midds

My point is that he inherited a shit show and he's had to work with lots of it whilst still being expected to deliver consistently. I've been a bit critical of him for being a bit 'samey' and not mixing things up but the club, as a whole, has had to be built from the ground up. He inherited a literal pile of rubble and he's been expected to turn it into a pyramid by some

Still think that many have forgotten what was actually bought in the takeover. It was a shell, a complete husk of a club. It had a shit manager, zero coaches of any standing, zero scouting network, no reserve team and zero coming through the youth set up. The squad had virtually zero value, no player was worth anything and there was no obvious 'sell them immediately and use the money to invest', there was nothing and no-one of any value. The entire entity had been deliberately hollowed out for the previous decade. To go from (literally) nothing to CL in 3 years should have been nothing more than a pipedream. Howe's got his faults and if people want to criticise then that's fair enough, I have in the past but he's built this squad from fucking scratch. He had zero foothold from day 1 and nothing to work with. He's far from perfect and he makes mistakes but just cast your mind back 4 years and look at what he inherited ffs

Mins 68 Shots 1 On target 0 Accurate passes 2/4 Chances created 0 xG 0.15 Touches 9 Touches in oppo box 1 Successful dribbles 0/2 Duels won 1 Duels lost 4 He clearly had a poor game today but that's also 18 without a goal now. I know he's young and still adapting but....

Just a rush of blood to the head, bit of frustration and a bit of an overreaction from the Brighton lad but he was always going to walk for that imo. You can't do that and expect to get away with it. He's not a robot but he's now going to miss out on a Cup Final at Wembley against his boyh.....

He didn't miss them as such. He stubbornly refused to show them

Difficult to begrudge Brighton the win tbh. They looked sharp, quick, organised and made far fewer mistakes than we did. We could easily have won it too, we had chances but so did they. They're streetwise and know exactly what they're doing, they may be cucks for the Sky 6 but they're a good, solid unit and they're in brilliant form

That, ladies and gentlemen, is known as season-killer of a game. Mentally and physically that will be fucking brutal on them all, such a shit way to throw it away too. Throw in the Gordon red and potential Isak injury and that could be that. What a fucking awful day

This is like Rocky 2

Willock - E

He's an A imo. He's exceptional and he's going to get even better too. We only have a couple of As in the squad tbh but he's definitely one of them, probably only a couple of CMs in the league I'd swap him for, he's got the lot

The main takeaway from this thread is that if we look at each player as an individual then there are some pretty flawed players in the squad. Genuine quality is pretty thin on the ground as we can see from the (very honest) ratings we've given each player so far. Given how bereft the squad is of top quality it makes the job Howe has done even better. He's got this squad of C's and D's into CL contention, 2 Finals in 3 years and a good chance of another QF in the other cup. The collective is clearly far greater than the sum of it's parts and that's credit to Howe

Yeah, something like that. It was extremely convenient for Real. Village Idiot is the one to ask tbh

Aye the local government/council have been very cooperative with the club in the past. A new training ground rings a bell and land sold off to pay for it? Some sketchy shit definitely

BREXIT MEANS BREXIT! SHOVE IT UP YOUR TebASS!! etc

Essentially, this

Strongly think Isak has a tactical injury tonight and he's been given the week off. Not saying it's totally fabricated but probably massively exaggerated to give him the night off and I'm not totally against it tbh. He needs to be in tiptop condition in 3 weeks time which means taking a hit and resting him at some point prior to the Final, tonight, as negative as it sounds, it the correct game to give him a rest in. It's pragmatic as fuck and some will spin it as throwing the towel in before we kick off and I understand it but this particular fixture is the most difficult in the League

This is probably the only fixture I still write off now. Getting anything from Anfield just seems impossible for us, ignore the form, ignore the formations, ignore the subs and everything else, we just don't win in that shithole. Doesn't matter how well we play, we lose and/or get fucked over and it frustrates me so much I can't even bring myself to watch it, it winds me up too much. I'm not prepared to go to bed in a bad mood again, if we do pull something out of the bag then I'll forgive myself and watch every single second of the game a hundred times

https://www.soccerstats.com/latest.asp?league=england Just a link to the site that often gets quoted on here. Click on any team in the table and you can see all stats and remaining fixtures etc. Got a feeling it'll go right down to the last game of the season

Whilst we're on the subject I'll admit my number 1 , perfect, ideal solution would have been to stay at SJP, knock it all down and build a superstadium around that little green rectangle of grass that's been our home for nearly 130 years or whatever, that would have been the perfect solution for me. You keep all of the history and tradition of the games that have been played there on that grass, same pitch and that's unique, can't think of (m)any pieces of grass that have been used exclusively by a single sports team going back to the 1880s or whatever. It would be unprecedented and simply perfect for us to do it. But that doesn't seem possible. There are just too many hurdles in the way and we don't have the option of just moving out for 3 seasons while it happens. Nope the only option now, for me, is a brand new stadium as close to SJP as we can get. For all intents and purposes it'll still be SJP in my eyes, different architecture, different looking stands but it'll still basically be SJP just 100 yards up the road. It's not ideal , it's not what I would have voted for but it's the best option for the club now imo. We need to compete and to to do that we need the extra capacity, we need the extra income and we need a stadium fit to host the club we all want Newcastle United to be in the next 20, 30 or 40 years. That means a new build. I know it'll sting, I know it'll be unpopular with some but it needs to happen

200 people being laid off earning circa £35k a year is saving £7m. That's about 6 months of Casemiro's wages. 200 families go home to an unemployed sibling/mother/father and that fat knacker is clawing in about £330k a week or whatever? No the wonder they're pissed off at the whole lot of them. It's a rotten club. It's rotten from the mouth to the arsehole

He's a D but he's only going one way from here and it's not up

I get the frustration but they've not bought a shed from amazon, they're seriously thinking about slapping down over a billion quid on a stadium, that decision is going to take some amount of consideration. It's a huge project with many minefields including massive opposition from some groups that needs to be mitigated before it's announced. It'll happen, it's a huge deal and whatever they decide to build could be there for a hundred years, they need to get it right

Oooof! Pick that cunt out

This Leeds keeper is a fucking clown

When was the last vaguely positive story that came out of that shithole of a club? Seems like it's been a continuous stream of negative/hilarious/disgraceful/shocking snippets that have made them look shitter and small time with each passing day. The rest of the country gets to laugh itself to sleep with what they're doing. The PR team are the only set of people performing even worse than the first team squad And I'm right here for all of it, it's amazing