midds

Made it to "in the 80's" and had to switch it off.

its more than that though, matic and fabregas have gone from the best midfield pairing to almost useless, hazard is hugely less effective, costa seems to have forgotten he's there to score goals in his pursuit of trying to piss off every single centre back in the league and ivanovic has forgotten how to play football. Terry needed replacing sure but its not as if Zouma or Cahill are bad defenders (also why the hell is zouma playing rb, they spent 20m or so on a left back so play him and put azpilicueta in his natural rb slot or does that just make sense). Absolutley, everything you say is correct but it was more to do with the fact he's lost the players and they're clearly not playing for him any more.

Not getting Stones to replace Terry played a part too imo. Everything I've read about Terry emphasises how influential he is in that club, the power he has is ridiculous - bit like Gerrard at Liverpool. He had a replacement to bring in and it never happened, he's left with a pissed-off John Terry in obvious decline.

Unbelievable. Fucking unbelievable.

Reminds me of Viana a bit. Very talented but totally unsuited to the physicality and pace of the league.

Yeah picking a keeper baffled me aswell. You know what I mean.

Still far too conservative with his team selection imo. at home to Stoke, we're desperate for a win and he picks 7 players purely designed to stop Stoke. Keeper, back 4 and Anita and Tiote, all there to, largely, defend and/or protect. We're neck deep in the shit and he's only brave enough to pick 4 players to break Stoke down and score enough to win it. It's just not good enough. Trying to play a bit of football is admirable but it's utterly futile when it's left to 4 or 5 men to break down an entire team. We're a sheep in wolf's clothing, utterly toothless and unless he has the bottle to go for weaker opposition at home then we'll go down playing nice football.

Dropping £100m+ on De Bruyne and Sterling was the only statement that was needed tbh.

Exactly. It's one less body McClaren can call upon but he offers so little when he appears the effect is negligible. Can pretty much guarantee his replacement won't be worse.

Yeah, fair to say the rot is starting to set in now. The only games he's won since August are WBA, Watford and Charlton with Man U and Liverpool up next.

Good. Problem being that he'll struggle at that level which will put a lot of clubs off.

Genuinely surprised they've over-turned the decision but in reality it doesn't change anything.

Anita Sissoko Wijnaldum as a midfield 3. Mitrovic central then you've got options of playing a combination of Perez, De Jong, Thauvin, Aarons. Cisse on the bench etc. Absolutley no need to see Gouffran in there at all unless we pick up more injuries.

He's had a good couple of minutes to consider what he's going to do once he (probably) scores too. He knows he's about to take a pen and decided to imitate an aeroplane and run 80 or 90 yards towards the Newcastle fans, it's not a spontaneous thing he's done, he's decided that's the best way to rub Newcastle fan's noses in it. Only he knows why he's done it, I'd like to think it's just ill-advised and crass rather than malicious but...it's Adam Johnson and he's been formally charged with grooming and sexual activity with a 15 year old lass...His decision-making in the past has obviously been 'questionable'.

The 38-40 point benchmark is a little misleading too. To stay up you've got to be better than 3 other sides, the points total doesn't really come into it and as poor as we are I think we'll finish above at least 3 other sides. We've had one of the worst starts to a league season in our history and are only 2 points behind 17th, 3 behind 16th etc. Not trying to spin this as success by any stretch but I think we'll survive.

I thought it was obvious tbh.

Waste of time. He was clumsy and had he defended it properly then the ref wouldn't even have had a decision to make.

He was given time and space today and still did nothing. They backed off him and he still just played the percentages, passing it sideways and backwards, not really getting involved too much and his touches were in areas where Sunderland knew he couldn't do too much damage. He did get kicked out of the game and that's not his fault. Any injury he's picked up was inflicted by that cunt Cattermole.

1 penalty awarded in the last 68 games I think. That came at Old Trafford in the 87th minute whilst we were 3-0 down... ...tie that in with the 13 red cards that we've been shown since the last time we've had a man advantage and it's the type of stat that gets you wondering and Jeff Stelling loves.

The run of fixtures from now til Xmas is huge. don't want to put a number on it atm but the next 7 or 8 games will decide which division we play in next year.

Regardless of opposition and referees it does highlight how our players have a huge problem with self-discipline and professionalism. Yes we've been shit for ages, yes some of those reds are debatable but the fact we've had so many means it's not a coincidence. It needs to be addressed, we're 10 games in and we've had 3 reds ffs.

The next shit red card we get we should pull the team off the pitch and concede the game. FA won't ignore that the fucking corrupt cunts. You can add Coloccini today to that list. It's now 13 reds since we played with a red card advantage.

bleurgh. I've decided I'm going to remember the first 43 minutes of the game and try to take a few positives from the game. Even with 10 men we still created chances but games hinge on big moments and they all went in Sunderland's favour today. If you don't score when you're on top you generally pay the price eventually.

I thought it was a pen like. The red was a little harsh but I can see why he's given it, had Coloccini not barged him out of the way then Fletcher would have had a chance to get on the end of the pass. don't think he would have got there in time, it was tight, but he wasn't given the chance to because he'd been knocked on his arse by Colo.