interesting thread on the Toon Fansite. Looks like the geordies are trying to imply there's more to Soueys signing than meets the eye later on!

JW says that the appointment will take a couple of week.s Maybe thats because certain people are away managing on international duty this week.

Thats normal when a new market like this first appears. Any significnt move would probably be seen on Betfair and as yet thats pretty quiet. So far £14,300 has been staked on the market with over £5,300 on Mark Hughes who is 9/2 fav. Strachan next best at 6/1 with Newell attracting interest at 7/1. Some suckers have backed Glenn Roeder at 90/1. Whats all that about then. The other fancy prices include Craig 'cuddly bear' Brown at 65/1, John Gregory (please god no) at 35/1 and P Taylor at 50/1. I presume thats Peter Taylor but you never know, maybe The Power fancies trying his hand at another sport. If Clive Woodward can do it!!!

Sorry Dwight , too much of this. and not enough of this Bye Bye

No we wouldn't , we would consider it very lucky

Just watched it again on football first and still can't believe that Dickov gets hoofed 2 foot up in the air 5 seconds before amorouso's sending off and it's not noticed. And for the second week running I got the feeling Tony Cottee doesn't like us in the commentary box. On a plus note newcastle looked a mess of a team, especially defensively.

I really need to watch that game again because there was decision after decision that baffled me. As well as the obvious the other big decision which was mentioned on the ref thread was that before Amo's sending off Dickov was pulled all over by a Manc defender who then went through the back of him. Ref waved play on - long ball forward - sending off. Why if Scholes goes to ground and slides in on Ferguson not winning the ball is it not a yellow. because he shook his hand? How can Ronaldo do a dive so bad and yet not get booked. Every time the ball was played forward and Yorke and Neville tussled for the ball neville got a free kick. Why is the advantage rule never used to our advantage. Why did their equaliser come from a free kick taken 20 metres from the wroing position because in the first half that was being penalised. I could go on and on. People wil say that happens in every game and you always see things from your own side but in our case I really believe thats not true. Some people will probalby do what George Graham did and state it wasn't deliberate hand ball even though it was knocked back accurately with some force. The problem with footy is that the frustration that most of us feel now is something we have to live with. The decision won't be reversed. The ref won't comment. The FA wont comment. The only thing that makes us feel better is by putting our point across. And the only man who has the public face to do that is Graeme Souness. If I was Souey I'd bast the referee. I'd highlight everything I could be it from this season or the last. I'd call the referee a clown and the FA clueless and spineless for not having the guts to do anything about it. Will TV replays work? We don't know but why not try it, even if its just for one round of the league cup. Instead we will keep a closed shop were referees can quietly live with there biasedness and incompetence safe in the knowledge they are under the protective cloud of the people above them. We have to pay £20, £30 even £40 for the pleasure of watching live sport ruined by these men. I for one have had enough.

Blackburn 3 - 0 ManUre Yorke (Pens 22, 38, 87)

If you look at the name D'URSO closely you can see the name URS. Spooky.

I'm not going to predict a score but I've just backed Amo for the first goal at 33-1. Header from a corner, Free Kick, in off his arse. I'm not bothered how just get it in there big man. Go on then. 1-1

I'm probably in Manchester centre on Saturday morning so anyone know any (friendly) pubs were the game will be on and other Blues may be holed up?

I'm not as worried as some people seem to be about today. For me we always looked a far better side in possession and looked like we might open them up wthout creating a lot. We never looked like conceding apart from when Reid fell on the ball injured and let their guy in for a 1 on 1. I wouldn't say that PNE looked fitter than us as some people had suggested. It was blimmin hot today (my face is glowing after 90 minutes in the sun) and that affected the game quite a bit. You were never likely to see box to box breaks in that heat. Good day out as well.

(tongue placed in cheek) To play Devils advocate:- Neill ------> Hunt (Neill will be suspended far more as refs hate him) Amoruso -----> Ngotty (Amo is slow and can't derfend, remember the Turks) Matteo ------> Jaidi (has Jaidi ever captained a team to relegation?) Gray ------> Gardner (Has Gardnder ever played in a team relegated from the top flight?) Emerton -----> Giannakopoulus (Emerton can't beat a man and has never won Austrailasia 2004) Ferguson ----> Campo (Fergies not fit and used to playing St Mirren. Campo played for Real) Thompson -----> Djorkaeff (Thompsons not fit full stop.) De Pedro ------> Okocha (Ones a proven Premier League player. The other is Grabbi waiting to happen) Stead ------> Davies (Davies knows how to 'exploit the box' in Tokyo Joe's better) (tongue removed from cheek)

They may well hit home harder. And if someone posted an account from bradford on here I would read that too. I wouldn't say take it off a Rovers message board which is the point I was trying to make.