ohmelads

Should add that Wor Flags have done a brilliant job in representing the feelings of the fanbase. There's no need to go political now and many would find it disappointing to be associated with that.

Please stay well away from politics and respect the many NUFC fans who will not want it there. Politics is divisive but what brings us together is football. It would be a massive shame to see our club being used to push an agenda, especially one a huge number of our fans (from all generations and walks of life) won't agree with.

Absurd if this gets cancelled for a completely unrelated event. See the state-sponsored BBC have the Queen's death as top story on every sports page. Feels like 1984. I get the point about injuries and good timing for us but by the same token, West Ham fielded a decent team in Europe with some key players playing 90.

As if. Do the producers/commentary just live in a bubble or do they genuinely believe that's the public mood? They're as bad as state media AKA the BBC.

Would also like to know who made the decision not to give the referee the best angle of the push on Willock? They're also culpable. I mean, it's obvious from all angles but especially the reverse angle, which was withheld from the ref. You don't just 'forget' to give the ref the best camera view.

Look who they're playing in Europe though. Will be a second string side you'd think.

It's legit. The PGMOL responded to it denying his claims.

No way they're getting the same replays as we are and just innocently making catastrophic mistakes that no one can make sense of. I think the question here is the integrity of some of the referees, especially in the VAR room.

I hope Howe takes the fine and calls VAR out. It's a blatantly dirty decision and there's no defending it. We have to stand up for ourselves here.

Who cares how 'big' a club is? It's a childish and pointless debate. Take Man U and Liverpool, undeniably two of the biggest clubs in the world by every metric and yet wherever you go, you're met with clueless plastic fans of both (not so many Man Utd 'fans' nowadays, but you know they'll be back if they pick up). It's the price of success. They both have their real supporters but the ones mouthing off on twitter that they're a massive club are plastic fans. I don't take this type of fan seriously. I'd love to see either club have half a decade of being genuinely shit and I don't mean 7th place. Let's see them battle relegation year after year with no hope of anything in the short or medium term future, with any half decent players being poached and playing their peak years elsewhere. Then you'll see who's left. We might end up as 'big' as they are but what I love about Newcastle - and any fan will feel this about their own club - is what makes us different: the unique combination of a big city centre stadium relative to the population of our city and region, a one-club city obsessed with the sport, a city that broke all attendance records after a second relegation within a decade, all after half a century without a trophy and 15 years without anything to hope for. Other clubs will have their own reasons for feeling they're different to everyone else and rightly so because there's so much history in our game. You look at the 'big clubs' and you have several generations of fans there who have no concept of struggle. To me, Newcastle is the biggest club in the world and I'm sure Palace fans for example will feel the same about their own club inside. The game became commercialised ages ago and all that 'big club' stuff comes from people who see clubs as brands and don't 'get' what the game is about. If we emulate those clubs' successes then we'll attract those arrogant twats too, but they won't be our genuine fans.

Be very surprised if they pay 6 million to keep him, but considering there's only 13 league games until the January window, and we can recall him if need be, it could be worse. Leaves us in an awkward situation in January though because if we go out and get a backup keeper, there's still every chance he returns in May and we have a load of keepers. Most likely, we'll just stick with Darlow until summer and then Dubs comes back. Man U have got the better deal here - if we activate the recall clause then it'll be in the transfer window so they can just find another backup.

They will. They'll get the breaks when they need them. Title race is a huge money spinner.

Those lines are manually placed by a human who eyeballs where they think it should go. You can often see them moving the mouse and picking a spot.

My understanding is it has to be the referee's clear and obvious error. I agree the linesman should probably bear the brunt of the blame because he has raised his flag even though there's no way he could have reasonably seen an offside. He's guessed, and the ref has gone with it, and then so have VAR. To my mind it's still a clear error because there's no discernible infringement (ie offside) by Isak in their images, yet he was penalised. The nonsensical lines feel like a fudged attempt to corroborate the ref/linesman and prevent a shitstorm. It is a problem with the system but one that they've tried to clear up by giving the benefit of the doubt to the attacking player. The linesman should be honest with the referee that he needs to go to VAR, and they need to be honest when they're guessing.

