Agreed.

Our recent results are obviously a problem, but I think the main beef with Allardyce is his tactics; it's "gritty" football even when it gets points. Newcastle fans love to see entertaining football, outscoring teams 4-3 and all that. The happiest we've been since Keegan left is when Bobby Robson brought some sort of spark back to the team. Allardyce, however, will grind out a 0-0 draw at Stoke, for example, and think it's a good thing, even though now we have to play one more game we could have avoided (and needed to avoid, really, because we haven't got a big enough team to play more matches than necessary, which is why we'd be fucked if we ever got into Europe with the present team).

When we went 2-1 down against Derby at home last month he made a straight substitution, bringing Taylor on for (I think) Cacapa. A straight replacement of a centre half for a centre half is hardly creative or positive thinking. It's "Stopping the rot" or "deficit prevention" - which is fair enough if you go 3-0 down at half time against an on-form Chelsea, but we happened to be playing a team at the bottom of the league, and they went in front early in the second half.

As for the players themselves, they need to play together consistently enough to get settled in their positions. N'Zogbia prefers to play on the wing rather than left-back (though long-term, that might be at the expense of Damien Duff, because Milner should play on the right). Taylor and Faye should partner each other at the back long enough to settle into playing with each other. It's no good to rotate an unsuccessful team; it does nothing for morale (Benitez at Liverpool gets away with it because he has the players to do so).

Anyway, I'd keep Allardyce but encourage a more positive stance going into a game. He's not as conservative as Roeder, and he's a better manager than Roeder, but at present his results are no better than Roeder's.