Alan Pardew: “It is physical power you need on the pitch against Stoke. It is a small pitch and there will be battles all over the pitch.
“I have to make sure my team is strong enough to cope with that and it plays its own game.
“It is something like 700 square metres smaller than our pitch at St James,’ so we need to make we use full width and we keep possession.
“We need to be able to cope with them and dictate the pressure of the game.
“You are going to miss a player of Joey Barton’s quality and I am not going to try and disguise that.
“I am hopeful he will be available for this one, but we are just going to have to wait and see.
“Jose Enrique is well off at the moment.
“He has not trained this week and we will have to see if he can do something. He is a player I cannot afford to put at risk. Jonas did the warm-up in training, but he is still feeling his knee, Joey did the same. Nile Ranger is fine.
“You have to ask Cheick Tiote and Kevin Nolan to play their normal game and not hold back, but of course they are aware of it.
“An example would be Everton’s first goal – when Saha controlled it and laid it back to Arteta, who skipped past Cheick.
“Now, Cheik might have brought him down, because he was the last midfield player in the line and he didn’t and he is on nine yellows.
“Whether that was because of that situation, that is the sort of fine lines you are talking about.
“The two players on nine yellows are Cheik and Kevin.
“They are very, very important players and we cannot afford to lose them for two games.
“I remember Cheick having a few little words with the referee against Everton and Kev coming over and dragging him away.
“We are all very conscious of it, I think – you cannot not be conscious of something like that.
“So it does play a slight negative role, if I am honest.
“It is a valid point. If I was on nine bookings, I would be looking to protect myself a wee bit.
“However, there will be no extra instruction from me on that, I don’t think I could do that.”
Footymad are organising a poker competition on MONDAY this week ... with a prize pot of $500. Anyone interested?
FOOTYMAD: We be running the first tournaments on Monday of this week (21st) strting at 8pm, with a view to continuing every fortnight.
The idea is that each site will have a free roll tournament with a prize pot of $500. By making it site-specific we're hoping there will be a bit of friendly banter between regulars to add to the competitive element. If its popular we may well then be able to organise an inter-club tournament between the winners of each club site? A Champions League of Poker so to speak.
All is set for Monday at 8pm.
Bonus Code: Nunited
http://www.partypoker.com/td/wsop_2011/wsop_2011.htm?wm=3289944
Please use the 'Nunited' bonus code in order to register with PartyGaming ready for Monday (can do this from now).
Then on Monday I'll let you know the password so we can get into the private room for NU Mad in time for the 8pm start.
If this works well we hope to do it fortnightly and you could then even arrange a better day/time if you prefer.
Any questions, give me a shout and I'll try to get the answer to you asap.
Kev - the usual address - Kevnumad@fsmail.net