The moaning and counter-accusations from Klopp and a section of their fans are just an attempt to divert attention from the elephant in the room which is the major decisions that have proved decisive in their favour yet again. Would be nice to beat them through some bullshit decisions our way for once and give Klopp something real to have a hissyfit about. Unlikely though - we'll get shafted there again next season if it's tight.

It should never have been flagged offside in the first place. Linesmen are instructed not to flag when it's tight in case a goal is scored. VAR manually drawing lines to try to back their linesman just makes a bad situation worse. Both are guessing, which is clear from the VAR images.

Thanks for pointing that out, but that's even worse! If the cameras can't show any discernible offside, what is he doing putting his flag up? Goes against all his training and instructions as a linesman. Then some guy in a studio eyeballs a grainy image and manually puts two lines where he reckons they need to fall to say offside despite the guidance being that when you're guessing, you give the benefit of doubt to the attacker. Both are really dodgy decisions by the linesman and VAR and need to be called out. For Liverpool fans to moan about timewasting is delusional in the extreme. A deflection tactic perhaps? Their fans and pro-Liverpool media will obviously try to focus on the clock because it draws attention away from the obvious talking point.

They're the new Man U. Booing opposition players after you've just VAR'd your way to another 3 points with an embarrassing offside decision. Guess they've learnt from Klopp's hissy fits.

Forget about the clock. Liverpool fans would prefer to talk about the clock because it deflects attention from VAR and the disallowed goal. VAR chose to rule it out in spite of the evidence. Manually drawing the lines wherever you feel like on a blurry image isn't a scientific method and everyone knows this is a flaw with it. When you're left guessing and it's clearly impossible to call, the benefit of the doubt rightly goes to the attacker now (in other words you play on). It's a very dodgy decision.

Could be he was after mental wages that only West Ham were willing to pay? He's a regular in the Brazil first XI. Would guess he's on a lot more than Isak.

As others have said, think our hand's been forced by the player but if it turns out we get Pope for 10m and lose Dubs for 5m, that's solid business from where we were last season. Pope's 3 years younger and has been far less injury prone. As the list of keepers further up shows, loads of clubs have sub-standard backup. Most keepers aren't as injury prone as Dubravka, so most clubs get away with it. It's not easy to keep a good second-choice keeper happy as we've found out here. Usually it's either an inexperienced youngster or an old head who's been around and can do a job in a pinch. For the positives, it frees up quite a lot in wages. People go on about transfer fees more but having Dubs on the bench takes a lot of wages away from strengthening elsewhere. Man U can throw that money around but we're light in midfield and attack. And I really rate Dubravka but having injury prone backup is also a gamble in itself. Yes it could come back to bite us but so could keeping him, using up that squad place and not getting an outfield player we need because of his wages. He's only getting older and could be injured when Man U need him.

Gutting news about Bruno and Isak but we're a well drilled side. Could be another long one like Brighton. Keep it tight and try and do them on the break with ASM/Almiron or a set piece.

Buying and selling houses doesn't involve a transfer deadline day that affects one and all though.

"Whataboutery/Whataboutism" is a lazy twitter term pulled out when someone's losing a debate and wants their point to be accepted devoid of context, logic or scrutiny.

Think our transfer strategy is opportunism at this point. If we can't get any of the targets from our list then it seems we're trying to play the market to stretch our money, exploit circumstances and punch above our weight in terms of what we can attract. That's how I see the Maddison bids, because he isn't exactly what we were looking for, he probably eats up our whole budget, and he might force a change in system to get the best out of him. But he is far above what a midtable side should be attracting, he's a safe bet and more or less guarantees goals or assists if he stays fit. Opportunism isn't how the very top sides operate because they have the luxury of pinpointing players that fit their needs and system and usually get their man, but that didn't work out for us (Ekitike, Diaby, etc). That doesn't mean opportunism leads to failure though. You could say we got Trippier like that, exploiting the Howe connection and the lack of clubs needing a RB at that time. As we get to the end of the window, there'll be a lot of clubs trying to push surplus players, and some fringe players for national teams who aren't getting game time in a world cup year (Werner, Maddison etc). It will hopefully become a better market for opportunists with cash to spend, like us. Clearly it hasn't gone to plan since the Botman success and there's no point in dressing it up, but let's wait until September before we evaluate the window. Far from ideal but have a feeling we'll pull something off because it could become a buyer's market with the world cup coming up.